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The Waverly Hills Sanatorium

The Business of Haunting

The history of the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky, combines disease, death and dilapidation, essential elements for a haunting...

According to legend, this 20th Century tuberculosis sanatorium was the scene of 63 000 deaths, horrendous treatments, patient abuses, cruel experiments, and of suicide and intrigue. This is yet another ‘most haunted building in America’ (i.e., well-marketed). Popularised by movies, documentaries and reality television shows, the sanatorium is a hub of tourist, if not paranormal, activity.

However, the precise location of the Sanatorium is a closely guarded secret. How to find a hidden haunted property? Knowing that the building had been abandoned until recently, I consulted a teenager at a local café. Probably having spent many blissful hours away from parental oppression at the Sanatorium, the fellow was able to provide some simple directions, “Follow the Dixie Highway, turn left at the railway crossing and left again at Bobby Nichol’s golf course”.

Seemingly out of nowhere, an imposing building atop a hill came into view. The gates to the building were closed, but I followed a well-worn path through an opening in the fence. I happily trespassed around the premises until I noticed a security camera. Evidently, this camera had also noticed me. A large red truck appeared. Out stepped a fellow dripping with gold jewellery and wearing a baseball cap with SHERIFF convincingly embroidered across the forehead. He greeted me with, “I’d hate to have to arrest you, ma’am”. I apologised profusely and introduced myself. Confident that I was harmless, the Sheriff extended his hand and exclaimed, “People ‘round these parts call me Gooch”.

I boldly asked Gooch if I could take a legal look around the premises and he kindly tried to arrange this with the owners. Unfortunately, a dignitary was about to inspect the premises, much to Gooch’s chagrin, “I don’t care for them politician types. They can kiss my ass.” In consolation, I was invited to attend a tour to be held later that afternoon. I spent the day wandering around the city’s downtown area, learning how to pronounce Louisville (locals say loo-wuh-vay-ul), sipping a mint julep, and checking out the museums to the city’s claims to fame, the Kentucky Derby and Colonel Sanders.

The tour began with a screening of an episode of Sci-Fi channel’s TAPS, showing an investigation of the Sanatorium. This un-skeptical investigation found ‘evidence’ of paranormal activity, by way of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVPs) that captured “moans”, Electro Magnetic Field (EMF) readings that detected “paranormal energy”, video footage of “apparitions” and photos of orbs. The group searches for proof, rather than truth, and ended the show with the claim, “If anyone says this place isn’t haunted they’re lying.” In looking at photos of the Sanatorium in operation, what is truly haunting is the look of sadness on the gaunt, pallid faces of the patients who knew they were dying.

Following an outbreak of tuberculosis in the County, a sanatorium was opened in 1912 in an attempt to contain the disease. This original hospital housed 50 patients. This was prior to the 1943 introduction of the antibiotic streptomycin, and the contagious ‘White Plague’ rapidly reached pandemic proportions on a global scale (even today, it is estimated that 2 billion people, one third of the world’s population, are infected with the tuberculosis bacterium).1 Surrounded by swampland, Louisville was the perfect environment for breeding tuberculosis. However, it was believed that the country air was beneficial for the disease. To cope with the spate of cases, the city built another hospital to treat up to 400 patients.

The Sanatorium operated from 1926 until 1961. Rob, “tour guide and historian” claims that 63 000 people died at Waverly Hills during the five decades of operation. He further claims that during the height of the outbreak, the death rate was 1 person every hour (another source claims 3 per hour). 2 These shocking, incomprehensible statistics are perpetuated in books, on television and online, but are these figures factual?

