WAVERLY HILLS
SANATORIUM
Louisville, Kentucky
Perhaps one of the most famous haunted places in the United States is Waverly Hills Sanatorium. Anyone who has any interest in the paranormal has heard of Waverly Hills, and almost all of them have the desire to go there. Starting in 1908 as a two-story building and evolving into the extremely large and shut-down building it is today, Waverly Hills has seen its fair share of death and suffering. The sanatorium was closed in 1980 by the state and is today a museum and tour exhibition of the paranormal. The largest number of deaths at Waverly Hills took place during a tuberculosis outbreak in the early part of the twentieth century. It is estimated that thousands of people died in Waverly Hills as a result of the epidemic.
I do not know when the hauntings began in the building, but I can assure you that they continue today. Several television shows and books include details about Waverly Hills and the reported hauntings. If the thousands of people that died at Waverly were haunting the place, why stay? Could it be the attention and admiration from all the tour members and paranormal investigators? If people suffered and died in the sanatorium, could they be desperately trying to escape the hell that surrounds them?
I felt these were legitimate questions and I had ample opportunity to go and find answers. I know evidence can be falsified and stories can be told, but I wanted solid proof for myself. I wanted to have that personal experience and document it fully. I was looking for the answers and would do almost anything to have my chance to find them. Little did I know I was about to get them.
Investigating Waverly Hills:
The Living, the Dead, and the Death Tunnel
I made a reservation for July 6, 2008. This investigation would feature me; Tony, an investigator; Ashley; the mysterious investigator Meagan; the experienced and innovative investigator Deanna; and the talented Michelle (who was the most beautiful investigator I had met at the time). We found the front gate with no problem. I could easily see the top of the building from down the drive. The problem was that we could not see anyone coming to let us in. I called the number listed on the sign to let them know that we had arrived. No answer. Two investigators exited the car to unlock the gate themselves and let us in.
As the gate was swinging open, I could see a golf cart in the distance with two men heading our direction. Damn, I thought. I knew we were about to get a quick lecture about passing the gate with No Trespassing signs. When the cart pulled up, I quickly announced that we had a reservation for the evening and was educated about how opening the gate could lead to trouble. We made the drive up to the building to wait for Tony and Deanna to arrive so we could start the investigation. I got out the video camera and took a few outside shots of the building.
After a few phone calls and mixed directions from the locals, Tony and Deanna arrived. We gathered all the equipment and made our way into the main area, where the gift shop is located, to prepare for the investigation.
Our tour guide, Mike, asked if we wanted him to take us on a tour of the building. We all agreed, and I asked if it would be okay if I filmed the tour. He said yes, and we headed out. We started our tour at the death tunnel, or “body chute” as they called it. He explained about the actual use of the tunnel and how they used it to transport bodies when the death toll was at its peak. I had always had an interest in the death tunnel but didn’t want to spend a lot of time there to investigate. Mike told us that approximately 63,000 people lost their lives in the building, most as a result of the tuberculosis outbreak.
We proceeded through each floor of the main hospital, hearing the stories associated with each one. I was familiar with the nurse who hung herself outside of room 502 on the fifth floor but I was unaware of the remaining stories. Mike told the story of a group of kids who broke into the hospital late one night and were trapped on the fourth floor by an unseen force. They used a hatchet to try and hack through the metal door in order to escape. They made it out of the building okay, but the evidence of the hatchet was still left in the door to this day. Mike also told us about the story of the homeless man and his dog who were thrown down one of the elevators on the third floor in a cult-related killing. This was said to have been documented as a homicide with the local police department.
One of the sanatorium’s spirits was that of a child named Timmy who frequented the second floor. I once asked the owner if the name Timmy was accurate, and she said that it was a name picked up by a psychic who visited the building. While the name could not be validated, the activity that was created by the child could very well be. The child was said to roll balls down the hallway in a playful manner. The other areas with activity, unrelated to any particular story, were room 503, the morgue, the electroshock therapy room, the gift shop, the cafeteria and kitchen, and the occupational therapy room.
The First Floor
We started our investigation on the first floor and made our way through the entire hallway to the other side of the building, which had the staircase to the upper floors. As we explored the floor, we made basic observations of the areas and looked for a good place to conduct the first sit-down. We chose the occupational therapy room as our first sit-down area. As we settled in a space to sit and conduct the experiment, Tony took the EMF arrays (EMF meters that are soundless with LED lights to indicate activations) down the two hallways and set them up in a V-shaped pattern (to maintain visibility) leading directly to the room we were in. The thought of watching the arrays go off heading in our direction seemed like an appealing idea to me. We took our seats and, in the midst of the darkness, started the session.
