Located along the Great Plains, in the North East corner of Kansas lies the small town of Stull. With a population of less than 2,000, Stull is one of the smaller towns in all of Kansas. However, small Stull may seem, the town is renowned for being home to, what some people consider to be, one of the gates of hell.
Stull Cemetery Graves
Built in 1861, Stull Evangelical Church was funded by the members of the community. For decades the church and cemetery represented a primary assembly for many of Stull’s residents. It wasn’t until 1974 when a newspaper article from Kansas State University revealed the haunting legend of biblical proportions. It is said that the Stull Church is one of the only places on earth where the devil himself materializes several times a year. The spirits of those resting, whom died a violently, are said to roam the grounds with the devil during the Spring Equinox and Halloween. Students have reported “supernatural happenings” such as being touched by beings that were unseen, and others have experienced sudden recollections, or memory losses while visiting the grounds.
Stull Cemetery and Graves
Many attribute the origination of the story to the witchcraft practices and black magic of pagans in the region. According to legend, these pagans summoned the presence of spirits which would haunt the territory for eternity. Contrary to popular belief, the town Stull is actually said to be derived from “skull” which legend holds was the original title of the location.
Stull Cemetery Building
Others say that the devil makes his presence there because of a horrible tragedy which occurred in the 1870s. It is depicted that a hand at the local stable violently murdered the mayor of the settlement by stabbing him to death. In turn the stable was constructed into a church, where the inhabitants would gather for worship.
The legend of the Stull Cemetery has not gone unheard either. Pope John Paul II, while flying over the region, specifically requested for his plane not to pass over “the unholy ground”. Nevertheless, those residing in Stull Kansas continue to believe that these ghost stories are mere creations of youth and college students. Many inhabitants deny there ever being a community of witchcraft practicing pagans. However, if one considers that the inhabitants currently residing in Stull are descendants of these earlier settlers, there may be a reason why they continue to deny these unnatural occurrences.
Road Closed at Stull Cemetery
As the rumors of the Devil’s presence continued to anger the citizens of Stull, some decided to take the matters into their own hands. Following an increased attraction of media coverage, Major Weiss, the proprietor of the grounds, mysteriously destroyed the old stone church. On one hand he claims that he did it because the structure attracted vandals onto his land. On the other hand, he might have been destroying what he thought to be one of the last passageways to hell. In any event, visitors from all over the country continue to attend the Stull Cemetery on Halloween. With no sightings of supernatural occurrences, some have completely abandoned the tales. However, the devil may only make his presence known to those he himself deems worthy of such an event; and who would expect them to speak up?
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Stratford is similar to a lot of towns in New England. It has a scenic sea front, a busy central street and at one time had a haunted house.
It was referred to as the Phelps Mansion, and was initially owned by George R. Dowell, who was a rich captain of a clipper ship. Starting from 1826 to 1849, Dowell and his spouse resided there happily until they passed on.
At this juncture the Reverend Phelps purchased the sophisticated mansion and shifted here with his family. Mrs. Phelps came from Philadelphia and was somehow taken aback at Stratford. She found it hard to get used to life in this small town.
Old Photo of Phelps Mansion Exterior
However, despite this, everything was very peaceful. That is, until 10th March, 1850.
Strange Happenings
On this specific Sunday, Reverend Phelps and family came back from Sabbath and found their house in total disarray. Furniture was thrown helter skelter and lay in broken pieces. Cutlery lay scattered all over the floor.
The most disturbing discovery was different articles of women clothes in the main parlor which had taken a human shape. News spread fast and hoards of reporters and spiritualists set up camp in the exterior of the house, hoping to catch a glimpse of the apparitions.
Interior Stairway inside of Phelps Mansion
In the months that followed, voices and knocking was heard throughout the house and weird writing appeared on walls mysteriously. Objects also flew from one end of the room to another.
Different Theories
Theories on what was happening thrived. One spiritualist stated that important radiation coming from Phelps’s son who was 11 years old, made things fly across the room.
Reporters were doubtful even at this time and concluded that the haunting was a big hoax set up by Mrs. Phelps and the kids, as they were all disappointed with Stratford’s slow pace.
Even the history of the city describes it this way. In October of the same year when Mrs. Phelps and her children returned to Philadelphia, the haunting continued.
However, the story continues…
Years Later
Many years passed, owners changed and everything was calm on Elm Street. Then, about a century after the horrifying events, Carl Caserta and his spouse bought the Phelps’ mansion in 1947 and transformed it to a convalescence home. It was while they were owners that the supernatural came back to Stratford.
Mrs Caserta was carrying out chores in the basement one evening, soon after putting her baby son to bed, when the buzzer sounded. After the Casertas carried out renovations on the house, they installed buzzers on every floor to enable the residents to call for help.
Drawing of Phelps Mansion
When she heard the buzzing, Mrs. Caserta ran upstairs and did not find anyone who had rung for her on the initial two floors which were occupied by residents.
When approaching the third floor however, which was occupied by her and her family, she smelt smoke and rushed into her son’s bedroom. She found a blanket ablaze, which she had put over his bed.
Fast, she put out the flames and was overcome by emotion. But, who had rung the buzzer. The staff was with her, the patients, who were elderly, were all sleeping in their beds and it was not possible for her son to reach it.
Some years later, a similar occurrence took place when her son who was sleep-walking tried to leap from the landing on the third floor. He would have done so, had the phantom buzzer not sounded, prompting Mrs. Caserta to stop him.
The Casertas were unable to discover why the buzzer sounded, saving the life of their young son two times. Maybe the answer was hidden inside those walls, but it will never be available to us.
In 1972, this house was a victim of the wrecking ball. Nowadays, a parking lot encompasses the plot where the Phelps’ Mansion once stood.
However, the mystery continues…
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There isn’t a hotel in the world, no matter how grand, that hasn’t had an unwanted or unwelcome guest at one time or another.
The Brown Palace Hotel, in Denver Colorado is a pretty grand place, and has been since 1892 when it was built by Henry Cordes Brown as his response to being denied entry to the Windsor Hotel; at the time Denver’s most renowned establishment, for being improperly dressed; he had come straight from his ranch and was still wearing his working cowboy attire.
The hotel hasn’t closed for so much as a single day since it opened, and it has been the site of everything from the sublime to the ridiculous in that time.
It was here that the Denver Broncos were born; in the lobby of the hotel a prize bull was exhibited; it has been host to Presidents and rock stars and has taken everything the world has to throw at it, while still retaining its reputation as one of the finest hotels in Colorado, if not the entire United States.
However, even here there have been…and still are…a few unusual guests.
Room 904 was home to a famous Denver socialite for some 15 years, between 1940 and 1955. She was so well known that when the hotel started to offer tours to visitors, the room was included in the itinerary, with tourists being told of her life and her heartbreak over a lost love.
At just this time the switchboard started to receive calls from room 904. Nothing odd about that…except that the room was undergoing renovation at the time, and had no telephone line, no furniture and of course no-one in residence.
The hotel dropped the room and its tragic resident’s story from their tour, and the calls stopped.
With such a long and colourful history, the Brown palace has had its share of incident, and maybe some of the shades of its past still linger.
There have been sightings of a man in an old-fashioned train conductor’s uniform crossing a hallway, then disappearing through a wall. The spot where this is reported used to house a railroad ticket office.
The service elevator is regularly occupied by a uniformed waiter, who is never seen to board the car or to leave it.
Children play in empty halls, and an infant can sometimes be heard crying in the boiler room.
And in the main dining room – now known as Ellyngton’s, but for many years called the San Marco room; a room which played host to big bands, and later to the San Marco Strings, who entertained diners and guests, a staff member recounts hearing strange noises coming from behind the closed doors of the room late at night. He went to investigate and found a formally dressed string quartet busy practising their repertoire.
He challenged them, saying “You’re not supposed to be in here”, and was given the reply “Oh, don’t worry about us. We live here”
The Brown Palace really is a wonderful hotel, full of wonderful stories and history and perhaps more than a few unexpected guests.
