Waverly Hills Sanatorium

December 8, 2009 by Admin
Filed under Haunted Places

Waverly Hills Sanatorium is one of those stories you think just can not be true, it feels like it has been dreamt up by some big shot horror movie director or its a new haunted house attraction at a theme park… But Waverly Hills is a real place, the stories are real and this is certainly not a place you want to take the kids.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium like any other haunted hospital has a gruesome past and lots of horrifying stories. Waverly Hills is situated in south western Louisville-Jefferson County, Kentucky, it opened in 1910. The hospital was opened due to the outbreak of Tuberculosis in Jefferson County the hospital was just a small two story wooden building just enough to treat 50 patients. With increasing repairs needing to be done to the wooden buildings its was decided that a more durable and permanent building should be built. The new building was opened in March 1924.

The Haunting

The haunting of Waverly Hills Sanatorium are well known to the locals and the paranormal investigators that have visited the hospital but I will share with you some of the most horrific and terrifying stories to come out of the wards of Waverly Hills.

Room 502

The most known story about Waverly Hills is that of Room 502. A nurse, Mary Hillenburg, was found hanged in the door way of Room 502 in the year 1928, it is thought it was suicide as she had recently discovered she was pregnant out with wedlock. There is a story that Mary Hillenburg was impregnated by a doctor of Waverly Hills who was actually married. He tried an abortion which killed Mary Hillenburg in the process and to cover his back he made it look like a suicide.

Another nurse later took her own life in 1932 by throwing her self out of the window of the room that she worked in, Room 502. There are no reports of why she would have committed suicide but there was a rumour that someone did in fact push her. There are also reports that people have seen shadows move across the floor and walls in Room 502, so was this nurse pushed to her death by a ghostly spirit?…

Body Chute

The Body Chute was a tunnel which lead from the back of Waverly Hills to the train tracks at the bottom of the hill. This tunnel was built for supplies and deliveries and ease of access, but when the outbreak of Tuberculosis hit the tunnel was used to transport the dead bodies out of the hospital by a motorised trolley. This was used as the patients that were being treated would originally see all the bodies of the dead patients leave the hospital by the front, which depressed the patients and in turn would kill them.

The Tunnel now is said to be haunted by the spirits which travelled the length of that tunnel. Voices and unidentified noises have been heard in the tunnel, while cold shivers have been felt by paranormal investigators.

So as you can see Waverly Hills is not for the light hearted of us, but this is surely one of the most haunted places in America, especially when you take in to account the rumoured number of deaths, 63,000.