We started by asking questions to see if we could solicit a response: “Who are you, and why are you here?” While we did not observe any array activations, we did hear several noises and bangs from the distance. I had to wonder with the bats and open windows if they could have been false positive noises. At one point I heard what I could only explain as a strange ringing sound, almost like a dial tone. The sound was distant and very faint, but it reoccurred three times in all. We concluded the sit-down in the occupational therapy room and proceeded to the modern-day gift shop.
We did some rearranging of the equipment and brought some of the EMF arrays into the room with us. Most of us stayed in the room; Tony was outside in the hallway and one investigator stood in the doorway. Again, we started with the questions. Deanna noticed that one of the arrays flickered or the light pattern changed. Immediately focusing my attention on her and the array, I asked her about the activation.
“I can’t say for sure, but I saw the light increase from the meter,” she said.
The only two possible ways for the light to increase on the array are an activation (picking up a field) or if the battery power is depleted. When the battery from the array is low, the green LED pilot light on the meter will be dim. When the power is low and the meter is activated, all the lights on the array will light up all at once and stay lit until the battery is changed or the power is turned off. Even if low battery were the issue, there would still have to be activation from the meter to make the light pattern occur. Either way, I found the occurrence rather interesting, so I decided to keep an eye on that back wall.
We heard a few more noises from a distance but could not verify their origin or location. Ashley expressed feelings of apprehension in the building at this point and was a bit uncomfortable. We decided to divide up and cover two more rooms before proceeding to the next floor.
We split into two groups and covered the electroshock therapy room and another down the hall. I sat in the electroshock room with Ashley and Michelle, and we spoke briefly to the spirits as I stood in the doorway filming the room and the hallway. We did hear several noises that were later proven to be false positives, caused by the other team. With nothing more happening, we decided to take a break for a few minutes.
The Death Tunnel
The break gave us some opportunity to check the time and develop an efficient game plan for the rest of the building. The investigation of the death tunnel would be an appropriate action so that we could get it out of the way and not have to leave the building after that. We packed the gear up and headed to the dreaded body chute. Upon entrance of the tunnel, I set the camera up on the tripod before we made our way down. The tunnel was 485 feet down at a 45-degree angle. This was not going to be pleasant.
The women only went down about a quarter of the way, while Tony and I went down even farther. After passing the halfway point, I started getting very dizzy. I stopped and sat down. I told Tony that I had to wait for a few minutes to catch my balance. I felt like the entire room was leaning forward even though there was no movement. In addition to the dizziness, I felt like I was having trouble breathing. As I sat in the darkness, I looked up to see the faint light at the top of the tunnel when I started hearing a flapping sound. I shined my lights up and around and noticed a form coming down toward us. We ducked, avoiding a dive-bombing group of bats.
We stayed in the area a while longer, asking a few questions aloud and giving appropriate time for a response. The tunnel for the most part was very quiet and calm. My feelings of dizziness and difficulty breathing died down a little over the course of the last few minutes we were in there. Tony and I made the long walk up the tunnel to the others and eventually the exit. We then walked back to the gift shop area for another break.
At this point it was obvious to me that we had a serious problem. We had only covered the first floor and death tunnel and it was already eleven thirty. We were almost at the halfway point of our investigation timeline. After a thorough discussion, we felt it would be easier to once again divide the group into two teams of three, with each group investigating one floor. Ashley, Michelle, and I started on the second floor. Tony, Deanna, and Meagan started on the fourth.
The Second Floor
As we began the walk-through of the second floor, I thought back to the tour and some of the things that the tour guide had mentioned to us to look for on this particular floor. I remembered hearing of the child known only as Timmy and the ball activity. Mike had also recommended to check out the kitchen and cafeteria. During our walk-through, we made several obvious attempts to communicate with a child. We took the toy ball that was already on the floor and used it in various experiments. We told the spirits that they could at any time make the ball roll down the hallway and we would gladly roll it back and play with them. At one point, it appeared that the ball was going to move, but it only shifted back and forth very faintly.
We went to the other side of the building and into the kitchen area for a while. Rather than performing a sit-down, we stood in the room and asked a few quick questions to see if one was warranted. Again, observing no activity, we felt it would be more beneficial to move on and find another location. We went to the cafeteria door on the other side of the hallway, but it was locked. We turned around and started down the hallway back to the other side when we heard footsteps coming from down the hallway.
