There is a place that is only 40 kilometers from Athens and it is, daring, as if taken from the most terrifying scenes of Alfred Hitchcock or some dark poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
When it is day and it is spring or summer the mood is different if and when you get there the heavy shadow will definitely affect you.
When the landscape becomes wintery, however, things change. They get scarier. Especially if it is snowy, like this season. These are definitely mind games. But you can hardly stand at that point without being affected.
In fact, if you have heard some of the horror stories that are told about that place then you will definitely feel a shiver running through your spine.
The "Park of Souls" in I refuse which stands in front of the imposing sanatorium is a place that will surely "haunt" you!
The sanatorium that "hosted" the pain of hundreds of people
We are in the largest lung left in Attica. In Parnitha. The altitude is about 1.000 meters. If you follow the road that passes in front of the cable car after a few minutes of driving between the green landscape (or white if you are there after some bad weather) and many turns, you will find yourself in front of a large "opening".
To your left you will see an old, imposing but abandoned building in its fate. To your right you will see an "eerie" park where tree trunks have been turned into human figures who "shout" and try to convey their pain.
The abandoned building is the sanatorium. It was created in 1912 by the administration of the hospital Annunciation (the Petraki Monastery had donated the area) which founded it in order to function as a mountain anti-tuberculosis kiosk-treatment center. The sanatorium will end up with thousands of people from all over Greece but mainly from Athens.
Most of them came there for treatment and to take advantage of the fresh air of Parnitha but because they could not pay for the treatment (ranging from 300 to 480 drachmas per month) they camped outside it.
Perhaps the most famous patient who was hospitalized in the sanatorium was the poet Giannis Ritsos. He remained there from October 1937 to April 1938 but was not cured. During his stay there, however, he wrote three works: "A Firefly Illuminates the Night" (1937), "Summer Noon Dream" (1938, dedicated to Vassilis Rotas), "Spring Symphony" (1938).
The sanatorium operated for about three decades. After the discovery of penicillin in 1950, the services of the building were undermined, resulting in its closure in 1960. EOT followed, 5 years later, as the new owner of the sanatorium, where it operated for a while as a hotel "Xenia".
However, the way it was built and the fact that it was close to "Mont ParnesLed to its closure in 1960. In 1967 the Tourism Education and Training Organization moved and settled in the building. The tourist schools operated until 1984 and then were transferred to Anavyssos. The building was then permanently abandoned.
The horror stories associated with the sanatorium
Even today if one stands in that place it is impossible not to feel an awe. Most likely this is due to the fact that he "inherited" so much sanatorium as well as the "park of souls" a feeling that exudes fear.
Maybe again all these strange and creepy stories are responsible for spooky screams or for shadows that appear out of nowhere and disappear as suddenly as they appeared. Especially in the old days there were too many stories about people who had tuberculosis and died in the sanatorium and were supposed to have haunt the area.
Two of these stories, however, are the most famous and. Scary. The first concerns a little girl that you can meet if you are near the Source of Kyra. According to urban legend, this little girl, always dressed in white with a blue ribbon worn on her waist, started from the sanatorium, while she was seriously ill from tuberculosis, in order to drink the thermal water of the spring, something he did not succeed as he cooled down in the middle of the route. According to all those old horror stories, the little girl haunted the place and when she now meets some hikers, she approaches them with outstretched arms and tears in her eyes.
The second story is about a woman about 40 years old. And she "appears" wearing clothes of a bygone era. It wanders in the surrounding bushes and behind the rocks that exist near the Source of Kyra. It looks like something or someone is looking for. When he sees a hiker, he accelerates and approaches him. According to the urban myths that exist then, two things happen: either she gets angry and gets a scary look similar to what you see in the thrillers, or she starts crying and screaming, and then she continues her endless search.
The creepy Park of Souls
The Park of Souls was added to the pain stories from the sanatorium and the urban myths about the ghosts that have haunted the place. An outdoor scary museum, which is connected to one of the biggest natural disasters the mountain has suffered and certainly "ties" perfectly with the surrounding atmosphere.
Exhibits such as "The pregnant woman", "The cross of martyrdom", "The nostalgia of the mother for the child she left behind", "The couple", "The ear", "The feather", "The reasoning" etc. compose a whole that can hardly go unnoticed by the hiker of the area.
This park was only created in 2012, however, it has already managed to gain a reputation that would fit something that has stood there for many decades. The idea and its creation belong to the sculptor Spyridon Dassiotis who at that time worked in forestry office of Parnitha.
When he searched and learned the history of the area where the sanatorium exists, he was shocked by the pain, the suffering of those people and so he was inspired to do (non-profit) something that would stay there to remind everyone of what the TB people experienced. He chose to use tree trunks he found there for two reasons.
"The first reason was that I wanted it to be wood around the sanatorium because I always believe that there is something from the souls that once lived in this place. The patients were sitting around there, going out to see the sun, sunbathing under the shade. The second reason is that I combined the disaster of the 2007 fire, thus wanting to evoke memories of the fire in order to avoid a similar disaster. "I wanted to bring back memories in both cases", the creator himself had explained in an earlier interview.
And it seems that he achieved all that he wanted to achieve as it is almost impossible for someone who knows all these stories of pain, to be in the Park of Souls to look at the "haunted" sanatorium and not to sink into dark thoughts σκέ