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The Waverly
Hills Sanatorium
By Keith Age
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LGHS
"Waverly" Photos!
Excerpt from the soon to be
released book: "HAUNTED LOUISVILLE"
Imagine yourself choking. Not
being able to get air in to your lungs because your throat
is closing up inside from something unseen, congesting and
constricting the tissues like invisible hands. Your chest
feels like it’s ready to explode and your lungs feel like
they are on fire. Finally, able to cough, clumps of bright
red blood spew from your mouth as the inner walls of your
lungs have started to disintegrate. The buzzing and
dizziness that you feel in your head is from the constant
fever you keep and made worse by the lack of oxygen going to
your brain. Capillaries explode in your eyes due to the
violent coughing spells and leave your eyes spotted with
broken capillaries or a violent crimson red. Your skin has
now turned a ghastly pasty white color because your body has
stopped producing enough red blood cells to keep the pigment
in your skin.
These graphic
descriptions can only provide the modern reader with a hint
of what millions suffered from in the early history of
America -- the dreaded and deadly “white death” known as
tuberculosis. The plague swept through the country for
centuries, claiming entire families and sometimes entire
towns. It was a terrifying and very contagious disease for
which there was no cure.
In 1900,
Louisville, Kentucky had the highest tuberculosis death rate
in the country. This was due to the fact Louisville is such
a low valley area and before development, was basically all
swampland and perfect breeding ground for the Tuberculosis
bacteria. As with many other towns and cities across the
country, hospitals were needed to care for the sick. In
1910, a wooden, two-story hospital with 40 beds opened on
one of the highest elevated hills in southern Jefferson
County to try and contain this ravaging disease.
Officials soon
found that this small hospital was simply too small, as they
were soon housing more than 130 cases of tuberculosis.
Louisville needed a much larger facility and money began to
be raised for its construction. Land was donated and $11
million was used to started construction on the new hospital
in 1924.
The hospital,
known as Waverly Hills, was opened in 1926 and was
considered to be the most advanced tuberculosis hospital in
the country. If a patient had any chance of surviving the
disease, Waverly Hills was the place to come for treatment.
Of course, treatment in those days was primitive at best,
meaning that many simply came here to die. In those days, it
was believed that the best cure for tuberculosis was plenty
of nutritional food, plenty of rest and plenty of fresh air.
Many patients came to Waverly and were actually cured and
became well enough to once again enter society. For those
not as fortunate, Waverly was the last place they ever saw.
Records have been lost, but it is estimated that tens of
thousands died at Waverly. At the height of the tuberculosis
epidemic, it is reported that one patient an hour died.
The doctors
and nurses volunteered their lives to try and find a cure
for this disease. Many of them lived and died there with the
patients. A number of different experiments were attempted
in search for a cure. Some of these experiments may sound
barbaric, or even pointless, by today’s standards, but
others are now common practice. The lungs were exposed to
ultraviolet light to try and stop the spread of the
bacteria. This was done in early versions of “sun rooms”,
using artificial light to mimic the effects of sunlight.
Patients were also placed on the roof or on the open porches
on the upper floor to take in air and sunlight. Keeping in
mind that fresh air was thought to be a cure for the
disease; the patients would often to be placed in front of
the open windows in both summer and winter. Photographs
exist that show many of the dying literally covered in snow
but still placed outside in hopes that their lungs would
expand in the clean, country air.
Many of the
treatments were much harsher -- and much bloodier. Balloons
were surgically implanted into the lungs and then filled
with air to try and expand them more, often with disastrous
results. Hydrotherapy often caused pneumonia. But some
experiments were useful and these procedures are still used
today.
Pneumothorax
was a procedure that consisted of deflating the infected
area of the lung for a period of time and then letting it
heal. Thoracoplasty was a very invasive surgical procedure
where the chest of the patient was opened and then cords of
muscle and up to seven ribs were removed. The opening was
then closed up with the idea that the lungs would then be
free to expand further and allow more oxygen into the lungs.