“Hello?” we asked. No answer. We thought it was team two shifting or coming down the hallway. We still heard no response, but a figure appeared to be coming toward us from down the hallway.
A voice finally called out, “It’s me.”
It was Mike, our tour guide. He apologized for the door being locked and opened it up for us. I guess he could see us from the cameras around the hospital. We proceeded inside and prepared to perform a sit-down in the room. Before we could begin, I noticed that I needed another tape for recording. I didn’t have one so I was going to have to go back down to the main area, where the rest of our equipment was. This was going to require me to go back down to the first floor … alone.
I made my way to the first floor. I occasionally looked into the empty rooms with my flashlight and stopped every now and then to see if something would happen or if something would try and get my attention. I had no incident on the way to the gift shop. I grabbed a new tape and a drink of soda before heading back to the group. On my way back, I made a stop in the occupational therapy room for a few seconds to see if something would happen. I thought I saw something coming toward my direction from the down the hallway. It was moving very slowly, almost as if it were crippled, with a limp or hobble. I didn’t want to wait up for it to see what it was or what it wanted. I had no equipment and no way of documenting whatever was about to happen, so I walked straight to the stairwell and back up to the second floor.
I entered the cafeteria room and loaded the camera with a fresh tape. Once again, I set the camera up on the tripod and took a seat next to the other two investigators for the duration of the sit-down. We could faintly see inside the room from the light projected from the array.
We began asking if anyone was in the room and, if they were, if could they make a noise or give us indication that they were there. The room was fairly large and could have easily been called two separate rooms put together. It was as if someone had knocked down a wall dividing the rooms. They were very open with little to no equipment in them. The back of the large room was surrounded by darkness and had one single array in the center of it. I started asking direct questions about the room and its purpose during the hospital’s days of functioning. I could see something in back corner of the room but could not tell what it was or what it was doing. It was moving and had no specific shape or form. I almost thought it was the same thing I saw on my way back from the gift shop area, only that one had a humanlike form. The quick, shadowlike form began to zoom inside the room: it moved so fast it was like the form was teleporting from one area to the other instantaneously.
“Is there anyone in the room?” No response.
The anticipation of array activations or a noise had me a little uneasy.
“If there is anyone in the room, please do something,” I stressed. We heard a knocking noise from the far corner of the room. The room was very still and quiet for a few minutes, so I felt was good time to get some EVP. Ashley took over asking questions, which allowed me to put all my focus into the other side of the room. I can’t tell you that being in the other side of the room was easy. I constantly felt like there was someone behind me, and I ended up standing with my back against the wall for the remainder of our time in the room. After the questioning, we packed up to meet up with the other team in the stairwell and switched floors.
The Fourth Floor
We spoke briefly to the other team about their experiences on the fourth floor and then headed up there. We didn’t know what to expect on the fourth floor since Mike had mentioned that this was one of the best floors in the building. It appeared to be darker than the previous ones.
We made our way down to the other side of the building and entered the operating room that Mike had told us on the tour that people kept getting trapped in. Apparently, the door would slam and they would not be able to get out. I set up the equipment and then took a seat on the floor. The room itself was fairly small compared to the other rooms, which I thought was strange, seeing that a room for medical operation would need more space. Meagan stayed in the hallway right outside in the event we did get trapped in. This would be the place to see if I could get the spirits to slam the door on command or at their own will. However, I did feel that this action was an end result of a mischievous temperament and didn’t think they would slam the door on command, since to them it was better to frustrate or frighten the unsuspecting victim.
As I felt it was worth the chance, I asked if they could shut the door. The door did not budge. I even offered the perpetrator a bribe of screaming for my life if they would slam it. Again, the door did not move. I asked Meagan to pay specific attention to the hallway due to the feeling that if someone were out there, she might be able to get a visual on them. We had a few arrays outside the room and one inside the room. We heard a few distant noises from down the hall but again could not validate that they were something paranormal. After fifteen to twenty minutes in the room, we decided to make our way back to the other side of the building through the atrium, which is open to the outside. There was no glass in the windows along the atrium, and there was a lot of outside noise contamination. Tony had mentioned to us earlier that when they had investigated that part of the building, he had witnessed what appeared to be twinkling lights at the end of the section. We walked all the way through and did not encounter anything unusual.
