Waverley Hills Sanitorium, Louisville, Kentucky, USA (Part 2)

Overnight Investigation:

During a trip to the USA a few years ago I realized that our itinerary was going to take us within a ten hour drive from Kentucky. As hubby wanted to visit the Jim Beam Distillery and I was very keen to visit the Waverley Hills Sanitorium we decided to add this side trip to our travels.

I was so excited to have the opportunity to not only go to see the notorious Waverley Hills Sanitorium but when I saw there were tickets available on both the Historical (daytime) Tour and the Overnight Investigation we HAD to get them. There are so many stories about the hospital building including apparitions being seen, footsteps being heard when no one is around, doors opening and closing by themselves, disembodied voices and unexplained black mists but one of the most intriguing reports to me is that of the "Creeper" (sometimes known as the "Crawler") which is a black shadowy or misty figure which seems to crawl around not only the floors but also the walls and ceilings!

With this activity in mind I booked the Historical tour so I could get a good idea of what was what and where everything was in daylight before we did the 6 hour overnight Investigation. The historical tour was really interesting and as it was done during daylight hours we were able to clearly see all the areas we would be visiting that night. It also gave me insight into how conditions in the building had been during the TB epidemic.

The overnight investigation group started at midnight with a walk-through of the building. We were shown areas of interest and told paranormal stories about the building and the inhabitants of the building. We were then left to explore the building and investigate as we wanted, although a huge problem with both of the tours we did was that we were not allowed any recording devices or video cameras during the day time tour and although we were allowed them for the night time investigation we were not allowed to use strong torches (only a small one in the stairwells) and were discouraged from using flash when taking photos. (You will see by some of my phone video clips that I did use a torch but only when I was alone in an area or the people in the area close by were also using torches. I was however able to do many communication sessions in areas where I was the only person present and I took many hours of infrared footage.  (As we were on a six week holiday I only had limited equipment with me so had to do my best with what I had.)

  During our time there the only odd thing that happened to me was when I walked into a room on the fourth floor and smelt dog. Later we were told that a homeless man and his dog had lived in that room and that he and his dog had been murdered some years before by a group of kids who had broken into the building. The room had been cleaned and was open to the elements so it was odd that I could smell dog after all those years had passed. Also strange was when hubby and I were standing in the doorway to the stairwell and hubby reported seeing a small dark mass move down a couple of stairs onto the landing, then within two minutes we came across a couple who also reported having seen a small dark mass moving across the floor in one of the large rooms nearby. At one point I thought I had seen a dark "orb" flying towards me as I help my torch but that was soon debunked as a bat (of which there were lots in places) By about 4.30am about half the people on the tour had decided they wanted to leave so for about the last hour hubby and I were the only people on the entire ground floor. This meant that we had the body chute to ourselves for this time, which was amazing. Strangely while standing at the top of the chute we thought we could see movement at the bottom and thought that maybe were not actually the only ones in that area as we had thought but, once at the bottom there were no people there.

It was a really good night and I'd recommend it to anyone. I don't know if we were just lucky when we did our investigation but we often found ourselves alone in areas and when most people left early we had free reign of whole floors. I can't say I captured anything paranormal that night and others who attended thought they had taken ‘ghost pictures’ but when I looked at them they looked like pareidolia, dust or nothing at all to me! I did manage to take a few video clips on my phone to share with our followers though so I hope you enjoy them. Sorry that they are very raw and the audio in places is not great but you definitely get the impression of what it was like inside the building. Waverley Hills is a building that I'd love to return to investigate once again.