Waverly Hills 2011:
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On June 26th 2011, a group of fourteen investigators, (Lon from Great Lakes Hauntings, eleven from Grimstone, Inc. and two from Lower Michigan Paranormal Society) took part in a private investigation of the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky. Built in 1926, this building served as the Jefferson County Tuberculosis Hospital until it closed in 1962. An estimated 63,000 deaths have thought to occur in this building while in operation. After the Sanatorium closed, it was reopened as the Woodhaven Geriatrics Hospital until 1981, when it was closed due to reports of patient abuse. The building, now owned by the Mattingly’s, is currently being restored and has become a favorite attraction for paranormal investigators.
Before the discovery of Streptomycin, the treatments for Tuberculosis were minimal. The general treatment was healthy food and fresh air. The patients on the south side of the building would be wheeled in their beds, onto the open air verandas across the face of the building, for eighteen hours per day, January through December. More extreme treatments included: deflation of the lung to allow it to heal and pneumothorax surgery, in which the patient had 8, or more ribs removed to allow the lungs room to inflate. This surgery very often hastened the patient’s death. The terminal patients were housed in small rooms on the north side of the building to await their end.
At 8pm we were greeted at the gate by our guide for the evening, Tiffany, who has been with WHS for several years. She took us on a tour of the building describing many events that occur including those she has experienced herself. She told us of a recent occurrence on the walkway leading from the front of the building down around the now enclosed entrance to the Body Chute (a 489 foot long tunnel leading from the hospital through the hillside that would transport the dead to waiting hearses at the base of the hill for cremation). She was walking along this path when she saw four black figures in a circle, bent at the waist. As she approached them, thinking they were trespassers on the property, they quickly moved off down the hillside through the trees. It was only as they were headed down the hill, that she noticed that they made no noise at all.
The building encompasses five floors. The 1st floor includes: the entrance to the body chute, the morgue (which still has the original three tray cooler for the corpses), the electro-shock therapy room, the coolers and freezers for food storage (some of these were used to store bodies too numerous for the morgue’s cooler) and office space. The 2nd floor houses patient rooms, the Kitchen and the Cafeteria. The 3rd floor has more patient rooms. The 4th floor more patient rooms and the Major Surgery room. The 5th floor had two dormitory style rooms that would have the children at one end, with playground equipment on the expansive roof allowing them access to fresh air. The other side housed the patients that became insane as the tuberculosis spread to their brain. A few small nurses’ room separated the two dorms and includes the infamous Room 502. This room is reported to have been the site of one of the nurse’s suicides. Distraught at discovering she was an unwed mother, she hanged herself from a pipe just inside the doorway in full view of the patients and remained there until she was discovered by her replacement at the end of her 12 hour shift.
During our tour with Tiffany, we spent time on the 4th floor watching for shadow figures. She told us of her encounters with “The Creeper” on the 4th floor. The Creeper has been seen as a dark shadow figure that moves along the floor, walls or even ceiling and will often drop to the floor and move towards the observer with a clicking noise (sounding like long fingernails). Tiffany told us that he is more often seen by females, which he is more likely to approach. She has seen him on numerous occasions and believes that he might’ve been a pneumothorax patient, which causes him to creep, as he is unable to fully stand without the support from the missing ribs. She told us that he has even approached her and lightly scratched her arm as if to see if SHE was real. She has since stopped calling him “The Creeper” and uses a man’s name, like Henry, instead and says since she has done that, he becomes even more likely to appear. While she was talking about this, we all heard a banging noise down the hallway, out of site from us and Tiffany said, “That’s probably Henry!”
After the tour, we broke up into smaller groups to begin our investigations. I (Lon –GLH) along with Danielle & Keith (LMPS) and Maryann, Shaun & Amanda (Grimstone) set up in the 4th floor hallway. We spent about half an hour watching the doors of the hallway and saw several shadow figures crossing the hallway and in the doorways. There is enough ambient light coming through the open veranda to allow us to see with out flashlights and observe the shadow figures blocking out this light. The rest of my group went to the 5th floor to investigate, while I volunteered to stay on the 4th floor alone and record with infrared video. I continued to see sporadic shadow figure activity and after I snapped a photo to post on a social media site, I saw a dark black shadow near the ceiling above one of the doors about 30 feet down the hall. As Tiffany had recently been calling out to him with our group, I called out to him too. As I moved towards the shadow, it was gone, but there was a broken transom window in the door where I saw the shadow. I can’t be sure if it was an actually “Creeper” sighting, the video camera wasn’t pointed that high. Upon review of the recording, I am walking back from the area I saw the shadow and an orb is seen flying into my chest. In the audio portion, I ask, “I’m sure you don’t like the name “The Creeper”, can you show yourself to me?” In response, among the sound of the nearby tree frogs, is a male voice replying, “What do you want?” A review of the audio from my DVR sitting with my camera while I was out walking along the veranda reveals several noises in the empty hallway including tapping noises and long fingernails clicking. Another recording has my Ovilus X saying “FEAR” followed shortly after with the sound of a child’s laughter.