This bloody procedure was only attempted as a last resort
because fewer than 5% of the patients ever survived it.
In many cases,
entire families came to live at Waverly Hills. Some were
cured but many others left the hospital through what was
called the “body chute”. This was a tunnel that led from the
hospital to the railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill.
It consisted of a motorized rail and cable system where the
bodies were placed and lowered down on one side of the
tunnel and steps led up and down on the other. A small steam
plant on the property heated the tunnel, as well as the
hospital and provided warmth for the maintenance workers
that lived off the property. This was their entrance and
exit for work. The tunnel was totally enclosed from the
Morgue wing of the hospital. The purpose of this was so that
the patients couldn’t see how many bodies were leaving the
hospital. It was believed this would negatively affect their
morale as the doctors discovered early on that the mental
health of the patients was just as important as their
physical health.
Because of the
procedures and experiments that were performed at Waverly
Hills and other hospitals around the country, tuberculosis
was declining worldwide by the late 1930’s. It wasn’t until
1943 though that a young graduate student at Rutgers
University by the name of Albert Schatz discovered
Streptomycin, the first real medicine against the disease.
By the mid 1950’s, tuberculosis had been largely eradicated
because of this antibiotic. In 1961, Waverly Hills
Sanatorium was closed because there was no longer a need for
a tuberculosis facility. The buildings were reopened in 1962
as Woodhaven Geriatrics Sanitarium.
There have
been many tales of patient mistreatment and unusual
experiments that have filtered down from the hill over the
years. Some have been proven false, while others
unfortunately have turned out to be true. Electroshock
therapy was widely used, although it was considered to be a
very effective treatment in those days. Even today, it has
been used with great results but now, as it was then, tragic
losses sometimes occurred. During the 1960’s and 1970’s, a
time of budget cuts for facilities of this type, there were
many well documented cases of horrible conditions and
unusual treatments at mental institutions all across the
country. Apparently Woodhaven was no different because the
state of Kentucky closed it down in 1982 due to patient
abuse. The buildings, contents and land were auctioned off
and the doors were locked for good.
The building
and land changed hands several times over the next 18 years.
The second owner of the property wanted to tear all the
buildings down to construct the world’s largest statue of
Jesus Christ. He succeeded in demolishing all of the
buildings except for the main hospital and was only stopped
by an injunction because the building is on the National
Historic Register’s “endangered” list. He then decided that
if he couldn’t legally tear it down then he would do
everything in his power to get it condemned. He let vandals
come into the building and tear it up. After breaking
windows, porcelain sinks, toilets and doors, they began
spraying graffiti on every available wall. The owner then
dug around the foundation, in some places as deep as 30
feet, to try and make the foundation crack. If this
happened, then he believed he could get the building
condemned and would be able to legally tear it down.
Fortunately, the structure refused to give way and his
efforts failed. The area where his extensive digging took
place can still currently be seen.
By 2001, this
once regal and majestic hospital had been ravaged by time,
the elements and vandals and was a shell of its former self.
Waverly Hills had now become every town’s “haunted house”.
Vagrants took to living here and kids broke in for the rush
of finding a “ghost” or just to get high. It started to get
the reputation of being haunted and rumors had it that
satanic rituals were taking place within its walls. There
were tales of a little girl running up and down the third
floor solarium playing hide and seek with trespassers, of a
little boy playing with his leather ball, of rooms lighting
up as if there was still power to the building, doors
slamming, disembodied voices, a hearse driving up and
dropping off coffins and an old woman running from the front
door with her wrists bleeding screaming “help me, somebody
save me!” The years went by and the owner decided to sell
the property to the new owners, who took possession in 2001.
In that same
year, the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society was asked to come
to Waverly Hills to find the “hot spots” for Triage
Entertainment, who were producing a segment of Fox
Television’s “Worlds Scariest Places”. LGHS Vice President
Jay Gravatte, founder Keith Age and several other members
arrived in the early evening. Jay would be featured on the
show as the Waverly “historian” and his task would be to
guide the girls through the building.
