Some places almost dare you to see how long you can stand being within their walls. The Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Ky., is one of these places.
Located two and half hours south of Dayton, at the top of a hill, this nearly century old hospital was considered state-of-the-art in tuberculosis research and patient care until the 1960s. In its time as a tuberculosis hospital, it was thought that thousands had died there, however exact numbers are not truly known.
In 1962, it reopened as Woodhaven Geriatric Center, a nursing home that eventually closed due to patient abuse in 1982. Since then, the great structure fell into near ruin, changing hands until it found its current owners in 2003.
Today, the hospital is considered one of the most haunted places in the world, hosting ghost hunts and tours from March until August every year as well as a popular haunted house attraction during Halloween.
My spur-of-the-moment visit to Waverly would span a six-hour overnight stay in the hospital.
On the drive there one Friday evening in late March, I was unsure what lay in store for me, having never been to such an imposing place before. We checked in and waited at the hospital’s main office that serves as HQ and a gift shop. We had a full house of 25-30 people that night going on the same adventure. At midnight, the hunt began as we went up to the fourth and fifth floors.
Waverly Hills is said to be haunted by various ghosts such as an unknown little girl with no eyes and a homeless man and his dog who were murdered in the building during the years it was abandoned. The hospital has become famous due to its “shadow people” that seem to roam freely amongst the patient rooms and hallways.
Our tour guide let us loose after a brief overview of floors and cautioned us to stay close by in case anything happened. The pitch blackness of the hallways was unlike anything I had ever experienced. You cannot help but feel like your every move is being watched.
Feeling uneasy, I walked out onto the open porch area of the fourth floor which offered stunning views of the buildings and the city surrounding it. I stayed in this area for much of the couple of hours on the upper floors.
I watched as shadows seemed to move across the windows on the lower levels.
We took a 25-minute break in the main office and then set out for the infamous body chute or “death tunnel” and lower floors. The body chute is an old multipurpose tunnel that runs down the hill from the hospital. At one point, it was used as a place to discreetly transport bodies of dead patients from the hospital to be claimed by their families.
We didn’t see anything down there, so we made our way back to the building to finish out the tour on the second and first floors. These floors had a morgue and various freezers for the kitchen. We performed experiments such as being locked in the freezers and listened to strange noises coming from down the halls. By the night’s end, it proved an interesting and unsettling experience.
The drive back in the morning left me thinking about the souls that lived and died there and few that may still be there. But also thinking about how important Waverly Hills is as a one-of-a-kind architectural marvel and memorial for a sad chapter in Kentucky’s history.
I would return for a second visit in a heartbeat. I will say that Waverly Hills Sanatorium is an incredible place to visit that will leave its mark on you whether you are lucky or unlucky enough to come face-to-face with its ghosts.
