HGB Ep. 569 - Return to Waverly Hills Sanatorium

Moment in Oddity - The Origin of Times Square's New Years Celebration (Suggested & Written by: Dwight Shepherd)

Most holidays have traditions that grow up around them. Things that, over time, just become almost a natural and expected part of the holiday. Did you ever stop to think how some of these traditions got their start? Take New Years, and in particular, New Years Eve. I’m sure every one of you is familiar with the dropping of the ball in Times Square.  Most of us have probably watched it at one time or another.  For some, it’s just something that we do EVERY New Years Eve. A few of you may even have seen it in person in New York City. Over 1 million people do that each year. Worldwide, another 1 billion people watch it on TV. Did you ever wonder how all that got started? Well, would you believe that its very beginnings can be traced to a small cemetery in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee?  Indeed, that’s where it all began. The cemetery is First Presbyterian Cemetery.  For those of you not familiar with it, it’s located behind the Tennessee Theatre. Let's go back to the year 1869.  An 11 year old boy had to pass by it on his way home from his job at The Knoxville Chronicle, which was located over on Market Square.  There were no child labor laws then, so he got off work at midnight each night. This meant the area near the cemetery was very dark and deserted. There were stories whispered that at least one of the residents of First Presbyterian Cemetery didn’t always stay in his grave, or at least his spirit didn’t. So, many nights, this 11 year old boy stayed at work until daylight. Now there were no beds at The Chronicle. Heck, there wasn’t even an employee breakroom back then. So in order to be allowed to stay, this boy started “helping out” throughout the paper. He began to learn about all aspects of producing a newspaper.  His family moved away briefly the next year.  However, within another year they were back in Knoxville.  He was back working at The Chronicle, and back to learning and earning his keep overnight. By the time he was 19, he was capable of running a newspaper himself.  And he soon got that chance.  He heard that a newspaper in Chattanooga had gone bankrupt.  Through the help of family and friends, he was able to put together $250 to buy The Chattanooga Times in 1878.  He turned that paper around, and was soon making a profit.  As a side note, although it has since merged with The Free Press, that paper is still in business today. In 1886, a friend let him know that a paper in another city was close to going bankrupt, and was available for sale.  Coincidentally, it was also named The Times.  He was able to come up with the $75,000 to buy that paper.  He turned it around as well.  The job he did was so impressive that even today, the masthead of The New York Times continues to list Adolph Ochs as publisher. Now Adolph Ochs grew The Times so much that he had to have a new building constructed to house his paper.  That building is located at what is now called Times Square in New York in its honor.  To celebrate the completion of his new headquarters, Ochs had fireworks set off from the building on New Years Eve 1904.  It was so well received, that they began doing it every year.  In 1907, they began dropping a ball as part of that celebration.  It has taken place every year, except 1942 and 43, because of World War II. They say that truth is stranger than fiction.  The fact that way over 1 billion people celebrate New Years Eve having its beginnings because an 11 year old boy was scared to walk past a haunted cemetery in Knoxville at night certainly is odd.

This Month in History - Hank Williams Checks into the Andrew Johnson Hotel Before Dying (Suggested & Written by: Dwight Shepherd)

On December 31, 1952, Hank Williams checked into the Andrew Johnson Hotel to wait out bad weather and by the wee hours of the morning, he was dead. The Andrew Johnson Building on Gay Street in Knoxville will soon be renovated into a mix of commercial/retail space, permanent residences, and overnight rental accommodations. For a number of years, it housed the Knox County School System Central Office.  Before that, it was something completely different.  It opened as a luxury hotel in 1928, and was at the time, the tallest building in Tennessee.  In the 1930s radio station WNOX broadcast from its upper floors.  Their Mid-Day Merry Go Round program featured live performances from a list of entertainers that soon would be among The Who’s Who of Country Music. In 1936, Amelia Earhart stayed here.  During an interview conducted here, she told a local reporter because of the nature of flying, she didn’t expect to die of old age.  She disappeared on her around the world flight a year later.  In 1943, Russian composer Sergi Rachrominoff stayed here while giving a concert at the University of Tennessee.  It would prove to be his last concert. He died three months later. On New Years Eve 1952, Hank Williams checked in here because bad weather had canceled his flight.  Williams, in addition to being a country music superstar, was also a legal morphine addict.  A back injury caused him so much pain that he actually carried a card that authorized doctors to give him morphine to control the pain.  Unfortunately, Hank was also an alcoholic.  Those two are not a good combination. After getting to the hotel, Hank told his teenage driver, Charlie Carr, to get him a bottle of whiskey and a doctor to give him a shot of morphine.  Folks at the hotel told him where he could find both. Now, naturally the doctor had never treated Hank before.  Exactly how he figured the dose of morphine, only he knew for sure.  Anyway, it couldn’t have mixed well with the alcohol. Later that evening, Hank’s manager called.  Hank was in no condition to talk to him, so young Charlie Carr took the call.  Hank was due for a concert in Charleston, West Virginia.  They couldn’t wait for the weather to clear.  They needed to get on the road and keep driving until either they came to an airport where they could get a flight out, or they reached Charleston by car.  At 10:45PM, the driver called the front desk.  They were checking out, and he’d need help getting his boss to their car.  Charlie pulled a 1952 blue Cadillac to the hotel’s side entrance.  Porters and bellmen who helped Hank to the car said he was unresponsive, except for a couple of coughing noises, and was cool to the touch. Charlie finally pulled over in Virginia, and flagged down a highway patrolman.  Hank Williams was dead at age 29.  Many people believe that he actually died at the Andrew Johnson in Knoxville.  It has been reported that on foggy New Year’s Eves, an old blue Cadillac can be seen circling the AJ Building. Maybe Hank hasn’t quite checked out yet.

Return to Waverly Hills Sanatorium

In April 2018, Diane visited Waverly Hills Sanatorium for the first time and several listeners joined her on a tour of the place. The group experienced some unexplained things and Diane has been dying to get back and show me the place. Covid thwarted our plan to investigate privately with a group of listeners in April 2020. So, with an unexpected trip to Louisville in December 2024, we couldn't pass up a chance to do a tour. Gargoyles maintain sentinel duty atop the imposing structure of the sanatorium. Are they keeping ghosts locked inside or protecting the interior from spirits? It's hard to say. Perhaps a little of both as Waverly Hills Sanatorium quite possibly is one of the most haunted locations in America. Join us for this return to the history and hauntings of Waverly Hills Sanatorium!

Most people are probably unaware that Tuberculosis still kills over one million people every year. This isn't just a disease that ravaged people during the early 1900s. The disease was often referred to as Consumption because it seemed to consume the afflicted individual. Others called it the "white death." This disease was highly contagious and there was no cure. The city of Louisville was hit with the highest case load in the country by 1900 and they needed a place that could not only get the sick away from the rest of the population, but make sure the sick got the three main forms of treatment being used for TB: nutrition, fresh air and sunlight. Waverly Hills Sanatorium would become that place.

