In the early 1900s, Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard opened a sanatorium in Olalla, Washington. She named it Wilderness Heights. Dr. Hazzard didn’t have any degrees, but she had written a book on the benefits of fasting. In her sanatorium, she practiced what she preached and slowly starved her patients, which earned the sanatorium being dubbed Starvation Heights by locals.
More than a dozen patients died while in her care and undergoing the fasting cure. Worse still, when they grew weak, she convinced them to leave all they had to her. It wasn’t until a wealthy patient reached out secretly for help that she was caught. In 1911, she was arrested for her crimes. She was convicted in 1912 of the manslaughter of one of her victims and served two years before being released on parole. She was granted a full pardon the next year.
The Bizarre and Chilling Tale of The Greenbriar Ghost
After her release, she and her husband moved to New Zealand, where she worked as an osteopath and dietitian until 1920. It was found out that she wasn’t really a doctor, and was charged with practicing medicine without a license there and fined. She then opened another sanatorium, which she publicly called a “school of health,” in an effort not to get in trouble for her lack of licensing again. In 1935, that sanitarium burned down and was never rebuilt.
Attempting to cure herself, she began fasting also, and in 1938, she died of starvation. We’ll never know if she set out to con and kill her patients or not, but she must have actually believed in the cure of fasting since she tried it herself.
Her former house was reportedly haunted. Chairs were found piled up in the kitchen, and paranormal investigators recorded ghostly voices calling, “Help us!” and “Dig us up!”
The house has been slated for demolition, but the horrible memory of this Angel of Death will not soon be forgotten.