The Morgue
By the time we reached the end of the hallway, it was time to meet back up with team two. We met them in the stairwell and decided to head back to the main area for another break. After the break, we reconfigured our schedule. It was almost two o’clock and we had a little over two hours left in the building with two whole floors to go. We decided to stay together as one whole group instead of breaking up. I wanted to go to the morgue area on the first floor before we went upstairs. I remembered watching the television show in which the teenage girls were in the morgue and the body table slid out from the cabinet. I decided to take the team into this room for a quick sit-down session.
As we entered the room, we noticed a body cabinet used to store bodies that would fit three. The room was fairly open itself and did not feel cramped. There was what appeared to be an embalming table next to the cabinet. Ashley decided that she wanted to climb into the cabinet and lie on the morgue slab tray. The middle tray seemed the sturdiest. We radioed the main office to be sure that there was not going to be a problem, and once we got the okay, she climbed in. I couldn’t believe she was going to be able to stay inside that cabinet since she was previously so claustrophobic. She described the feeling in the cabinet as void of any feelings or sensations. She said it was very quiet and all the strange feelings that were in the room seemed to disappear when she entered the cabinet. She climbed out and we continued.
Soon after, Deanna started feeling ill. She said she felt like she was having a panic attack. Her heart rate increased and she was very uncomfortable. I asked her a few questions about her condition to see if it was asthma related or something else. I also asked if she wanted to go on with investigating or if she would like to go outside for a while. She said although it was an uncomfortable feeling, she wanted to continue the experience. Ashley suggested she lean into the cabinet and see if the feeling went away. She briefly stuck her head into the opening for a minute or two and said there was no effect. We all stayed in the room for several minutes and then proceeded up to the third floor.
The Third Floor
Once we entered the third floor, we conducted the first sit-down at the elevator shaft that a vagrant man and his dog were thrown down. Mike also suggested that we pay attention to the L-shaped linen closet behind the elevator. I positioned my camcorder into the room of the closet, and we took our position out in the hallway. Some of the investigators almost immediately identified a whistling noise. The noise seemed to have come from down the hallway opposite of where we were, in one room where none of us had been yet. We started asking questions and tried to get some communication going. I quickly observed shadowy movement down the hallway where the whistling originated. The shadow was very low to the ground and lasted only a few seconds before dissipating. I asked for a confirmation noise if someone was in the room with us. Silence.
After several minutes, Meagan decided to send a penny flying down the hallway in hopes of a response. I was concerned about making a bad impression on the long-departed guests of the hospital. During the time the hospital was active as a tuberculosis clinic, financial hardships were common, and I didn’t want them to think we were making fun of them. I mean, if you were starving and some jerk threw a can of biscuits down the hall at you, you’d be pissed, right? I made it known to the spirits that we meant no disrespect and would like a response or sound.
The penny made its long journey down the long dark hallway only to bounce off the ground and land in an undetermined location. We waited to see if a response was coming. After minutes of silence, I tried a knock test.
“I’m going to knock a few times to let you know where I am, and if you could be so kind as to make a noise or do something to let us know where you are, I would greatly appreciate it,” I stated loudly. I made three loud knocks that echoed in the halls of the sanatorium. Again, we got no response.
We then decided to head down the hallway to the other side of the building. At the hallway’s end, I set up the camcorder on the tripod, and we all took a seat and started yet another session. After a few minutes of asking questions, I looked down the hallway through which we came and saw another shadow moving along the ground. No more than six inches high, it was very long in shape and almost appeared like it was slithering along the ground about forty feet down the hall from us.
At almost the same time, a few team members heard an audible giggle or voice from the room. I did not hear the voice myself but believed that something was going on inside the room. I started asking questions to see if someone was trying to get our attention.
“Could you make more noises or come closer in the room we’re standing in?” The room was once again quiet.
Deanna decided at that point to try another experiment. She had a ball that she wanted to roll down the dark hallway to see if whatever was there would roll it back to us in hopes of further communication. She announced herself and then rolled the ball down the hallway. The room was quiet. I looked around the dark hallway to see if I could pinpoint something moving or shifting. I could not see or feel any proof of environmental or physical changes, and the equipment did not register anything.
Then we heard noises from the back corner of the room. Several isolated noises had manifested in that area of the room earlier, but these were getting louder. I made the comment that whatever was in the room had something to do with the far back corner. As soon as I made that comment, there were no more noises. It was like once I identified where they were or where had been, they made no effort to do anything else.