Atrium Interior of Brown Palace
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There are many ghosts roaming our world from the old pioneer days and the northern state of Alaska is no exception to this. Alaska is littered with countless abandoned Russian settlements, these deserted sites are scattered with the artifacts of doomed explorations into the cold and mysterious tundra. Old spirits are said to be trapped within the animals roaming the cold white northern land. Legends say that the animals are carrying the spirits of those crossed over from this realm and into the next.
Alaskan Miners – Copper Mines
The lore of many spirits and haunts wondering the forest, haunting the old cabins, sliding through the mountain passes and dwelling around old broken ships is quite abundant, however there is only one story that claims to have scared away the Alaskan state government.
It is no surprise that the majority of ghost stories in Alaska’s vast land have been reported near the site of the world’s richest copper and gold mines. The old railroad that once serviced the Kennecott copper mines in the Valdez and Chitina mining districts is said to be so haunted, so scary, that to this day (73 years later, since it’s last production) the phantom spirits plague repetitive attempts by even Alaskan government to re-develop the area.
Kennecott Tourist on Rails
The old railroad is an abandoned, 200 mile long stretch of railroad tracks winding from Kennicott Glacier south to Cordova on Prince William Sound. Copper was shipped south to smelters in Tacoma, Washington after being processed there. The railroad, built by the J.P. Morgan-financed Kennecott Copper Corp. around 1909, completed in 1911, was built over many unstable areas. One of those areas included a massive glacier, which required that the tracks had to be moved continuously, as the glacier shifted around , day by day. The track bridged gaping canyons and clung to rugged rock walls above the wild Copper River. While the railroad was being constructed, thousands of laborers had to dig through the deep snow and even avalanches. Others had to blast their way through miles of rock. With these horrendous conditions it is not a surprise that many of the workers were reported to have met their maker during construction of the railroad.
Copper Railways Bridge
The rail line was no cheap endeavor and ended up costing Kennecott Corp. around $20 million to build. That would be comparable to around .5 billion dollars in our time. The investment did ultimately pay off and eventually produced millions of tons of copper ore that passed south over the Chitina River Bridge, and many other unstable bridges. The acronym for the CR & NW railroad came to mean something different for the workers, their claim is that it humorously mean’t “Can’t Run and Never Will.”
Chitina is where most Alasakan ghost stories came from, and many spread through out the large area where the railway ran. For many years, tourists and passer-bys have claimed they’ve seen tombstones just off the old dirt path where in places it parallels with the tracks of the Old Copper Railroad.
Kennecott Historic Mill
The same travelers have consistently reported that the grave markers disappear, virtually vanish into thin air when they look for them on their way back.
Near end of the twentieth century, the state of Alaska began developing government housing along the once marked ‘CR & NW’ trail. During the housing’s construction, many workers regularly saw phantom visions and heard disembodied voices of both children and adults along the “Old Copper Railroad” which made continuing the work there completely impossible.
Abandoned Railways of Copper River and Northwest Rails
Things became even worse after that.
Construction workers had already seen the grave stones and often heard the wailing of dead miners from earlier times. The spooked construction workers started losing their tools, sometimes right off of their belts and boxes. The stories and sitings were enough to scare away even the bravest public servants. The whole construction project is rumored to have been canceled due to the ghosts of the mines.
Kennecott Historic Mill
If you’re looking to venture out to see the old ghost mines, getting out to the abandoned track will not be easy, as most any other place in Alaska. There are very few haunted places that have as many spirits deterring resettlement as the abandoned ghost towns and railways of the Kennecott Copper Mines.
Video featuring the ghost mines:
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History is what makes a cities character and government buildings are a major part of history. Almost every city features sculptures and monuments but Carrollton’s courthouse has something really special to add to it’s character. The Pickens County Courthouse in Carrollton has an unforgettable monument of freedom thanks to “The Lightning Portrait of Henry Wells.”
