Comments (0) Best Inhospitable Hospital (1904) - 2010
Linda Vista Community Hospital
Abandoned places have their own energy — or seem to, at least, if you watch any basic-cable pseudoscience-channel filler programs about hauntings or the paranormal. The abandoned Linda Vista Community Hospital in Boyle Heights is used these days as a shooting location for everything from episodes of ER to music videos to assorted horror movies dripping with that dull post-Saw decay for effect. You can wander through for a fee. Founded in 1904 as the Santa Fe Railroad Hospital, it served railway employees who got sick of working on the railroad all the livelong day. Closed in 1991, it’s been the focus of intrepid urban explorers who are either too principled or too cheap to pay the admission fee charged by the on-site guard. So why would ghosts choose to haunt places with very little life left in them? Psychoacoustic feedback loops, unexplained penance and just plain spectral loneliness have all been offered as guesses at ghostly motivation, but the faithful and the skeptical can agree that the building currently crumbling away slowly in East Los Angeles resembles a ghost because it’s just sad. 610 S. St. Louis St., Boyle Heights. (323) 526-4222. —David Cotner
