Pages


Monday, January 3, 2011

Waverly Hills Haunted Sanitarium










Waverly Hills Haunted Sanitarium

Waverly Hills Sanitarium is a huge building that's construction began in 1908 to treat those infected with Tuberculosis. The original building was designed to house some 20 patients and was filled within a couple weeks, so construction to build a 5 story-400 room sanitarium was in the works located on the south-western end of Louisville, Kentucky on one of the highest hill points in the city so patients could be both secluded and get the freshest air possible.

The Tuberculosis epidemic blasted out of control and the facility was packed beyond control. Patients in the 1920's died at a rate of 1 person every 30 minutes, so to keep the moral of the other patients up the doctors designed a passage way through the hospital to an outside tunnel that ran down the side of the hill to the bottom where train tracks passed through. They sometimes burned the bodies on the grounds if bodies began to stack up in large numbers, most were taken through the tunnel, known as the "body chute" to an awaiting train the carted the bodies off to be cremated.

Treatment of the disease in those days was primitive at best, meaning that many people simply came to Waverly Hills to die. Records have been lost, but it is estimated that tens of thousands died at Waverly. At the height of the tuberculosis epidemic, it is reported that one patient an hour died.

The building was closed as a Tuberculosis Sanitarium in 1962 due to the eradication of the disease. The building was reopened in 1963 as a retirement home for the most down trodden. The facility was closed due to patient abuse and neglect in 1988. In all over 6,000 people died in the 5 story building known to all as Waverly Hills.

Room 502 in Waverly Hills Sanatorium has a scary reputation. In 1928, the head nurse was found dead in Room 502. She had hanged herself from the light fixture in a fit of depression. She was 29 years-old at the time, unmarried and pregnant. It is unknown just how long she may have been left hanging in this room before her body was finally discovered. They say that the mental patients continued to walk around, ignoring her hanging body until the next nurse showed up for duty.

In 1932, another nurse who worked in room 502 jumped from the balcony of the roof that leads from the room and was killed when
she landed with a splat on the ground, several stories below.

The Death Tunnel or Body Chute is a 500 foot long tunnel that leads from the hospital to the railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill. Originally, it was built to transport produce to the hospital. However, as the deaths continued to rise, the staff began using the Death Tunnel to transport the bodies of the dead so that the other patients would not see how many corpses were leaving the hospital.

Stories of ghosts at Waverly continued to surface, and amazingly, most of them are akin to what others have experienced. Many have seen a little boy playing with his ball on the third floor, many people have witnessed “shadow people,” and there has been a report of a woman running from the building with chains on bleeding from the wrists shrieking, “Help me! Somebody save me!”

Sebagai tambahan... Sanitarium ini pernah dipakai dalam sebuah film loh.. Kalo gak salah Death Tunnel.. tempat ini memang sangat mengerikan dan berhantu. terbukti dari banyaknya foto-foto hantu yang tertangkap di tempat ini..:)

3 comments: