![]() ![]() So, after sitting for 25 yrs & just recently it has started to be used for a haunted house attraction during Halloween, a film crew came in to film a horror film. it was a place of suffering where over 60,000 poor souls died from TB & later was used a convalescing home for the elderly & crippled who were treated so badly they had to close the place down in 1981. Very cool documentary based on a horror film crew who while looking for a very scary place to film there new horror film, " Death Tunnel" they found Waverly Hills Sanatorium located on the outskirts of Louisville,KY. Waverly for me however symbolized a fun place for adventure for a boy with a sled. I do believe that many around here truly think the place to be haunted. I am a skeptic when it comes to "Ghosts". It left me with a sour taste in my mouth for the filmmaker. If I am not mistaken it appears to have been Holocaust footage. The part of the documentary that turned me off the most was the piling of bodies into a cart. A lot of that may have to do with the age of the building or the right guy wasn't paid off. It was true that it was closed by the state in the early 80's. It did smell of urine and feces and you saw the occasional open gown associated with patients with dementia. They were wooden and openÂ…sometimes too open. By the way, the doors there were not prison like steel doors with chains and padlocks as portrayed in the film. We would go and visit shut-ins in the Nursing Home through a church youth group. I also have traveled into the building several times in the early 70's. Too much is focused on those who suffered. It took a lot of guts for people to work there knowing how contagious TB was. Let's face itÂ…The doctors back then did everything they thought was correct to save people. ![]() ![]() The thing that gets lost about Waverly is that many people survived TB there. It burned for hours while the entire neighborhood sat outside and watched. There was an older hospital on the hill that burned down. One evening when I was young we looked out our front porch and it appeared that the entire hill was on fire. I love the fact that it is getting attention after all these years. Nothing stranger than teen-aged boys acting stupid ever happened. I would have to say we went up that tunnel over 50 times that winter. The only sensation we felt was that we were getting away with something we should not be doing. We would go all the way through the tunnel up the hill to bang on what we thought was the "Door to the Morgue". The place was still being run as a "Geriatric Center" at the time. Many times during the winter of 76-77 we would climb into the Tunnel to warm ourselves. In the wintertime we would pull our sleds down Maryman road and cross Dixie Highway to go sleigh riding on Waverly Hill. Let me preface by stating that I have lived in Louisville, Kentucky all of my life. ![]()
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