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Waverly Hills

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 Waverly Hills is the fourteenth episode of the second season of Ghost Hunters.

Summary [ ]

The team heads to louisville, ky., to investigate the waverly hills sanatorium. opened in 1926, it was one of the country's most advanced tuberculosis hospitals, where experimental surgeries were performed. jason has heard rumors of full-body apparitions, sounds, voices and screams that have put the building on many paranormal investigators' to-do lists. [ ].

Jason and Grant meet with Tina Mattingly, co-owner of the sanatorium. She takes them to Room 502, where people have sighted the ghost of a nurse, who hung herself in the 1930's because of an unwanted pregnancy. There have also been instances of women walking into a nurse's station, getting sick, and having to leave the room. Both Tina and Byron George, a security guard, have seen mysterious lights travel from the room to the roof, where Tina has seen "shadow people" crossing back and forth.

Tina says that on the third floor she has seen the figure of a man with long, frizzy hair, wearing a trench coat and standing in the doorway of the elevator with a white dog lying on the floor nearby. When she walked toward the dog, it disappeared. She found out later that a homeless man and his dog had died in the elevator shaft. She takes them to the morgue, shows them body trays, and explains that 63,000 people have died in the sanatorium.

Because the building sprawls over more than one hundred and eighty thousand square feet, the team decides to get an overall feel for the place on the first night, so that they can figure out what specific areas to cover with their cameras on the second night.

Investigator Brian Harnois is back; Jason says that he told Brian he has to fix his relationships with the other team members on his own as a condition of returning.

On the first night Kristyn and Dave Tango go to the third floor, where they notice that it's cold after asking for a sign of a spiritual presence. Ö Steve and Brian take EVP readings on the fifth floor. Steve hears a moan that sounds like a human voice, but he can't figure out where it was coming from.

Near the roof, Jason and Grant record something on the thermal imaging camera, a shape moving across the hall. After examining the footage, they conclude that the figure was about three feet tall. At first they think it might have been an animal, but after talking with the owners they learn that an apparition of a boy named Tim has been spotted there before.

On the second night, as the team sets up its equipment and cameras, Brian and Kristyn see a short shadow move from the right doorway to the left but can't catch it. Jason and Grant investigate the floor where they saw a figure on the thermal imaging camera. This time they see something white flash on the camera screen. Grant confirms that it wasn't a camera malfunction.

Steve and Brian go to the fifth floor rooftop, where Steve sees walking legs out of the corner of his eye. At first he thinks that it's his own legs reflected in a window, but he realizes that there is no glass in the window frame. Later, the team analyzes Steve's footage. They see something bat-like that appears to move through the walls.

Jason and Grant meet with Tina and Charles Mattingly and tell them about the legs that Steve saw. When Grant talks about the full-body apparition that he witnessed, Tina agrees that the same thing has happened to her before. Then they screen the footage of something flying out of the wall, but neither Tina nor Charles can figure out what it is.

Jason and Grant decide that, with all of the interesting activity the team experienced, the Waverly Hills Sanatorium is indeed haunted.

• 1 Brian Harnois
• 2 Steve Gonsalves
• 3 Donna LaCroix

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Retro find: 'holy grail of haunted houses' was once a hospital where thousands died.

The Waverly Hills Sanitorium has been called 'the most terrifying building in America'

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The Waverly Hills Sanitorium was once an important medical center in Louisville, Kentucky. It opened in 1910 to accommodate tuberculosis patients when the city suffered one of the largest outbreaks in the country.

Now, some consider it the “holy grail of haunted houses.”

Thousands of patients reportedly died at the hospital. Countless people have since shared their stories of strange sounds and mysterious sightings.

The facility now hosts a haunted house each Halloween season , which takes you deep into the bowels of this spooky sanatorium. According to the website, it'll be open Friday, Sept. 29 and every Friday and Saturday through October.

Here are a few videos from our archives exploring the haunted history of the Wavery Hills Sanatorium.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium owner describes odd feelings, glowing orbs

The man who bought the hospital talked about the strange experiences he has had within its walls and his desire to share that with the public.

‘Ghost Hunters’ TV show visited Waverly Hills Sanatorium twice

The abandoned hospital was so haunted that the crew of the hit TV show “Ghost Hunters” had to visit twice. There were too many unexplained incidents to cover in just one trip.

Officials once wanted to turn Waverly Hills Sanatorium into prison

In 1983, some officials wanted to turn the abandoned sanatorium into a prison that would hold 500 inmates. Locals were not happy about the idea.

10 Scariest Episodes Of Paranormal TV Shows, Ranked

Paranormal investigators on TV shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures explore the unexplained, often experiencing truly scary encounters.

Ghosts , ghouls, monsters, and all things that go bump in the night. If there is one experience all humans share, it's fear, especially of the unknown. Perhaps that is why so many people find themselves drawn to ghost stories, and why ghost hunting and other paranormal or cryptic research shows have always had a prominent, if somewhat niche, audience.

Among these many shows, which can often vary in their quality, lie some true gems of horror. Capturing unbelievable evidence or with moments that send chills down the spines of viewers, these episodes are the scariest that paranormal television has to offer.

10 "Waverly Hills Sanatorium"

Ghost hunters.

The Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky is claimed by eyewitnesses to be one of the most haunted locations in the United States, if not the world. Many other ghost-hunting crews both on and off television, have visited the Sanatorium, but when the Ghost Hunters team investigated they captured some incredible evidence, even returning for a follow-up investigation years later.

The spirits of the abandoned hospital did not disappoint, and the team experienced inexplicable changes in temperature, recorded voices they didn't hear (so-called Electronic Voice Phenomenon or EVP), and most chilling of all, captured and saw what appeared to be multiple full-body apparitions on their thermal cameras.

9 "Castle Of The Damned"

Ghost hunters international.

Investigating what is purported to be one of the most haunted locations in all of Europe, the Ghost Hunters International team visits Charleville Castle in Tullamore, Ireland. The castle is claimed to be the home of the spirit of a young girl named Harriet who died after falling down one of the castle's many staircases.

The team wasn't able to conclusively prove the building was haunted but did have multiple unexplained encounters. They captured EVP of what sounded like a child's voice as well as footage of a door opening on its own, all enhanced by the creepy emptiness of this old castle.

8 "Alien Mummies"

Destination truth.

Fascinated by reports of the discovery of a tiny humanoid skeleton, Josh Gates and his team traveled to the deserts of Chile for an out-of-this-world investigation. Arriving at an ancient mine, although no one from the team is abducted by aliens , they do capture a lot of strange evidence.

From rocks being thrown at them to unexplainable orbs of light and strange sounds coming from a turned-off parabolic dish, the team had their fair share of close encounters. But their most perplexing find was the discovery of a rotting corpse, buried in the mine and wrapped in fabric, with strange-looking feet and with its head and hands removed, which multiple experts were unable to confidently identify.

7 "Island Of The Dolls"

Ghost adventures.

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The "Island of the Dolls", located in the canals south of Mexico City is an infamously creepy location, where the aging caretaker hung hundreds of dolls across his tiny island in an effort to appease the restless spirit of a young girl who had drowned in the waters surrounding the island. Before and especially after his death, these dolls were reported to have become charged with paranormal energy, able to move and speak on their own.

Zak and his team come to investigate this tiny island, and bring along with them one of the most purportedly haunted dolls in the world, Harold the Doll, in an effort to draw out the spirits. This apparently worked, as the team captured multiple moving shadows, unexplained voices, and even thermal evidence of Harold changing temperature, suggesting there may be a presence on the island after all.

6 "The Real Conjuring"

Paranormal witness.

This episode tells the true story behind one of the greatest modern horror films and shows just how much scarier the ghost was in reality . The Perron family of Harrisville, Rhode Island recount the horrifying tale of being haunted by a ghost that paranormal investigators and self-proclaimed clairvoyant Ed and Lorraine Warren claimed to be the spirit of a witch named Bathsheba.

There is a surprising amount of overlap with the Conjuring film, showing just how dedicated the cast and crew were. Still, seeing a recreation of these events as the family themselves described it, seeing unexplained cuts form, the sounds coming from nowhere, and the doors being opened and sometimes closing and trapping others within on their own is a different kind of terror.

5 "Ghosts Of Chernobyl"

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In a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Team Truth managed to secure permission from the Ukrainian government to explore the contaminated town of Pripyat, site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster. Hoping to find answers to the reports of unexplained sightings in and around the abandoned city, they interviewed former residents and some of the skeleton crew who work in the contaminated zone.

Arriving in sight of the destroyed fourth reactor tower just as the sun set, the team donned their protective gear and night-vision cameras for a truly disturbing night. Multiple times, the team caught images of human figures on their thermal cameras, and at one point, even captured footage of a ghost seemingly pulling on investigator Jael DePardo's arm. Curiously, almost all of these incidents were followed by spikes in radioactivity. Could the radiation explain all this? Possibly. Or is it possible that Pripyat truly is a ghost town?

4 "Bobby Mackey’s Music World"

The pilot episode of Ghost Adventures is a terrifying one. Investigating Bobby Mackey's Music World, an old club with a history of death and tragedy, Zak Bagans and his friends Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwin arrive in Wilder, Kentucky intent on capturing proof of life after death, and they are not disappointed.

Throughout their night locked within the club, the team captures multiple orbs of light and moving shadows, as well as chilling EVP's, but most disturbing of all is when Zak complains of a burning itch on his back. Taking off his shirt to show Nick and Aaron, three parallel red scratch marks appear on his back, which the team claims to be a sign of demonic activity.

3 "Haunted Forest"

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The Hoia-Baicu Forest of northwestern Romania is purportedly one of the most haunted locations in the world, and an uptick in reports of strange lights and noises emanating from the forest at night draws the attention of Team Truth. Setting off on an adventure that takes them through the historic countryside of Transylvania, they have one of their most bizarre investigations yet.

An attempt to recon the forest by air, searching for the infamous circular clearing that is claimed to be a hotspot of activity, sudden winds rip the roof of their plane off. Once entering the forest at nightfall, they capture multiple unexplained lights that seem to lead them on a wild goose chase through the forest. Once they finally find the circle, an EVP session by cameraman Evan Stone ends with him being thrown from a sitting position by an unseen force that also leaves him with scratches under his undamaged clothing.

2 "Stanley Hotel"

The building that inspired the truly classic horror film The Shining , the Stanley Hotel is the ultimate haunted house , and as such has been investigated dozens if not hundreds of times, but the Ghost Hunters not only captured some of their best evidence here, they also had some intense spooks. After interviewing guests and employees, the team begins their investigation, and they are not disappointed.

Things truly do go bump in the night, with Jason Hawes being woken in the middle of the night to his closet door opening on its own, and even creepier, the glass on his bedside table was broken by an unknown force. The team also captures strange noises, and the tension in this investigation is worthy of Kubrick's horror masterpiece.

1 "Poveglia Island"

The island of Poveglia in the waters surrounding Venice, Italy is a decrepit, abandoned place, and apparently, also an incredibly haunted one. Taking their lockdowns to a new level, Zak and his friends are left alone on the island, entirely cut off from the mainland as they investigate this former plague quarantine site, and its decaying church, hospital, and asylum.

Throughout the night, the team captures multiple EVPs, moving shadows, and unexplained noises. However, ​​​​​​​the truly chilling moment is when Zak begins acting strange and aggressive, claiming to have been possessed by a demon . This is one of the team's most famous investigations, and the experience left Zak, no pun intended, haunted.

Hulu's 'Living for the Dead' features Waverly Hills and Louisville Palace. What to expect

Just in time for the spooky season, Hulu has a new show with a major Kentucky connection.

"Living for the Dead" by executive producer and Academy Award nominee Kristen Stewart , features five queer ghost hunters as they investigate famed haunted locations around the U.S.

The eight-part docuseries includes a heavy pour of Kentucky with two of the spookiest locations featured in the series, Louisville’s own — Waverly Hills Sanatorium and the Louisville Palace Theater . Additionally, one of the main stars of this supernatural series is Ken Boggle , a tarot card reader and a proud Lexington, Kentucky resident.

"Going from a holler to Hulu has been mind-blowing," Boggle told the Courier Journal. "My granny taught me everything I know about spirits, reading tea leaves and tarot cards and all sorts of mountain witchy stuff."

The show's other four ghost hunters include Alex Le May (the tech expert,) Juju Bae (the resident witch,) Logan Taylor (the psychic), and Roz Hernandez (the paranormal researcher). In addition to executive producing the show with the creators of " Queer Eye, " Stewart narrates each episode.

"It’s so cool and enlivening that me and my best friend CJ Romero had this funny idea and now it’s a show," Stewart said in a statement. "It started as a bit of a hypothetical silly pipe dream and now I am so proud to have shepherded something that is as moving and meaningful as it is truly a gay old time."

So true. This is no stuffy scientific ghost-hunting expedition, instead, the team of "Living For The Dead" crisscrosses the country in a camper van dressed in eccentric outfits. Exploring some of the world’s most infamous haunted locations the team visits the Copper Queen Hotel in Arizona, the Clown Hotel and The Palomino, in Nevada and the Louisville Palace and Waverly Hills Sanitarium in Kentucky.

"Personally I love Kentucky and it was very, very important to feature the state where I have lived my entire life on this show," said Boggle. "I am so proud of my culture and I hope that viewers from Kentucky will be proud when they see two locations on the show and a proud Kentucky boy in the cast."

Boggle pushed hard to get the show's producers to record episodes in the Bluegrass State and it paid off. At Waverly Hills Sanitarium, the team encountered a Louisville couple who have been living with unpleasant consequences from a previous visit to the haunted location.

"We want to improve the lives of the living as well as the dead," the Lexington-based tarot card reader told the Courier Journal. "I can't give away what happens but I can say that Waverly Hill Sanitarium is incredibly haunted and what occurs in our episode has never happened on any other paranormal television show."

You may like: Ghostly footsteps. Spooky, unexplained shadows. Inside this haunted Kentucky theater

See for yourself when "Living for the Dead" debuts Wednesday, Oct. 18 as part of Hulu's “Huluween” programming.

As for Boggle, he hopes a second season of "Living For The Dead" is in the cards. In the meantime, he's putting the finishing touches on his autobiography "Becoming Ken Boggle" and is available for tarot card readings and classes to help you develop your psychic abilities. To find out, more visit kenboggle.com .

Reach features reporter Kirby Adams at [email protected].

Scariest Episodes of Ghost Adventures, Ranked

The longest running ghost-focused paranormal TV show has had its fill of spooky interactions. Here are the scariest episodes from the show.

The longest-running ghost-focused paranormal reality television show at 28 seasons, Ghost Adventures , has been on the air since 2008 and has since become one of the best paranormal reality TV shows to date. Starring Zak Bagans, Aaron Goodwin, Jay Wasley, Billy Tolley, and formerly Nick Groff; the show follows a group of three-to-four men as they toured the world's most haunted locations and spots, captured evidence, and tried to prove to the audience whether these places were truly haunted or not. Throughout regular episodes and timely specials, to new incarnations such as Ghost Adventures: House Calls , the crew has fascinated its audience with its evidence of the supernatural and more.

Update October 31, 2023: Happy Halloween! This article has been updated with even more scary Ghost Adventures episodes and its new streaming home on Max.

From lackadaisical episodes such as the "La Purisma Mission" to more terrifying episodes such as the "Preston Castle" adventures to getting full-on attacked by the paranormal in the "Pennhurst State School," the four have encountered some truly terrifying and ghostly spirits and experiences in the show's 280 episodes and specials. Here are the scariest episodes ranked.

15 Cecil Hotel

This two-hour special sees the Ghost Adventures team investigate the infamously haunted Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. If you have heard of this hotel or seen the recent Netflix docuseries, then you already have a sense of how spooky and mysterious this hotel is.

The team encountered their usual paranormal happenings, such as unexplained scratches, until Bagans investigated the room where serial killer Jack Unterweger stayed in 1991, all by himself. This led to the water faucet unexplainably turning on by itself. Without the dark and mysterious history of the hotel, this Ghost Adventures special is still very spooky and among the scariest episodes of the show.

14 Linda Vista Hospital

Notorious for being a spooky hotspot that is like catnip for ghost hunters, the Linda Vista Hospital is located in Los Angeles and was infamous for its checkered background and mistreatment of patients, and became a war zone for gangland violence. Zak, Aaron, and Nick investigated the ominous site during the third season, and it didn't take long until unnerving and spine-tingling occurrences began to happen. The guys captured deeply disquieting EVPs including "ready or not...here I come" and "don't leave me" and heard disembodied voices screaming, moaning, and a female singing.

Aaron's camera also malfunctioned during lockdown while Zak was attempting to speak with the spirit of a little girl, and Nick witnessed a full-bodied apparition of a woman standing in front of him that left him shaken to his core and caused his camera to freeze. The crew definitely seemed more than ready to leave the former hospital after the investigation was complete, especially a terrified Nick.

13 Preston Castle

The season two opener of the show took the original Ghost Adventures crew to Preston Castle in Lone, California. Originally a reform school for troubled youth, Preston Castle had its fair share of crime and troubles, including the murder of beloved housekeeper Anna Corbin, by two of the juveniles. It also brought the show so many pieces of ghostly evidence. A camera captured a shadowy figure walking down the hallway after hearing a loud scream.

One of the clearer EVPs (electric voice phenomena) hears a spirit tell the crew to "get outta here." But, perhaps the scariest part of the episode is when Zak becomes seemingly possessed by the ghost of Anna Corbin. Talking to what looks like himself, extreme emotions of sadness, and more; Zak believes he experienced a partial possession . With so much evidence from one place, it's hard to deny the fear caused by Preston Castle.

12 Island of the Dolls

In the tenth season of the hit series, Zak and his fearless crew head down south to Xochimilco, Mexico to check out the spine-tingling Island of the Dolls, an unsettling and bizarre tourist attraction where hundreds of baby dolls hang from trees within the land's sinister canals. Zak must face his intense fear of dolls while doing the investigation and almost immediately begins to experience unexplainable and disturbing events. After holding a haunted doll, Zak discovers three bruises on his left arm and realizes the creepy toy's same arm was almost completely broken and seemingly reflected his own injury.

During the investigation, Aaron witnesses an apparition walking around a bridge and continues seeing the figure throughout their lockdown. The guys also captured faint laughter and screaming on camera, as well as a ghostly presence moving through a hut with random lights also appearing. Zak felt an icy, cold hand touch his back, and the crew heard strange noises coming from a fire pit area, where a small fire sparked despite no one else being on the island.

11 Goldfield Hotel

The guys returned to where it all began when they once again investigated the historic Goldfield Hotel in Nevada where they had previously filmed their independent documentary in 2004. The ghost-hunting crew did not initially intend to go back to the haunted hotspot but felt compelled to after being contacted by the hotel's owner, who had forbidden anyone from going inside the establishment out of fear they would be physically hurt. During their intense lockdown, Zak and the gang experienced a terrifying array of events, including a rock being thrown at Nick, disembodied voices crying for help and snarling, and both Zak seeing a shadow figure.

The crew also captured EVPs during the investigation that included chilling voices saying, "Let's get Zak" and "They're back, what do you want?", with Nick also feeling as though a dark entity was trying to affect his body in a negative way. Glass also broke during the lockdown and a black mist was caught on camera, and all the crew felt extreme discomfort in their gut while filming the follow-up.

10 The Harrisville Farmhouse

In the 2019 Halloween special for the series, Zac and his fellow ghost hunters head to Rhode Island to investigate the notorious Perron family haunting at the Harrisville farmhouse, the paranormal hotspot featured in the spine-tingling horror film The Conjuring. The infamous 300-year-old house is believed to harbor a dark and demonic entity that targeted the unsuspecting family and continues causing chaos, with the site allegedly having seen numerous suicides and murders. In the thrilling episode, the guys experience unsettling physical pain, with Aaron even complaining about his chest and feeling an evil energy in the dwelling.

Zac also felt extremely sick while on the premises, expressing how he felt both dizzy and agitated during the lockdown, a feeling that would stick with him long after he left the location. He revealed in a follow-up interview on the special, "There were things going on with me that just seemed out of the norm. It really, I believe, made me sick. I had anxiety and panic levels that were just so unusual...I never felt possessed, but I felt like something was drawing the life out of me."

9 Waverly Hills Sanatorium

In a pulse-pounding episode of the fourth season, the guys head to Louisville, Kentucky, to visit the Waverly Hills Sanatorium and explore its somber history as a former hospital that once housed countless tuberculosis patients during the early 1900s. Many visitors claim to hear anguished screams and ominous footsteps, as well as doors slamming shut by themselves, and some have even witnessed ghostly apparitions while exploring the abandoned hospital.

In their investigation, the gang checks out the notorious fifth floor and captures sounds of people walking through the corridors and an EVP saying what sounds like, "remember me?". The crew also recorded the voice of a young child responding to Zac when he asked the spirit to come towards him, hearing the response "that would be evil" on their equipment. Their rem pod was constantly going off when the trio addressed the unseen presence, both fascinating and frightening them due to its seemingly intelligent nature.

8 Return to Bobby Mackey's

Countless urban legends, rumors, and spooky stories have circulated around the mysterious Kentucky nightclub Bobby Mackey's Music World, and while none of these claims have ever been proven, it has still been deemed "the most haunted nightclub in America." According to its owner, country singer Bobby Mackey, the site originally served as a slaughterhouse in the 19th century before being turned into a roadhouse, though there is speculation that Satanic rituals were conducted on the land. The GA crew first ventured to the haunted nightclub in the series premiere, and the guys later claimed that evil spirits followed them home.

Related: Zak Bagans, Nick Groff, and Aaron Goodwin Talk Ghost Adventures

They made their highly-anticipated return in season four and experienced extreme paranormal occurrences, with the gang having captured frightening EVPs saying horrifying things like, "I'm gonna kill Zak" and "that's because it's the Devil." Zak, Nick, and Aaron also heard growls and witnessed eerie apparitions, and once again, Zak had to fight off a possession while at the site. The episode is so scary and unsettling that Zak had to have an exorcism performed on him and was told never to return to Bobby Mackey's Music World.

7 Curse of Ranch Island

Once again, fearless leader Zac is confronted by a demonic and powerful presence while investigating the Las Vegas communal compound Ranch Island, where the spirit of a man who committed suicide allegedly dwells and targets the vocal investigator. The crew feels intense cold spots, and Zac believes the trapped supernatural being is trying to possess him during the lockdown, as he feels immense emotional duress throughout the episode and becomes progressively erratic and angry.

The gang managed to capture a shadow in a full spectrum photo that they also try to debunk later to prove its authenticity and quiet naysayers, and Zac is even forced to walk away from the filming due to feeling extremely dizzy and nauseous due to the negative energy on the property. The episodes in which Zac is facing an inner struggle with an entity have become some of fans' favorite, as they can't help but shiver over the terrifying forces the crew face during each investigation.

6 Demon House

A full-fledged documentary rather than a single episode , Demon House has cemented itself as one of the freakiest locations ever visited by the Ghost Adventures crew and one of the scariest entries into the series. Back in 2014, host Zak Bagans bought a haunted house in Gary, Indiana, most known for the bone-chilling case of the Ammon hauntings (a family was terrorized by demons, unexplainable masses of flies, etc., with over a thousand pages of official documents detailing the disaster).

Faced with a loud, horrific growl in the middle of the night, shadows walking through the house, and one sitting on the doorframe, and even a quick possession, the documentary added even more evidence to the house's list of paranormal activity. Bagans eventually had the house torn down in 2016.

5 Pennhurst State ​​​​​

The history of Pennhurst State is one of tragedy. The residents were all horrifically abused, meaning one can understand why the paranormal entities that haunt the school and hospital would be restless and why they weren't fans of the Ghost Adventures team investigating them. Any old abandoned hospital is creepy, but the team were not ready for what was to come.

This episode sees many unexplainable moving objects; a rock is thrown at Zak, but most notable was a coat hanger, which was also hurled at Zak after a voice is heard saying "hit." Again, this cannot be explained, leaving the audience and the team speechless.

4 Hell Hole Prison

Its official name is the Yuma Territorial Prison (nicknamed "hell hole" due to the intense heat), and possibly one of the most active places the Ghost Adventures crew has visited. With the common occurrence of unexplainable noises, disembodied voices, and voices actually heard clearly through the EVP recorder, what makes this episode scary is all the apparitions the crew caught on camera.

Aaron Goodwin caught two, a floating orb constantly following him and a tall shadowy figure making its way into the courtyard. But the most infamous one is when cameras capture a group of apparitions on the band stage as if they were playing instruments and performing for our protagonists. Though friendly, it is still terrifying to see.

3 Poveglia Island

In season three of the spine-tingling series, the ghost-hunting gang head oversees the notorious Poveglia Island to investigate the spooky paranormal occurrences happening on the small island located near Venice, Italy. Poveglia has long since been considered a hot spot for supernatural phenomena and is considered one of the most haunted places in the world, as it was a magnet for the dying and deceased. The crew was essentially stranded on the island throughout the duration of the investigation, being stuck there from dusk until dawn.

The episode is now famous among Ghost Adventures fans due to paranormal investigator Zak Bagans seemingly becoming possessed during the lockdown, as he began to feel extreme anger towards both Nick and Aaron. His behavior progressively became more aggressive to the pair, and Zak would later claim to have lost control of his own actions and thoughts during the ordeal. While the crew caught other evidence like EVPs, disembodied voices, and apparitions, witnessing Zak lose control of himself from a malevolent outside force was downright terrifying for viewers.

2 El Rancho Hotel

After hearing news that employees were quitting en masse due to a rise in paranormal activity, the Ghost Adventures crew made their way down to the El Rancho Hotel to investigate. The ghosts and spirits didn't even wait until nighttime to make their appearances, as before the lights even went out, the cameras captured a shadowy head poking its head outside a door frame to look at the crew.

Related: Horror Movies That Need Documentaries Made About Them

Along with reports of a demonic ritual happening at the hotel, feelings of uneasiness and possible semi-possession hit the crew and even brought one of them close to tears. It's easy to see why the employees were quitting, given all the evidence in this episode.

1 Route 666

Another Halloween special, the " Route 666 " episode, sees the crew travel to not one but two haunted locations: The infamous DeSoto Hotel (one of their many visits to the location) and the heart-pounding Goatman's Bridge. First, at the DeSoto Hotel (known for its history of devil-worshipping rituals ), the crew gets all sorts of unexplainable occurrences, such as loud knocks and audible footsteps; three visible apparitions standing together; and one of the X-cameras being ripped off of the wall. The hotel would burn down soon after their visit. It's at Goatman's Bridge, however, where things get truly terrifying.

Ashley seems to get possessed by some sort of demonic entity, calling out for it, and then gets audibly assaulted by an unseen force, leaving a mark on her head. The Bridge greets the entire crew with harm, with Zak feeling like he was being strangled, and Aaron is thrown nearly twenty feet by something. Along with capturing a pair of free-floating red eyes at the entrance to the forest, Goatman's Bridge became one of the most active locations explored by the Ghost Adventures crew, and perhaps the scariest.

Ghost Adventures is available to watch on Max and the Travel Channel.

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Beware — you’re in for a scare!

A self-professed “ghost hunter” has spooked out followers on TikTok after documenting a trip to an abandoned hospital once used to treat tuberculosis patients.

Kalani Smith, 23, was granted permission to explore the Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky, last month, filming the freaky expedition for social media.

The hospital first opened in July 1910 and was initially designed to handle around 40 to 50 patients at a time. However, as tuberculosis rapidly spread, the hospital expanded, with 400 beds installed by 1926.

A staggering 63,000 patients reportedly passed away at the hospital, with building managers even installing a “death chute” for doctors to drop corpses down for their quick disposal.

“The building has its own body chute, which had a dark energy to it, considering it was a 500-foot-long tunnel that was used to send [out] … countless bodies of dead patients,” Smith told Jam Press following his trip to Waverly Hills.

“You get that sense that someone is watching you the moment you enter the doors,” he further said of his spooky adventure.

Patients were also purportedly subjected to a range of cruel experimental treatments, including rib removal , which Smith said adds to the haunted feel of the hospital.

@kalanighosthunter What do you think the ghost says at the end? #greenscreenvideo #kalanighosthunter #waverlyhillssanitorium #paranormal #ghosts #ghosttalk #scary ♬ original sound – Kalani

“They had many experimental treatments that could be considered modern-day torture,” he explained.

The ghost hunter claimed he even heard strange voices emanating from the hospital and shared footage — with creepy audio — to TikTok.

Viewers were left spooked by the sounds, with one writing: “That gave me chills!”

Another warned followers not to continue watching the creepy clip, commenting: “Don’t replay it!”

The Waverly Hills Sanatorium shut down in 1961 after the discovery of an antibiotic that effectively treated tuberculosis.

The hospital was renovated and reopened as a nursing home, which was eventually closed in 1981. The building remained empty for two decades before being bought in 2001.

The current owners have kept parts of the hospital in their original state, making it a must-visit site for ghost hunters like Smith.

However, haunted expeditions don’t come cheap. Tours of the hospital grounds start at $90.

@kalanighosthunter follow @kalanighosthunter2 to see me live #greenscreen #kalanighosthunter #waverlyhills #haunted ♬ Halloween Kills (Main Title) – John Carpenter & Cody Carpenter & Daniel Davies

Smith toured the facility overnight from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., which cost him a whopping $1,300. However, he said it was worth every penny.

“The notorious nature of this location made it a must-see to me. It lived up to my expectations,” the ghost hunter declared.

“I am returning in January for another investigation. The desire to find more credible evidence of the unknown pulls me to places and I believe Waverly could provide anyone with an experience that could convince them of the supernatural.”

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Home > Ghost Hunters > Season 13 > Episode 9

Ghost Hunters Return to Waverly Hills

Ghost Hunters: Season 13

Episode Info

The new owners of Waverly Hills Sanatorium near Louisville, Ky., receive reports of unsettling paranormal claims, including blood-curdling screams and unexplained sounds, from visitors.

Genres: Documentary, Reality

Network: Travel Channel

Air Date: May 27, 2020

Where to watch Ghost Hunters Return to Waverly Hills

Watch Ghost Hunters Return to Waverly Hills with a subscription on Disney+.

Cast & Crew

Grant Wilson

Daryl Marston

Kristen Luman

Brandon Alvis

Mustafa Gatollari

Brian Murray

Richel Stratton

Craig Piligian

Executive Producer

Mike Nichols

Elaine Frontain Bryant

Amy Savitsky

Devon Graham

Peter Tarshis

Ghost Hunters Return to Waverly Hills   Photos

Critic reviews for ghost hunters return to waverly hills.

'Ghost Hunters': Kristen Luman Unpacks 'Waverly Hills' Season Finale's 'Prankster' Spirit, Ghostly Moans and More (Exclusive)

After almost 15 years, the Ghost Hunters steered by Grant Wilson, returned to Waverly Hills [...]

By Tania Hussain - May 27, 2020 10:01 pm EDT

After almost 15 years, the Ghost Hunters steered by Grant Wilson , returned to Waverly Hills Sanatorium on Wednesday night in a case that sparked an onslaught of unexplained phenomena. Touted " one of the most haunted places on earth, " the historic hospital on the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky, has long been regarded as a "Mecca" for paranormal investigators and the site of the team's most indisputable paranormal encounter to date. But while Wilson and his former team first investigated the location during the show's third season in 2006, the 20th-century sanatorium, used to house tuberculosis patients in the early 1900s and subsequently shuttering in the early 1960s, has since produced more claims stemming from its tragic history of more than 8,000 deaths on-site.

Wilson, alongside his new generation of hunters, heads back in the Season 2 finale, "Return to Waverly Hills," investigating claims of ghostly moans , objects thrown at unsuspecting guests, shadow figures, haunting moans and hissing sounds. With the case yielding several results positing proof of the afterlife during their exploration, co-lead investigator and paranormal researcher, Kristen Luman breaks down details of the team's haunting encounters in an exclusive for PopCulture.com, admitting the Louisville edifice's vibe was something that was felt by all.

"It was eerie sadness because you know that so many people were confined sick, and they knew of their fate," Luman told PopCulture. "The fact that they had so much depression… […] I thought it was wonderful that the doctors and nurses got together and said, 'Let's not keep carrying these bodies out of here for everyone to see. Let's use the chute, so it's less visible.' And it really did, when they did studies afterward, they researched it and discovered that the morale had hiked after they created this chute for their sick patients. They didn't see the bodies being removed and they had their own community there ."

But with the infamous chutes and storied history full of loss and pain, comes an abundance of residual and intelligent energy that each member of the team experienced during their investigation of the 180,000 square foot building. From a prankster spirit to a ghost attempting to manifest itself via walkie talkie transmissions and another trying to manifest following an encounter with the Van de Graaff machine, the paranormal investigator is dishing all in an exclusive you cannot miss! Scroll through to find out more about the groundbreaking case.

That 'Waverly Hills' feeling

Though the hospital, staff and patients were primarily separated from the rest of the town due to tuberculosis' infectious traits, Luman admits Waverly Hills was "basically its own town" at the time, complete with a postal service due to isolation measures. But even with the staff's good intentions of making the place a comfortable one for patients and boosting their morale, there was still a weighty feeling when entering with Wilson and the team .

"There's a sort of heaviness; a bit of sadness and eeriness knowing that these people live there knowing that they most likely wouldn't be leaving from there, and they had to wave [out the windows]," Luman said of the hospital's solarium, built to provide fresh air and sunlight for patients — a method in the treatment of TB patients at the time. "That scene in the show where we're on the balcony, and you have these big open windows, big open-air spaces — that's where they would wave to their family because they couldn't get close to them, and that just breaks your heart."

Luman adds that while audiences at home can't exactly see it, above the rooftop, the hospital staff had initially created a playground for children, but was later taken out. "There is an eeriness that comes along with that, knowing how so many people lost their lives there, but then there's also the happiness of how they try to make the best of a bad situation," she said.

The "prankster" ghost

During the one-hour case on A&E Wednesday night, fans were left stunned after the team experienced a prankster spirit during their investigation . First encountered when Brandon Alvis and Mustafa Gatollari investigated the chutes and subsequently finding themselves locked inside the "death tunnel" (much to Richel Stratton 's amusement), the New Jersey native once again found himself confronted by the prankster but this time with co-lead investigator, Daryl Marston during a communication session. The two became the target of the spirit upon leaving, who threw a rock in their direction — something that even caught their cameraman off guard.

While Wilson admitted in the episode that the spirit might be pranking guests who visit as a way of coping, Luman reiterates it's all a theory based on the evidence they collected . "We can only base off of theories and the questions that we ask, and the response that we get and the fact that the boys challenged whoever was there, and then they got this rock thrown — 'Try to scare us. See if you can scare us' — and then they got this rock thrown at them, was sort of funny, because whoever was there was answering that call," she said. "And perhaps it was somebody who was silly in life and was also silly in death, or perhaps this is how they spend their time now."

Luman adds that while it's all "basically guesses and theories" from the evidence collected, it's further proof of how the work they do is just "so fascinating" for the team. "I would say that either someone decided to make the best of their time with the investigators coming through, or they always were like that and were perhaps known throughout the hospital when they lived there to have played funny pranks on the doctors, nurses and other patients."

The walkie talkie transmission

During Luman's investigation of the third floor with Marston, the co-lead investigators experienced some unusual activity — particularly surrounding the walkie talkies when they suggested the spirits investigate them. During their attempted communication with a ghost, Marston's walkie talkie began going off, something that Luman further explains to PopCulture is known as instrumental trans-communication (ITC), a type of EVP that interprets as spirit voices.