After that session, I met up with Mark and Dave (Grimstone). We investigated the 5th floor and Mark picked up an anomaly with his K2 EMF meter. We were outside the dormitory area that housed the insane patients and his meter was registering high EMF next to the windows. He traveled along the wall testing various areas, but the columns, window sills, wall & roof registered marginal EMF. It was only the glass area that showed activity. We checked inside the room and traced the non-functional power conduit in the walls, but still no reading. We headed back outside to the windows and the readings returned. We began a line of questioning to try to get an intelligent response and received positive hits when asked if a child was present and if it was a boy and a girl. An interesting note, as Dave approached the meter in Mark’s hand, the reading instantly dropped back to zero. As he stepped away, the high EMF readings returned. Mark asked if Dave had startled them & we got a positive hit on the meter. Dave tried walking towards the meter again & the readings dropped instantly again, only to return when he walked away. We eliminated the cell towers in the horizon, as EMF from there would not have focused on just the area in front of the glass. The other anomaly that occurred while we were here was a knocking on the glass when Mark went to sit on the sill. A review of the video shows no explanation for the noise, as none of us are seen touching the glass.
We made our way down to the Morgue and each of us took a turn lying on the tray while being pushed into the cooler. Mark volunteered to do an EVP session while in the cooler. We captured one EVP while I was recording on video. I asked, “Can you give us a sign of your presence here?” We did not hear anything at the time, but the recording revealed a “croaking” response, almost a “hello”, or, “uh-oh”, and the sound of footsteps made by hard-soled shoes (we all had rubber-soled shoes on that night), possibly the ghost of a doctor passing by? Also, during our vigil in the morgue, while I was standing with my back to the wall filming Mark in the cooler, I twice felt a cold breeze blow across my neck. We checked, but the windows were sealed tight and no source of this breeze was
found.
A trip to the Body Chute was next. One side of the chute is a ramp upon which caskets were lowered to the hearses below to transport the dead to a crematorium and steps along the other side that workers at the Sanatorium would climb to work each day. Each step is set at a nine degree angle for water drainage, but it gives the illusion that you feel you are being “pushed” down the steps. The tunnel is so long (489 feet) that even my 80 lumens flashlight couldn’t pierce the darkness and reach the end of the tunnel. It took us about 5 minutes to reach the end and we stayed there for a short while, but recorded no paranormal activity. We did receive a visit from a bat flying down the tunnel, but he passed through the bars on top of the mesh gate at the exit. About 10 minutes to take the long trek back up the steps and to catch our breath.
After we had left the Body Chute, I met up with Amanda and we headed up to 4th floor Surgery. I set my video camera on a tripod in one corner and we began an EVP session. At one point I ask, “Can you make your presence known for us?” In response is a tap in the corner next to the camera. I ask, ‘”Is that you trying to communicate with us?” and something taps the camera causing the video to shake. Later in the video, Amanda is seated on the floor and I am leaning against the wall on the right side of the room. In the window next to Amanda’s right shoulder, the reflection of my camera’s IR illuminator can be seen shining on the right side of the window. Repeatedly through this clip, the IR reflection is blocked out as if figures are moving between the IR & the window (Possible residual haunt of the surgery team moving about the room?) No one else was on the 4th floor at that time. Audio review revealed another loud tap that we had both heard coming from the Autoclave Room adjacent to Surgery.
Amanda and I left the Surgery room and investigated the 4th floor hallway again. I had left my video recorder on a tripod in the hallway, while we walked to the end of the hallway and took photos on the veranda. In one video clip, as we are walking away, Amanda asks, “Is there anyone down here?” and a faint cough can be heard on the video. She then takes a photo on the opposite side of the hallway. After she says, “Flash”, a whispered voice can be heard saying, “Hey!” We walked back along the veranda and met up with Danielle and Keith in the hallway again. Danielle told us they had witnessed their K2 meter lying on the floor move. Keith verified that it had been moved from the location he had placed it. We continued here for a while and I saw a child-sized shadow figure run across the hall from right to left. Review of the audio following this sighting revealed an EVP which sounds like a young girl whispering, “Can anybody see me?” Shortly after that we all heard a series of unexplained knocks in the hallway in front of us. My video camera had shut off suddenly and when I had checked the battery, it showed it was drained, even though it should have at least 90 minutes more of recording time. I returned to our staging area on the 1st floor for a fresh battery. As I was headed back up the staircase next to the morgue, I turned the landing and glanced down to see the form of a nurse walking down the stairs I had just climbed. I could see her long sleeved nurse’s whites and her cap, but as I blinked, she had disappeared. I returned to the 4th floor and told my group about my experience.
We left the 4th floor and Danielle, Keith, Amanda and I set up outside the Kitchen on the 2nd floor. As we left the 4th floor and entered the stairwell, my video camera picked up a loud slamming noise nearby, but none of us reacted to the sound, or tagged it, so we had captured another EVP. While we were staged in the hallway between the Kitchen and the Cafeteria, we thought we saw a small shadow figure (child sized) standing near the doorway watching us. We tried communicating with the figure, but didn’t receive a response.
Danielle and Keith returned to the 1st floor, while Amanda and I continued to investigate the 2nd floor veranda. At 4:15am, Tiffany called to us from the hallway, to let us know the investigation was over and that we were the last two in the building. We followed her down to the reception room and left with the others.
We’d like to thank the Waverly Hills staff for their hospitality and knowledge of the building’s history. We enjoyed our investigation of this truly haunted building and look forward to return trips here.
To view the photos & evidence, click here: WHS Evidence Page