Front Side of the Pickens County Courthouse
All locals know the story of Wells. Wells was a former slave and was accused of burning the old original Pickens County Courthouse to the ground. Wells was arrested two-years later. At the time of Well’s arrest the courthouse had no jail cells and Wells was locked in the garret of the new courthouse. A group of locals had caught wind that Wells had been arrested and created a mob just outside the courthouse. The mob’s intent was to lynch Wells but little did they know, god had another plan in store for Mr. Wells.
Wells heard the mob outside and peered out the garret window to see what was going on. As Wells was peering out the window a bolt of lightning struck nearby and permanently etched the terrified expression of his face into a windowpane. The spine-tingling bolt of lightning also broke up the lynch mob, saving Wells from immediate death. However, Wells met his death less than a couple of months later due to “wounds received while attempting to escape”. You don’t have to be too smart to figure out what really happened there.
The photo etched by lightning can still be seen today but only from the outside. There is an arrow now bolted to the brick wall, three floors up, which directs you to the phenomenon of his face.
Henry Wells, a ghost face sketched into an old window pane
One local was quoted in saying that “Through all the years, in spite of hail and storm, which has destroyed all the windows in the courthouse, this one pane has remained intact. It has been scrubbed with soap and rubbed with gasoline by those who doubt its permanence, but it has met every test and the face remains unchanged. At close range the pane looks clear and flawless, but viewed from the ground where once gathered an angry mob, the fear-distorted face of Henry Wells can be clearly seen!”.
Pickens County Courthouse Historic Marker for the Ghost of Henry Wells
The face is now over a century old and on the 130th anniversary of the “Face in the Window”, it passed without any type of recognition by the locals, apparenlty they don’t find the face to be too flattering to their city, however others think it is indeed a remarkable phenomenon. A clerk town said, “I don’t think anybody took the time to realize that it’s been 130 years”. “We just know it’s there.” The clerk also said that, regardless of reports they’d received from nervous tipsters, the Courthouse was never threatened with condemnation or demolition. As a matter of fact it was actually being renovated. Carrollton would never demolish its most famous building, even if it is haunted by the curse of Henry Wells.
Local News Story of the historic window:
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Some witness have seen a lady in white haunting the old auditorium of Anchorage’s West High School. The highschool is located on the south bluff overlooking Westchester Lagoon. The Lady in White has been seen time and time again for decades. She is sometimes seen standing in silence among the seats of the empty auditorium as if she is waiting for the show to begin, sometimes just escaping through corridors as if she is running from something, sometimes lurking around the corners backstage or in the dimly lit basement halls.
West Highschool Outside
“I’ve never, ever seen a ghost in there and I can’t say I even believe in ghosts,” West theater teacher David Block told some of his past students. “I haven’t ever seen her, but enough people have seen her that I have to believe that something is going on.”
Block does however admit that the sightings do have an almost unbelievable consistency. He says that it is always a female who is wearing whispy white clothes and she always slips just out of sight when the witness attempts to investigate closer. There have been many reports which have varied from school staff to students. There have been several school officials, students who hadn’t previously known of the legend and even visitors. A good portion of the witnesses claim have no knowlede of the lady in white prior to their reporting of the encounter.
The lady in white however is not alone in her haunting of the West Highschool. Another phantom encounter has been reported of a former janitor who has been long deceased. The janitor was seen many times sweeping the lobby when no one should have been present. There have also been several reports of poltergeist type activities, such as footsteps clacking in empty halls, slamming doors, lights switching flickering on and off and even toilets flushing with no one in the bathrooms.
Scary Corridor
It was once reported that a stage-manager saw a student open an off-limits backstage door during a dress rehearsal and almost jumped out of her skin from fright. When the manager who saw her opened the door into the same space to confront the student for violating the rules, he saw that no one was there.
Another report is that two assistant principals and a security guard were shaken-up when a figure in white flashed by them in the dark, narrow corridor behind the balcony.
West Highschool Auditorium – Lady in White
“To this day, one of those assistant principals will not talk about what happened, he simply refuses to discuss it,” Block said. “Even I don’t like going into the passage behind the balcony”.
