Article written by Carol Mason - Carol visited Waverly Hills in 2006. Read on for a description of the tours given there.
Waverly Hills was opened in 1926 as a hospital for those afflicted with Tuberculosis (TB) in Jefferson County, Kentucky. TB was a bacteria that mostly afflicted the lungs. In 1926, antibiotics were not available, so there was no cure. Unbeknownst to me, TB could also affect other organs of the body. Although the lung infection was the most common, the bacteria could also get into the liver, bones and even the brain! The brain infection was the worst of all, as it made the afflicted person insane! That is why the hospital got the reputation of being an Insane Asylum, as those patients that had TB in the brain were quarantined on the 4 th Floor and almost always died after going insane with the bacteria.
Over 63,000 persons died there.
I went to the Sanitorium with two members of Indiana Ghost Trackers, Lorri and Keri on April 15, 2006. The directions given to us by one of the owners, Tina, were very direct and we found the facility with no problem. We couldn’t actually drive up to the building as the road was blocked, but you could see it from several directions. VERY impressive building! It sits on the highest point in Jefferson County, Kentucky. We were actually looking at the back of the building as we were driving up. Now that we had our bearings, we ate some dinner, did a little shopping and arrived back at the building around 8:15.
Lorri, Keri and I, along with the rest of the people scheduled for the 8:30 tour, gathered in the old laundry room of the facility. We paid our “donation” ($20!) and sat at tables waiting for the informational video we were required to watch. Both owners of the building, Charles and Tina Mattingly, were present, along with a rather large staff of tour guides. The video started promptly at 8:30, which was extremely interesting.
The informational video started out with an old film clip that can only be described as a “commercial” for the asylum. The clip described the “wonderful” conditions at Waverly Hills and showed happy workers preparing food for the patients, happy patients resting in their beds, doing crafts and whatnot, waiting to recover from their illness. The “cure” for TB, at the time, was good nutrition, bed rest and fresh air and sunshine. The patients (the ones that were considered curable) were wheeled out, in their beds, every day, to the open-air balconies.
Interestingly enough, a lot of times, both a husband and a wife were afflicted with TB and had to be checked into the asylum. If they had children and there were no family members that could take care of those children, they came along with the parents and were quarantined into the “children’s ward”. Sometimes the children became afflicted with TB, sometimes they didn’t. They built a playground on the roof of the building for those children so they could get plenty of fresh air and sunshine as their parents attempted to recover on the floors below.
The next part of the information video were segments of the “The Scariest Places on Earth”, in which Waverly Hills was featured. This is the show with Linda Blair, narrated by Zelda Rubenstein (the little old clairvoyant woman from Poltergeist). Charles and Tina’s daughter, Christie, and a few of her friends spent the night there and their experiences were recorded for the show.
The next segment included scenes from the recent (at the time) “Ghost Hunters” show on Sci-Fi. Jason and his team investigated the facility and got a VERY awesome image on their thermal camera of a “being” running across the hallway on the third floor. The image was too big to be an animal, which sometimes get into the building. According to our tour guide, they think it was the ghost of “Tommy” or “Timmy”, a boy that died in the hospital many, many years ago. I will elaborate on that story later on.
At 9:00, we finally got into the building. They split us into two groups and unfortunately, Lorri, Keri and I, got into a group with mostly local teenagers. They were not obnoxious or unruly, just very loud to the point they sometimes drowned out the tour guide. It was very frustrating. I turned on my digital recorder (to perhaps capture some EVP) at the beginning of the tour, but after ten minutes or so, I decided it was useless with all the background noise of the teenagers giggling, laughing, etc.
We started the tour on the first floor of the building. According to the tour guide, we were getting a special “treat” as they run a “haunted house” in October, and the first floor is normally blocked off. They are making some changes to the haunted house this year, and they decided to open it up on the tour until the remodeling, which happens some time in May.
The first floor was mainly administration, nurses’ stations, and whatnot. Not a lot of “activity” has been recorded on the first floor. The exception is that a nurse supposedly sliced her wrists and ran out into the lobby bleeding and screaming. Urban legend tells that she died in the front yard of the building, but in actuality, she was treated, stitched up and apparently lived a “normal” life after this incident.
On the second floor, we were led into an atrium that supposedly held patients and visiting family members. At one time, it was beautiful. The interesting part of this atrium is the picture taken a few years back of two girls on the tour. When they looked at the pictures, a ghostly figure of a woman appeared between them. They posted the picture and indeed, a woman appeared between them with long, wavy hair and she had a sad expression on her face. If the picture was real, it was very impressive.
From there, we were escorted on to the balconies, where patients were brought out on a daily basis to experience fresh air and sunshine. As previously mentioned, this was thought to be a healing process with TB. Lorri, Keri and I all experienced a “peaceful” feeling on these balconies. All three of us also thought that only the richest of the patients were afforded this luxury. This was neither confirmed nor denied by the tour guide.
Occasionally, there are people on the tour that had relatives that had stayed and/or died in Waverly Hills. The staff at Waverly welcomes these people and these family members are encouraged to bring pictures of their loved ones. If the relatives can remember which room they had stayed, their pictures are posted in those rooms. Unfortunately, these pictures are often stolen by vandals.
On the third floor, we were introduced to the hallway that TAPS captured the picture on the thermal camera which is thought to be either “Tommy” or “Timmy”. For years, the staff has put a play ball on this floor and have recorded on a daily basis, where the ball ends up. The ball moves daily. In fact, a local ghost hunting group had reserved an “all-nighter” and they were sitting around in a circle on the third floor. Much to everyone’s surprise, the ball just came bouncing into the hallway and NO ONE ELSE was in the building except for those people in the hallway! They have found the ball on all floors of the building, and no one has yet claimed to have moved it!
The Shadow People of Waverly
We were also ‘introduced’ to the shadow people that roam the halls. The group was instructed to stand in the middle of the hall, turn off all flashlights and watch the shadow people run back and forth across the end of the hall. You could definitely see ‘shadows’ flitting back and forth, but you have to understand that every last window at Waverly has been broken. We were standing in the middle of a dark hall looking towards a room at the end of the hall that once had a lot of windows. As stated earlier, Waverly is the highest point in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and the possibility of the shadow people actually being lights from the city of Louisville are rather high.
They also asked for volunteers to help with an experiment. That person was told to walk over to where the shadow people were running back and forth. The person was told to raise and lower their arms and we were all supposed to watch the shadow people walk in front of this person. The guide pointed out that the person standing in the area looked bigger and that his arms had ‘grown’. In my humble opinion, I think this was a rather impressive hoax. All “smoke and mirrors”. I actually volunteered to be one of the guinea pigs and as I was walking down the hall, the tour guide got a radio call that we were falling behind and we needed to move along. I felt nothing and nothing happened.
As you probably know, TAPS again visited Waverly for one of their “live” Halloween shows. I watched about two or so hours of it and watched the analysis/reveal show the next week. The only thing they really got was the “play ball” moving sixteen feet and actual footage of the ball moving. They “said” there was no wind, but we all know those play balls are very light and they have now placed several of them on each floor. The jury is still out on that one. Since all the windows are busted out, I have my doubts that any amount of wind could move around that ball.