Haunted Places : The Waverly Hills Sanatorium
Hello readers! Let’s shake things up this week and talk about a haunted place shall we?
What place exactly?
I thought you might like to hear about The Waverly Hills Sanatorium!
I got the joy of visiting this amazing facility in 2016. If you ever get the opportunity, I highly suggest going! It was a fantastic experience!
But what is it? Please, allow me to explain.
In the early 1900’s Tuberculosis was the word, but the word nobody wanted to hear. Much like Covid, Tuberculosis is a disease that spreads through little particles in the air when we breathe. The infection rate grew rapidly, and the world soon found itself in an epidemic. But what do you do with the infected when worldwide quarantine isn’t an option? You create places away from the general population to house and treat the infected until a cure could be found. The Waverly Hills Sanatorium was one of these places!
Waverly Hills, as it is known for simplicity, is tucked away in Louisville, Kentucky. It’s well past its prime at this point but in its heyday, it was an entire world in and of itself. It had its own farm to help produce fresh foods, a post office, hairdresser, bowling alley, movie theater and even its own zip code. Of course, it had to be its own little town, since both patients and staff were fully confined to its grounds once they decided to join. The only exception to this constant quarantine was a once-a-month visitors day when family and friends could visit with those who lived on the grounds. This doesn’t really seem like a smart move to me but I guess reading on the brochure: “Never see your family and friends again” is a bit of a turn off.
People who went to Waverly Hills went there with a focus on living, not dying. There was hope there. Life. Connection. The sanatorium focused on trying to heal more than just the body but also keeping people’s morale and hope high. It was surrounded by nature, with a serene view, open air balconies for enjoying that view and tons of windows that could be open to let in the fresh air. There was plenty to keep you busy and entertained and keep your mind off the fact that not everyone in the facility would leave alive.
To help keep morale up, the morgue at Waverly Hills was hidden from patients and many of them didn’t even know it existed. When patients did die, a regular occurrence, their bodies were often hidden away from the rest of the population until everyone else was in their rooms for the night. Only then would they be moved down to the morgue. Once there they would be processed and transported via an underground tunnel where a local coroner would meet them and take the body from there. I’m sure patients noticed when others would disappear and understood what happened. But the facility felt they were spared some pain by not laying eyes on the reality of their situation. Was it kindness? Manipulation? I guess that answer changes depending on who you ask.
As these stories tend to go not everything at Waverly Hills was positive. The facility also had a dark side. A big one. The fresh air treatments they prided themselves in left patients spending hours outside exposed to all kinds of weather. Even if they couldn’t walk, they’d be rolled out in their beds and lined up on the balconies. This happened in all months including winter. Why? Because it was believed this would strengthen their weakened lungs. Did it work? Take a guess. Of course not.
But that was hardly the worst of it. The latest and greatest treatments the sanatorium boasted included experiments like removing of ribs to make it easier to breathe, exposing lungs to ultraviolet light to kill bacteria and inserting and blowing up balloons in the lungs in order to expand them. All during a time when even simple surgery meant being cut open in a room with only open windows for ventilation and very little knowledge about sterilization.
Talk about bacteria galore!
These were not treatments; they were life threating experiments, and they did not stop there. Patients who didn’t die from these so-called treatments often went crazy. Such a large amount, in fact, they ended up devoting a whole wing to that population. With the diagnosis of insanity now in the facility, so too came new need for treatments. Electroshock therapy was not uncommon. Death and pain were just as frequent at Waverly Hills as was joy and hope. A split community experiencing such different realities.
Waverly Hills was truly a community of contradictions.
Needless to say, the spirits there are numerous and varied. Some are purely positive beings continuing to live happing in a community they love. Staff, patients, adults, kids. They have them all!
Other spirits there are darker, more chaotic energies who believe they are unable to move past and out of the place where their lives and bodies were destroyed. The nurse said to have hung herself on one floor, for example.
There are some that don’t even seem to be human at all. Like the thing that crawls on the ceiling of the one of the floors. Perhaps it’s a patient that went so insane that it lost its humanity completely. Or perhaps it is some other spiritual entity drawn in by the energy of the place.
My team and I certainly had some crazy experiences while we were there. The spirits played with every sense we had. I frequently felt like my backpack handle was being tugged on as I walked in a playful way. Strong enough it would prevent me from moving forward at times. We physically heard voices, had unexplainable smells and saw some pretty strange things.
I even got some really neat EVP’s (Electronic Voice Phenomenon) on my audio recordings.
One girl suggests “She can help.” Over a conversation I was having with a teammate. I find this one fascinating since I had previously connected with a little girl at the facility before we went and was strongly feeling her in the room where this was recorded. The current owner confirmed the presence of that spirit in the way I described when we first arrived. And after we left, but before I had a chance to listen to my recordings, I had felt the need to email the owner giving them a message of love from the spirits there.
We had a woman’s voice loudly whisper “Get to work” when we were in the body chute. This tunnel in the bottom of the building is not only where they were transport the bodies out but also how those few people who got to leave the facility occasionally for business purpose would come in and out of the building.
Most surprising was an EVP I got outside the electroshock therapy room. My team and I talk through it because we did not hear any of this audibly. But when you listen back you can clearly hear a man say “seize him!” then a young boy yell “No!” and the same young boy’s voice scream bloody murder.
In all it was an amazing night and I look
forward to returning one day!
Wanna know more? Check out their site! Therealwaverlyhills.com
Photo credit to Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Collections and myself!
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