Waverly Hills sits on a spot where a school once stood. Major Thomas H. Hays had bought the land in 1883 with the goal of building a school for his daughters to attend. That school was just a one room school house that was located on Pages Lane. Lizzie Lee Harris was hired to be the teacher and she named the school "Waverley School" after some novels named "Waverley Novels." Major Hays followed suit and named the property "Waverley Hill." The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital kept the name after purchasing the land and opening the Sanatorium. The original sanatorium that they built was not the large structure that stands today. The first was a framed building with a hipped roof and only had two stories. It could accommodate around 40 to 50 patients. The climate of Jefferson County, where Louisville is located, was conducive to the spread of TB and by the early 1900s, the county was hit hard. The original hospital was ill equipped to handle the amount of patients that would be flooding in. The city of Louisville started to plan a new hospital in 1911.

The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital was given $25,000 to erect a new hospital for the care of advanced cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. In order to start the building, the patients from the City Hospital had to be moved to tents set up on the grounds at Waverly Hills. The new pavilion was finished in 1912 and could care for another 40 patients. A children's pavilion was added as well for both sick kids and the children of patients. The plan for Waverly was to continue adding buildings and it eventually became like many other TB properties. These properties would become self-sufficient mini cities with their own water treatment facilities, post offices and growing their own food. Waverly followed the same pattern. But eventually, there was a desire to build a larger structure and that is the building that still exists today

Construction began in March of 1924 on the brick, five-story gothic styled building. It was designed by architect James J. Gaffney. The sanatorium would be able to house up to 400 patients. It was designed to provide a variety of treatments and was considered state-of-the-art at the time, despite the fact that many of the treatments they used for TB, we would consider barbaric. The facility officially opened on October 17, 1926. One of the treatments offered at Waverly Hills was time out on the Solarium.These were large patio areas on the outside of each floor where patients would sit for hours to take in the fresh air and enjoy the peace of the wooded area that surrounded the sanatorium. There was an audio system set up where patients could listen to music and the radio station broadcasting from within Waverly Hills. Our tour guide said it was like the first iPod. Some patients would be left out here up to 13 hours and there are even photos that show that some patients would actually be covered in snow. For this reason, the first electric blankets were used here. Another treatment was time in the sunroom, which was a room with heat lamps that were to provide a feeling as though being in the sun. The more barbaric treatments included electric shock for people with TB of the brain and surgical procedures to remove ribs and muscle. One of the worst treatments was a process where a lung would be deflated because TB needs oxygen to survive. This treatment did help some people, but mainly ended up killing people.

The facility served as a tuberculosis hospital until 1961. In 1943, streptomycin was discovered and it proved to successfully treat TB. This eventually would make Waverly Hills obsolete and so it did close in 1961 with any patients still remaining being transferred to Hazelwood Sanatorium. The following year it reopened after renovation as WoodHaven Medical Services, a geriatric facility for people with mobility issues and dementia. This facility ran until it was closed by the state in 1981. This was supposedly due to patient neglect. Simpsonville developer J. Clifford Todd bought the hospital in 1983 for $3,005,000. Todd joined forces with architect Milton Thompson and the men planned to convert it into a minimum-security prison for the state. Waverly is surrounded by a neighborhood and obviously, these people were not about to allow a minimum security prison in their backyard. The men switched to a plan to build apartments, but that fell through as well.

Robert Alberhasky bought the property in 1996 with the hope of turning it into an arts and worship center. He wanted to also build a replica of the Christ the Redeemer statue that is in Rio de Janeiro. This statue was going to be 150 feet tall and 150 feet wide and placed on the roof of the sanatorium. Donations fell through and the project was cancelled the following year. Tina and Charlie Mattingly then bought Waverly Hills in 2001. The Mattinglys hold tours of Waverly Hills and host a haunted house attraction each Halloween, with proceeds going toward restoration of the property. Restoration is going well, but is slow. The rooms that we saw that were restored looked great. Waverly Hills Historical Society is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of Waverly Hills Sanatorium.

It is no secret that Waverly Hills is haunted. And while I generally leave it up to you to decide if a place is haunted or not, I can tell you that I believe something I cannot explain is going on in this building. Thousands of people have had experiences here, including us. The smell of fresh baked bread has come from the former kitchen. Many ghost hunters claim that the ghost of a small boy named Timmy roams the halls. There are no records of a Timmy at the sanatorium though. The creepiest story in connection to Waverly is that of The Creeper. The Creeper is a dark and terrifying entity that crawls along the floors and the walls and many believe it is demonic in nature. Others believe it’s a human spirit that's been twisted by the trauma of tubercular death. People who see it are filled with dread.

The refrigeration room has child ghosts that like to play Hide and Seek. A group investigating in here once caught an EVP on a phone. You can hear the guest say "Ready or not" and then a child's voice responds "Here I come."  Apparently, the refrigerators were sometimes used for more than just food. The vegetables and meat would be pulled out and replaced by bodies. People who are closed up in the unit routinely feel their hair being pulled or the shirts being tugged upon. Children also haunt the former cafeteria and are sometimes joined by a ghost cat. People feel it rubbing up against their ankles.

The Cult of Weird website reported the following experience, "As we continued our conversation I began to notice a small orb-shaped pinpoint of light moving across the second floor solarium. It was the size of a firefly but a blue-white color, and it would disappear only to reappear with perfect timing in every other window. My companion asked if I could see a blue light. I said that I could. We watched as it traveled the entire length of the west side of the building heading east. At first it appeared as if it was inside the building, but as it progressed it moved up above the solarium windows in front of the exterior brick. When this happened it became two separate identical points of light, spaced so closely they almost touched each other. When the light neared a bend in the building—the sanatorium is roughly question mark shaped—we lost sight of it. The light(s) traveled roughly 350 feet in approximately 10 seconds."

Diane visited with a bunch of listeners in April 2018 and we couldn't pass up the chance for Kelly to get to see it when we drove to Louisville for Jerry Paulley's memorial service. We were joined on the tour by Bailey Landrum and her friend Ellie. We started the tour where the cafeteria, kitchen and bakery were once located. We then went to the former chapel on an upper floor. There we were shown a picture captured on an investigation in 2003 by a staff member who has worked at Waverly Hills for 21 years and the picture features two guests standing in front of a window in the chapel and there is the head of another person between them. This was someone who was not standing there for the picture. And being that this was the third floor, it couldn't have been someone standing outside. And there was no glass in the windows in 2003, so it wasn't a reflection of someone else in the room.

There was a woman who had lived at Waverly Hills named Lois. She passed away here in a room that guests visit on the tour. Lois was only 28 when she died from TB in 1956. She had been pregnant when she got to the sanatorium, so when it was time to give birth, she was taken somewhere else to give birth and then brought back. Lois never got to touch her son that she gave birth to. She suffered from TB for 8 years and spent all of those at Waverly. Her sister, Audrey, also had the dreaded disease and joined her in the room. She managed to recover and lived to be in her 90s. Investigators have picked up EVP of a female voice saying "Audrey" as though Lois is searching for her sister. A flowery smell is sometimes detected and she likes to play with people's hair. We didn't get any activity here, but we were told that Ghost Hunters saw a full-bodied apparition here when they investigated. Our guide Kristal saw her only apparition near this area. (Kristal Experience)

Our tour group in 2018 had an amazing group experience at the elevator shaft on the third floor. A homeless man and his dog were thrown down to the bottom of this shaft and reports claimed that it had been a ritualistic murder. The homeless man had lived in the building for quite some time and he was very protective of it. As the tour guide was telling us this history, Diane clearly heard a dog whimper. She thought perhaps it was the power of suggestion until the tour guide asked if we all heard it and everybody said yes. Then a little bit later there was another whimper followed by a door slam. And we again heard the dog whimper a third time before we left the area. It was clear. It was audible. Diane had no doubt that the ghost of a dog had joined us...or at least a residual whimper. This time around we didn't get any activity, but were told about the ball moving down the hall on the Ryan and Shane Unsolved Buzzfeed Show. The ball went down the hallway and then turned the corner by itself, as if a dog was carrying it and we were also told that Tina once saw the apparition of a dog lying down in the hallway and then it disappeared. Then our guide shared this audio with us. (Dog Audio)

Diane had a guide tell her about an experience he had on the fourth floor. A group had arrived in a chauffeur van and the driver had joined the tour. The driver was bringing up the rear with the guy telling Diane the story and they distinctly heard the sound of dance music floating up the hall and they also could hear the sound of feet dancing on the floor. The fourth floor is probably the most haunted floor and is very creepy. People often feel uneasy and nauseous on this floor and it is cloaked in darkness with just a hint of ambient light. To get to the floor, you go through a metal door and the guide told us about some teenagers who were ransacking the place and they got locked in by something. They had brought an axe with them and tried to open the door with it, but had no luck. The marks in the door are still there. Whatever is on this floor does not seem to be human. There are supposedly shadow figures everywhere poking out of doors. We thought we saw a child ghost peeking out of a room several times. We went into a room that was used for the surgery and it was here where many people suffered and died from various experiments to ease their symptoms. A person in our group captured a weird picture of Bailey in here. And Kelly felt weird in here with tightness in her chest. 

The fifth floor opens up onto the roof. A nurse supposedly hanged herself in the center room. She had fallen in love with a doctor who was married and carried on an affair with him. She discovered she was pregnant and she told him about it. He rejected her and in her dismay, she committed suicide. Some stories claim that she lived in Room 502 and hanged herself there, but guides believe she hanged herself in the public area. We're pretty sure that is the truth as we were told a story about a man who visited and told the guides that he was 8-years-old when he came to the sanatorium with his mother who was a nurse and they walked off the elevator and into that open area and discovered the nurse hanging. Kristal pointed out that she didn't think it was a suicide because what nurse would hang herself near the children's wing, which was on the fifth floor. She thinks its possible that an orderly was asked to take the nurse out on behalf of the doctor.

The Morgue Wing has a cafeteria above it and in order for a patient to eat in the cafeteria, they had to get dressed. They couldn't enter in their gowns. There was a morgue slab still in the morgue that could hold three bodies. Only the bottom one can still hold any weight and many times, investigators try out lying down in that bottom one and being left for awhile. We were told on the tour about one woman who decided to do this and when her team returned 30 minutes later, she was curled up in the fetal position at the back of the slab. This was shared on TripAdvisor, "I got away from the other folks and did my own thing. I laid on the bottom morgue slab, hoping to get touched. But didn't. Later, I did a flashlight session with a female in the shock therapy bedroom while sitting on the bed and she answered questions by making the flashlight turn on. THEN, I went down the Death Chute alone - a 500 ft walk down in complete blackness. I could hear footsteps behind me but when I turned to take a picture, there was no one there. I turned on my FLIR and have two videos of an entity which followed me down the Death Chute and then led the way back up. It even played with my hair!" What that person meant by Death Chute is the infamous Body Chute. It was out last stop.

The creepiest location at Waverly Hills has to be the Body Chute. This is a long chute that went downhill a very long way and has 145 concrete stairs next to it. A track system would carry the bodies to the bottom where families could pick up the bodies or the local funeral parlor would collect them. The reason this was used was because so many people were dying, the administrators were worried that it would depress the patients and they would give up their fight and all hope when they saw so many of their compatriots die. The chute is dark and it smells. When Diane took the tour in 2018, the guide shared a story about an experience that she had at the Body Chute. She was giving a tour and had her back to the chute. She noticed that several people in her group were getting startled looks on their faces and one of them told her to turn around. When she did, she saw a white misty figure at the bottom of the Chute. She has experienced enough at Waverly Hills that she thought to herself, I'm okay as long as that just stays where it is. When she turned back around, she saw that her entire group had run away. She turned around again to see why they had run and the white figure was running straight at her. People report hearing screams and cart wheels on investigations. Kristal has seen someone get scratched on their abdomen here. A SWAT team has run out of the Body Chute they were so scared. Green orbs with faces have been captured in pictures. We had an experience there on this tour too. (Body Chute Sound) (Body Chute Amped) (Body Chute Full Audio) At the end here you hear that Kelly and I heard totally different sounds.

Visiting Waverly Hills Sanatorium is an experience that every paranormal enthusiast needs to have. Are the former patients and staff still wandering the halls in the afterlife? Is Waverly Hills Sanatorium haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 300 - It's a Haunted Gay Life

Moment in Oddity - Whispers of Yellowstone Lake
Suggested by Carren Sanders

Science has been able to document and explain many weird atmospheric occurrences that have happened throughout the years, but when it comes to the Whispers of Yellowstone Lake, they have documented the phenomenon, but never explained it. The first reports of these sounds were collected in 1893 and published in Science Magazine by Edwin Linton. He had heard the strange noise himself twice. But accounts go back much further than that to the fur trappers and mountain men. For many years after Linton's article, nobody mentioned the sounds, but reports started again in 1924. Jack Haynes was a photographer and he was with a group in a boat on Yellowstone Lake early one morning. They all heard this low roar that got louder and rose in pitch and then faded, only to start up again from another direction. It happened a third time and all of this took place in less than a minute and then it was silent. People who have heard the Whispers say that they sound like these weird ethereal aerial sounds that mimic an electric harp and that they sound as though they are coming up out of the lake or that the sound is hanging over the lake. They are like a low hum that increases in decibels and it sounds almost as if the hums pass right over the person who hears them. It then fades away.. There have been several causes suggested over the years. Some say it is caused by swarming bees, but the sound is still around in the winter. Others believe it is just the wind blowing through the trees. A man named Ed Henry suggested that the weird sound was created by air currents created by the mountains and many agree. The sound is always heard when the lake is calm and early in the morning after an unusually cool evening. Whatever it is that causes the whispers, they certainly are odd! And here is a sample shared by the National Park Service!

This Day in History - Pulse Nightclub Massacre

In the month of June, on the 12th, in 2016, Omar Mateen, opened fire inside the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida and killed 49 people and wounded 53 others. The Pulse Nightclub was opened in 2004 by Barbara Poma and Ron Legler as a gay bar and nightclub that hosted various theme nights. This particular night happened to be Latin Night, so most of the victims were Latino. Mateen was a security guard who had been to the club a few times. He had sworn allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and a recent event in which the U.S. killed Abu Waheeb, the leader of the militant group Islamic State in Iraq, triggered him. That would not only make this a mass shooting and hate crime, but also a terrorist attack. The attack started around 2am with Mateen marching into the club carrying a SIG Sauer MCX semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol. An off-duty police officer working as security called in the police immediately. There was an initial engagement, but Mateen barricaded himself inside and created a hostage situation. He claimed to have explosives, which made the police more cautious about bursting in, but in actuality there were no explosives. At the time of the attack, this was the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in US history. Today, it is still the deadliest act of violence against the LGBTQ community in US history. The Pulse Nightclub is now a memorial site and museum, slated to open in 2020.

It's a Haunted Gay Life

This episode is going to be a little different and why shouldn't it be since this is officially HGB's 300th episode! June 2019 marks a few things. I've been producing the podcast for exactly 4.5 years. We've hit a big episode number and have almost 4 million downloads of the podcast. And the month of June is gay pride and 2019 marks 50 years since the StoneWall Riot that started the big push for gay rights in America. This coming together of big milestones inspired this episode and what I will present here for your listening pleasure is a bit of gay history that has hauntings connected to it and after producing a haunted history podcast for this many years, I have changed my opinions, beliefs and practices in regards to the paranormal and will share that perspective. Plus, my top 10 most haunted places I've visited! Join me on an exploration into my haunted gay life!

For podcasters, big milestone shows usually mean rolling out a big topic. I struggled. What did I want to do? I haven't done Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum yet. How about Skinwalker Ranch? Or perhaps Raynham Hall in England? But these places have been done to death and I really enjoy doing the obscure places. But I wanted this episode to be different. I thought that I might share my top haunted locations based on my own experiences - and I will throw a few of those in - but this would be repeating things from other episodes. Almost like a review show. Then I thought about the fact that I've been doing History Goes Bump for a year now, on my own. I've settled into my own skin and realized that my views have changed from the very first episode. I listened to Episode 1 a few weeks ago and once again cleaned up the audio a little bit and added an intro disclaimer in hopes that people would not just listen to that episode and decide they didn't like HGB, but give it a chance as the production has drastically improved. As I listened, I realized that I had changed my mind on a few things and even more importantly, in the last four and a half years, I've had quite a few of my own experiences that I can't explain. I also got really inspired by a podcast I just binged. The latest season of Uncover by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is titled The Village and it explores the history of the Toronto Gay Village and unsolved murders of gay men and transsexuals that have happened there. That trip through history made me think of American gay history and my own. Things have changed so much. And wouldn't you know, as I explored the history, I found some haunts in some very important landmarks.

I turned sixteen in 1987. I guess that makes me a little old for some listeners as the vast majority of podcast listeners are millennials. While most teens at that age are concerned with passing their driver's license test, I was realizing what it was exactly that made me seem different then everybody else and it wasn't just that I wished I lived in the attic of the Addam's Family House while they all lived downstairs. I was gay. It amazes me as I sit back today and see that we live in a culture where people don't even have to claim a gender anymore and can love anybody they want to love. That wasn't the case when I was a teenager and it certainly wasn't for the decades before I came out to myself. There was a time when a relationship of mixed religious beliefs or races was taboo and even illegal. My how things have changed and I'm so happy for young people today. There are definitely still places where it isn't accepted and families that will still lay down judgement, but for the most part, we are pretty close to being where we should be.

I like to educate on this podcast, so let's take a trip back 50 years to one of the most momentous moments in gay history here in America. There was a time when not only was homosexuality considered a mental illness, it was illegal to practice. Come with me to The Stonewall Inn

The Stonewall Inn

The Stonewall Inn got it's start in 1930 as a speakeasy located at 91 Seventh Avenue South. Vincent Bonavia was the owner, so it was known as Bonnie’s Stonewall Inn and its cover was that it was just a basic tearoom serving up light faire and some non-alcoholic beverages. It eventually was raided by prohibition agents, but it continued to operate. When Prohibition was repealed, Bonavia decided he wanted to move to a better location. There was a building on Christopher Street that had once been stables back in the mid-19th century. Bonnie's Stonewall Inn moved in there in 1934 and took up two storefronts, 51-53 Christopher Street. The bar and restaurant was very successful until the inside was gutted by a fire in 1964. The place needed somebody new to love it.

In walks the Mafia. They were all about making a profit and they saw a need in New York City for gay bars. So in 1966, three members of the Mafia refurbished the Stonewall Inn and reopened as a gay bar. At that time, it was the biggest gay establishment in the U.S. This not only made it popular with the gay community, but it put a big target on it for the police. It was customary for the New York Police Department to raid bathhouses and gay bars. Every establishment got hit at least once a month. The ludicrous rules in place at the time were that it was illegal for same sex people to dance close to each other, it was illegal to serve gay people alcohol and customers had to wear clothing specific to their genders. For example, a woman needed to wear three pieces of feminine clothing. A police raid usually happened early in the evening and if the bar was lucky, they would have been tipped off, so they could hide a bunch of liquor and continue business after the raid. The police would come in and turn on all the lights. Everybody would be lined up along the wall, verbally harrassed and they would have to present their IDs. If you didn't have ID or were a man dressed in drag or a woman dressed butch, you would be arrested. Bar employees would also sometimes be arrested.

By 1969, the gay community in New York had had enough. On June 28, 1969, the gay community would make their stand and their frustration would erupt in riots. At 1:20 in the morning, eight police officers raided the Stonewall Inn. They expected the typical subjugation, but the 200 patrons refused to cooperate. They were all informed they were under arrest, but the cops needed more paddy wagons. As they waited for the wagons, a crowd began to form outside and before long, it was ten times its original size. The wagons arrived and the first to be loaded was a lesbian. She pushed back and refused to get in the wagon and as she fought she was hit in the head with a billy club. She was picked up and thrown into the wagon. And that was all it took.

Some of the crowd pushed against the paddy wagon trying to tip it over, while others threw beer bottles and bricks at the other wagons. There were ten officers against a crowd of 600 and in a true twist of irony, they ended up seeking shelter in the very gay bar that they made unsafe for the gays. Despite this being their place to love and dance, the rioters turned on Stonewall and threw anything they could at the windows, from bottles to rocks to garbage cans. Attempts were made to bust down the doors. The Tactical Police Force was called in and they managed to squash the rebellion and arrested a bunch of people. The streets were cleared by 4am. Several people had been injured including four of the officers. Damage to Stonewall was devastating. Everything was broken.

