Spooky tales that could make you believe…
3/14/2014
Waddle, Abigail L
The Waverly Hills Sanatorium
A NIGHTMARE COME TO LIFE
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magine, right now, a scary slasher horror movie. Imagine an innocent, just like you, being tortured and abused in the film. Imagine the cries of pain, the wails of terror, and the screams for help you may hear behind the locked doors and the walls holding so many dark secrets they can hardly contain. Imagine an unsuspecting killer, targeting you and many others as the next victim, planning in perfect detail what he or she may want to do you, as if you are their own science experiment. Imagine a killer trying to envision what your screams sound like, and how he/she might hide your screams along with your dead body when you take your last breath and your heart stops beating. Imagine all of this actually happening; you worst nightmare come to life, in fact it has already happened, years ago, in fact maybe even the state you live in.
Above is a photo of the Sanatorium
MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME
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ll the way back to the early nineteen hundreds, a large city was ravaged by an outbreak of tuberculosis, also known as the white plague. The Waverly Hills Sanatorium was a hospital that was born in the year of 1910, as a place to try to cure only patients that had tuberculosis. The hospital was built in the southwestern area in Jefferson county, in Louisville, Kentucky. The hospital was only two stories tall, however, it carried around forty to fifty patients on days that were not busy.
SOMETHING FAMOUS…
O
ver the years, the sanatorium became a famous hospital, which was well known for its “success.” People went traveling as far as overseas, to receive special treatment for the tuberculosis disease. As the disease was spreading throughout Louisville, the hospital had to eventually keep on expanding, giving more places to situate patients. But little did any of the patients know, that most of who they were looking at for help, was just the opposite. Little did they know that at least one person was dying each hour in that building, and little did they know that they were most likely part of some famous… but deadly experiment.
TALES FROM THE SANATORIUM
W
hile many people thought that Waverly Hills was the safe place to go, there were actually a lot of deaths that occurred. One story is of a young woman, named Mary Jane Hillenburg, who was only twenty-nine years of age who was a head nurse in the hospital. The young nurse was unmarried and she discovered herself pregnant, in 1928, with a doctor who also worked in the building. The doctor, however, was married. Hillenburg was found hung, in room 502, after she apparently discovered she had TB, which could easily kill her baby.What most people thought was suicide, wasn’t however. The true Photo of Mary
story is that the doctor who was the father performed an abortion that resulted in the baby’s and Hillenburg’s passing and later staged her death to look like a suicide. Not only that, but one nurse was suspected of committing suicide from the roof’s patio, when she supposedly leaped to her death. Nobody seems to understand why she would have done this, and because of that, some people suspect that the nurse was pushed. However, there is no further evidence that supports that idea.
UNEXPECTED ABUSE
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t may seem there were strange and unexpected deaths among the employees in the sanatorium, however, there were plenty of patient deaths. In fact, to be more precise, it is now estimated to at least 63,000 patient deaths in the Waverly Hills Building. But what do you think could have caused these numerous deaths? One word. Your only answer is merely one word. Experimentation. Waverly Hills employees ran trials and experiments on just about every patient that checked in. Some of the tests ran are thought to be barbaric or useless by some, but are now partially used in today’s common practice. An example would be when a patient’s lungs would be exposed to ultra-violet lighting, in order to prevent the spreading of bacteria. However, these people took it too far, this procedure was done in what was called a “sunroom,” placing patients in a spot where the sunlight was replaced by artificial light, or even on the porches or roofs of the sanatorium. Not only to mention how some doctors thought that fresh air would be good for the
lungs, and possibly even a cure for TB. Because of this small theory, patients were placed on patios, in front of large open windows, or even open porches, no matter what the weather was like. It could be snowing, or raining, and the patients would still be left outside. Unfortunately, the experiments get crazier, and much more blood curdling.