Another incident is that a student was entering the supposedly empty theater last year with a group of classmates and she noticed a woman in white clothes standing above them glaring down from a balcony. When she motioned to her friend and asked, “Do you see her?”, the woman had vanished.
The student knew nothing of the legend of “the lady in white” before seeing her in the balcony.
This school is definitely experiencing a poltergeist armed with several spirits. As there is yet another story of a different spirit. The school has a basement vault which was formerly used as a rifle range but is now filled with props and costumes for plays. One time a female student reported that she had opened a door into a small side room and was screamed because she saw scary and strange man glaring at her. Some say that it could have been the janitor’s spirit but the girl claimed he was not wearing a janitor’s uniform.
One student threatened to drop the teacher’s class after hearing his story.
Haunted West High School Hallway, Anchorage Alaska
Block has admittedly spent time alone in the theater and sometimes at night he has heard footsteps up in the haunted corridor.
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The Drish House was built in the 1830s by a Doctor named John Drish. This old federal style house has seen many faces and has set the stage for many stories throughout it’s life. It was at first simply a house for the Drish family, then it was turned into a school, at one time it was even a wrecking company, it has been a church and later on a storage space. The house has set vacant for quite a while as well. Over 175 years of history has went on inside these walls.
Doctor Drish’s legacy holds quite a bit of drama, which obviously has led to the hauntings inhabiting the home. Doctor Drish was born in Loudoun County, Virginia and in 1795 he went to school to be a doctor. His wife was a very wealthy woman named Catherine Washington. After marriage, the two had daughter and named her Katherine M. Drish.
Years later, a dark cloud fell on the family and Doctor Drish’s wife Catherine died early on when the little girl was still very young. His wife’s untimely death led the doctor to leave the child behind with his relatives in Virginia. The doctor felt he couldn’t watch after the little girl like she needed and have a successful career as a doctor. He moved alone to Alabama, taking his wife’s fortune with him.
Old Drish Plantation Mansion, Monroe Place
The doctor arrived in the town of Tuscaloosa in 1822. This is where he was married again three years later to a wealthy widow by the name of Sarah Owen. The couple bought around 160 acres in Southern Tuscaloosa to build their dream home and in 1837 construction started on Monroe Place. The construction of the home was finished in 1839 and the doctor then brought his daughter Katherine home from Virginia to live along with him and his new wife.
The house was originally named Monroe Place because it sits at the terminus of what was then called Monroe Street. The home has two levels and a basement. The architectural influence of the home was taken from a notable Alabama Architect named William Nichols. Doctor Drish had previously worked with Nichols as a contractor in building several government structures, the capitol, the local jail and even the University. There is no proof that the Architect Nichols had a thing to do with the design, it’s merely an observation by locals that he influenced Drish. The house was embellished with 14 Tuscan columns and a double-ellipse staircase designed and built by his nieces husband John Fitch who was a very skilled carpenter.
The war came around 1860 and hit the Drish family pretty badly, like many others in the south. However Monroe Place and many of the other close-by mansions were spared.
Old Drish Plantation
After the war, Drish was bankrupt and soon died in 1867. In his will, he left his wife Monroe Place. However unfortunately since he owed the state of Alabama money, all of his property and real estate, including the Monroe Place mansion were auctioned off. The home was sold to an Alabama lawyer who went by the name of Powell in 1869. The new owner however let Sarah Drish use the house until she died in 1884.
After the long occupancy of the Drish family, the house was sold time and time again and housed many different facilities.
The Wrecking Company front side, previously known as Monroe Place
In 2007 everything in the area including the Drish house was condemned and was soon to be torn down. However the church was still in place and they were able to negotiate to save the Drish house and renovate, while all the other surrounding buildings met their end and were finally torn down.
As with any old house from the 1800s the Drish house became susceptible to many stories and rumors. Some say that Doctor Drish was a drunk and gambled all his money away. They also say that his daughter Katherine fell in love with a man that her father did not approve of and locked in her room for many weeks with scarce food or drink.