Keith Age:
It had been
several years since I had actually been inside the old
hospital and once we entered, we started to see the extent
of the damage that time and vandals had done to this
building. Eighteen years of trash, dust and dirt had
collected in the hallways from where the windows had been
broken out. Debris and trash was two to three feet deep in
some places. The floor was like walking over hills.
We decided to
explore the morgue wing first. As we descended down this
almost totally pitch black hallway, my electromagnetic field
meter started clicking and within moments was jumping up the
scale. One of the main pieces of equipment that is used in
ghost detection is an electro-magnetic field meter, or EMF
meter. It is believed that ghosts are a form of energy and
that when they present they disrupt the natural
electro-magnetic fields in their vicinity. EMF meters detect
these disturbances, and while it is not solid proof of the
presence of a ghost, it is a good indicator. The meter
should not have gone off in the building unless something
magnetic was encountered as there had been no electricity
provided to the top of the hill since the middle 1980’s. The
poles had been knocked down at that time and the wires all
removed. Strangely, the meter continued to react to
something though -- and whatever it was, it was moving.
We followed
the signal to a small room. A cinder block wall partitioned
off half the room. This wall was built so that you could see
through to the adjoining room. On the far side of it, we
could see a lot of graffiti on the walls and by the door
there was a box with light bulb sockets with some writing on
it. As I got to the center of the room, the meter spiked to
the top of the scale and squealed to a pitch that I had
never heard it make before. The meter pegged all the way
over and it made an audible noise like glass breaking and
the needle froze at the highest position. It stopped
squealing and actually started to get warm in my hand. The
meter then got so hot that solder actually melted on the
circuit board and started to drip out of the meter.
I pulled the
battery out to try and stop it from doing even more damage
and that’s when we noticed it was getting colder in the
room. This was a hot summer’s evening and more than 80
degrees and very humid outside. Naturally, this part of the
building would be cooler since there was hardly any light
coming in and the thick concrete walls and marble floor
would diffuse the heat from outside but not as cool as it
started to become. The temperature now dropped from 74 to 52
degrees. The chill soon faded and we left the building to
get another meter and to consult the floor plans that we had
for the place. I was a little surprised to discover that the
chamber had been Woodhaven’s electroshock therapy room.
After going
back into the building, we returned to the room and examined
it more closely. The room that had been used as the
observation area had a bathroom leading off from the back of
it and also had a narrow entrance to the room next door. But
the most interesting aspect of the room was the electrical
panel with light bulb sockets on it. This panel had once
been used to show how much current was being sent to the
patient.
There was no
further activity with the meters or unusual temperature
changes and so we continued down the hall. As we walked, we
noticed that the far end wall looked as if it was getting
closer to us. Puzzled, we stared and tried to figure out how
this could be happening. There was no denying it though --
it was getting closer. Then, we began to hear sounds like
scratching and scraping. It came closer and when it was no
more than 20 feet away, we realized what was happening. No
one had been down this part of the corridor in years and we
had just disturbed a huge colony of bats. It looked just
like a dark wall as it came down the passageway toward us! I
was in the lead and ducked down, as did the person in front
of me. Others ducked into a side room until the bats passed
and luckily, no one was injured or hurt, including the bats.
At the end of
the hall, we came to a room on our left that had a thick
metal door, the kind that you often see on freezers. Upon
entering the room, we saw that it was approximately 15 feet
deep, 15 feet wide and 20 feet from floor to ceiling. There
were 8 poles that were connected to the ceiling from the
floor and from these poles were four more that were
connected to the walls crossways. There was a drain on the
right side of the floor. We later learned that this was what
was called “the draining room.” During the heyday of the
tuberculosis hospital, people were dying so quickly that
bodies had to be hurriedly removed from the hill to make
room for other victims. The problem was that the people of
Jefferson County did not want the infected bodies coming
down carrying disease. There was no cemetery at Waverly, so
the bodies couldn’t be buried. The officials were forced to
authorize the best remedy they could. The last stop for the
dead inside of the hospital would be the “draining room”.