The rest of the sit-down on that floor was quiet and uneventful. The time was 2:55 a.m., and we had little over an hour to complete the last area of the building, the area I was the most eager to get to: the fifth floor. We made the climb up two floors to the top of Waverly Hills Sanatorium. The one and only thing that I had heard about the floor was the story of room 502, outside of which a nurse was found hanging. I felt it was going to be an interesting final hour.
The Fifth Floor
We arrived on the fifth floor and started setting up in the middle of the hallway. This floor comprised a hallway as well as a few small rooms, such as 502 and 503. On each side of the hallway were two large rooms that gave access to the roof from each one. The first things that I wanted to pay close attention to were room 502 and the outside area. I set up my camcorder to record the inside of room 503 for the remainder of the evening. I also set an EMF array on a small chair in the room as well. We took a seat in the hallway, and I sat next to the doorway of 502.
Almost immediately, Deanna spotted a shadow in the corner of one of the rooms. She said it went away quickly, but I knew that this was a sign that we were not alone. She started asking the dark figure questions and tried to coax it to reappear. After several failed attempts, she decided to try and roll another ball. She made the announcement and rolled the ball to Ashley, who then rolled the ball out to the middle of the room.
“Will someone roll it back to me or another person?” she asked. The room was very still for the next minute or two, and the ball failed to move. “If you change your mind, you can roll it anytime you wish.”
I wanted to focus on the nurse who hung herself outside room 502.
“If the nurse is there, can she please make a noise to alert us of her presence?” I asked. A noise came from room 502. I asked for another knock for validation of her presence, and two noises again came from the room. I thanked her for the effort and began asking her direct questions. I made the mistake of asking her why she wanted to end her life, and it caused a dramatic environmental change. A frigid cold air blasted through the area I was in, and I got the distinct feeling of apprehension and shame mixed with a little anger. I knew that I would be outside on the roof in a little while and didn’t want an angry spirit pushing me over. In light of that, I didn’t feel it was appropriate to continue asking questions, so we let the quiet take the room over before we headed to another room.
The two rooms that gave access to the roof were our two final destinations on the floor. We started in the one to the left of 502. We entered the room and scattered. As everyone settled, we continued asking questions. I asked if someone there was looking for their family, but I could not get any response and kept getting pulled back into the previous hallway. I asked aloud if someone there would like us to reenter the hallway and heard no response. The time kept slipping away, and we knew we had another room to check out.
Upon entering the final room, I thought it would be a good idea to try the ball experiment myself. I picked up a small round ball that fit in the palm of my hand and started talking. I stated my intentions: “I will bounce the ball in the hallway, and, if you can, would someone bounce it back or toss it to another location?” I bounced the ball into the darkness and listened to the bouncing across the floor. No response was given.
In a last effort, Ashley and Deanna came up with a plan: they decided to play a game and see if it would spawn a reaction. They got up and stood in the middle of the floor. Then they started moving in a circle, singing “Ring around the Rosy,” and fell to the ground. They asked if anyone would like to join in on the fun and games. They even invited them to play games of their own. It was a really big place to play hide and seek, but we were too short on time to get involved in such a game.
Before long, we heard several footsteps in the stairwell and a flashlight shining from below. Mike had come through the door. We asked if our time was up, and he said we had about five minutes left. We used the last five for discussion of what had happened throughout the night and some of the impressions we had of the building. At the four o’clock mark, we made the long descent to the main area to pack up and go home. It seemed like the night flew by, but we were all tired and exhausted from the investigation and welcomed a good night’s sleep.
Final Thoughts on Waverly Hills Sanatorium
Even though we did not collect a lot of physical evidence, it was still very much worth the trip and the money to investigate Waverly Hills Sanatorium. Several things happened to us that we cannot pass off as coincidence, and we did capture a few EVP and photo anomalies. Several of us had personal experiences, but we cannot conclude they were paranormal due to the lack of evidence.
The staff was excellent and accommodated us at their every chance. Overall, I would say that it was one of the more memorable investigations I have had in a while. I can’t say for sure why Waverly Hills could very well be haunted. I know the deaths from the tuberculosis outbreaks could have a big part, but there were other feelings present there besides suffering and death. I believe that some of the departed souls from family members could have returned to the building to seek out relatives and friends who were treated there.
I believe the building hosts significant activity at times, but as I know from investigating buildings in the past, the activity level varies from time to time. I don’t know who or how many people are still lurking behind the walls at Waverly Hills, but I know some of them are willing to communicate with you under the right circumstances. I highly recommend taking the chance and investigating Waverly Hills for the possibility of having the spirits of the dead walk the halls in attempt to welcome you to the place they call home.