In the early 1900s, America was in the throes of a full blown tuberculosis epidemic.  Hit hard was the State of Kentucky.  According to James C. Klotter’s book, Kentucky: Portrait in Paradox, 1900-1950, the state ranked second in the nation in the early 1900s for its death rate from tuberculosis.  Black populations were particularly at risk, with a disease contraction rate twice that of the white population.  Something had to be done.  In 1910, Louisville opened up a forty-bed hospital, but it was quickly over-run with patients.  Then, after much fundraising, the Waverly Hills Sanatorium was built and opened in 1926, and was a state-of-the-art TB hospital with over 400 beds.  Built high on a hill, Waverly Hills offered the best “cure” for tuberculosis known at the time: lots of fresh air.  There were other treatments available, some of the remarkably barbaric in nature, but Streptomycin, the first real treatment for TB, was not discovered until 1943.

The Body Chute 

At the height of the epidemic, Waverly Hills took in entire families, some of which lived, many of which died.  The death rate at one point was calculated to be one death per hour, twenty-four hours a day.  A 500 foot long tunnel was built, with stairs on one side and a ramp on the other, to transport the dead from the facility so that the other patients wouldn’t have to see the dead being transported from the hospital.  The tunnel became morbidly known as “the body chute.”

Patient Resting at Waverly Hills

Life at Waverly Hills was not all bad.  Though most did not survive “the white plague,” the staff and physicians were dedicated to trying to make a stay at the sanatorium as pleasant as possible.  Radio, horseback rides, movies, and visits from Santa for the kiddos were all part and parcel of convalescence at Waverly Hills.  This government video features Waverly Hills in its hey-day.

When antibiotics finally became available, the population of people in need of the services of places like Waverly Hills dwindled, and eventually the hospital was shut down in 1961.  It was reopened in 1962 as a geriatric sanatarium called WoodHaven.  WoodHaven was shut down by the State in 1980 for alleged patient abuses.  The building has remained unused since that time.

With ownership of the building bouncing around for the next 18 years, the building fell into immense disrepair.  One owner, who wanted to tear down the hospital to build a massive statue of Jesus but was told he couldn’t because the building was on the National Historic Register’s “endangered” building list, opened the building to vagrants and vandals.  The damage done at that time was intense, with rubble piling up three feet deep in some areas.  Then Waverly Hills was purchased by its current owners, who are using the proceeds of both historical tours and ghost tours to renovate the property to its former glory.  Several years into the project, they still have miles to go, and much of the building is still in a horrible state.

Vandalism at Waverly Hills

 It was during the time when the building was open to vandals that the first reports of restless spirits began to surface.  An investigation by the Louisville Ghost Hunter’s Society in 2001 showed high, moving EMF readings.  Electromagnetic Field Detectors are often used in paranormal investigations because it is believed that ghosts use a lot of energy to manifest, and this energy will register on an EMF meter.  At the time, all electricity to Waverly Hills had been disconnected, and the electrical poles had been torn down, so it is certain that the EMF was not picking up on any electical energy being run to the building.  They also reported hearing footsteps, drastic temperature changes, and the smell of baking bread.  Room 502 also caused the EMF meter to react, and the temperature rose and then dropped suddenly.  Room 502 is notorious in Waverly Hills lore because of the deaths of two nurses who worked in that room.  One jumped from a fifth floor balcony to her death for reasons unknown, and the other hung herself from a light fixture in that room in a fit of depression.  It is rumored that she had become pregnant by one of the married doctors that worked there at the time.  Photos taken from this investigation show spectral lights, shadow spirits, and a disembodied face behind two of the investigators.

Room 502

Many investigations have take place at Waverly Hills in the seven years since this one, and the tales of the paranormal get ghastlier and ghastlier.  A little girl is seen peering out of the windows.  A ball has been seen rolling out of one room and changing course so that it rolls into another room down the hall.  And scariest of all, a woman has been seen running out of the front door in chains, wrists bleeding, begging for help.  Several people have reported seeing objects move of their own accord, doors open and slam shut on their own, and one investigator actually had a brick lauch up at him from the floor and hit him in the small of his back.

Waverly Hills continues to be a hot spot for paranormal investigations.  The Most Haunted crew recently came over from Great Britain to film a show there, and the gang from T.A.P.S. has also done an investigation there.  The Sanatorium is also featured on the Travel Channel as one of the “World’s Scariest Places.”  I had planned on including some youtube investigation footage here, but there are so many decent clips, I recommend you go there yourself, search for Waverly Hills, and just enjoy.