The corpses would be hung from the poles in the room and
then slit from sternum to groin so that all of their bodily
fluids would drain out. Once this was completed, the bodies
were taken down, placed on the gurney and then transported
down the body chute. Later on, as tuberculosis became less
threatening in the 1930’s, the room was used as a smokehouse
to cure the meat that was raised and slaughtered on the
grounds.
From here, we
went upstairs to the cafeteria and kitchen. One of the
“legends” of Waverly tells of a man that can be seen walking
around in a white coat here and smell of food cooking that
comes wafting from the kitchen. What we found wasn’t spirits
but still pretty shocking. The second floor of this wing was
so damaged by vandals and the elements that it was utterly
devastated. The ceiling was collapsing in some areas of the
hall and had fallen down in other areas. The doors to the
kitchen had been knocked down and were lying in the hallway.
These doors provided walkways over puddles of water, mud and
debris. The murky pools had been formed by the leaking roof.
The kitchen was in shambles and it looked as if a bomb had
exploded in here. There was only one gigantic oven left.
Tables that had been built into the walls were broken and
all of the windows had been shattered. Some of the window
casings were so deteriorated that they were falling out of
their frames. The ceiling was simply no longer there. It had
become just a mess of wires, pipes and rotted tile panels.
The cafeteria
hadn’t fared well either. A huge mural that had once graced
the walls had been splashed with paint. The ceiling was
caving in and in the middle of the floor was a huge radiator
that had been ripped out of its moorings and left there. But
it was after our initial inspection that we heard several
footsteps around us, the sound of a door closing and the
smell of fresh baked bread in the air. There was no logical
explanation for these things. They simply happened and
several of us were there to witness them.
We soon
abandoned the area for the front entrance with only one
further incident. It would not be until our film was
developed that I discovered that something very unusual had
happened at that moment. As we had walked back down the
hallways, we passed a stairwell and my EMF meter suddenly
went off. Several photos were taken and one of them shows
what appears to be a light bulb at the landing of the
stairs. There were no light bulbs left in Waverly at that
time, no glass on the windows to reflect anything and had
been no electrical service to the hill in more than 18
years. I simply couldn’t explain what turned out in the
photograph -- any more than I could explain the other
incidents that involved electricity and lights. There had
long been stories of lights being seen in the windows at
night and one time, a security guard actually reported what
seemed to be a television playing in one of the rooms on the
third floor. From the ground, he could see what appeared to
be the distinct flicker of a television in a dark room.
Going upstairs to investigate though, he found no lights or
televisions of any kind.
After this
incident with the stairwell, we climbed to every floor in
the building but encountered nothing else strange until we
got to the fourth floor. The EMF meters again began to pick
up unusual readings and we also recorded a number of
temperature drops. This also faded away but we found other
anomalies on the fifth floor of the hospital.
The fifth
floor of Waverly consists of two nurses stations, a pantry
(#501), linen room (#503), medicine room (#504) and two
medium sized rooms on both sides of the nurse’s stations
(#506 & #502). Room 502 has tales and rumors all its very
own and is the place that every local curiosity-seeker has
heard about and wants to explore. This is where (the legends
say) people have jumped to their deaths, other have seen
images moving in the windows and disembodied voices have
been heard telling people to “get out”.
There is much
in the way of speculation about this area but what is known
is that mentally insane tuberculosis patients were housed on
the fifth floor in these two rooms. Nurse’s stations 502 and
506 looked over these two rooms in 18 hour shifts. The
patients had to go to a half door at these stations to get
their food and medicine or to use the restroom, which was
adjacent to the nurse’s station. In 1928, the head nurse in
room 502 was found dead in this room. She had hanged herself
from the light fixture in an apparent fit of depression.