Above is a photo of patients “taking in the sunlight”
MORE PETRIFYING EXPERIMENTS
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nother well-known experiment that was also performed was when doctors opened the patient’s chest, and had actually broken a few ribs, trying to allow more air for the patient’s lungs. However, very few people survived this procedure. This is the same with another type of experiment called thoracoplasty. In this type of procedure, believe it or not, doctors actually put balloons in the patient’s lungs and inflated them. Employees also had to remove several ribs to allow room for the lungs to expand.
BONES ARE HIDDEN IN THIS SANATORIUM… LITERALLY
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hy would a sanatorium like this be known as such a successful hospital? The answer is that the doctors kept it secret. Most, if not all, of the dead patient bodies were hidden from the living patients, and the general public. They believed that the loss of hope was the larger reason for patients dying throughout the building. That is also why they planted many trees around the building in order to make it look much more like a peaceful environment. How the staff hid the patients was by placing them in a motorized cart, down through the basement in the sanatorium, inside what was called the “body chute” or the “death tunnel,” however, the passage was originally built to aid the construction workers to bring in and take out their tools and materials.
Below is a photo of the “death tunnel” or the “body chute”
When it started coming to no longer use, that was when the Waverly Hills staff began to use the tunnel to use, in order to hide dead bodies.Thankfully, the Sanatorium closed its doors in 1961. It was replaced by another sanatorium, but the procedures were far worse than it was before. Doctors went as far as performing electro-shock therapy, and finally, there was no longer a TB sanatorium existing in Louisville. It was closed in 1982, due to new medications invented and was charged by the state of Kentucky for abuse. However, there are rumors about many spooky places inside the sanatorium that to this day, some of the patients still remain trapped in the building, haunting the people who get in their way.
Are you a skeptic, or a believer?
T
he sanatorium still stands to this day, and possibly, even some of the people who died in the building, unfortunately. There have been many strange experiences, that bizarrely, no one can explain. Anytime someone who is pregnant steps inside the room 502, they experience crucial stomach cramps. Every time. Remember, room 502 is the room that Mary Hillenburg was staged for suicide, when the father gave her a such a botched abortion. The places that are known to have strange activity in the sanatorium are very specific, and one example is the “draining room.” Nobody knows exactly how doctors used this room, or why, or how often they used it, but historians conclude that they were used to hang patients, and drain their blood, before they place them in a motorized cart in the “death tunnel.” The only clue to this theory are the hooks that are attached to the ceiling in one room. No human has been able to move any of the hooks around, however, they have been visually known to move a few inches on their own. Not only to mention when the sanatorium was finally shut down and on sale, people who considered buying it walked inside and started smelling what they thought was bread baking in the oven. They started hearing loud banging sounds that seemed to sound exactly like pots and pans banging around. They followed the sound of an oven time going off and loud footsteps. The small group stepped inside the kitchen in which the sounds were coming from, and the sounds had stopped as soon as they stepped foot inside the floor the kitchen was on. The windows were old, dusty, and broken, the floor was packed with dirt, and the pots and pans were no place in sight. The room still smelt of bread, but the oven was turned off, and had shown no signs of being turned on at all.
Above is a small corner of the Waverly Hills Kitchen
Down deep inside the death tunnel, (the body chute) typical activity has been spotted and heard by many, for multiple times. Examples are seeing strange shadows that appear human-like actually moving far down into the darkness of the tunnel, and also hearing strange voices echoing inside the passage way. The current owner, once a skeptic, now has a little more belief in ghosts, spirits, or whatever unknown thing that is known to supposedly still be inside the sanatorium.
T
ickets are now available for anyone who is interested in taking a tour of the sanatorium. But just be aware, if you are looking for a place that is fake, or set up, this is the wrong spot for you. The ghostly activity is obviously confirmed, and even the deaths are true, and have been confirmed. I had ancestry that actually worked in the sanatorium. So whether you are a skeptic, or a believer, once you walk through the Waverly Hills doors, nothing will ever seem the same again.