"[ITC] is when an entity will use our own devices to try to communicate with us, like through a walkie talkie or even through a phone," Luman said. "There's been incidents of where people have had messages left on their machine from somebody who was departed or a phone call… […] Strange things like that, and [Marston and I] decided to work outside the box. I came up with the idea that the entities that are there, they have been through so many investigations and so many people come there to try to talk to them and what would it be like if we turned the tables and said, 'How about you investigate us? Ask us questions. Get to know us. Steal...' I mean, this part wasn't in the show, but I said, 'Steal our clothing. Touch our devices.'"

Admitting that she and Marston took a "good amount of time" warming up that communication method while speaking about themselves to the spirits, she adds how the activity started "pretty quickly" soon after. It was then that they experienced what they did with the occurrence of ITC. "That's when the walkie talkie started acting somewhat haywire, and we've never had that on any investigations Season 1 or Season 2 where the walkie talkie is going off like that, consistently like that," she said. "It's hard to hear on the show, but you heard some sort of murmur while we were listening. You hear static through the walkie talkie, but then it did sound like a voice was trying to come through."

Luman shares that whatever the voice was trying to say through the walkie talkie, it left her and Marston stunned. "That was a first for me," she said. "I've never had that experience with a walkie talkie. I've never experienced that where an entity tried to communicate through our technology in that way."

Positing to Luman how the walkie talkies could have found their correlation to perhaps a former soldier at the TB hospital, she enthuses over the theory, admitting that kind of thinking is how science can be creative. "It's all theory until we can really prove for a fact that it's evidence," she said, adding how the team also went to experts and scientists with their evidence, but they were just as baffled . "To me, that says we've caught something real, and have somewhat given credibility to this theory of what spirit matter, may be made up of or have something to do with photonic events."

Grant's wife Reanna

During Wednesday's season finale, the team also welcomed Wilson's wife, Reanna, to help cover the expansive grounds of Waverly Hills. As an esteemed paranormal investigator in her own right and former nurse, the case was a special one for the couple to work on together, which had Luman also very much excited over. "It was really great. They are the cutest couple," she said, adding how she also always mentions the pair as the hashtag, "couple goals" on her Instagram account. "[It's] because they're just so cute, and they work so well together in coming up with theories and putting their minds together."

The parapsychologist and paranormal researcher adds that what fans might not realize is how Reanna has always been in the background of the team's cases, just not on film. "She would be staying in and hanging out in our base location, and I'd come to her with some of our findings, and [she] and I would put our heads together and come up with theories or what it could be," Luman said. "She, just, like Grant, has this amazing insight to [a case], and she's such a kind, loving person."

Luman shares how the two not only work well together on cases but bond over the paranormal well, disclosing how the two even returned to a case together to find more answers on their own. "Grant and [Reanna] actually went back and wanted to talk to an entity more because they felt like more needed to be explained," she said. "They really have a passion for this and just a gentleness and kindness for these entities — these people who may not be able to communicate as well as they would like to. She's just a wonderful person to be around, and as I said, just adds a whole new level of insight into any investigation."

Did a spirit cross over?

During Wilson and Reanna's investigation together, the two came across an interesting finding with a female caretaker who worked at Waverly Hills communicating via control questions with the Tri-Field Meter. Getting responses right on cue with the aid of their device, Reanna shares how the room became instantly lighter after the heated and vibrant exchange, leading some to think the two helped a spirit cross over. But Luman said it's a lot more complicated than just that. "I go back into my psychology [on this], but does the room feel lighter, or do we feel lighter because we've given somebody that permission?" she said. "It gets mixed. It gets mingled and so, to say that because they said that, that means that everybody can float to a bright light. We don't know."

Luman adds that something the team did pick up on was behavioral cues from the spirits at Waverly Hills after some of the investigators were coughing during the case amid recovery from colds. "We were coughing quite often, and we noticed that the more we coughed, the less activity we got," she said, theorizing how some of the patients might have wanted to stay away or were concerned about the team's health. "We thought that was interesting."

She adds how Reanna was the one who pointed out the correlation between the investigators' cough and the mere fact of being in a TB hospital, complementing how she and Wilson's mind work well together. "After we maybe came to that conclusion or just thought that might be an idea to pay attention to, then we went back in there saying, 'We're healthy, and you can be healthy, too, now, and excuse our cough,' and explained that we weren't sick."

The Van de Graaff helping to manifest entities

With the team using state-of-the-art technology to understand the spirit world better, Luman said she was excited to use the Van de Graaff device, which pumps out energy into the air based on the theory that it helps entities utilize that source for an entity to manifest. Interestingly enough, with the use of the device, they experienced something right after in the form of a rock thrown at Gatollari and Marston.

"A lot of times when we've used that, that's when we've gotten actually something, object manipulation where something is actually moved, and Richel and I used the Van de Graaff in Clifton, Arizona — that's when we got that screw thrown at us, and it's just interesting that we used it in the tuberculosis hospital [and] that's when they got a rock thrown at them," she said. "So, it makes you wonder; we're starting to see a pattern there. The only other time that I can recall us using it in this season was when we were at the camp, and it was in the theater, and you don't even see that because nothing much was experienced there afterward. But it is interesting that a couple of times we have used it, we've experienced that type of activity."

While the machine reaps some incredible activity, she also knows it's something that would perhaps alarm someone from another era , seeing a weird, electricity snapping device that doesn't look safe, though it is. "Using this device, there's a yin and yang to it," Luman said. "It can really provide this energy for the entities if they can feel safe around it. I think that it can also scare them off a bit, too, if it's not explained well enough. So, I think that's very important."

Luman's favorite part of their Waverly Hills investigation

Excited and happy for fans to have finally seen the Waverly Hills case, Luman shares one of her favorite parts of the team's investigation was all the stuff that happened in the chute because it was "very similar" to what Wilson's original group in 2006 had experienced before. "I liked how they showed some of the original team's reaction because it's been said that we get very excited or a little scared sometimes. [But] you see the original team having all the same reactions that we did, really, in this investigation because there were a lot of comparisons, and so I'm glad the audience gets to see that — it was a good choice for editing," she laughed.

Luman adds that she loved how the team could all experience this "paranormal Mecca" together and have pretty much every experience imaginable. "We have the EVPs, and we had visual and we had feelings. I mean, we had pretty much everything you can get at a location and so, once again, Waverley didn't disappoint. It was a really amazing experience."

Reiterating her enthusiasm for the chutes, she shares how the moans heard by Gatollari and Alvis was something not only spooky but an element into their investigation that really got the team excited over the evidence collected. "I liked a lot of the stuff that happened in the chute. I liked the moaning that just sounded like a typical haunted house ghost moan [and] that they got locked in there," she laughed. "Stuff kept happening; I thought that was pretty amazing . And then we got the bangs and the knocks just like the original team had gotten as well and then, again, we got some other things that they didn't get with the communication through the walkie and all of that, so that was a pretty cool experience."

Ghost Hunters airs on A&E and is produced by Lionsgate's Pilgrim Media Group. For more on the groundbreaking reality series, spooks and other paranormal-related news, keep it locked to PopCulture.com and follow us on Twitter @PopCulture for the latest in news and entertainment coverage.

Investigations Conducted By The Louisville Ghost Hunters Society:

The Waverly Hills Sanatorium By Keith Age View LGHS "Waverly" Photos ! Excerpt from the soon to be released book: "HAUNTED LOUISVILLE"

Imagine yourself choking. Not being able to get air in to your lungs because your throat is closing up inside from something unseen, congesting and constricting the tissues like invisible hands. Your chest feels like it’s ready to explode and your lungs feel like they are on fire. Finally, able to cough, clumps of bright red blood spew from your mouth as the inner walls of your lungs have started to disintegrate. The buzzing and dizziness that you feel in your head is from the constant fever you keep and made worse by the lack of oxygen going to your brain. Capillaries explode in your eyes due to the violent coughing spells and leave your eyes spotted with broken capillaries or a violent crimson red. Your skin has now turned a ghastly pasty white color because your body has stopped producing enough red blood cells to keep the pigment in your skin.

These graphic descriptions can only provide the modern reader with a hint of what millions suffered from in the early history of America -- the dreaded and deadly “white death” known as tuberculosis. The plague swept through the country for centuries, claiming entire families and sometimes entire towns. It was a terrifying and very contagious disease for which there was no cure.

In 1900, Louisville, Kentucky had the highest tuberculosis death rate in the country. This was due to the fact Louisville is such a low valley area and before development, was basically all swampland and perfect breeding ground for the Tuberculosis bacteria. As with many other towns and cities across the country, hospitals were needed to care for the sick. In 1910, a wooden, two-story hospital with 40 beds opened on one of the highest elevated hills in southern Jefferson County to try and contain this ravaging disease.

Officials soon found that this small hospital was simply too small, as they were soon housing more than 130 cases of tuberculosis. Louisville needed a much larger facility and money began to be raised for its construction. Land was donated and $11 million was used to started construction on the new hospital in 1924.