According to further research, she was 29 years-old at the
time, unmarried and pregnant. It is unknown just how long
she may have been left hanging in this room before her body
was finally discovered. Her death was ruled a suicide by the
county coroner’s office. And this was not the final tragedy
to occur here…
In 1932,
another nurse who worked in room 502 jumped from the balcony
of the roof that leads from the room and was killed when she
struck the ground several stories below. We have yet to find
any records that indicate why she did this act. There are
also no records, despite what the legends say, that anyone
other than the above mentioned nurse was ever pushed or
jumped from the roof of Waverly Hills.
When we got to
the fifth floor that night, we were accompanied by one of
the owners. We went into room 502 and almost immediately,
the EMF meter reacted to something here. Even stranger, the
temperature suddenly rose around us from 86 to 98 degrees.
It continued to climb so high that we actually backed out of
the room. The owner wanted to see what was happening and as
they walked into the room, the meter continued to react but
the temperature dropped suddenly down to 68 degrees. This
lasted for just a few moments and then stopped. We searched
the room to try and find anything that would have caused
this to occur but could find nothing artificial or natural
to explain it.
After
inspecting the rest of the rooms on the roof, we went back
downstairs to talk with the director from Triage and to
explain where the “hotspots” in the place were located. Jay
would be the one who would then deal with the participants
in the show.
Jay Gravatte:
My job on that
night was simple -- take five girls through Waverly Hills
for the Fox’s “reality” series. My main duty was to explain
to them some of the history and paranormal activity
surrounding the abandoned hospital. Everything we
encountered was to be recorded and broadcast as an episode
of the show but what occurred that night was anything but
simple.
It began on an
unusually hot July day, as I arrived at Waverly Hills. I was
introduced to the director of the show and he explained how
he "wanted" me to do my tour and history lesson. I explained
very early on that I did not want to be involved with a show
that was going to be rigged. I was then informed that
nothing was to be 'spooked up' whatsoever. At close to 8:00
p.m. I was finally introduced to the young ladies I was to
play guide to. Before we had even entered the old hospital,
the girls felt apprehensive. All they could see was this
hulk of a building as it sat there like a conquered and
battered ruin.
As we stood in
front of the main entrance, I told them of an apparition
that had often been seen in that location: a woman running
out of the front door, her hands and legs in chains,
spectral blood dripping from her wrist and ankles, crying
and pleading for help, only to then dissipate into thin air.
I led their eyes to a third story window, where a young girl
of about seven or eight years old has been seen, and peering
out from the windows. This set the mood for the night to
come….
Finally we
entered the building and I swung open the old main doors and
led the girls inside. We spent several moments looking
around the lobby where we stood. The girls, the three people
from the production company, and I then entered a room
directly adjacent to the main entrance. When the Sanatorium
operated here, it was the medical director's office, but now
it became the girls “safe room”. Chairs, food, and water
were set up if the girls needed a break while filming or
needed a place to retreat to if things became too much for
them to bear. After unloading their sleeping bags,
flashlights and other equipment, I proceeded to take them
down the medical wing on the first floor. This meant a trip
through the so-called “death wing” in which the morgue and
autopsy room were located. I was then asked by the director
to pull out one of the old trays from the freezer unit, in
the autopsy bay. Unbeknownst to me, it had been rigged with
a cable, to pull back in on itself. At that point, it didn't
though. We then traveled down the hall and out the sliding
door at the end to the body chute, the converted coal tunnel
that was used to transport dead patients from the hospital
to the crematorium located down the hill.
As we
proceeded into and down the 485 foot tunnel, one of the
girls finally succumbed to the eeriness of her surroundings.
