Inside the abandoned hospital that became one of America's most haunted buildings
Waverly Hills Sanatorium, a former tuberculosis hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, has been described as 'the most terrifying building in America'.
According to the Louisville Courier Journal, the site draws paranormal thrill-seekers from around the world, and more than 6,000 people are believed to have died on the property.
Several spots on the grounds have taken on a life of their own in paranormal popular culture, including a 600-foot body chute that was used to discreetly move thousands of corpses through the facility.
Advert
It has grown in infamy and is often cited as a place where ghostly experiences happen.
In a 2017 interview, Tina Mattingly, who owns the property alongside Charlie Mattingly, said orbs and balls of light are believed to have been seen in the chute, along with spirits.
Another notorious spot is 'Room 502' in the rooftop chambers.
A 2010 Courier Journal article said it is believed to have housed tuberculosis patients with mental illnesses, and it was allegedly the site of a nurse's death.
Why is Waverly Hills Sanatorium so haunted?
Construction of the sanatorium began in 1908, and it opened in 1910 as an isolated medical center for tuberculosis patients.
Louisville had one of the highest tuberculosis death rates in the country at the time, with the city's location in the Ohio Valley and limited airflow considered contributing factors.
Tuberculosis was often deadly and extremely contagious, so patients were usually quarantined in secluded spaces.
Waverly Hills was built as a self-sufficient community with its own ZIP code, post office and even farmland.
After an expansion in 1926, it could hold more than 400 patients at once.
A Courier Journal reporter writing in 2001, ahead of an on-site taping of Fox Family's Scariest Places on Earth, noted 'countless local legends about the place being haunted'.
They had been fueled, the reporter wrote, by the high number of people who succumbed to tuberculosis during the more than 50 years it housed patients.
An estimated 6,000 to 8,000 people died at Waverly Hills Sanatorium during its active operation as a tuberculosis hospital.
According to stories and anecdotes, a tunnel linking the heating plant at the bottom of the hill with the main building also carried bodies discreetly to a waiting ambulance for a limited time between the 1920s and 1940s, sparing patients the knowledge that someone had died.
After antibiotics lowered the need for such a facility, the hospital closed in 1961 and reopened the following year as the Woodhaven Geriatric Center, a nursing home for older patients, including people with dementia and mobility limitations, as well as patients with mental disabilities.
Reports of overcrowding, staffing shortages and patient neglect brought increased scrutiny before the nursing home closed in the early 1980s. The property then sat closed for about 20 years and fell into disrepair, until Charlie and Tina Mattingly bought it in 2001.
The property grew in popularity among the paranormal community, with shows such as A&E's Ghost Hunters filming on location.
Major Thomas H. Hays bought the land in 1883 as a family home, and the teacher he hired for a one-room schoolhouse, Lizzie Lee Harris, named it after Walter Scott's Waverley novels.
That name, too, may have played a role in the reputation, with then-Courier Journal reporter Thomas Nord describing it as 'like something out of a comic book, a place where the Joker might hide out from Batman'.
How can you tour Waverly Hills Sanatorium?
The Mattinglys founded the Waverly Hills Historical Society two years after buying the property, and they have worked in the years since to renovate it.
Tours are one way to see the site. A two-hour paranormal tour costs $25, a two-and-a-half-hour historical tour costs $30, a six-hour public investigation costs $90 and a private overnight investigation costs $1,000. Details are on therealwaverlyhills.com, and the property is at 4400 Paralee Drive, Louisville, Kentucky, 40272.
The group also runs an annual haunted house on the main building's first floor and hosts private events in the restored laundry room.
Thomas Bamford