The hospital, known as Waverly Hills, was opened in 1926 and was considered to be the most advanced tuberculosis hospital in the country. If a patient had any chance of surviving the disease, Waverly Hills was the place to come for treatment. Of course, treatment in those days was primitive at best, meaning that many simply came here to die. In those days, it was believed that the best cure for tuberculosis was plenty of nutritional food, plenty of rest and plenty of fresh air. Many patients came to Waverly and were actually cured and became well enough to once again enter society. For those not as fortunate, Waverly was the last place they ever saw. 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 doctors and nurses volunteered their lives to try and find a cure for this disease. Many of them lived and died there with the patients. A number of different experiments were attempted in search for a cure. Some of these experiments may sound barbaric, or even pointless, by today’s standards, but others are now common practice. The lungs were exposed to ultraviolet light to try and stop the spread of the bacteria. This was done in early versions of “sun rooms”, using artificial light to mimic the effects of sunlight. Patients were also placed on the roof or on the open porches on the upper floor to take in air and sunlight. Keeping in mind that fresh air was thought to be a cure for the disease; the patients would often to be placed in front of the open windows in both summer and winter. Photographs exist that show many of the dying literally covered in snow but still placed outside in hopes that their lungs would expand in the clean, country air.

Many of the treatments were much harsher -- and much bloodier. Balloons were surgically implanted into the lungs and then filled with air to try and expand them more, often with disastrous results. Hydrotherapy often caused pneumonia. But some experiments were useful and these procedures are still used today.

Pneumothorax was a procedure that consisted of deflating the infected area of the lung for a period of time and then letting it heal. Thoracoplasty was a very invasive surgical procedure where the chest of the patient was opened and then cords of muscle and up to seven ribs were removed. The opening was then closed up with the idea that the lungs would then be free to expand further and allow more oxygen into the lungs. This bloody procedure was only attempted as a last resort because fewer than 5% of the patients ever survived it.

In many cases, entire families came to live at Waverly Hills. Some were cured but many others left the hospital through what was called the “body chute”. This was a tunnel that led from the hospital to the railroad tracks at the bottom of the hill. It consisted of a motorized rail and cable system where the bodies were placed and lowered down on one side of the tunnel and steps led up and down on the other. A small steam plant on the property heated the tunnel, as well as the hospital and provided warmth for the maintenance workers that lived off the property. This was their entrance and exit for work. The tunnel was totally enclosed from the Morgue wing of the hospital. The purpose of this was so that the patients couldn’t see how many bodies were leaving the hospital. It was believed this would negatively affect their morale as the doctors discovered early on that the mental health of the patients was just as important as their physical health.

Because of the procedures and experiments that were performed at Waverly Hills and other hospitals around the country, tuberculosis was declining worldwide by the late 1930’s. It wasn’t until 1943 though that a young graduate student at Rutgers University by the name of Albert Schatz discovered Streptomycin, the first real medicine against the disease. By the mid 1950’s, tuberculosis had been largely eradicated because of this antibiotic. In 1961, Waverly Hills Sanatorium was closed because there was no longer a need for a tuberculosis facility. The buildings were reopened in 1962 as Woodhaven Geriatrics Sanitarium.

There have been many tales of patient mistreatment and unusual experiments that have filtered down from the hill over the years. Some have been proven false, while others unfortunately have turned out to be true. Electroshock therapy was widely used, although it was considered to be a very effective treatment in those days. Even today, it has been used with great results but now, as it was then, tragic losses sometimes occurred. During the 1960’s and 1970’s, a time of budget cuts for facilities of this type, there were many well documented cases of horrible conditions and unusual treatments at mental institutions all across the country. Apparently Woodhaven was no different because the state of Kentucky closed it down in 1982 due to patient abuse. The buildings, contents and land were auctioned off and the doors were locked for good.

The building and land changed hands several times over the next 18 years. The second owner of the property wanted to tear all the buildings down to construct the world’s largest statue of Jesus Christ. He succeeded in demolishing all of the buildings except for the main hospital and was only stopped by an injunction because the building is on the National Historic Register’s “endangered” list. He then decided that if he couldn’t legally tear it down then he would do everything in his power to get it condemned. He let vandals come into the building and tear it up. After breaking windows, porcelain sinks, toilets and doors, they began spraying graffiti on every available wall. The owner then dug around the foundation, in some places as deep as 30 feet, to try and make the foundation crack. If this happened, then he believed he could get the building condemned and would be able to legally tear it down. Fortunately, the structure refused to give way and his efforts failed. The area where his extensive digging took place can still currently be seen.

By 2001, this once regal and majestic hospital had been ravaged by time, the elements and vandals and was a shell of its former self. Waverly Hills had now become every town’s “haunted house”. Vagrants took to living here and kids broke in for the rush of finding a “ghost” or just to get high. It started to get the reputation of being haunted and rumors had it that satanic rituals were taking place within its walls. There were tales of a little girl running up and down the third floor solarium playing hide and seek with trespassers, of a little boy playing with his leather ball, of rooms lighting up as if there was still power to the building, doors slamming, disembodied voices, a hearse driving up and dropping off coffins and an old woman running from the front door with her wrists bleeding screaming “help me, somebody save me!” The years went by and the owner decided to sell the property to the new owners, who took possession in 2001.

In that same year, the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society was asked to come to Waverly Hills to find the “hot spots” for Triage Entertainment, who were producing a segment of Fox Television’s “Worlds Scariest Places”. LGHS Vice President Jay Gravatte, founder Keith Age and several other members arrived in the early evening. Jay would be featured on the show as the Waverly “historian” and his task would be to guide the girls through the building.

It had been several years since I had actually been inside the old hospital and once we entered, we started to see the extent of the damage that time and vandals had done to this building. Eighteen years of trash, dust and dirt had collected in the hallways from where the windows had been broken out. Debris and trash was two to three feet deep in some places. The floor was like walking over hills.

We decided to explore the morgue wing first. As we descended down this almost totally pitch black hallway, my electromagnetic field meter started clicking and within moments was jumping up the scale. One of the main pieces of equipment that is used in ghost detection is an electro-magnetic field meter, or EMF meter. It is believed that ghosts are a form of energy and that when they present they disrupt the natural electro-magnetic fields in their vicinity. EMF meters detect these disturbances, and while it is not solid proof of the presence of a ghost, it is a good indicator. The meter should not have gone off in the building unless something magnetic was encountered as there had been no electricity provided to the top of the hill since the middle 1980’s. The poles had been knocked down at that time and the wires all removed. Strangely, the meter continued to react to something though -- and whatever it was, it was moving.

We followed the signal to a small room. A cinder block wall partitioned off half the room. This wall was built so that you could see through to the adjoining room. On the far side of it, we could see a lot of graffiti on the walls and by the door there was a box with light bulb sockets with some writing on it. As I got to the center of the room, the meter spiked to the top of the scale and squealed to a pitch that I had never heard it make before. The meter pegged all the way over and it made an audible noise like glass breaking and the needle froze at the highest position. It stopped squealing and actually started to get warm in my hand. The meter then got so hot that solder actually melted on the circuit board and started to drip out of the meter.

I pulled the battery out to try and stop it from doing even more damage and that’s when we noticed it was getting colder in the room. This was a hot summer’s evening and more than 80 degrees and very humid outside. Naturally, this part of the building would be cooler since there was hardly any light coming in and the thick concrete walls and marble floor would diffuse the heat from outside but not as cool as it started to become. The temperature now dropped from 74 to 52 degrees. The chill soon faded and we left the building to get another meter and to consult the floor plans that we had for the place. I was a little surprised to discover that the chamber had been Woodhaven’s electroshock therapy room.

After going back into the building, we returned to the room and examined it more closely. The room that had been used as the observation area had a bathroom leading off from the back of it and also had a narrow entrance to the room next door. But the most interesting aspect of the room was the electrical panel with light bulb sockets on it. This panel had once been used to show how much current was being sent to the patient.

There was no further activity with the meters or unusual temperature changes and so we continued down the hall. As we walked, we noticed that the far end wall looked as if it was getting closer to us. Puzzled, we stared and tried to figure out how this could be happening. There was no denying it though -- it was getting closer. Then, we began to hear sounds like scratching and scraping. It came closer and when it was no more than 20 feet away, we realized what was happening. No one had been down this part of the corridor in years and we had just disturbed a huge colony of bats. It looked just like a dark wall as it came down the passageway toward us! I was in the lead and ducked down, as did the person in front of me. Others ducked into a side room until the bats passed and luckily, no one was injured or hurt, including the bats.