She was ready to give up. After a quick pep talk from the
others, she decided to weather it out for awhile longer. We
then reentered the hospital and headed up toward the second
floor dining area. Keep in mind again that it was a hot July
day with no wind whipping around us what so ever. I began
telling the girls about "Ralph", a ghostly maintenance man
who has been seen wearing a white, buttoned-down shirt and
white pants. The girls and I begin walking down the corridor
and as I am talking, one of them starts to see a red glow
beginning to illuminate the entire end of the hallway.
Of course, the
girls began screaming and proceeded to nearly run myself and
the film crew down. I managed to calm them down and re-tell
them about Ralph. At this point, you have to understand that
Waverly is in horrible shape. As we are standing there
discussing Ralph, a piece of the ceiling swings down and
nearly decapitates a cameraman from Triage! Once again, the
building was filled with the sound of screaming young women.
Finally, after
escorting them back to the "safe room" for a break, I took
them on an extremely brief tour of the third, fourth, and
fifth floors. I explained about all of the legends
associated with Waverly, from the apparition of the little
girl on the third floor to the nurse that was hung in room
502 up on the fifth floor. I was then instructed to take
them back down the medical wing on the first floor, and as
we rounded the corner near Occupational therapy, which is
adjacent to the morgue, one of the old heavy wooden doors
slammed shut right in my face! At this point, I jumped back,
I'll admit it. It takes a lot to unnerve me, but this did
the trick. These doors are thick, and rusted on the hinges,
and nearly immovable. Suddenly, something comes bouncing
down the hallway at us, and old time bottle cap from a soda,
it turns out. This made the girls finally break down and
scramble back down the hallway to their safe room. Two of
them could no longer deal with everything that was
happening.
At this point,
I'd been there for over five hours, which equals around
seven minutes in television time. By this point, it was
nearly 1:00 in the morning and the director decided that I
was to leave the girls in the building “by themselves“, so
to speak. That was fine with me and I gathered my equipment,
along with the town girls who chose to leave. We said our
goodbyes and walked right out the front door. Unfortunately,
the crew caught me saying "I am so glad to be out of there"
and it ended up in the show. Of course, I was -- I wanted to
go home and take aspirin for the headache that had been
brought on by the sounds of screaming -- but not for the
reasons that it appeared in the final cut of the program. I
walked away from this experience a little wiser on how the
media interprets the paranormal when they are only looking
for ratings.
I would later
ask the girls what had occurred after my departure? This was
months before I would see the final aired episode and they
told me of noises that had followed them in the building,
doors slamming, being touched and even observing things move
on their own. This stuck a chord, because during the times
that the investigative team of the Louisville Ghost Hunters
Society has spent exploring Waverly Hills, we have had this
type of activity happen with great frequency.
Troy Taylor:
One of the
first questions that people ask me when they learn what I
write about for a living is whether or not searching for
real ghosts ever scares me. For a very long time, I assured
them that I was never frightened during these outings to
haunted places and for the most part this was true. My reply
would have to change though after I experienced Waverly
Hills for the first time.
I first heard
about the old hospital from Keith about the time that he and
the Louisville Ghost Hunter’s Society first got access to
it. In fact, the meter that had been destroyed in the former
electroshock therapy room had been purchased from my company
and when I heard about what had happened to it, I asked
Keith to return it to me. I then sent the meter to my
distributor, who has been in business for more than a decade
and is an expert on electromagnetic field meters, and asked
him to look it over. He had never seen anything like the
damage that had been done to the meter before -- and he had
no explanation for what could have caused it.
The first time
that I visited the hospital was in September 2002. I was in
town for the first Mid-South Paranormal Convention and one
of the places that I asked Keith to show me in Louisville
was Waverly Hills. I was already interested in the history
of the place and had heard about the investigations that had
been conducted there. I was anxious to see it and so Keith
arranged a tour. It was literally a dark and stormy night
when we arrived at the hospital and it had been raining all
day. I was looking forward to seeing the place, no matter
what the weather, and not because I was convinced that I
would meet one of the former patients face to face -- it was
simply to experience the place for myself. By this time, I
had traveled all over the country and had been to hundreds
of places that were alleged to be haunted. I had felt just
this same way before exploring all of them, so Waverly Hills
was no different. To me, it was just an old, spooky building
with a fascinating history. The fact that it was alleged to
be haunted simply added to the experience. I have long since
abandoned the idea of going in expecting too much. This is
likely why I was so surprised by what actually happened that
night.