The man she had previously fell for eventually left Tuscaloosa, so she then married a man by the name of W.W. King from New Orleans and later had two sons with him. She and her two sons later returned to the Drish House to finalize a divorce from their father. Many say his daughter had went insane after witnessing many outbursts and incidents occurring at the home due to her unruly behavior. Around the same time, Doctor Drish’s niece Helen Whiting was murdered by her husband, the carpenter Mr. Fitch, he was the same carpenter who built the mansion’s staircase. In an episode of rage, he slit her throat almost severing her head. These heinous actions by Mr. Fitch ultimately sent him to an insane asylum.
While all this craziness was going on Doctor Drish became ill himself and refused to eat; he was only kept alive by force feeding. Some say he leapt from his bed and fell going down the staircase. Some of his workers or slaves insisted this is how he died.
One story is that one of the tower rooms is haunted by a runaway slave who had somehow managed to get into the tower room and hid. The slave was eventually forced out from starvation. Story says that he was then handed over to his master, and his master then burned him to death. So this is where the legend of the burning tower was born.
The second story is that Katherine’s sons returned to the Mansion to retrieve her after her death. Katherine wanted the same candles burned at her funeral that were burned at her husband’s funeral several years before. Unfortunately she did not get her wish fulfilled to have the candles at her funeral as they were unable to be found by her sons in time for her funeral.
These two stories over time have led to the legend of the burning tower at Drish house.
Sometimes people see the towers burning and notify the local fire department only to find that there was no fire at all. Firefighters have reported seeing the ghost of Mrs.Drish while responding to the mystery fires numerous times. Others have reported hearing the slaves crying and yelling about the fire from inside of the Drish House.
The Old Drish House today
Below are two videos, one of a very convincing Tuscaloosa resident story teller and the other of a news story on the Drish house.
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In the late 1800s and into the next century Americans were overtaken with the horrible disease called tuberculosis. During this time no cure existed for this disease and it took the lives of entire families, sometimes even entire towns. Louisville was by far one of the most of the impacted cities, having one of the worst tuberculosis death rates in America. Louisville was a breeding ground for tuberculosis and in 1910 a hospital was designed and constructed to host those affected and combat the horrible disease. Unfortunately with the widespread of the plague-like disease, the hospital quickly became overcrowded. The over-crowding lead to the creation of another hospital in 1924 which was created with donations of money and land.
This new hospital was named Waverly Hills opened in 1926. Waverly Hills was considered to be the most advanced tuberculosis sanatorium in the United States. However the majority of the patients still died.
Many patients did survive at Waverly Hills but the estimate is that hundreds perished there at the peak of the epidemic. Back in those times, no medicine was available to treat this disease, the practitioners of the time thought that the best treatment for tuberculosis was fresh air, the right foods and continuous rest.
Waverly Hills Patients in Bed
However, some of the treatments for tuberculosis back then were pretty barbaric by today’s standards. For example, a patient’s lungs were put into an ultraviolet light to try and stop the spread of the bacteria. This experiment was conducted in “sun rooms”, using an artificial light, on the hospital roof or open porches. Since a theory was that fresh air might be a possible cure, many of the patients were sometimes placed in front of huge open windows or on the porches, no matter what the season. Some photographs depicted patients sitting in chairs out in the “fresh air” during the winter season covered in the snow.
Other practices however were much worse in comparison. For example, ribs and bones were removed from the chest cavities and latex balloons would be surgically implanted in the lungs and then filled with air to expand. I’m not quite sure what the benefit to this was but it was a “last resort” procedure and had very few survivors.
Waverly Hills had a “body chute” which was essentially a enclosed tunnel for the dead that lead from inside of the hospital to the railroad tracks at the bottom of a hill. The system utilized a motorized rail and cable system, the dead bodies were lowered in secret to trains. This was done in secrecy so that the other patients would not see how many deaths were actually occurring during their stay.
In 1943 new medicines had made their way around the country and had taken care of most of the cases of the disease in the United States. Waverly Hills closed its doors in 1961 and was re-opened a year later as Woodhaven Geriatrics Sanitarium. Just like any old age or crazy home, rumors and stories were abundant on the amount of abuse that took place at Woodhaven. Many of the accusations turned out to be false but others unfortunately turned out to be true. Of course this included electroshock therapy which was considered to be highly effective in those days. The funding for the sanatorium was scarce in the 1960s and 1970s which led to both horrible conditions and patient mistreatments so in 1982 the facility was closed.
