Today, Waverly Hills is an abandoned sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky. Paranormal phenomena often occur here and, to understand their cause, we will go back two centuries …
In the 1800s and early 1900s, America was plagued by a fatal disease, also called the "white death", tuberculosis. A terrible epidemic destroyed not only families, but entire cities. Already in 1900, the city of Louisville had the highest death rates in America, as it was located in a swampy lowland, where dampness was an ideal environment for the spread of infection.
In 1910, a hospital was built on a hill in southern Jefferson County to fight a terrible disease. The epidemic developed so rapidly that the hospital was very quickly overflowing with patients, and the city began collecting donations for a huge sanatorium complex.
Construction began in 1924 and Waverly Hills was reopened 2 years later. The sanatorium was famous for the most advanced equipment, good specialists and special treatment methods. Only thanks to this considerable number of patients, Waverly Hills managed to survive, but hundreds of infected people died within the walls of the hospital during the height of the epidemic.
In many cases, the disease was not as painful as the methods of treatment. Barbaric experiments were performed on patients in a hopeless situation. For example, patients' lungs were exposed to ultraviolet light to try to stop the spread of bacteria. Artificial light was used especially for these purposes. It was believed that the fresh air also contributed to the eradication of bacteria, so the sessions were carried out at open windows or on roofs, regardless of the season. According to the memories of the survivors, some of the operated were literally covered in snow.
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A more brutal, but no less common method of treatment was the implantation of balloons into the lungs for their subsequent expansion. Needless to say, this almost always resulted in disastrous consequences, as in those operations where muscles and ribs were removed from the patient's chest to prepare the lungs for further expansion and let more oxygen into them. This bloody procedure was seen as a "last resort" for hopeless patients.
The few survivors left Waverly Hills through the main entrance. Most died, and their bodies were taken out of the hospital through a secret underground tunnel. The patients did not see the actual death toll, and there was little hope of recovery. Doctors believed that the mental state of the infected was as important as the physical.
By 1940, the American tuberculosis epidemic had largely been eradicated, and in 1961 the sanatorium was closed as unnecessary. A year later, it was reopened as a nursing home with a geriatric treatment center. Over the years, many rumors and stories of patient abuse have prompted a series of checks that have revealed flagrant violations. The patients were forcibly treated with electroshock therapy, which was considered highly effective in those days.
Budget cuts in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in appalling patient conditions, and in 1982 the ill-fated sanatorium was closed for good. Despite this, the old walls will long remember the suffering, pain and death that have filled the building for decades. Here you can hear strange sounds, watch doors slam on their own, and see other unexplained phenomena.
In 2002, an abandoned sanatorium with the glory of a "haunted house" caught the eye of Keith, a representative of the American society "Ghost", who for several years explored the place and more than once encountered paranormal phenomena. Keith managed to attract not only other researchers to Waverly Hills, but also television.
On their first visit, the researchers saw a man in a white coat and smelled food. Imagine their surprise when they followed the stranger and ended up in a dilapidated kitchen: broken chairs, broken windows, crumbling plaster and a leaking roof. There was no mysterious doctor in the kitchen, no trace of food. Moreover, there was no one else in the building except them.
During their time here, Keith's group also managed to meet the ghost of a woman with a bloody wrist who was screaming and asking for help, and the ghost of a little boy playing with a ball. But the most paranormal place in Waverly Hills was number 502 on the 5th floor, where collisions with otherworldly entities took place most often.
In 1928, the head nurse was found hanging from a lamp in this room. They say she could not bear everything that was happening and a deep depression made her commit suicide. In 1932, another nurse, also from room 502, threw herself off the roof. The exact motives behind these suicides are unknown, but rumors say that an ancient evil dwells in this room. However, the abandoned sanatorium does not like uninvited guests at all …