What I Did on My Summer Vacation

I've always been intrigued with old empty buildings and abandoned homes.  So the chance to visit Waverly Hills, which is a closed sanatorium in Louisville was something I just couldn't pass up.  In the early 1900's, Jefferson County where it's located, was full of swampland making the area a perfect environment for an outbreak of tuberculosis.  The sanatorium was built to accommodate 400 tuberculosis patients and opened in 1910.   During the thirty five years of its existence it was reported that 63,000 people died at Waverly Hills.  However, the county puts that number at around 10,000.  Either way it is an eerie place that sits on a hill over looking the city of Louisville Kentucky.  To me it looks a little like a reigning fortress of gloom.  But it has been given the reputation of being 'one of the most haunted places in the United States' by those in the paranormal field who have visited there extensively.

Over the years, Waverly Hills has been totally vandalized.  But the structure remains sound and work is currently being done to restore it and make it into a hotel for ghost-seekers.  As a way to make money for this undertaking, all kinds of tours are given from 2 hour tours to overnight stays.  The two-hour tour that my brothers and I went on Saturday night is touted as being a 'paranormal ghost tour.'  While most were there hoping for a ghostly encounter, I was there out of curiosity and to see the inside of this historical building.

~Down one of the hallways--If the walls could talk.~

One of the most talked about and famous aspects of the Waverly Hills Sanatorium is the Body Chute or Death Tunnel.  At the peak of the TB epidemic, many patients died everyday. In order to keep morale up and not upset patients, the hospital administration decided to use the Body Chute to discretely send bodies away from the hospital by the use of a rail-car wench-type system in the tunnel that transported the bodies of deceased TB patients to waiting hearses or trains.  Due to the lack of electricity, there is total darkness inside of the tunnel after about thirty feet down. The acoustics are interesting and there is a strong echo when you talk.

Waverly Hills was a state-of-the-art facility. The rooms were very nice, and many lead out to porches so the patients could get plenty of fresh air; many spent as much as 15 hours each day on these porches.  Electric blankets were used in the winter.  Patients even had radios with headphones on the porches and in the rooms so they could listen to music. The sanatorium had a chapel, a school for the children, and special housing for the hospital staff also.

Here's a picture of what the porches used to look like: 

The tour takes you to all the floors and you're told many stories including being able to hear voices of children chanting "Ring Around The Rosy" on the roof top terrace.  There is even said to have been encounters with an apparition of one of the two nurses who died in room 502, and of visitors who have crossed paths with the shadow people of the fourth floor.

One story is told of the spirit of a child that haunts the third floor who has been known to play with toys and roll balls.  With this in mind there are balls placed around each floor because they've been known to start rolling with no explanation.  In complete darkness we waited for a ball to roll...It didn't move until....

I walked past and nudged it with my foot!  I don't know what made me do it--But those behind me on the tour thought they were having that awaited encounter with the paranormal because when I glanced over my shoulder and watched them with their flashlights, and heard their exclamations, I realized they hadn't seen me bump the ball as I walked past.  I didn't have the heart to tell them anything differently and it gave my brothers and I a really good chuckle afterwards!

Next year, my brothers want to do the 'overnight stay.'  We'll see...Would you visit Waverly Hills?