This would not be the end to the riots. News spread quickly through Greenwich Village and riots occurred on the next five nights. Things quieted down and the raids stopped. The next year on June 28th, a parade was hosted marching from Greenwich Village to Sheep Meadow in Central Park. This would be the first gay pride march and they have continued in city's around the world all the way until today. I'll never forget my first pride parade. It was so much fun and even though at the time, the city of Denver only gave us access to one side of Colfax Avenue, we were able to celebrate, rather than hide who we were.

The Stonewall Inn did not go on however. It closed. And for the next twenty years, a variety of businesses used the building. There was a shoe store, a bagel shop and a Chinese restaurant. In the early 1990s, the block of Christopher Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues was co-named "Stonewall Place" and another gay bar named just Stonewall opened in part of the building where the original Stonewall had been. Through the efforts of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, the area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. Things went well for the bar until 2006 when it closed again due to mismanagement and noise complaints. Another group of investors took over in 2007 and renovated the neglected club and was reopened as the Stonewall Inn in March 2007. It is still going strong today.

With this kind of history from Prohibition to the launch of a national push for human rights, it is easy to believe that some energy is inside this building and there are both patrons and employees who claim that Stonewall has ghosts.One employee said, "We think we have ghosts. Doors slam if no one is there, so we say there are two guys and one girl ghost upstairs. It's an ongoing, running joke." And the upstairs is indeed where most of the run-ins with apparitions take place. That's all I could find, but I'm sure if I ever got the chance to talk to employees there, I'd hear a lot more.

Harvey Milk's Old Castro Camera Shop

Harvey Milk was born on May 22nd in 1930 in Woodmere, New York. His parents were Lithuanian Jews who owned a department store. He worked in the store when he was growing up. It was also as he was growing up that he figured out he was gay. He attended New York State College for Teachers in Albany, which is now known as State University of New York. He studied math and history and became a writer for the school paper. Many of his columns featured commentary on diversity. When he graduated in 1951, he decided to enlist in the Navy and he was enrolled in officer training. He did well and ended up stationed as a diving instructor in San Diego. His naval career would come to an abrubt end when his orientation was discovered. He resigned at the rank of lieutenant junior grade. He decided to get a job as a teacher and did so working as a public school teacher on Long Island. He later would work as a stock analyst in New York City and then as a production associate for Broadway musicals. The Vietnam War would get him more active in politics and activism.

He eventually made his way to San Francisco in 1972 and opened up a camera store on Castro Street. The Castro District and gay culture go hand-in-hand. The Castro Street Fair has been hosted for 45 years and was started by Milk in 1974. He started it because of the discriminatory policies of local merchants who tried to block two gay men from opening a store. It was an offshoot of the Castro Village Association, the first US organization for gay businesses. The influence of the Castro Street Fair was much of why Castro transformed into the center of the LGBTQ community.

Milk went on to announce that he would be running for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He lost the race, but he was now a prominent figure in politics. He ran again for the combined San Francisco City/County supervisor seat in 1975 and almost won. Mayor George Mascone appointed him to the city’s Board of Permit Appeals. This was a precedent and made Milk the first openly gay city commissioner in the United States. Milk ran for state assembly and lost, but this spurred him to champion an amendment that would replace at-large elections for the Board of Supervisors with district elections and he won his next race. He was inaugurated as a San Francisco City-County Supervisor on January 9, 1978. He became an advocate for many people, especially the gay community. He once said during a speech, "Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets. We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out." Many people hated Milk though and he received daily death threats.

Former city Supervisor Dan White was really angry. The bad blood between him and Milk went back to an early controversy over the building of a mental health facility for troubled youths. Both White and Milk opposed it, but then Milk changed his mind and voted against White who lost on the issue. White never forgot that and voted against every issue Milk supported after that. White would resign his seat on November 10, 1978 citing that the money was not enough to support his family. He then changed his mind, but the Mayor would not let him back. Now White hated Mayor Moscone too. On November 27, 1978, White managed to get into City Hall with a gun through a basement window. He went to Moscone’s office and killed him, then walked down the hall and killed Milk. White used the Twinkie Defense, which basically was claiming he had so much sugar that he had lost his sanity so he was not accountable for what he did. And it worked. He was acquitted of murder charges and given a lesser sentence for manslaughter. People rioted on Castro Street and set police cars on fire. The police in turn raided gay businesses and beat people.

Perhaps this is why Harvey Milk is not at rest. I mentioned that Milk opened up a camera shop when he first moved to San Francisco. This shop would become a neighborhood center. Milk's spirit is said to have returned here and taken up residence. Moviemaker Gus Van Sant definitely felt this was the case as he filmed the movie Milk. For the film, Van Sant recreated the former Castro Camera Shop in the gift store that took its place. He tells the following story, "The gift store owners were very into the legacy of the store and willing to let us close their shop down and move our set in. They had a mural of Harvey Milk. During a shot at night there was a take where we were using most of the room and there were three or four actors in the scene. Some people were sitting on the sofa which was outside of the shot and during one of the takes somebody walked in from outside and sat down on the sofa during the shot. After the shot was over and I yelled 'Cut,' he apparently got up and walked out. The actors were like, 'Did you see that guy?' I didn't see anybody, but they kept describing Harvey, so I figure it was the ghost of Harvey walking into the store for a brief second."

Milk would make another appearance via a Ouija Board in 2012. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to name a Navy vessel for Milk and it just happened to be his 82nd birthday. Supervisor Scott Wiener said, "LGBT people have always served in our armed forces. For many, many years, our community was hidden and oppressed in the armed services. Now, because of the repeal of 'don't ask, don't tell,' our community can serve openly and proudly. We must support our LGBT soldiers past and present. I can think of no better way to do that than to name a vessel for a Navy officer who went on to become one of the most important civil rights leaders in history."

Another supervisor named John Avalos suggested they ask for Harvey Milk's opinion on a Ouija Board. He described what happened as, "We actually put our hands on the Ouija board and the letters g-o-o-d-r-i-d-d-a-n-c-e-d-a-d-t came out. We asked Harvey, and Harvey gave us these letters: 'Good riddance don't ask, don't tell.' It was quite clear that Harvey Milk would have been opposed to 'don't ask, don't tell.' I can honestly say that's one aspect of this resolution that's really valid."

Upstairs Lounge

Our final stop is at a location in New Orleans. This was a bar known as the Upstairs Lounge and it was located on the second floor of a three-story building at the corner of Chartres and Iberville Streets. The tragedy that occurred here was made worse by the fact that this location had only one entrance and patrons had to climb up some wooden stairs to get to the bar. We need to go back to the summer of 1973 in June. The French Quarter has always been an open and party kind of place, but back in the 70s, gay people still needed to keep their gathering together underground. It was the last Sunday in June and was the final day of Gay Pride for the city. Such a celebration was new as Stonewall had only happened four years prior.

