Date: 4/08/09

Location:  

Louisville, KY

Building size and style:  

Five Floors, fifth floor is a roof top with open areas and a small enclosure with a former nurse's room (the infamous 502)

Building opened in December of 1912.   Land originally purchased in 1883,  and was the site of a home and small school house.

Weather Conditions:

Clear, very cool, 35-40 degrees Farenheit

BP: 29in and falling

Dew Point:  26 degrees F

Solar X-Rays: Normal

Geomagnetic Field: Quiet

Moon Phase: 99% Full, Waxing Gibbous

Time of investigation: 8pm EST to 3:30am EST

 

The breezeway, where patients were kept outside year-round so that the fresh air could fill their lungs, and it was thought this would eliminate germs and help prevent further contraction.  Many staff members still contracted the disease, sadly.

The 5th floor, or roof top, where a children's playground existed.  They were often brought outside on the roof, minus most of their clothes, as again the fresh air was believed to help patients heal and purge their bodies, in particular their lungs, of the disease.   But more importantly this was known as "Heliotherapy," because ultraviolet sunlight was known to kill the TB bacteria (and thus why they are shirtless).  Remnants of the playground set still sit there today.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium P.I.N.K. Investigation Summary and Notes

 

We did not have any worthwhile evidence to present here, other than a couple of verified personal experiences, that multiple people (in one case just about all 10 of us) experienced.  It's a great place to investigate once a year if you can, but the conditions are tough (lots of neighborhood noise - dogs, cars, planes). It's much more tolerable in the late spring or fall, as there's no heat or AC.  On a windy, cold night such as ours, the upper floors were brutal and it was just challenging to do much or stay up there for long periods of time.   Every possible bit of evidence we had to throw out due to not knowing where even just 10 people were in the building, from the fixed cameras covering the hallways.  Other times voices were heard quite loudly in the distance, but our recorders were too far away to get a clear catch.  

Power is limited and we used every extension cord and reel of cable we had, and were able to put fixed cameras on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors, with IR extenders.  As for hearing footsteps or seeing shadows, which is often reported there, we experienced none of that, just the two female voices that were very loud and really a worthwhile experience on their own.  We could literally hear someone having a conversation outside the room we were in, for several seconds, with no logical source (no one else on the floor or stairwell).

 After the tour we broke-off into groups of 3 and 4 (2 groups of 3 and one group of 4).  The building was as it's been described;  incredibly drafty and open on the upper floors where the patients resided, dark and abandoned.  The moon was almost full and very bright, which actually made it somewhat difficult on our IR cameras and ability to work in darkness, ecspecially on the noteworthy and active upper floors.



Here one of the operating room light fixtures still remains, the other light was stolen.

 

It's a great, fun place to investigate, you can almost feel the emotional imprints left there, as it's just as it was (despite the lack of furniture, and the objects and graffitti) back in the prime years of it's operation.  Thousands of people died here, but the actual number is often exaggerated.   A former doctor of the hospital, while still alive, re-called the hightest number of deaths in one year being  152.  This was during WWII when a number of soliders returned after having contracted TB overseas.

 



Room 502

Room 502, where the nurse (Hillenburg) reportedly hung herself, or threw herself off the roof, or was killed inadvertently in an abortion gone-wrong,  has never been verified by public or private records.  A former employee claims to have found her, but only two Hillenburg's have death records in Kentucky, and they were both in different areas of the state, and occurred much later than the nurse's reported death.   We're led to believe that the stories of this room, are simply an urban myth, because it's the only one in the hospital with a number still above it's door.

Mike, Ruth, Brad and Dennis had a notable experience on the 4th floor late in the night.  While standing in the room in west wing of the building, all four heard a distinct adult female voice speaking just outside the room, it was very audible and clear, and it seemed as if the person were talking to someone else.  They waited a few seconds to register what happened, and quickly realized no one else was on the floor with them or in the stairwell (we rotated floors every 1.5 hours typically and used 2-way radios to communicate.

Additionally, the entire group (12 people including the tour guide) heard a another female voice from a distance, while we all stood in a stairwell listening to a tour guide story, between the 3rd and 4th floors.  Everyone heard this, it occurred around 9:15-9:30pm.

Over-all it was a relatively quiet night with no sightings reported or other notable or verifiable paranormal activity.  We covered the building and grounds thoroughly with cameras and walk throughs.

I suppose the building is suffering from some over-exposure and whatever types of phenomenon reside there, have become quite used to, and resigned to the fact, that people are there just about every night.