After meeting
with the owners, Keith and I went inside and started our
exploration of the building. Once we were away from the
activity going on downstairs, the surroundings fell silent.
The only thing that I heard in the dark building was the
sound of our own footsteps, our hushed voices and the drip
of rain as it slipped through the cracks in the roof and
splashed down onto the floor. Keith led me through the place
and pointed out the various rooms, the treatment areas, the
kitchen, the morgue and on and on. We climbed the stairs to
the top floor and I saw legendary room 502, as well as the
lights of Louisville as they reflected off the low and
ominous-looking clouds that gathered above the city.
During our
excursion, I mentioned to Keith that there had been one
floor that we had missed -- the fourth. He explained that
this was the only floor in the building whose entrance was
kept locked and he had waited to save it for last. I
remembered then some of the stories that had been passed on
to me about this floor. Many regarded it as the most active
-- and the most frightening -- area of the former hospital.
The most
unusual experience that I had heard about was when Keith was
in one of the rooms here. He had been walking along the
corridor of the fourth floor with an EMF detector and was
followed by two members of his group with a video camera. He
started to picking up readings with the meter and he was led
onto one of the former treatment rooms. The intensity of the
magnetic energy in the room continued to increase and the
strongest readings seemed to be in the southeast corner of
the room. Keith was standing in the corner, looking at the
changes on the meter scale, when an empty plastic soda
bottle came seemingly out of nowhere and struck him in the
back. As he turned to see what had happened, an overhead
fluorescent light fixture suddenly came loose from the
ceiling with a loud crack. With one end of it still anchored
to the ceiling, the other end swung loose and hit Keith in
the side of the head. The long burned-out bulb that remained
in the fixture shattered when it collided with Keith and
showered him with glass. Before he even had time to react,
he heard the sound of a brick scrape across the concrete
floor. The noise came from the opposite corner of the room
and when he looked over, he saw the brick moving across the
floor towards him. With a lurch, it shot directly at him and
as he scrambled to get out of the line of fire, it hit him
in the small of the back. Needless to say, he quickly
retreated from the room. The other investigators had not
seen where the brick or the soda bottle had come from, but
they had clearly heard the brick move and had seen both
objects strike Keith. This is still regarded as one of the
most chilling events to occur in the building.
It would not
be the only time that Keith would see an object move in the
building though. I was present on one other occasion, along
with a tour attendee and authors Alan Brown and Dave
Goodwin. In September 2003, I returned to Louisville for
another conference and that night, we took a group tour of
the old hospital. As we were climbing the stairs and going
past the fourth floor landing, the group of us at the front
of the line clearly saw the heavy metal door open up a few
inches and then slam shut under its own power. Keith was
just a few feet away from it at the time and he jumped in
surprise. No one had been near the door and at the time, the
floor was still locked so there was no way that anyone could
have gotten on it to manipulate the door.
A year earlier
though, when I entered the fourth floor for the first time,
I got the distinct feeling that something strange was in the
air. I make absolutely no claims of any psychic ability
whatsoever but there was just something about this floor of
the hospital that felt different than any of the others.
What had been nothing more than just an old ramshackle and
broken down building suddenly seemed different. I can’t
really put into words what felt so strange about it but it
almost seemed to be a tangible “presence” that I had not
encountered anywhere else in the place. And right away,
eerie things started to happen.
We had entered
the floor in what I believe was the center of the building.
Behind us was a wing that I was told was not safe to enter.