Happening at the same time in America was a not so well known targeting of gay churches. The Metropolitan Community Church, MCC, had been founded in 1968 by Troy Perry. MCC churches were starting in big cities, many of them having to share space at community centers or spaces. Earlier in 1973, a Nashville MCC was burned as well as the Los Angeles headquarters for the MCC. A fledgling MCC congreation in New orleans had asked the Upstairs Lounge if they could use the space for church services. Since the Upstairs Lounge was a gay bar, it was a no brainer and they said yes. The group would move services to their pastor's house just a couple weeks before the Upstairs Lounge would be firebombed, but this was still a spiritual center for them.

The afternoon of June 24th, the lounge hosted an all-you-can-eat buffet and free beer. Around 130 people attended. The beer ran out and only about 60 people stayed, mostly MCC members. They gathered around the piano and sang some songs together. At 7:56 pm, the buzzer downstairs sounded. This usually meant that a cab had come to pick someone up, but no one had called for a cab. One of the guys went to the steel door that led to the stairs leading downstairs and when he opened it, flames rushed inside the club. Someone has deliberately set the wooden stairs on fire. The bar was an immediate inferno and as I told you, this was the only exit. There were windows, but they were boarded up or had iron bars over them. There was no marked emergency exit. Some bars were far enough apart that a few people were able to squeeze through and jump down to the sidewalk.

The local MCC pastor was Rev. Bill Larson and he was at the lounge. He attempted to get through the bars and became stuck. He burned to death wedged in the window. This would become an image of the mass murder as his body remained in that window into the next day. A bartender named Buddy Rasmussen knew where the emergency exit was and he managed to get fifteen people out. One of those men, MCC assistant pastor George "Mitch" Mitchell, ran back inside to get his partner and both men ended up dying. Twenty-nine people died that night and three more would died later from their injuries. More people died that night then died when the entire French Quarter burned down in 1788. Not only was it troubling that someone would set out to burn a gay club and murder gay people, but the city had a very tepid reaction. It was as if no one cared. Descriptions of the aftermath were horrible and none of the coverage mentioned that this was a hate crime.People claimed it was God's judgement and a cab driver even said, "I hope the fire burned their dress off." Two days after the firebombing, the story disappeared from headlines. And to be honest, I knew nothing of this until I heard Mark Bologna cover it on his podcast "Beyond Bourbon Street"

Major Henry Morris, chief detective of the New Orleans Police Department, said of the victims, "We don’t even know these papers belonged to the people we found them on. Some thieves hung out there, and you know this was a queer bar." As if gay people didn't carry ID or were unworthy of identification. Churches refused to host memorial services. Clearly, there are many reasons why spirits would be here in the afterlife. We have a painful death, murder and no justice because nobody was ever caught in connection to this crime. Not to mention the community's reaction. Several victims were dumped into a mass grave at a Potter's Field because their shamed families wouldn't claim the bodies.

The Upstairs Lounge was not rebuilt or reopened. There is a bar in the first floor under the lounge called The Jimani Bar. Patrons and employees all claim to have unexplained experiences. People feel as though they are being watched and that someone or something they can't see, is there. Disembodied voices are heard both in this bar and on the third floor. Voices are also caught on EVP and they have told investigators their names and that they don't want to be forgotten. Full-bodied apparitions have been seen walking on the second floor and in the kitchen area of the Jimani. And obviously, the vision of these ghosts is horrible as they are seen charred. The smell of smoke floats on the air and I can only imagine that occasionally there is another smell as well.

Gay history is important and I'm glad that I was able to share a few key pieces of that history. Are these locations haunted? That is for you to decide!

My Most Haunted 2019

I've been doing ghost tours since I was a kid. At this point, I've lost count of how many I have done. I've been going into haunted locations just as long, but for most of those years I was not actively seeking interactions. As we like to say around here, I didn't tempt the spirits. For those of you that have been on this journey with me - and that includes any of you that have binged the back catalogue - you know that I have been tempting the spirits more and more and starting here in 2019, I have been doing actually ghost hunting or investigations. What changed that got me doing that? Number one is that I really wanted to start getting my own answers. Number two is that I had been afraid to interact with the spirit world, partly because of my religious upbringing and partly because I didn't have a partner in crime to do it with. I wrote down a list of haunted locations that I have visited that have been discussed either on a regular episode or a BonusCast. These are places that I've actually been inside and wandered around a bit. I'm sure I've missed a few places or forgotten about some. I have 25 of them: Mammoth Cave, Mineral Springs Hotel, King's Tavern (Natchez), The Colosseum, Moses Cone Manor, Sorrel-Weed House, Driskill Hotel, Biltmore Estate, 1725 Captain Taylor House, Old Charleston Jail, Disneyland, Hotel Cassadaga, The Stanley Hotel, Queen Mary, Croke-Patterson House, Molly Brown House, Sugar Mill in St. Augustine, Cuban Club, Treehouse Bar in Orlando, Lillian Place House, Baker House, Waverly Hills Sanitorium, Lemp Mansion, Ripley's Odditorium and the St. Augustine Lighthouse.

Of those 25, I would say that in ten of them, I have had some kind of unexplained experience. So I guess that makes it easy to do a top 10 most haunted locations based on my experiences. But before I share that, I want to talk a bit about some of my beliefs that have changed. Obviously, I'm more open to tempting the spirits although I would say there are certain methods I'll never use...can you say Ouija Board? I used to really wonder about child spirits and I didn't think that a child's spirit would just be left here. But I'm not sure where I stand on what happens directly after we die, so it is possible in my mind that a child spirit might still be around. And the thing that has convinced me the most about this are the EVP of children I have caught myself. As for what a ghost is, I'm still open to ghosts being sourced from many things, but I lean most heavily on some kind of trapped energy. I think this is why the most common experiential thing we hear when it comes to the paranormal is that someone feels weird in some way.

10. King's Tavern

9. Croke-Patterson Mansion

8.Lillian Place House

7. 1725 Captain Taylor House

6. Treehouse Bar

5. Mineral Springs Hotel

4. Ripley's Odditorium

3. St. Augustine Lighthouse

2. Baker House

1. Waverly Hills Sanitorium

So I've done 300 episodes and way more locations than just that. Am I running out of material? No way! I've counted 200 locations on my suggestions list still left and you guys add to it consistently. Some of them don't have enough for a regular episode, but they make it into a BonusCast. And speaking of those, I have over 150 of those available and some of those have been my favorite to produce. So I can sit back at the end of this episode and declare, "It's a haunted gay life!" Or is it? That is for you to decide!

