Night at the Sanatorium

Location: Waverly Hills Sanatorium; Louisville, Kentucky

Date: June 20, 2008

If reputation alone haunted a building, then the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky would be the most haunted structure in America…  As it is, it may be in the running for that title anyway.  Recent lore around the Waverly says that it is almost impossible to enter the massive relic without encountering something on one of its five floors. 

The Waverly Hills Tuberculosis Sanatorium, built in 1926, sits alone atop a hill south of downtown Louisville.  This secluded location was chosen intentionally, since it was housing hundreds of patients at a time that were cursed with one of the most contagious illnesses in the world.  And, as suspected, the Waverly’s history is gruesome.  An exact number does not exist, but at least 60,000 people died within its walls while it was in operation.  The numbers of the dead and the dying were so great, and so constant, that exporting all the deceased patients for a proper burial was impossible, and a chute was dug into the hillside to quickly transport some of the bodies to a mass burial site.  Waverly Hills has been abandoned since 1961, and today the ruin is owned by a local couple who saved it from being demolished. 

Samantha and I drove to Louisville and met my parents and sister at the Ramada Inn near the airport.  With plenty of time to kill before our visit to the Waverly, we toured Louisville’s historic district with a man named David Dominè, who knows a thing or two about the city’s haunts.

Our tour at the Waverly was scheduled to take place between midnight and four a.m.  We brought several flashlights, digital cameras, a voice recorder, and a DV camcorder.

We soon discovered that the Waverly is appropriately ominous when viewed in the dark.  Its massiveness and dismal condition seem to dare those waiting outside to come in and see what they can get.  Our tour began with a viewing of the Ghost Hunters episode that was filmed there, and then the rules and procedures were outlined: the large party of tourists/ghost hunters will be broken into two smaller groups, and these two groups will be split between the bottom two floors and the top three.  At two-thirty, the parties will switch, so that everyone is able to explore every floor.  No scaring one another, no obnoxiousness or taunting.

Our group was first granted access to the top three floors, which consisted mostly of patient rooms.  I was slightly in awe as our tour began.  I had known all along that the sanatorium was in a state of ruin, but I hadn’t imagined the building looking like this.  The walls were covered in graffiti, some of them broken with holes, some of them torn away completely.  Many of the doors were either gone or hanging by a single hinge, and similarly, very few of the windows were in one piece, and every level of the building had been exposed to the elements.  On our night, great portions of the floor were covered in water from an earlier thundershower.

The guide, who gave us a brief outline of the top three floors, warned us of a frightening phenomenon that often occurs on the fourth floor.  This phenomenon, simply called Big Black, sucks away all traces of light and leaves its victim in total, disorienting darkness.  We did not encounter Big Black, or anything else so dramatic, but the paranormal occupants of the Waverly did make their presence known in subtle ways.

On the third floor, near the elevator shaft, my mother reached out to open a door and received a complimentary (and unexplainable) slap on the wrist for her efforts.  On the fifth floor (which is largely exposed to the outside), while looking down the bent exterior of the building, she also saw a faint shape—perhaps a face—lean out of one of the windows.  While we were exploring the fifth floor, my dad decided to make a sole trip down to the fourth level (which was, by then, completely empty of hunters) to search for Big Black, or anything else that wished to show itself.  He didn’t find anything that could be captured on film or described in words, but being alone on that floor, he felt that something may have shown itself had he stayed longer.

"Sliding" down the body chute

At two-thirty, we met our guide and he took us down to the first two floors… and out to the body chute.  Like most of the locations at the Waverly, the body chute is best experienced when you stop long enough to be alone… and focus on its past.  I did that.  I didn’t see any ghosts, but I felt much more unsettled.  After descending the entire length of the chute, I posed for the absolutely necessary I’m sliding down the body chute picture, and then climbed back to the top.

The bottom two floors yielded experiences similar to those on the top three.  These first two floors were more employee-and-public oriented than the top three, which were almost exclusively centered on the patients’ living quarters.  Floors one and two contained the main hall, the kitchen, the examination and autopsy rooms, and the shock therapy room, among others.  And a sizeable portion of the first floor was currently decorated for a Halloween haunted house.

We initially focused on the autopsy room, but soon realized that, because of the nature of this room, we would never get to experience it alone and in silence.  My dad did feel a presence on the ground floor, while we stood in a large, empty room, in complete silence and darkness; he felt a cold presence around his ankles, which slowly expanded.

The last encounter we had came at the very end of our hunt.  We were leaving behind the end of a quiet, empty hallway when Samantha, my mother, and myself heard a noise behind us—a footstep, perhaps.  We spun around, and my mother and I began to approach, asking for whoever (or whatever) it was to identify itself.  Moving slowly, we proceeded at least twenty feet… and began to notice a small light on the ceiling.  After numerous calls for this entity to show itself, a young couple emerged from behind the door at the end of the hall.  At first I was disappointed—mystery solved, I thought—, and then we learned that 1) this couple hadn’t been there the whole time, and 2) they were not carrying flashlights.

The Waverly did not come out and pounce on us.  I think this is because we were accompanied by at least forty other people, and because truly haunted places are not obligated to open themselves up for every anxious ghost hunter who passes through the door.  But after experiencing its ruined atmosphere, learning of its past, and experiencing some of the things we experienced, I do not doubt that the Waverly is haunted.  Any location cursed with such a grotesque past has to contain some trace of its former self.

I would like to go back to Waverly Hills.  Most of all, I would like us to have an all-access pass to experience the structure alone.  Then, I think we would encounter Big Black, along with some of the Waverly’s other current residents.

Mitch.