Unfortunately, the hospital records were lost in a fire and it is difficult to calculate a precise number of both patients and deaths. However, an autobiography by former Director Dr J. Frank Stewart claims that the highest annual death rate was 152 people (This figure was taken from the early to mid 1940s and represented an influx of untreated returning World War II soldiers). 3 As a maximum estimate, this would put the total death rate at approximately 7448 during the 49 years of operation. This is less than 12% of the propagated figure, but we can assume that the actual figure is less still. Where might this sensationalised number come from? Perhaps 63 000 is a mistaken extrapolation of approximately 152 deaths per month rather than per year. Conversely, 63 000 might reflect the deaths throughout the state of Kentucky during the pandemic. 4

The Sanatorium closed its doors in 1961 and has had a fragmented history ever since. From 1962 until 1981 the building operated as Woodhaven Geriatrics Hospital. It is claimed that the hospital was closed following a series of patient abuses (However, the building is expensive to run and this rumour might ride on the grisly reputation of Waverly Hills). The next owner planned to convert the premises into a maximum-security prison, a plan that was thwarted by outraged neighbours. Plans to remodel the building into a set of apartments also failed. In 1996 the Christ the Redeemer Foundation Inc. purchased the estate. Inspired by the Rio de Janeiro statue, the Foundation had a vision to construct the world’s largest statue of Jesus Christ. Failing to raise the necessary funds, the eccentric group abandoned the plans, and the building. The Sanatorium quickly fell prey to trespassers and vandals, and from the decay its haunted reputation arose.

The current owners, Tina and Charles Mattingly, purchased the property in 2001, with plans to construct a ‘haunted hotel and museum’. With the phenomenal publicity generated by the Sanatorium’s sudden fame, and funding (“donations”) from ghost tours and overnight ghost hunts, this goal is well on the way to realisation. A unique way to circumvent the mortgage crisis, it is a growing trend in the US to capitalise on (and often create) the paranormal for profit. Never before has America been so haunted.

The gutted, defaced insides of the building no longer reflect its majestic face. Vandalised and devastated, what remains of the walls are covered in grime, graffiti and peeling paint. Rubbish and debris litter the floors. Most of the doors and windows are missing, not to mention parts of the ceiling. The building is sprouting weeds and infested with bats and rats. The grounds are overgrown. ‘This place must be haunted’, remarked most of my tour companions. This is haunting by stereotype.

Waverly Hills is reputedly haunted by a large number of ghosts. Some visitors report the sight of phantom children running through the long halls of the building. The Sanatorium housed many child patients, and patients’ family members who had been exposed to tuberculosis. Mundanely, these ‘phantom children’ are probably real children, given the volume of visitors. Likewise, sightings of so-called ‘shadow people’ are probably shadows cast by people. A popular story features the ghost of ‘Timmy’, a young boy who playfully bounces a ball. Red balls are strewn across the premises to lend effect to this story, but some visitors interpret the mere sight of a ball as a sign that Timmy is about. When captured on film, this “bouncing” becomes a gentle roll, suggesting that the real culprit is the wind flowing through the windowless windows.

A melodramatic female apparition is shackled, covered with bleeding incisions and screams “help me!” This ghost piggy-backs another myth, the existence of an abattoir-like ‘draining room’. The following comes from an investigation of the premises:

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. 5

Conversely, the original floor plans show that this was a transistor room. The quote also offers a bonus fallacy that “tuberculosis became less threatening in the 1930s”. We know from Dr Stewart’s book that the disease was most rampant in Louisville during the early to mid 1940s, until the introduction of streptomycin. The ‘autopsied woman’ and ‘draining room’ myths might stem from the experimental surgery that took place in the Sanatorium, including the unsuccessful artificial pneumothorax or ‘resting the lung’ procedure that involved collapsing a diseased lung to allow lesions to heal; and thoracoplasty, a disfiguring operation where ribs were broken and pushed into the thoracic cavity to collapse the lung. These seem barbaric today, but they were drastic, final attempts to alleviate critical conditions. Treatment for less severe cases included a high protein diet, and bed rest, outside, throughout the sweltering summers and icy winters.

Like a fun park ride gone wrong, the ‘Tunnel of Death’, ‘Death Tunnel’ (the name of a recent movie about the Sanatorium) or ‘Body Chute’ lies on the grounds of the property. This 500ft long tunnel was reputedly used to discretely transfer the deceased from the hospital to awaiting hearses. Apparently, the tunnel is haunted by the spirits of those who made the journey down the tunnel. It is likely that this tunnel was used to convey the dead, but a constant cavalcade of bodies fits in better with the ‘three deaths per hour, 63 000 deaths in total’ myth. The steep tunnel was probably originally devised to transport supplies, and possibly laundry. Of course, the laundry is also haunted, by faces that materialise on the floor. There is also a haunted Morgue and autopsy room, and an Electro Convulsive Therapy room, from the days of the home for the elderly, where screams of terror can be heard at night (hang on, was this a home, or a mental health care facility?).

