Death Tunnel, White Plague and Hauntings Make Waverly Hills Sanatorium One Of The World’s Most Scariest Places

The Waverly Hills Sanatorium is located in Louisville, Kentucky and is often classified as “one of the most scariest places on earth”. Ghost Hunters of the Sci Fi Channel and Family Channel’s Scariest Places On Earth have also talked about the Waverly Hills Sanatorium.

Waverly Hills was started in 1910 as a hospital with 140 beds outside of Louisville. The place was isolated and was mainly opened to care for patients that were infected by the ‘White Plague’ disease also known Tuberculosis. As there was no real cure for TB at that time, this facility started to receive a lot more patients than it could handle. A number of patients died at the facility. In order to handle more patients, the Waverly Hills Sanatorium was expanded to house 500 patients with everything needed to keep it self-sufficient.

The most talked about part of the Waverly Hills Sanatorium is the ‘Death Tunnel’. The ‘Death Tunnel’ was a 500 feet underground tunnel of the Sanatorium that was used to transport dead bodies from the main hospital to a receiving area for dead bodies. The dead bodies would then be handed over to loved ones from there. The ‘Death Tunnel’ was a very important part in the hospital’s treatment of TB. A recovering patient would lose his will to live if he saw a dead TB patient. This was what the doctors at the hospital thought and special care was taken to dispose off the dead bodies in a manner such that living patients never saw any dead patients. All bodily fluids were removed from the dead bodies before they were sent down the Death tunnel.

The facility was closed down in 1961 and since then there have been numerous tales that if believed would make this place ‘One of the most scariest places on Earth’. Room 502 of the Sanatorium has a story associated with it and two suicides are said to have occurred in this room. Hauntings of different forms have been witnessed here. According to a Wiki article,

Room 502 is the subject of a local myth about two suicides which are said to have occurred in the room. The first reported death is that of nurse Mary Hillenburg, who is said to have hanged herself from a fixture in 1928 after becoming pregnant out of wedlock; the second, that of a nurse who is said to have been pushed or jumped out the window.

There have been several hauntings in different forms to be confirmed by multiple visitors to the grounds. While Room 502 and the Death Tunnel are nearly synonymous with Waverly Hills, those familiar with the hospitals paranormal history have either heard or seen the child known simply as “Timmy”. While no real history into the child’s human life is known, there have been scattered claims that the young ghost enjoys playing interactive games, such as hide and seek. There have been reports of sudden temperature plummets in an area or room as well as people feeling “cold spots” in various areas or even the sensation of a physical contact as that of a person’s hand. There are even reports of an elderly woman, wrists chained and bleeding (most likely from the geriatric hospital days) running out of the front door pleading for help. Still others outside the hospital have made claims of rooms lighting up briefly despite there being no electricity since the hospital closed.

- Other forms of paranormal activity reported to be found in the hospital include: “Shadow People” (Apparitions shaped as a human but with no physical detail); Orbs (Balls of light that inexplicably appear on film but not to the naked eye), and Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) Recordings, which are essentially voice “footprints” left behind by a spirit without any physical form necessarily connected to it that are usually heard best through a special high-power audio recorder that then plays back what one might not have heard on their own.

To read more about the hauntings and stories surrounding the Sanatorium, check the Wikipedia article here.

In 2005, director Philip Adrian Booth made a movie titled ‘Death Tunnel’ with a plot in which five students are trapped in the abandoned Waverly Hills Sanatorium. Recently, there have been plans to convert the Sanatorium into a hotel. This property was bought by a Ford employee in 2001 and he now wants to convert into a ‘Haunted’ hotel. This place is also listed on the National Register Of Historic Places.

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