February 8, 2019 ▸ Myth & Folklore, Places

Episode 365: Waverly Hills Sanitarium – Haunting in Kentucky

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On this episode of the world famous Sofa King Podcast, we get all supernatural and look into the dark history and strange happening of the Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Kentucky. Considered one of the most haunted and terrifying places in America, the Waverly Hills Sanitarium started as a schoolhouse but expanded during a horrible Tuberculosis epidemic in the late 1800s.

Louisville, Kentucky had one of the highest death rates in the nation due to TB, and the hospital there was always overflowing. So, a committee formed and bought this school house to transform it to a state-of-the-art medical facility for the TB infected. Of course, the state had very little to do with art, since they mostly left patients outside to breathe fresh air or did horrible things like stick balloons in their lungs and inflate them and remove ribs (and probably kill them). TB was all but a death sentence at the time, and this place didn’t do much to keep anyone alive.

In fact, the estimates (though they range wildly) could be as high as 60,000 dead in Waverly Hills Sanitarium over the years before it shut down in the 1960s. Once it did shut down, it became a geriatric sanitarium where old people went to get tortured, and the place saw more death and suffering than maybe anywhere in the south.

And this leads to the haunting. After sitting empty for decades and changing hands, it finally found owners who wanted to let people tour and do supernatural investigations? Why? Because it’s spooky as hell! There are endless bumps and apparitions there, glowing orbs, shadow people in the hallways, phantom smells and sounds, lights that come on where there is no power, and all sorts of madness.

The prime time ghosts are a girl named Mary who plays with investigators, a boy who bounces a ball on the roof, and an old screaming woman with bloody wrists. Of course, this all leads us to a discussion of hauntings in general and what the cause of them are. So, if you want to hear things go bump in the night, this one is for you. Check it out!