Sections of the floor had fallen in and this area was
off-limits to tours and visitors. The strange thing about it
was that both Keith and I clearly heard the sounds of doors
slamming from this part of the building. I can assure the
reader that it was not the wind either. The wind was not
strong enough that night to have moved those heavy doors and
this clearly sounded as though someone was closing them very
hard. When I questioned Keith about who else could be up
there with us, he explained me about the floors. I
investigated on my own and determined that he was correct
--- there was no one walking around on that part of the
fourth floor.
As we started
down the hallway, Keith told me about some of the other
experiences that had been experienced by investigators on
this floor. The experiences involved the strange shapes that
had been seen. The sightings had started the previous
October when, on consecutive nights, investigators were able
to see what looked like human shadows moving up and down the
fourth floor hallway. One of the shadows in particular
actually appeared to look around corners at them and all of
the shapes passed back and forth across the doorways. Keith
added that sightings like this had occurred at other times
as well and happened most often when no flashlights were
used in the corridor.
I switched off
my flashlight and we walked down the corridor using only the
dim, ambient light from outside. The hallway runs through
the center of the building and on either side of it are
former patient rooms. Beyond the rooms is the “porch” area
that opens to the outside. It was here where the patients
were placed to take in the fresh air. There was no glass
ever placed in the huge outer windows, which has left the
interior of the floor open to the elements ever since. On
this night, the windows also illuminated the corridor,
thanks to the low-hanging clouds that glowed with the lights
of Louisville. We walked down through the dark and murky
corridor and I began to see shadows that flickered back and
forth. I was sure that this was trick of the eye though,
likely caused by the lights or the wind moving something
outside and so I urged Keith on for a closer look. It was
where the corridor angled to the right that I got a look at
something that was definitely not a trick of the eye!
So that the
reader can understand what I saw, I have to explain that the
hallway ahead of us continued straight for a short distance
and then turned sharply to the right. In the early 1900’s,
most institutions of this type were designed in this manner.
It was what was dubbed the “bat-wing” design, which meant
that there was a main center in each building and then the
wings extended right and left, then angled again so that
they ran slightly backward like a bird, or bat’s, wings.
Directly at the angle ahead of us was a doorway that led
into a treatment room. I only noticed the doorway in the
darkness because the dim light from the windows beyond it
had caused it to glow slightly. This made it impossible to
miss since it was straight ahead of us.
We took a few
more steps and then, without warning, the clear and distinct
silhouette of a man crossed the lighted doorway, passed into
the hall and then vanished into a room on the other side of
the corridor! The sighting only lasted a few seconds but I
knew what I had seen. And for some reason, it shocked and
startled me so badly that I let out a yell and grabbed a
hold of Keith’s jacket. I am not sure why it affected me in
that way but perhaps it was the setting, the man’s sudden
appearance, my own anxiety --- or likely all of these
things. Regardless, after my yell, I demanded that Keith
turn on the light and that he help me to examine the room
the man had vanished into. After my initial fright, I became
convinced that someone else was on the floor with us. Keith
assured me we were the only ones there but he did help me
search for the intruder. There was no one there though, he
was right, whoever the figure had been, he had utterly and
completely vanished.
As of this
writing, I was not the first person to have seen this
mysterious figure on the fourth floor and it’s unlikely that
I will be the last. However, for me, this put Waverly Hills
into a unique category for there are not many places that I
will firmly state are genuinely haunted. Before I can do
that, I have to have my own unexplainable experience and
hopefully, it will be something that goes beyond a mere
“bump in the night” or spooky photograph. In this case, it
was much more than that because I actually saw a ghost. In
all of my years of paranormal research, I can count the
times that I have seen ghosts on just two fingers and one of
them was at Waverly Hills. In this case, seeing really was
believing.
View
LGHS "Waverly" Photos!
See more of this story at
Troy Taylor's Site!
See more about the
History of Waverly Hills!
Read the pdf file review about
Waverly Hills from TAPS!
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