At the end of the hall, we came to a room on our left that had a thick metal door, the kind that you often see on freezers. Upon entering the room, we saw that it was approximately 15 feet deep, 15 feet wide and 20 feet from floor to ceiling. There were 8 poles that were connected to the ceiling from the floor and from these poles were four more that were connected to the walls crossways. There was a drain on the right side of the floor. We later learned that this was what was called “the draining room.” During the heyday of the tuberculosis hospital, people were dying so quickly that bodies had to be hurriedly removed from the hill to make room for other victims. The problem was that the people of Jefferson County did not want the infected bodies coming down carrying disease. There was no cemetery at Waverly, so the bodies couldn’t be buried. The officials were forced to authorize the best remedy they could. The last stop for the dead inside of the hospital would be the “draining room”. The corpses would be hung from the poles in the room and then slit from sternum to groin so that all of their bodily fluids would drain out. Once this was completed, the bodies were taken down, placed on the gurney and then transported down the body chute. Later on, as tuberculosis became less threatening in the 1930’s, the room was used as a smokehouse to cure the meat that was raised and slaughtered on the grounds.

From here, we went upstairs to the cafeteria and kitchen. One of the “legends” of Waverly tells of a man that can be seen walking around in a white coat here and smell of food cooking that comes wafting from the kitchen. What we found wasn’t spirits but still pretty shocking. The second floor of this wing was so damaged by vandals and the elements that it was utterly devastated. The ceiling was collapsing in some areas of the hall and had fallen down in other areas. The doors to the kitchen had been knocked down and were lying in the hallway. These doors provided walkways over puddles of water, mud and debris. The murky pools had been formed by the leaking roof. The kitchen was in shambles and it looked as if a bomb had exploded in here. There was only one gigantic oven left. Tables that had been built into the walls were broken and all of the windows had been shattered. Some of the window casings were so deteriorated that they were falling out of their frames. The ceiling was simply no longer there. It had become just a mess of wires, pipes and rotted tile panels.

The cafeteria hadn’t fared well either. A huge mural that had once graced the walls had been splashed with paint. The ceiling was caving in and in the middle of the floor was a huge radiator that had been ripped out of its moorings and left there. But it was after our initial inspection that we heard several footsteps around us, the sound of a door closing and the smell of fresh baked bread in the air. There was no logical explanation for these things. They simply happened and several of us were there to witness them.

We soon abandoned the area for the front entrance with only one further incident. It would not be until our film was developed that I discovered that something very unusual had happened at that moment. As we had walked back down the hallways, we passed a stairwell and my EMF meter suddenly went off. Several photos were taken and one of them shows what appears to be a light bulb at the landing of the stairs. There were no light bulbs left in Waverly at that time, no glass on the windows to reflect anything and had been no electrical service to the hill in more than 18 years. I simply couldn’t explain what turned out in the photograph -- any more than I could explain the other incidents that involved electricity and lights. There had long been stories of lights being seen in the windows at night and one time, a security guard actually reported what seemed to be a television playing in one of the rooms on the third floor. From the ground, he could see what appeared to be the distinct flicker of a television in a dark room. Going upstairs to investigate though, he found no lights or televisions of any kind.

After this incident with the stairwell, we climbed to every floor in the building but encountered nothing else strange until we got to the fourth floor. The EMF meters again began to pick up unusual readings and we also recorded a number of temperature drops. This also faded away but we found other anomalies on the fifth floor of the hospital.

The fifth floor of Waverly consists of two nurses stations, a pantry (#501), linen room (#503), medicine room (#504) and two medium sized rooms on both sides of the nurse’s stations (#506 & #502). Room 502 has tales and rumors all its very own and is the place that every local curiosity-seeker has heard about and wants to explore. This is where (the legends say) people have jumped to their deaths, other have seen images moving in the windows and disembodied voices have been heard telling people to “get out”.

There is much in the way of speculation about this area but what is known is that mentally insane tuberculosis patients were housed on the fifth floor in these two rooms. Nurse’s stations 502 and 506 looked over these two rooms in 18 hour shifts. The patients had to go to a half door at these stations to get their food and medicine or to use the restroom, which was adjacent to the nurse’s station. In 1928, the head nurse in room 502 was found dead in this room. She had hanged herself from the light fixture in an apparent fit of depression. According to further research, 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. Her death was ruled a suicide by the county coroner’s office. And this was not the final tragedy to occur here…

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 struck the ground several stories below. We have yet to find any records that indicate why she did this act. There are also no records, despite what the legends say, that anyone other than the above mentioned nurse was ever pushed or jumped from the roof of Waverly Hills.

When we got to the fifth floor that night, we were accompanied by one of the owners. We went into room 502 and almost immediately, the EMF meter reacted to something here. Even stranger, the temperature suddenly rose around us from 86 to 98 degrees. It continued to climb so high that we actually backed out of the room. The owner wanted to see what was happening and as they walked into the room, the meter continued to react but the temperature dropped suddenly down to 68 degrees. This lasted for just a few moments and then stopped. We searched the room to try and find anything that would have caused this to occur but could find nothing artificial or natural to explain it.

After inspecting the rest of the rooms on the roof, we went back downstairs to talk with the director from Triage and to explain where the “hotspots” in the place were located. Jay would be the one who would then deal with the participants in the show.

Jay Gravatte:

My job on that night was simple -- take five girls through Waverly Hills for the Fox’s “reality” series. My main duty was to explain to them some of the history and paranormal activity surrounding the abandoned hospital. Everything we encountered was to be recorded and broadcast as an episode of the show but what occurred that night was anything but simple.

It began on an unusually hot July day, as I arrived at Waverly Hills. I was introduced to the director of the show and he explained how he "wanted" me to do my tour and history lesson. I explained very early on that I did not want to be involved with a show that was going to be rigged. I was then informed that nothing was to be 'spooked up' whatsoever. At close to 8:00 p.m. I was finally introduced to the young ladies I was to play guide to. Before we had even entered the old hospital, the girls felt apprehensive. All they could see was this hulk of a building as it sat there like a conquered and battered ruin.

As we stood in front of the main entrance, I told them of an apparition that had often been seen in that location: a woman running out of the front door, her hands and legs in chains, spectral blood dripping from her wrist and ankles, crying and pleading for help, only to then dissipate into thin air. I led their eyes to a third story window, where a young girl of about seven or eight years old has been seen, and peering out from the windows. This set the mood for the night to come….

Finally we entered the building and I swung open the old main doors and led the girls inside. We spent several moments looking around the lobby where we stood. The girls, the three people from the production company, and I then entered a room directly adjacent to the main entrance. When the Sanatorium operated here, it was the medical director's office, but now it became the girls “safe room”. Chairs, food, and water were set up if the girls needed a break while filming or needed a place to retreat to if things became too much for them to bear. After unloading their sleeping bags, flashlights and other equipment, I proceeded to take them down the medical wing on the first floor. This meant a trip through the so-called “death wing” in which the morgue and autopsy room were located. I was then asked by the director to pull out one of the old trays from the freezer unit, in the autopsy bay. Unbeknownst to me, it had been rigged with a cable, to pull back in on itself. At that point, it didn't though. We then traveled down the hall and out the sliding door at the end to the body chute, the converted coal tunnel that was used to transport dead patients from the hospital to the crematorium located down the hill.

As we proceeded into and down the 485 foot tunnel, one of the girls finally succumbed to the eeriness of her surroundings. She was ready to give up. After a quick pep talk from the others, she decided to weather it out for awhile longer. We then reentered the hospital and headed up toward the second floor dining area. Keep in mind again that it was a hot July day with no wind whipping around us what so ever. I began telling the girls about "Ralph", a ghostly maintenance man who has been seen wearing a white, buttoned-down shirt and white pants. The girls and I begin walking down the corridor and as I am talking, one of them starts to see a red glow beginning to illuminate the entire end of the hallway.

Of course, the girls began screaming and proceeded to nearly run myself and the film crew down. I managed to calm them down and re-tell them about Ralph. At this point, you have to understand that Waverly is in horrible shape. As we are standing there discussing Ralph, a piece of the ceiling swings down and nearly decapitates a cameraman from Triage! Once again, the building was filled with the sound of screaming young women.

Finally, after escorting them back to the "safe room" for a break, I took them on an extremely brief tour of the third, fourth, and fifth floors. I explained about all of the legends associated with Waverly, from the apparition of the little girl on the third floor to the nurse that was hung in room 502 up on the fifth floor. I was then instructed to take them back down the medical wing on the first floor, and as we rounded the corner near Occupational therapy, which is adjacent to the morgue, one of the old heavy wooden doors slammed shut right in my face! At this point, I jumped back, I'll admit it. It takes a lot to unnerve me, but this did the trick. These doors are thick, and rusted on the hinges, and nearly immovable. Suddenly, something comes bouncing down the hallway at us, and old time bottle cap from a soda, it turns out. This made the girls finally break down and scramble back down the hallway to their safe room. Two of them could no longer deal with everything that was happening.

At this point, I'd been there for over five hours, which equals around seven minutes in television time. By this point, it was nearly 1:00 in the morning and the director decided that I was to leave the girls in the building “by themselves“, so to speak. That was fine with me and I gathered my equipment, along with the town girls who chose to leave. We said our goodbyes and walked right out the front door. Unfortunately, the crew caught me saying "I am so glad to be out of there" and it ended up in the show. Of course, I was -- I wanted to go home and take aspirin for the headache that had been brought on by the sounds of screaming -- but not for the reasons that it appeared in the final cut of the program. I walked away from this experience a little wiser on how the media interprets the paranormal when they are only looking for ratings.

