“When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come.’ I looked, and behold, a pale horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the Earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the Earth.”
— Revelation 6:7–8 (New American Standard Bible)
Welcome to the Eerie USA Podcast
I’m your host, author Evan Camby. I write horror and suspense books and I’m the creator of this podcast where we discuss American legends, hauntings, and folklore. In today’s episode, we’re going to visit Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Louisville, Kentucky, one of the most notoriously haunted former hospitals in the United States, and a place that some have called “the most haunted building in America.”
The History
Before Waverly Hills Sanatorium was featured on every ghost show on television, it was just a piece of land in Louisville, Kentucky owned by Major Thomas H. Hays, who purchased the property in 1883. Hays wanted a place for his daughters to attend school, and started a one-room schoolhouse on the site, hiring a woman named Lizzie Lee Harris to teach. In fact, it was Harris who coined the name “Waverly School,” as a nod to her fondness for the Waverly Novels by Sir Walter Scott. Hays liked the name, and so the land eventually became known as “Waverly Hill.”
The happy days of the one-room schoolhouse were short-lived, however. In its place, a two-story frame building with a hipped roof and half-timbering was constructed beginning in 1908. On July 26, 1910, Waverly Hills Sanatorium opened for business, with the goal of caring for and treating tuberculosis patients. While it was originally designed to accommodate 40-50 patients safely, the epidemic nature of the disease meant the the hospital soon outgrew its original capacity. Tuberculosis was running rampant, and Louisville was hit especially bad because of the wetlands along the Ohio River, which were a perfect breeding ground for the tuberculosis bacteria. In fact, at the beginning of the 20th century Louisville, Kentucky had the one of highest rate of tuberculosis deaths in the United States.
While we can treat tuberculosis today, at the time it was a very serious, often fatal disease. People of the time did not understand that it’s an airborne illness, but they did know that it was contagious. Because of this, those afflicted were isolated from the general public and put in areas where they could rest and have plenty of fresh air. Sanatoriums, like Waverly Hills, were purposely built on high hills surrounded by peaceful woods to create a proper atmosphere to help patients recover.
Much like Indiana’s Central State Hospital, which we discussed in the first episode of the podcast, Waverly Hills was a self-contained community. The hospital was almost a city in and of itself, complete with its own zip code. It had a post office, a water treatment facility, grew its own fruits and vegetables, raised its own meat for slaughter, and other necessities. Because of the epidemic nature of tuberculosis at the time, everyone at Waverly – not just patients but nurses, doctors, and other employees, had to leave everything they knew on the outside world and become kind of “citizens” of the facility.
Even though it was the twentieth century, treatment of tuberculosis was limited at the time Waverly Hills opened. This was before the development of antibiotics, and patients were prescribed a regimen of fresh air year-round. In fact, there are photos of patients in hospital beds sitting out in the middle of winter, some of them covered with snow. Other treatments for tuberculosis were sometimes as bad as the disease itself. Some of the experiments that were conducted in search of a cure seem barbaric by today’s standards. One treatment involved patients’ lungs being exposed to ultraviolet light in an attempt to try and stop the spread of bacteria. This was done in what they called “sun rooms,” using artificial light in place of sunlight, or on the roof or open porches of the hospital.
In another treatment, balloons were surgically implanted in the lungs and filled with air to expand them. Unsurprisingly, this often had disastrous results, as did another operation that was commonly done where muscles and ribs were actually removed from a patient’s chest to allow the lungs to expand further. Doctors thought this would allow more oxygen to enter the lungs. This grisly procedure was often a last resort, and needless to day, most patients did not survive it. The treatments overall were largely ineffective, and hundreds (some reports even say thousands) of patients died during the thirty-five years Waverly Hills was in operation.
Beyond the sheer number of deaths at the facility, one of the most disturbing real-life elements at Waverly Hills is what’s known as the “Body Chute.” A five-hundred foot long concrete tunnel, it was designed to wheel the bodies of dead patients discreetly out of the facility to the bottom of the hill, where they would then be met by a hearse and taken for burial. While the purpose of the Body Chute, to shield patients from the potential reality of their illness and improve morale, was a good one, now that the facility is no longer in use, the tunnel is now one of the eeriest parts of Waverly Hills. The Body Chute was also used for delivering supplies from the local community to the closed off sanatorium, and during World War II was also used as an air raid shelter for patients and staff at the facility.
In 1961, the discovery of an antibiotic that successfully treated and cured tuberculosis rendered the facility obsolete, and Waverly Hills Sanatorium closed. In 1962, the building reopened as Woodhaven Medical Services, a nursing home. This facility was closed by the state in 1981.
In the following decades, the former Waverly Hills Sanatorium fell victim to vandals and damage, and the building was nearly condemned. In 2001, the building was purchased and since then many improvements and changes have been made to the building and surrounding property. The Waverly Hills Historical Society, established by the new owners, is tireless in their efforts to restore the historic building to its former splendor. But the former sanatorium’s legacy goes beyond the historic. The large amount of paranormal phenomena at Waverly Hills has attracted the interest of paranormal investigators from across the world.
The Haunting
If you ever find yourself driving up to Waverly Hills Sanatorium, the first thing you will notice is that the building itself has a foreboding facade. It’s really like something from a gothic novel, or another time much farther back than the early twentieth century. A former reporter for the Louisville Courier Journal described it as looking like something “out of a comic book, a place where the Joker might hide out from Batman.” Today, Waverly Hill Sanatorium is widely considered to be one of the most haunted places in the United States, based on the sheer volume of paranormal activity. Some of the paranormal phenomena observed include voices in the empty rooms of the building, odd smells, and even the sensation of being touched. In one of the most astonishing signs of “proof,” full body apparitions have been captured on film and video in the hallways.
