Waverly Hills Sanatorium Ghosts

Waverly Hills Sanatorium is a site that will come up 99% of the time when talking about ghosts and haunted locations. Located in Louisville, KY this is a spot that a great deal of the info you think you know is incorrect so I present to you the real truth about Waverly Hills Sanatorium it’s ghosts, hauntings and even maybe a bit about shadow people.

During the 1800s and early 1900s, America was ravaged by a deadly disease known as tuberculosis. Louisville, Kentucky had one of the highest tuberculosis death rates in America from this contagious plague. Waverly Hills opened in 1926 and was billed as being the most advanced tuberculosis sanatorium in the United States even though most of the patients still perished from this terrifying plague, for which no cure yet existed.

Some of the treatment methods created at Waverly Hills in order to search for a cure were as bad as the disease itself. The worst of these barbaric methods was having balloons surgically implanted in the lungs and then filled with air to expand them needless to say only a few ever survived this “cure”. Patients who were lucky enough to have survived both the disease and the treatments left Waverly Hills through the front door, however the majority of Waverly Hills patients left through what came to be known as the “body chute”. The body chute was an enclosed tunnel for the dead led from the hospital to the railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill. Using a motorized rail and cable system, the bodies were lowered in secret to the waiting trains. This was done so that patients would not freak out after seeing  how many people were leaving the hospital as corpses instead of “cured”. Legend say’s an estimated death toll at Waverly Hills is about 63,000(by a ghost) the number is closer to 6300.

By the end of the 1930s, tuberculosis cases were on the decline across the United States.  In 1961, Waverly Hills was shut down but was re-opened a year later as Woodhaven Geriatrics Sanitarium. Budget cuts in the 1960s and 1970s led to both horrible conditions and patient mistreatments and in 1982, the state closed the facility for good.

By far the most haunted spot at Waverly Hills Sanitarium is the fifth floor. This floor was where the violent and insane patents were kept. Although disease did take many life’s at Waverly Hills on the fifth floor tuberculosis was actually the third leading cause of death behind Suicide and Murder. A great deal of fifth floor patients just couldn’t handle seeing all the death around them and not knowing when it would be coming for them so they would jump to there death from the windows or they would slice their wrists with eating utensils.

The fourth floor has the least violent ghosts and in fact a few doctors even haunt this floor as if they are still making rounds to visit their sick patents (A lot of people call these doctors shadow people when they appear because sometimes there white coats seem black). This is a popular hangout for those who had experimental “cures” because this floor will lead you to the “sun room” where patents lungs were exposed to ultraviolet light to try and stop the spread of bacteria.

I didn’t catch the ghost’s name but he said he worked here and  he asked me to pass a message unto his Son. Hey said “Sell Charlie and Tina, Sell!” not sure what he ment but I promised to pass that along.