I would later ask the girls what had occurred after my departure? This was months before I would see the final aired episode and they told me of noises that had followed them in the building, doors slamming, being touched and even observing things move on their own. This stuck a chord, because during the times that the investigative team of the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society has spent exploring Waverly Hills, we have had this type of activity happen with great frequency.

Troy Taylor:

One of the first questions that people ask me when they learn what I write about for a living is whether or not searching for real ghosts ever scares me. For a very long time, I assured them that I was never frightened during these outings to haunted places and for the most part this was true. My reply would have to change though after I experienced Waverly Hills for the first time.

I first heard about the old hospital from Keith about the time that he and the Louisville Ghost Hunter’s Society first got access to it. In fact, the meter that had been destroyed in the former electroshock therapy room had been purchased from my company and when I heard about what had happened to it, I asked Keith to return it to me. I then sent the meter to my distributor, who has been in business for more than a decade and is an expert on electromagnetic field meters, and asked him to look it over. He had never seen anything like the damage that had been done to the meter before -- and he had no explanation for what could have caused it.

The first time that I visited the hospital was in September 2002. I was in town for the first Mid-South Paranormal Convention and one of the places that I asked Keith to show me in Louisville was Waverly Hills. I was already interested in the history of the place and had heard about the investigations that had been conducted there. I was anxious to see it and so Keith arranged a tour. It was literally a dark and stormy night when we arrived at the hospital and it had been raining all day. I was looking forward to seeing the place, no matter what the weather, and not because I was convinced that I would meet one of the former patients face to face -- it was simply to experience the place for myself. By this time, I had traveled all over the country and had been to hundreds of places that were alleged to be haunted. I had felt just this same way before exploring all of them, so Waverly Hills was no different. To me, it was just an old, spooky building with a fascinating history. The fact that it was alleged to be haunted simply added to the experience. I have long since abandoned the idea of going in expecting too much. This is likely why I was so surprised by what actually happened that night.

After meeting with the owners, Keith and I went inside and started our exploration of the building. Once we were away from the activity going on downstairs, the surroundings fell silent. The only thing that I heard in the dark building was the sound of our own footsteps, our hushed voices and the drip of rain as it slipped through the cracks in the roof and splashed down onto the floor. Keith led me through the place and pointed out the various rooms, the treatment areas, the kitchen, the morgue and on and on. We climbed the stairs to the top floor and I saw legendary room 502, as well as the lights of Louisville as they reflected off the low and ominous-looking clouds that gathered above the city.

During our excursion, I mentioned to Keith that there had been one floor that we had missed -- the fourth. He explained that this was the only floor in the building whose entrance was kept locked and he had waited to save it for last. I remembered then some of the stories that had been passed on to me about this floor. Many regarded it as the most active -- and the most frightening -- area of the former hospital.

The most unusual experience that I had heard about was when Keith was in one of the rooms here. He had been walking along the corridor of the fourth floor with an EMF detector and was followed by two members of his group with a video camera. He started to picking up readings with the meter and he was led onto one of the former treatment rooms. The intensity of the magnetic energy in the room continued to increase and the strongest readings seemed to be in the southeast corner of the room. Keith was standing in the corner, looking at the changes on the meter scale, when an empty plastic soda bottle came seemingly out of nowhere and struck him in the back. As he turned to see what had happened, an overhead fluorescent light fixture suddenly came loose from the ceiling with a loud crack. With one end of it still anchored to the ceiling, the other end swung loose and hit Keith in the side of the head. The long burned-out bulb that remained in the fixture shattered when it collided with Keith and showered him with glass. Before he even had time to react, he heard the sound of a brick scrape across the concrete floor. The noise came from the opposite corner of the room and when he looked over, he saw the brick moving across the floor towards him. With a lurch, it shot directly at him and as he scrambled to get out of the line of fire, it hit him in the small of the back. Needless to say, he quickly retreated from the room. The other investigators had not seen where the brick or the soda bottle had come from, but they had clearly heard the brick move and had seen both objects strike Keith. This is still regarded as one of the most chilling events to occur in the building.

It would not be the only time that Keith would see an object move in the building though. I was present on one other occasion, along with a tour attendee and authors Alan Brown and Dave Goodwin. In September 2003, I returned to Louisville for another conference and that night, we took a group tour of the old hospital. As we were climbing the stairs and going past the fourth floor landing, the group of us at the front of the line clearly saw the heavy metal door open up a few inches and then slam shut under its own power. Keith was just a few feet away from it at the time and he jumped in surprise. No one had been near the door and at the time, the floor was still locked so there was no way that anyone could have gotten on it to manipulate the door.

A year earlier though, when I entered the fourth floor for the first time, I got the distinct feeling that something strange was in the air. I make absolutely no claims of any psychic ability whatsoever but there was just something about this floor of the hospital that felt different than any of the others. What had been nothing more than just an old ramshackle and broken down building suddenly seemed different. I can’t really put into words what felt so strange about it but it almost seemed to be a tangible “presence” that I had not encountered anywhere else in the place. And right away, eerie things started to happen.

We had entered the floor in what I believe was the center of the building. Behind us was a wing that I was told was not safe to enter. Sections of the floor had fallen in and this area was off-limits to tours and visitors. The strange thing about it was that both Keith and I clearly heard the sounds of doors slamming from this part of the building. I can assure the reader that it was not the wind either. The wind was not strong enough that night to have moved those heavy doors and this clearly sounded as though someone was closing them very hard. When I questioned Keith about who else could be up there with us, he explained me about the floors. I investigated on my own and determined that he was correct --- there was no one walking around on that part of the fourth floor.

As we started down the hallway, Keith told me about some of the other experiences that had been experienced by investigators on this floor. The experiences involved the strange shapes that had been seen. The sightings had started the previous October when, on consecutive nights, investigators were able to see what looked like human shadows moving up and down the fourth floor hallway. One of the shadows in particular actually appeared to look around corners at them and all of the shapes passed back and forth across the doorways. Keith added that sightings like this had occurred at other times as well and happened most often when no flashlights were used in the corridor.

I switched off my flashlight and we walked down the corridor using only the dim, ambient light from outside. The hallway runs through the center of the building and on either side of it are former patient rooms. Beyond the rooms is the “porch” area that opens to the outside. It was here where the patients were placed to take in the fresh air. There was no glass ever placed in the huge outer windows, which has left the interior of the floor open to the elements ever since. On this night, the windows also illuminated the corridor, thanks to the low-hanging clouds that glowed with the lights of Louisville. We walked down through the dark and murky corridor and I began to see shadows that flickered back and forth. I was sure that this was trick of the eye though, likely caused by the lights or the wind moving something outside and so I urged Keith on for a closer look. It was where the corridor angled to the right that I got a look at something that was definitely not a trick of the eye!

So that the reader can understand what I saw, I have to explain that the hallway ahead of us continued straight for a short distance and then turned sharply to the right. In the early 1900’s, most institutions of this type were designed in this manner. It was what was dubbed the “bat-wing” design, which meant that there was a main center in each building and then the wings extended right and left, then angled again so that they ran slightly backward like a bird, or bat’s, wings. Directly at the angle ahead of us was a doorway that led into a treatment room. I only noticed the doorway in the darkness because the dim light from the windows beyond it had caused it to glow slightly. This made it impossible to miss since it was straight ahead of us.

We took a few more steps and then, without warning, the clear and distinct silhouette of a man crossed the lighted doorway, passed into the hall and then vanished into a room on the other side of the corridor! The sighting only lasted a few seconds but I knew what I had seen. And for some reason, it shocked and startled me so badly that I let out a yell and grabbed a hold of Keith’s jacket. I am not sure why it affected me in that way but perhaps it was the setting, the man’s sudden appearance, my own anxiety --- or likely all of these things. Regardless, after my yell, I demanded that Keith turn on the light and that he help me to examine the room the man had vanished into. After my initial fright, I became convinced that someone else was on the floor with us. Keith assured me we were the only ones there but he did help me search for the intruder. There was no one there though, he was right, whoever the figure had been, he had utterly and completely vanished.

As of this writing, I was not the first person to have seen this mysterious figure on the fourth floor and it’s unlikely that I will be the last. However, for me, this put Waverly Hills into a unique category for there are not many places that I will firmly state are genuinely haunted. Before I can do that, I have to have my own unexplainable experience and hopefully, it will be something that goes beyond a mere “bump in the night” or spooky photograph. In this case, it was much more than that because I actually saw a ghost. In all of my years of paranormal research, I can count the times that I have seen ghosts on just two fingers and one of them was at Waverly Hills. In this case, seeing really was believing. View  LGHS "Waverly" Photos !

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* The Louisville Ghost Hunters Society Investigations are not always public, we do confidential investigations of haunted residences which will not be reported on our website. If you have a haunted house, or a unexplained phenomenon that you would like us to investigate - please do not hesitate to contact us, and rest assured that your investigation will remain strictly confidential (unless you wish to release our findings to the public).