After it’s prime Waverly Hills was auctioned off and changed owners many times. By the turn of the 21st century, the building had been nearly destroyed, by the non-existent upkeep and by vandalism.
Waverly Hills had became a local “haunted house” and a magnet for the homeless looking to keep out of the weather. By nature of what it once was.. the hospital had earned reputation for being haunted.
Children and Staff of Waverly Hills
There were many stories of ghosts, like the stories of children running around throughout the buliding into the solarium, the boy playing with a ball, the crying woman with slit wrists and a hearse that sometimes was seen in the back, dropping off coffins.
Little boy ghost of Waverly Hills
The classic sounds of slamming doors, mysterious glowing in the windows and strange sounds echoing through empty rooms.
Ghost hunters and paranormal researchers are naturally drawn to the fifth level. The fifth level held two nurses stations, a medicine closet, a storage room and two rooms on both sides of the nurses stations. The most famous of these rooms is Room 502, this room has held many stories, all of which are not for the faint of heart.
Everyone and anyone who has visited Waverly Hills has to see it. After all, this is where many people have committed suicide leading to the dark legends of Waverly Hills. Several witness have seen shapes moving in the windows and have heard demonic sounding voices that warn trespassers to “…get out!”.
Controversy is abundant here and no one really knows as to what went on in this part of the hospital but most believe that mentally insane tuberculosis patients were quarantined on this floor.
This floor is centered in the hospital and the two wards extending outward were glassed in on all sides and open out into a roof patio, that was perfect for the patients to get their “fresh air”.
ghost of waverly hills
As you may have guessed, there is no lack of stories surrounding this floor of the hospital.
In 1928 a head nurse was found dead in the Room 502 at only 29 years old. Investigators claim that she committed suicide by hanging herself from a light fixture centered in the room. Some claim that the nurse was unmarried and pregnant which caused her a great depression, ultimately leading to her self-imposed death.
Room 502 Entrance, inside is an autopsy table
Four years later another nurse who worked in this room is said to have thrown herself from the roof falling several stories to her death. Some say she was pushed over the edge by a malevolent spirit or a mentally disturbed patient.
Waverly Hill’s infamous notoriety was brought on by the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society.
The Society introduced the sanatorium to national television, held paranormal meetings there and conducted countless haunted tours of the sanatorium for those willing to enter.
Within five years members of the Louisville Ghost Hunters Society’s investigation, they experienced many paranormal encounters. These encounters ranged from eerie sounds, phantom slamming doors, unexplainable lights being lit, random flying objects, acts of violence from invisible forces, apparitions passing throughout the building and so on.
Some of the investigators experiences involved seeing many not so common dark floating shapes.
The sightings started around October 2001 on consecutive nights when the paranormal investigators were able to see seemingly human shadows moving up and back down within the fourth floor hall. Some of the darkened shadows actually appeared to peak around corners at the investigators. It should be noted that the investigators claimed that these happened most often when no flashlights were used.
Waverly Hills is confirmed to be haunted by many professional paranormal investigators and ghost hunters.
Waverly Hills Sanotorium Front-side
This ghastly location can be visited even today. If you have the courage and audacity then you, yourself can make the trip to see the supernatural spirits of this decrepit sanatorium in Kentucky.
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Once there was a lady who grew up in New York, her family was quite well-to-do as they were transporters for the area. In those days, rich youngsters were required to make their presentation in the public arena and to wed a well-off young person from a upper class family. At the same time this fair lady was a bit of a radical. When she became mature enough to wed, she despised the rich youthful society men and fell for a more established man who was filling in as a steward in her home.
Yet as I’m sure you’d have guessed there was a huge contention inside the family after the she had reported her decision of spouse. Her elders were irate, especially the patriarch, who blamed the steward for courting his little girl as a means to expedite and grow his position in the families business. Nonetheless, she demanded the marriage, her father gave the couple a large amount of money with the stipulation that they leave after the ceremony of marriage and never return.
