True Ghost Stories

Waverly Hills Sanatorium

Time era: 1900s
Locations: Louisville, Kentucky
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Waverly Hills Sanatorium was built in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1910. Its purpose was to treat people infected with tuberculosis during the outbreak of the disease in the early to mid-1900s.

At that time, no cure of the "white plague" had been found. The disease had a high mortality rate. Some doctors carried out insane methods in a fruitless effort to find an effective treatment, but nothing worked.

At this particular sanatorium, over 8,000 patients died over the years of the epidemic. Waverly Hills was finally closed in the 1980s.

Before that, treatments allegedly carried out in this building included electroshock therapy. Most of the treatments were as deadly as tuberculosis itself.

Nowadays, people report hearing footsteps in the empty building, as well as screams from the specters of the patients. Forms cloaked in shadows gather in dark recesses and follow visitors as they make their way through the old sanatorium's narrow hallways.

Two of the most active parts of the sanatorium are the "death tunnel" and the 5th floor.

The "death tunnel", also known as the "body chute" is an underground tunnel built into the sanatorium that was used to get rid of the dead bodies via railway tracks at the bottom of the hill Waverly was built on. The tunnel was used so the still-living patients didn't see the dead being carried away. Footsteps are heard when no one is there, along with voices accompanying them.

The 5th floor of the sanatorium was specifically used to hold tuberculosis patients with mental illnesses. In Room 502, where it is said two nurses committed suicide by hanging and jumping off the roof, people often have supernatural experience. Shapes move in the windows, and voices whisper at them, telling them to "get out..."