‘Mary’ is an eyeless ghost. Like a cartoon character, her glowing, disembodied eyes are supposedly seen floating about in darkened rooms. ‘Ralph’ haunts the halls of the third floor. Ashen, consumptive faces stare out of the windows wistfully. But the most infamous ghost, and most infamous room, is the Nurse of Room 502. The most common version of the story tells of an unmarried nurse who had an affair with a married doctor in 1935 (or 1926 or 1930). She became pregnant. Her grisly solution was to abort herself and ‘flush the foetus down a commode’. In her shame, she hanged herself from the rafters of Room 502. Wearing a long white nurse’s gown covered in blood, she now haunts this room, along with a ghostly companion. Another nurse contracted tuberculosis and in her misery, jumped to her death from this fifth floor room. No record of these events exists, but real or not, the stories reflect the suffering and despair that probably pervaded the Sanatorium.

These anecdotes are reminiscent of a B-grade horror film. In fact, we can attribute most of these stories to bad movies, un-skeptical documentaries and ‘reality’ TV. Numerous amateur investigations have been conducted on the premises. Most notably, the Celebrity Paranormal Project for ailing acting careers featured eminent scientist Gary Busey (who spent most of the show screaming and crying). As I type, the Ghost Hunters are conducting a live 6-hour Halloween investigation, featuring an overly-emotional group of adults talking inanely to invisible ‘spirits’, commanding them to respond, and filming a still red ball. Feeding the frenzy, viewers email their observations of ghostly sights and sounds from the comfort of their couches (“Jeff of Kansas saw a floating face”).6

Such TV shows, documentaries, books and websites are rife with inaccurate dates, grossly inflated statistics, false history and fallacious medical information. Therefore, can these be reliable sources for investigating supposed paranormal activity? Furthermore, these investigators are too readily convinced, despite the lack of credible evidence. For example, the Paranormal Investigations of Texas group provide a series of Electronic Voice Phenomena that are presented as proof that Waverly Hills is haunted. Two examples feature recordings of inaudible “actual ghost voices” that reputedly convey such convincing messages as “Oh my Lord” and “Gotta get outta here, Bo”7. Falling debris is interpreted as the presence of spirits.8 The documentary Spooked: The Ghosts of Waverly Hills Sanatorium, supplies blurry footage of ‘orbs’ (dust or moisture) and ‘ghosts’ (shadows) to ‘prove’ that the premises are haunted, all supported by anecdotal evidence, especially from the owners.9 However, as I’ve been advised, no one should research these claims too deeply, as we don’t want to “ruin the livelihood” of these folk.

As usual, it seems that fact is stranger, and more profound than fiction; the pandemic scale of tuberculosis, the high mortality rates, the sufferings of the patients, the hopelessness and ever-present fear of death. Is the ghost hunter brave, or the doctors and nurses who persisted, despite ineffective treatments and the risk of contagion? Myths undermine and distort the fascinating, true story of the Sanatorium. Inventing history might be profitable, but it is also cheap, and even Waverly Hills is bound to be supplanted by the next ‘Most Haunted’.

Notes:

1 Retrieved 26/10/07 from: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/1996/tbtip.htm 2 Retrieved 26/10/07 from: ttp://www.hauntedamericatours.com/buildings/WaverlyHillsSanatorium/ 3 Stewart, J. Frank. 1991. Sunrise, sunset: an Autobiography. New York: Vantage Press. 4 Retrieved 25/10/07 2007 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waverly_Hills_Sanatorium 5 Retrieved 27/10/07 from: http://www.prairieghosts.com/waverly_tb.html 6 Sci-Fi channel, 31/10/07. 7 Retrieved 31/10/07 from: http://www.paratexas.com/waverly.htm 8 http://www.prairieghosts.com/waverly_tb.html 9 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0437484/

Adapted from: Stollznow, K. 2007. The Haunted Sanatorium. The Skeptic. Vol.27, No.4. Australian Skeptics.pp,34-37.

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