Ep. 257 - Waverly Hills Sanatorium

 
Moment in Oddity - The Center of the Universe in Tulsa
Suggested by: April Barber

You probably were unaware that the “Center of the Universe” is located in of all places, Tulsa, Oklahoma. One just follows the brick path that leads to the railroad tracks at the corner of W. Archer St. and N. Boston Ave just northwest of the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. There one finds a marker indicating that the Center of the Universe has been discovered. And what proves that this spot is the Center of the Universe? A very weird and mysterious acoustic phenomenon. This phenomenon is that when one stands in the center of the circle and calls out, they will discover their voice echoing back at them like a private amplified echo chamber. And even stranger, the sound is echoed back much louder. For people standing outside the circle, they hear a very distorted voice. Legend claims that even a foghorn could be going off in the center of the circle and nobody would hear it outside the circle. Studies have been unable to prove what is causing the weird anomaly and that, certainly is odd!

This Month in History -Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Born

In the month of May, on the 22nd, in 1859, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was the second of ten children. He decided to get into medicine and attended the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School where he received a Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery qualifications in 1881 and an M.D. in 1885. One of his professors inspired him to create the character of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes made his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet, a novel-length story published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887. It probably seemed odd to Conan Doyle's friends that he could create such a logical character who held to science when he himself was a big believer in the paranormal and routinely took part in seances. Conan Doyle addressed his beliefs in a short novel named "The Mystery of Cloomber," which was published in 1889. He wrote Sherlock Holmes stories through to 1926. He died in Windlesham, his home in Crowborough, Sussex in 1930.His funeral was held by members of the spiritualist community who celebrated his passing beyone the veil. On July 13, 1930, thousands of people filled London’s Royal Albert Hall for a séance during which Estelle Roberts, the spiritualist medium, claimed to have contacted Sir Arthur.

Waverly Hills Sanatorium

Tuberculosis was a horrible disease in which people had to watch their loved ones literally waste away before their eyes. For this reason, it was commonly referred to as Consumption and there were points in history when people actually believed that people suffering from TB were being attacked by vampires. One of the nicer locations built to help people with TB was Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky. A group of us visited and toured this historical hospital where so many people met their final end at the hands of the dreaded disease. For this reason, the sanatorium is famously known to be very haunted. And for those of us that visited, I think most of us left convinced that some kind of supernatural activity is happening. Join me as I share the history and hauntings of Waverly Hills Sanatorium!

Waverly Hills Sanatorium looms large when first approached. When you arrive at the gate, an employee comes down and instructs everyone to drive up the hill to a parking lot. The trees open up into a full view of the sanatorium when you reach the top of the hill. Despite the fact that it has stood abandoned for the most part for many years, the building looks to be in remarkable condition. The screens no longer stretch in the windows of the solarium, giving an eerie open feeling and gargoyles continue their sentinel duty at the top of the building adding to the creep factor. We were instructed to walk to a rear building for check-in and you immediately feel just what a presence the building is all by itself, minus the stories of ghosts.

Waverly Hills sits on a spot where a school once stood. Major Thomas H. Hays had bought the land in 1883 with the goal of building a school for his daughters to attend. That school was just a one room school house that was located on Pages Lane. Lizzie Lee Harris was hired to be the teacher and she named the school "Waverley School" after some novels named "Waverley Novels." Major Hays followed suit and named the property "Waverley Hill." The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital kept the name after purchasing the land and opening the Sanatorium. The original sanatorium that they built was not the large structure that stands today. The first was a framed building with a hipped roof and only had two stories. It could accommodate around 40 to 50 patients. The climate of Jefferson County, where Louisville is located, was conducive to the spread of TB and by the early 1900s, the county was hit hard. The original hospital was ill equipped to handle the amount of patients that would be flooding in. The city of Louisville started to plan a new hospital in 1911, but they had no intention of including admission of people suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis.

The Board of Tuberculosis Hospital was given $25,000 to erect a new hospital for the care of advanced cases of pulmonary tuberculosis. In order to start the building, the patients from the City Hospital had to be moved to tents set up on the grounds at Waverly Hills. The new pavilion was finished in 1912 and could care for another 40 patients. A children's pavilion was added as well for both sick kids and the children of patients. The plan for Waverly was to continue adding buildings and it eventually became like many other TB properties. These properties would become self-sufficient mini cities with their own water treatment facilities, post offices and growing their own food. Waverly followed the same pattern. But eventually, there was a desire to build a larger structure and that is the building that still exists today

Construction began in March of 1924 on the brick, five-story gothic styled building. It was designed by architect James J. Gaffney. The sanatorium would be able to house up to 400 patients. It was designed to provide a variety of treatments and was considered state-of-the-art at the time, despite the fact that many of the treatments they used for TB, we would consider barbaric. The facility officially opened on October 17, 1926. One of the treatments offered at Waverly Hills was time out on the Solarium.These were large patio areas on the outside of each floor where patients would sit for hours to take in the fresh air and enjoy the peace of the wooded area that surrounded the sanatorium. There was an audio system set up where patients could listen to music and the radio station broadcasting from within Waverly Hills. Our tour guide said it was like the first iPod. Some patients would be left out here up to 13 hours and there are even photos that show that some patients would actually be covered in snow. For this reason, the first electric blankets were used here. Another treatment was time in the sunroom, which was a room with heat lamps that were to provide a feeling as though being in the sun. The more barbaric treatments included electric shock for people with TB of the brain and surgical procedures to remove ribs and muscle. One of the worst treatments was a process where a lung would be deflated because TB needs oxygen to survive. This treatment did help some people, but mainly ended up killing people.

The facility served as a tuberculosis hospital until 1961. In 1943, streptomycin was discovered and it proved to successfully treat TB. This eventually would make Waverly Hills obsolete and so it did close in 1961 with any patients still remaining being transferred to Hazelwood Sanatorium. The following year it reopened after renovation as WoodHaven Medical Services, a geriatric facility for people with mobility issues and dementia. This facility ran until it was closed by the state in 1981. This was supposedly due to patient neglect. Simpsonville developer J. Clifford Todd bought the hospital in 1983 for $3,005,000. Todd joined forces with architect Milton Thompson and the men planned to convert it into a minimum-security prison for the state. Waverly is surrounded by a neighborhood and obviously, these people were not about to allow a minimum security prison in their backyard. The men switched to a plan to build apartments, but that fell through as well.


Robert Alberhasky bought the property in 1996 with the hope of turning it into an arts and worship center. He wanted to also build a replica of the Christ the Redeemer statue that is in Rio de Janeiro. This statue was going to be 150 feet tall and 150 feet wide and placed on the roof of the sanatorium. Donations fell through and the project was cancelled the following year. Tina and Charlie Mattingly then bought Waverly Hills in 2001. The Mattinglys hold tours of Waverly Hills and host a haunted house attraction each Halloween, with proceeds going toward restoration of the property. Restoration is going well, but is slow. The rooms that we saw that were restored looked great. Waverly Hills Historical Society is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and restoration of Waverly Hills Sanatorium.

