Once upon a time Ursula in the early 1900’s in the Catskill Mountains in the little town of Kerhonkson, New York was a TB Sanitarium (Tuberculosis Sanitarium). It was called Dr. Foorde’s Sanitarium. The sanitarium housed over 200 people, which of many were children. It was one of the most beautiful parts of New York and had many flower meadows and waterfalls. The sanitarium sat on over four hundred acres. On the property there were six buildings, which were built in the 1890’s.


At the sanitarium some of the kids were almost recovered while others were near death. On June 27, 1905, many of the children were playing near the pond that is near the entrance of the sanitarium. There was an eleven-year-old girl named Ursula who decided to jump into the pond but not knowing how deep it was. But the water was too deep for her and she couldn’t swim at all. Ursula had been at the sanitarium for quiet a while and was probably going to fully recover. As Ursula was drowning, the kids just watched and laughed. No one even tried to help Ursula.

Later that year, Dr. Foorde’s sanitarium had a record amount of deaths. Since that time something strange had always happened. Sometimes a building would catch on fire or a child would fall off of the waterfall. Forty-one years later after Ursula’s death in 1946, the sanitarium closed with the invention of antibiotics. In June 1951, the abandon property was bought for $72,00 to become a resort for travelers from all over the world to come to and visit. The word Soyuzivka is a Ukrainian word which means land of spirits. Later the resort expanded, building four more buildings. But with every building that was being built something weird would happen. In one building the frame somehow blew over, destroying it sending construction back a couple of months. Other buildings caught on fire and many windows were broken. In 1982, the resort was planning to build another building but this one was on Ursula’s favorite part of the mountains. It was a beautiful flower meadow and at sunset you can see the deer running to the apple orchards just a half a mile down. Ursula spent almost every sunset there that she possibly could. The construction workers reported that two by fours were falling on people and even killed one. Also, several fires occurred. Four years later after down sizing the project by 2/3’s the original size, it was finished. The original bigger design should have taken at the maximum up to six months. There were a total of one death and several reported injuries. June 27,1985, there were reports of a little girl almost drowning in the same pond as Ursula died in, only eighty years later however, the girls dad happened to have saved her.

Today people still report-seeing Ursula in the room that she stayed in or at her favorite meadow watching the deer roam freely. Today people say that Ursula is known as nice ghost but only did those things to protect what she loved while other people are terrorized by her. Some people even come back every year to come and to see Ursula and to listen to her stories.