Waverly Hills, the haunted asylum

One of the most famous haunted asylums in Italy is Aguscello, but there are many abroad too. Perhaps the suffering and deaths that took place in those buildings are the cause of the spirit manifestations. This is the story of Waverly Hills hospital.

The hospital

The hospital is in Louisville, Kentucky, in the United States, and opened its doors to tuberculosis patients in 1910. At first it was a small two-story wooden building with room for about forty patients.

In the early 20th century tuberculosis, known as the “White Plague”, was still incurable, and Louisville had one of the highest death rates in the United States: its location in the Ohio Valley, with little airflow, favored the disease.

There were no drugs, but fresh air and sunlight were thought to help. That’s why in 1926 a large five-story building for more than 400 patients was opened, with long open-air porches. Some photos show patients in bed in front of wide-open windows, even covered in snow. Treatments also included artificial pneumothorax, deliberately collapsing a lung to let it “rest”.

The hospital was almost a small town: it had a laundry, a slaughterhouse, vegetable gardens, a post office and a dormitory for nurses. Like many places of the time it was also segregated: Black patients were housed separately.

The fifth floor and the asylum

It is said that the fifth floor was reserved for the mentally ill, kept isolated and subjected to inhumane treatments such as electroshock.

In fact Waverly Hills was never an asylum. After the sanatorium closed in June 1961, thanks to antibiotics, in 1962 the building reopened as a nursing home, the Woodhaven Geriatric Center, which housed elderly people, including some with dementia, and people with mental disabilities. Conditions were difficult: overcrowding, understaffing and reports of neglect. Woodhaven closed in 1980.

It is also said that tens of thousands of people died in the hospital. The figures, however, are probably greatly inflated: in the worst periods, such as during World War II, there were about 150-180 deaths a year.

It is true, however, that there was a tunnel about 500 feet long, built to carry steam and supplies from the heating plant at the bottom of the hill up to the building. According to many accounts, between the 1920s and 1940s it was also used to discreetly remove corpses, so as not to lower the patients’ morale. Today it is called “the death tunnel”.

The ghosts of Waverly Hills

After it finally closed the building was abandoned and changed hands several times: some wanted to turn it into a prison, some into apartments, and someone even wanted to build the world’s tallest statue of Jesus next to it. Meanwhile people began to see something.

In the hospital, they say, you can see ghosts.

The best known are a little boy playing with a leather ball, a little girl on the third floor and a woman wandering the corridors.

But there is one room in particular full of mystery: room 502, on the fifth floor.

According to legend, in 1928 a 29-year-old nurse, pregnant and unmarried, died there, having taken her own life out of shame. In 1932 another nurse who worked on the fifth floor supposedly died falling from the same room, and some whisper that it was no accident. There are no records, however, to confirm these stories.

Outside the room, sometimes, you might see the ghost of a woman dressed as a nurse.

Some tell of lights on in abandoned rooms and footsteps in empty corridors. Since 2001 the building has been owned by a couple passionate about history and the paranormal, who run guided tours, including at night, and paranormal investigations. The proceeds fund the restoration, and Waverly Hills has appeared on countless ghost-hunting TV shows.

Would you visit it?

Sources

• Waverly Hills Sanatorium – Wikipedia