Not long after the new owners purchased Waverly Hills, stories began to circulate about the spirits allegedly residing there, like the little girl seen running up and down the third floor, a little boy spotted playing with a leather ball, the hearse seen in the back of the building dropping off coffins, and the woman with the bleeding wrists crying for help. Visitors reported slamming doors, lights in the windows even though power no longer ran through the building, and strange sounds and footsteps in empty rooms.
Another legend of Waverly Hills involves a man in a white coat sometimes seen walking in the former kitchen and the smell of cooking food wafting through the room. When the new owners bought the facility, the kitchen was in a state of ruin, with broken windows, fallen plaster, broken tables and chairs and puddles of water and debris from a leaking roof. The nearby cafeteria was in a similar state. While these spaces at Waverly Hills were obviously long-since abandoned, several people reported hearing footsteps in the rooms, seeing a door swing shut on its own, and the smell of fresh bread in the air.
Many who worked on repairs also reported seeing a mysterious man in white drifting through the corridors. Volunteers working on restorations experienced ghostly sounds, heard slamming doors, saw lights appear in the building when there should have been none, had objects thrown at them, were struck by unseen hands, and reportedly saw apparitions in doorways and corridors. Others had run-ins with a ghost named Timmy, a boy who roams the hallways and allegedly pushes a ball back and forth. When the facility finally opened to the public for tours, visitors frequently corroborated these experiences. One visitor claimed to see the distinct silhouette of a man crossing a doorway, passing into the hall, and then disappearing into a room on the other side of the corridor. The visitor claimed this was a man wearing what appeared to be a long, white drape, not unlike that of a doctor’s coat.
While the entire facility is said to be rife with hauntings, the fifth floor is especially notorious. Specifically, Room 502 is also known for being haunted by the ghost of a nurse who, allegedly despondent at finding herself pregnant and unmarried, hanged herself from a light fixture in 1928 when she was twenty-nine years old. It’s unknown how long she may have been hanging in this room before her body was discovered. In 1932, another nurse who worked in the same room allegedly jumped from the roof patio and plunged several stories to her death. No one seems to know her motive, but many have speculated that she may have actually have been pushed over the edge. I will note that there are no records to confirm either of these stories that I was able to find, but rumors, and strange experiences in room 502, persist. This floor of the hospital consisted of two nurses’ stations, a pantry, a linen room, medicine room and two rooms on either side of the nurses’ stations. According to the stories, visitors have seen human figures moving in the windows and have also heard disembodied voices on the fifth floor.
In Conclusion
Today, the owners of Waverly Hills run a series of paranormal tours at the former sanitarium, including a 2.5-hour historical tour, a 2-hour guided paranormal tour, and a 6-hour public investigation tour. They also hold special events during the Halloween season, and all proceeds go towards the restoration of the century old facility.
As a history enthusiast, I am happy that the Waverly Hills Historical Society is so dedicated to preserving the building and history of the sanatorium. The tuberculosis epidemic is sometimes referred to as the “forgotten plague.” Even though you may not be aware of it, I can pretty much guarantee that an ancestor of yours succumbed to the disease, as it is said to have killed one out of every seven people during its peak. In fact, through my research I discovered that one of my great-great grandmothers succumbed to the disease in 1899 at the age of 28 after only twelve months of illness. I have a photo of her before contracting tuberculosis, and a photo of her afterwards where she is hardly recognizable. She went from a young, pretty woman to completely skeletal in less than a year. Tuberculosis was truly a horrific, miserable disease which stole the lives of scores of people until, mercifully, a treatment was discovered.
Below: her obituary from 1899. “Consumption” is another word for tuberculosis.
We often think of haunted places as being “bad” or evil.” While that might occasionally be true, I don’t agree in this case. Louisville’s Waverly Hills Sanitarium wasn’t necessarily a bad place. Doctors simply did not have the knowledge they do now, and some of their practices seem barbaric compared to present day medical care. Other tragedies also occurred there, almost as if the many deaths themselves were contagious.
Though it’s now perhaps most famous for being one of the many haunted former hospitals in the US, the land at Waverly Hills Sanatorium was, at one point, a lot of things to a lot of people: schoolhouse, hospital, work place, nursing home, sick bed, and for some, death bed. Some visitors have noted that the place gives them a feeling of sadness even more than any feelings of fear. Whatever the skeptics say, it’s evident to me that the sheer volume of emotional experiences there—both positive or negative—has resulted in the astonishing amount of paranormal phenomena that continue to be observed to this day.
Maybe it’s not just the ghosts that haunt us, though. You and I know all too well the realities of pandemics, and I think we’re now acutely aware the the next scary illness could be right around the corner. There are limits to our knowledge and science, no matter the age we live in. Waverly Hills stands as a stark reminder of that reality, a glimpse of both the past and the future.
I’ll leave you some words from Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “Masque of the Red Death.”
“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”
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Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Eerie USA Podcast. Make sure to subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com/EvanCamby for where I share one exclusive piece of behind the scenes content every Friday for less than the price of a fancy coffee.
For more scary stories, check out my books on Amazon. My horror story collection, “Walking After Midnight: Tales for Halloween” available on Amazon, and the entire series is available in ebook and paperback formats from .99 cents to $9.99.
Join us for the next episode where we’ll be visiting the allegedly haunted Congress Plaza Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, who’s notable guests include the likes of gangster Al Capone and serial killer H.H. Holmes. Until next time, I’m your host Evan Camby, bringing you America’s forgotten places and forgotten people.
Show Notes:
Waverly Hills Sanatorium
“The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe
Music Credits:
Classic Horror 1″ Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
“Zombie Hoodoo” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quinn’s Song: First Night Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/