Waverly Hills
It’s clear that this pandemic isn’t close to packing up and taking a hike, let’s start there. It’s been going on for almost two years, and it seems that we are far more done with it than it is with us. While this is all true according to the way things are now, these statements could be echoed the same (if not louder) roughly 104 years ago. In the early 1900s, the United States—and to some extent, this world as a whole—was infested with two different plagues that ravaged the populations of several areas. The first was the influenza epidemic; despite its commonality today, the disease was new and deadly to whoever suffered from it. Its death toll in 1918 (when it was at its peak, according to the CDC) was the same as that of the Black Death in the 1340s: 50 million.
At the same time one of the most common illnesses today was wiping out the world’s population, another—just as deadly and arguably more contagious—was spreading. Also known as the “white plague,” the Tuberculosis epidemic of the eighteenth century didn’t seem to be finished with its dirty work. It continued to increase its death toll until a vaccine was made in the 1940s (though the disease—like the flu—isn’t entirely curable, it is treatable according to medicalnewstoday.com). Originating in Africa about three million years ago, the disease spread like wildfire, leading to one of the deadliest epidemics in history alongside its partner in crime, influenza. This epidemic eventually led to the opening of a sanitorium in Louisville, Kentucky back in 1926. Named after a teacher’s fondness for “Waverley Novels,” Waverly Hills Sanitorium was hardly a home-away-from-home for patients suffering from Tuberculosis. Once there, patients and staff became strangers to the outside world and could not go outside of the ‘campus’ for any reason. A school, post office, water treatment facility, garden, and many other necessities of life. Due to the consistent loss of patients (63,000 by the end of the sanitorium’s run), a tunnel was made away from the prying eyes of the facility. Morbidly nicknamed “The Body Chute,” the area was often frequented by staff taking beds which carried deceased patients to the morgue or to be buried.
In the end, Waverly Hills would eventually close its doors in 1961 due to the invention of an antibiotic and vaccine that rendered both the disease and the establishment obsolete. Though Tuberculosis had been “cured,” it seemed that some people just didn’t want to leave the place they called home for so many years and have maintained their residence at Waverly Hills in the form of restless spirits.
Oh yes, you read that right. Big shocker, a place riddled with death and pestilence has now become a staple of the ghost hunter’s road trip. Appearing on several shows such as Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural (which can be watched in its entirety on YouTube and is in the midst of its series finale), Ghost Adventures, Ghost Hunters, and even on the Travel channel, Waverly is known to have its fair share of paranormal events and entities. One is the ghost of a little boy named Timmy, who is said to play with a blue rubber ball. In their visit to the sanitorium, host of Buzzfeed Unsolved Ryan Bergara got a little bit of a surprise from the ghost boy. During the video, Ryan tosses a blue rubber ball down a dark hallway. After not hearing it suddenly stop, he and co-host Shane Madej went to investigate. It was then that Bergara noticed the ball in the middle of an adjacent hallway—directly under graffiti of his first name. As expected, Bergara (the token believer of the duo) had a bit of a breakdown, while his partner (the token skeptic) laughed at his expense—which he claims to be a “coincidence.”
Though this may sound comical, and even if you are not the most avid believer in the supernatural, it’s important to remember that a lot of tragedy occurred at a place that is only three-and-a-half hours away. Many people were unable to get the chance to see loved ones and the outside world again. Even though we are in the midst of history repeating itself—albeit in somewhat of a less-severe way—never take where we are for granted (both in terms of technology and life in general). After all, you could be a little ghost child hearing nothing but “Are ghosts real?” for the rest of eternity.
