The (Mis)adventures of Jyl: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

Jyl takes us inside one of Kentucky’s darkest landmarks from the era when tuberculosis was a rampant “consumption” across the world.

Welcome back, misadventurers! This week, we’re heading to Louisville, Kentucky, for a place that has never needed much help building a reputation. Its name comes up often in conversations about hauntings, but the building’s history is heavy enough without anything added to it.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium originally opened in 1910 and later expanded into the much larger facility, completed in 1926, that still stands today. This is one of the most talked about abandoned medical sites in the United States. At its peak, the facility held hundreds of patients at a time, all in varying stages of an illness that was, at the time, slow, unpredictable, and frequently fatal. Patients were sent there for long-term care, often staying for months or even years.

It was built to treat tuberculosis at a time when there weren’t effective options. The building reflects that purpose. It is large, practical, and not especially concerned with comfort. Long hallways run the length of each floor, lined with rooms that opened to porches, part of a treatment plan that relied on constant fresh air, even in the winter. Patients were moved outside for hours at a time every day. They were put on strict bed rest and fed diets heavy on milk, eggs, and meat. In more severe cases, doctors resorted to procedures meant to collapse parts of the lung to give it a “rest,” an approach that says a lot about how limited their options were.

By the 1920s and 1930s, tuberculosis deaths were high, and facilities like Waverly Hills were under constant pressure. Medical staff worked with very limited resources, and for many patients, there was no real recovery to offer. It’s estimated between 6,000 and 8,000 people died here. One feature of the building that gets talked about often is the so-called body chute, a long, enclosed passage used to move the dead away from patient areas. It was designed to keep operations discreet and to avoid drawing attention to how frequently deaths were occurring. It is a practical solution to a difficult problem, but it is also one of the clearest reminders of how the building functioned on a daily basis.

After antibiotics became widely available, tuberculosis treatment changed, and facilities like Waverly Hills were no longer necessary. It closed as a sanatorium in 1961. The building was repurposed for a time as a nursing home, eventually closed in 1982, and was then left to sit. As the building sat empty, stories about the place started to spread for reasons that had less to do with medicine and more to do with what people thought they experienced there.

What stands out isn’t any single report, but how consistent they are over time. Visitors and investigators describe footsteps in the long empty corridors, doors that move without anyone near them, and voices that seem to carry through the building when it should be quiet. Some claim to hear children. Others describe the feeling of being watched, especially in the upper floors where the wards once held the sickest patients. The same features that made the sanatorium functional are the ones that seem to shape how people experience it now.

Today, Waverly Hills operates as a tour site, with both historical and after-hours visits available to the public. Daytime tours focus more on the building’s medical history and architecture, while evening tours lean more into the paranormal. There are even options for six-hour overnight investigations, which feels like a bold way to learn whether you actually enjoy scary places or just like the idea of them.

Jyl Glenn is a writer, editor, formatter, anthologist, poet, and a medical-legal writer and consultant. Her lifelong love affair with horror began at a very early age when she was left unattended on the weekend Poltergeist debuted on HBO. And then she figured out she could read any horror book she liked as long as she hung out at the public library, even if the librarian deemed it not to be age appropriate. Jyl was born and raised in New York and now lives in Tulsa with her dog and kitten. She loves creepy art, dark poetry, and pink dinosaurs. When she isn’t dabbling in the macabre—she’s most likely asleep.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.