The Vault | The haunting history of Waverly Hills Sanatorium

The Vault is a WHAS11 feature in which the Louisville station revisits stories from its archive. This October 2022 segment, from editors Brooke Nichols and Shay McAllister, recalls that Waverly Hills was built in the early 1900s to contain Jefferson County’s tuberculosis epidemic, explains the sunlight-and-fresh-air treatments of the day, and describes the 500-foot concrete tunnel down the hillside.

Most of the piece is about the building’s second life as a ghost attraction. It credits the TV series Ghost Hunters with popularising the site, includes a clip of an environmental health worker who filmed an image he could not explain with a thermal camera, and runs through the stories told on tours – a nurse said to roam the halls, a boy called Timmy said to roll a ball back to visitors, and a “man in white” – with a guide listing shadow people, apparitions and camera malfunctions. It also gives the skeptics’ explanation for the rolling ball.

Treat the numbers with caution. The segment’s claim that more than 50,000 people died at Waverly – and the even larger 63,000 figure repeated on tours – cannot be squared with a hospital built for around 400 patients; researchers at Kentucky Historic Institutions have instead begun compiling a name-by-name index of patients who died there. Likewise, the tunnel was built to carry supplies and steam, and its use as a “death tunnel” is part of the legend.

The segment does include one skeptical note – uneven floors and open windows for the rolling ball – and it is fair about what draws the crowds: paid tours and a haunted house that help fund the building. The patients and staff of the tuberculosis years are the real history here.