Yours in this life and the next!

GhOsTwRiTeR KiM

sources:  http://www.louisvilleghs.com/LGHS_MASTER/SUB/Investigations/Waverly/, http://www.emedicinehealth.com/tuberculosis/page3_em.htm, http://www.therealwaverlyhills.com/, http://books.google.com/books?id=o58mJavC4msC

By my heritage, I am 100% Irish mutt, meaning I am anything but 100% Irish, but that part of my lineage is the only one I generally acknowledge, for it is the only one I feel in my veins. Ah, Ireland.  I have always been able to count on the little island for many pleasant images in my head: the picturesque beauty of the countryside, quaint villages with small winding streets, aging castles and keeps overlooking the gray sky and the even grayer sea…

It is these very castles that make Ireland all the more intriguing to me, as their histories and haunts provide such ample fireside fodder for the weaving of tales, and that, along with my Irish blood, is the stuff that I am made of.

So we begin our tale this evening in County Offaly, not so far from the town of Roscrea in the central part of Ireland.  Here stands Leap Castle (Leim-ui-Bhanain in Gaelic, meaning “Leap of the O’Bannon’s”), erected in the mid-thirteenth century on a hill overlooking a pass through the Slieve Bloom Mountains.  Leap Castle is widely said to be the most spirit-infested castle in all of Ireland, and with its bloody past, it’s no wonder why. At that time, the area was under the rule of the O’Carroll Clan, and the O’Bannon’s ruled as sort of seconday chieftans.  The O’Carroll’s eventually took control of the castle, and that was the point in time when the blood began to spill on its ground. There are a number of stories of violence and torture surrounding the castle.  One tells of the O’Carroll Cheiftan inviting some of the clan to dinner at the castle only to slaughter them all at the table.  Another tells of two O’Carroll brothers, in a mad struggle over the rule of the family.  One brother, a priest, was giving a sermon in the chapel when the other burst in and ran him through with a sword, killing him on the altar.  The chapel, now called “The Bloody Chapel,” is said to be haunted by the priest, and many visitors have reported seeing apparitions and even being assaulted while in the chapel.The castle remained in the hands of the O’Carrolls well into the 17th Century, when it is told that an O’Carroll daughter helped a British prisoner escape from the dungeons there and later married him.  Through this marriage, the prisoner’s family, known as the Darby’s, eventually inherited the castle.  Generations later, Charles and Mildred Darby moved into the family castle, and it is said that Mildred, a dabbler in the dark arts, is responsible for summoning the hunchbacked creature that still terrorizes the castle to this day.  The creature is said to be an elemental, which, for those of you unfamiliar with that term, is believed to be a spirit of alchemy that is attuned with one of the elements of nature: earth, air, fire or water.  People who catch a glimpse of this creature often report smelling rot and sulfur at that same moment.  Mildred herself described it as being about the size of a sheep, and smelling of decomposing corpses.

A depiction of an Earth Elemental

The castle’s history took another nasty turn in 1922 when it was burned by the IRA during the Irish Civil War.  During reconstruction, workers located a shaft with spikes at the bottom of it.  This kind of dungeon is called an “oubliette,” which comes from the French word “oublier” which means “to forget”.  Prisoners were tossed down the shaft and onto the spikes and then were “forgotten,” or left to die.  If they were lucky, the spikes got them; if not, starvation or slow death from their wounds was their fate.  It took three cart loads to remove all of the human bones that were uncovered in this oubliette.  Three cart loads.  Enough said. 

A view down the oubliette

The number of people who wrongfully lost their lives at Leap Castle remains a mystery, though the castle is said to house some twenty-four spirits, ranging from the harmless to the malevolent.  It is also said that the castle lies on a powerful ley line.  Some believe the castle is one of three that make up a triangle of ley lines in the Earth.  Charleville Castle and Kinnitty Castle are the other two of this triangle, and they are both purported to be mightily haunted as well. 

Leap Castle was purchased in 1991 by Sean Ryan and has undergone massive restoration under his care.  Though he will not deny that there have been some odd occurrences at the castle since he and his family purchased it, Ryan believes his family has found a way to peacefully coexist with the spirits.

In 2002, the British television show Most Haunted spent an evening in the castle, and the folks from the American television show Ghost Hunters did the same in 2006.  I will leave you, then, with a clip of the findings presented by the T.A.P.S. team from their 2006 investigation, and allow you to draw your own conclusions.

Yours in this life and the next!

GhOsTwRiTeR KiM