It is no secret that Waverly Hills is haunted. And while I generally leave it up to you to decide if a place is haunted or not, I can tell you that I believe something I cannot explain is going on in this building. There are stories that two nurses killed themselves in Room 502, one by hanging and the other jumped to her death. They are believed to haunt the fifth floor and one has shown up in photographs. The smell of fresh baked bread has come from the former kitchen. Many ghost hunters claim that the ghost of a small boy named Timmy roams the halls. Chelsea explained that there are no records of a Timmy at the sanatorium and she doesn't believe the stories. The creepiest story in connection to Waverly is that of The Creeper. The Creeper is a dark and terrifying entity that crawls along the floors and the walls and many believe it is demonic in nature. Others believe it’s a human spirit that's been twisted by the trauma of tubercular death. People who see it are filled with dread.

The Cult of Weird website reported the following experience, "As we continued our conversation I began to notice a small orb-shaped pinpoint of light moving across the second floor solarium. It was the size of a firefly but a blue-white color, and it would disappear only to reappear with perfect timing in every other window. My companion asked if I could see a blue light. I said that I could. We watched as it traveled the entire length of the west side of the building heading east. At first it appeared as if it was inside the building, but as it progressed it moved up above the solarium windows in front of the exterior brick. When this happened it became two separate identical points of light, spaced so closely they almost touched each other. When the light neared a bend in the building—the sanatorium is roughly question mark shaped—we lost sight of it. The light(s) traveled roughly 350 feet in approximately 10 seconds."

Out tour started at the Body Chute. This was a long chute that went downhill a very long way and we walked down most of it on some concrete stairs next to it. A track system would carry the bodies to the bottom where families could pick up the bodies or the local funeral parlor would collect them. The reason this was used was because so many people were dying, the administrators were worried that it would depress the patients and they would give up their fight and all hope when they saw so many of their compatriots die. The chute is very creepy and smells. Our guide, Chelsea, told us a story about an experience that she had at the Body Chute. She was giving a tour and had her back to the chute. She noticed that several people in her group were getting startled looks on their faces and one of them told her to turn around. When she did, she saw a white misty figure at the bottom of the Chute. She has experienced enough at Waverly Hills that she thought to herself, I'm okay as long as that just stays where it is. When she turned back around, she saw that her entire group had run away. She turned around again to see why they had run and the white figure was running straight at her.

We spent some time in the refrigeration room and Chelsea asked for a volunteer. One of our group, Quin's boyfriend Matthew, volunteered. Chelsea said,"Hi kids" and explained that she was going to ask the children who used to play hide and seek in the refrigeration system if it would be okay for Matthew to enter one of the units. She also told Matthew to ask permission. Chelsea goes through this process ever since one of the people she put in the unit on a previous tour told her that the children had said that they needed to be asked for permission for someone to enter. She then shut him up inside the unit. She explained that on occasion, the refrigerators had to be used for bodies, so they would move the vegetables and meat out and put the bodies in. People who are closed up in the unit routinely feel their hair being pulled or the shirts being tugged upon. Chelsea played an EVP that a guest had recorded on their phone. You can hear the guest say "Ready or not" and then a child's voice responds "Here I come."

The man who was serving as our "caboose" told me a story about an experience he had on the fourth floor. A group had arrived in a chauffeur van and the driver had joined the tour. The driver was bringing up the rear with the guy telling me the story and they distinctly heard the sound of dance music floating up the hall and they also could hear the sound of feet dancing on the floor. The former cafeteria of Waverly is haunted by the ghosts of a little boy and girl and there is also a resident ghost cat. People feel it rubbing up against their ankles. There was a chapel at Waverly for services and was also used for arts and crafts. Outside one of the windows, an apparition appeared in a picture. We saw the picture and it was creepy as hell. And this was up on the third floor, so nobody could be standing outside the window.

We went inside Lois' Room and said hi to her. Chelsea told us her story. She shared a photo of Lois who passed away in the room at the age of 28 from TB. She suffered from it for 8 years and spent all of those at Waverly. Her sister, Audrey, also had the dreaded disease and joined her in the room. She managed to recover and lived to be in her 90s. Investigators have picked up EVP of a female voice saying "Audrey" as though Lois is searching for her sister. A flowery smell is sometimes detected and she likes to play with Chelsea's hair. We then went to an area where there had been an elevator shaft. A homeless man and his dog were thrown down to the bottom of this shaft and reports claimed that it had been a ritualistic murder. The homeless man had lived in the building for quite some time and he was very protective of it. This is where I had my first paranormal experience of the evening and it was shared by the whole group. I clearly heard a dog whimper while Chelsea told the story. i thought perhaps it was the power of suggestion until Chelsea asked if we all heard it and everybody said yes. Then a little bit later there was another whimper followed by a door slam. And we again heard the dog whimper a third time before we left the area. It was clear. It was audible. I have no doubt that the ghost of a dog had joined us...or at least a residual whimper.

We went to the fifth floor, which opened up onto the roof. This is said to be the most active floor. Chelsea told the story of the nurse who hung herself in the center room. She had fallen in love with a doctor who was married and carried on an affair with him. She discovered she was pregnant and she told him about it. He rejected her and in her dismay, she committed suicide. Some stories claim that she lived in Room 502 and hanged herself there, but Chelsea said that was not true. She had done it in the public area. I went into 502 where a Spirit Box session was taking place and made this recording. Before I made the recording, we were let loose to do some investigating if we liked. I had turned off my recorder to save the battery. I use an H1 Zoom and you have to pull down and hold a switch to turn it on. I did this and watched the display light up. I pushed record and nothing happened. I noticed the display was off.I thought that the battery had a half charge when I looked at the display, but perhaps I was wrong. The only way the Zoom will turn off that way is if the battery dies.Otherwise, you have to hold down the switch just like turning it on. I turned it on again and saw clearly that half the battery was still good. I tried hitting record again and nothing. It had turned off again. I thought that maybe the battery really was going bad, but i tried a third time.This time the recorder stayed on for 15 minutes and recorded. Deana of TwistedPhilly shared a creepy experience she had up her on the fifth floor in her Patreon bonuscast about Waverly Hills.

The fourth floor was by far the creepiest floor and most of the Spooktacular Crew felt very uneasy here and even a little sick. Before we went through the metal door, Chelsea told us about some teenagers who were ransacking the place and they got locked in by something. They had brought an axe with them and tried to open the door with it, but had no luck. The marks in the door are still there. Whatever is on this floor does not seem to be human. There are supposedly shadow figures everywhere and Chelsea instructed us on how to look down the hallway and blink our eyes so they wouldn't play tricks on us. I think I saw two shadow figures and this was verified by the Caboose guy who was standing next to me.

Visitng Waverly Hills is an experience that every paranormal enthusiast needs to have. I look forward to visiting again. Nothing scared me here, but i definitely feel like I had experiences. Are the former patients and staff still wandering the halls in the afterlife? Is Waverly Hills haunted? That is for you to decide!