When the newly wed couple arrived at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone, the once steward had bet away the greater part of the cash that his wife’s family had presented to the love birds. There was not enough cash for the couple to complete their honeymoon, much less to purchase a house and begin their life together.
The young lady had became vexed with her spouse. They had argued constantly about money during the stint of the honeymoon, and by now, she realized that her father had been right about the insatiability of her new spouse. He was clearly more intrigued by her fortune than being with her. Still, they were now bankrupt and required something to pay the hotel and services here at Yellowstone, so she had not choice but to call on her parents for more funds to pay their bill.
Her mother nor father would not provide any relief. They declined any further involvement in the finances of the newlywed couple.
That evening, after she had been unable to produce any money from her family, the couple had a horrid battle in their hotel room. The new husband frenzied out of the Inn in an anger, leaving his lady in the hotel room. The woman did not come out of the room for days, after days had passed the staff finally had to enter the room as the bill had still laid unpaid and there had been no sign of activity from the room.
The maid knocked and of course as you guessed, there was no answer. The maid finally entered the room using the master key and gazed upon a horrific site. The room looked as though a mad bull had cleared through the inside. Garments were strewn all over, and the bedclothes were thrown on the floor. Even worse, the maid was practically smothered by the metallic smell that pervaded everything. There was no indication of the other half of the newlywed couple, yet the stink that wafted from the connected lavatory indicated at what the maid would find. Lying in the bathtub in a pool of dark soupy blood was the corpse of the poor newlywed bride, well at least most of what was once her young body. Her head had been removed and was nowhere in the room.
The maid’s shrills of horror alerted the rest of the hotel. The local police were brought in, the bride’s mother and father were updated on the status of their poorly misled late daughter and the room was washed leaving no indication of the horrors from just hours before. The detectives had done anything and everything they could have done to find the brutal killer but unfortunately he was nowhere to be found. Eventually, after some time passed, the entire story was quieted to avoid embarrassment to the family.
Bloody Bathtub
A couple of days after the news of the homicide, a horrid smell was noticed up in the Crows Nest where the musical artists frequently played, the smell was followed to its source: The spouse’s rotting head. Her blonde wavy hair surrounded her wide-peered gaze of horror. The stench was unbearable.
The funeral of the tortured bride ought to have been the end of the repulsive occurrence and that it proved to be until one late night when a hotel courtier up late studying heard a weird commotion originating from the foyer. It was the stroke of midnight when he rushed out onto the gallery and looked upward, looking for the source of his interruption. He found towards the Crows Nest, far above, and saw a shining figure in white gradually following the stairs downward from the Crows Nest. Tucked under its arm was a head! Solidified with horror, the man viewed the lady plummet the steps and hover along the passageway until she arrived at the entryway of her old room. At that point she vanished!
From that day ahead, there are individuals who say they can see the headless lady floating down the stairs from the Crows Nest at the stroke of midnight; tragically looking for her lost murdering husband and her lost dreams of happiness.
The Headless Bride Captured with NightVision Camera
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As I drove down the infinitely dark street, I cursed my old friends. “A curious little tavern in the middle of nowhere,” they said. Well they got that part right, there was not one indication of civilization to be seen out in these parts. Just after that, I finally got a glimpse of a building not far off. Human life! finally!
I slowed down and pulled up to the round building. My headlights lit up various motorcycles parked in front of it. They were having an old motorcycle gang meetup, I thought as I pulled in and went to the entryway.
The celebration was going full swing as I ventured through the large entryway. The inside of the building was loaded with drunken couples wearing the ensembles of old western wear. It was surreal.
A giant unshaven beast of a man clasped me on the shoulder in welcome and gave me a mug of lager. I took a taste and after that swallowed it down willingly. It was the best brew I’d ever tasted. At that point a brunette with gorgeous brown eyes pulled me by the hand and hauled me out onto the floor. I was flying high, dancing, drinking, and grooving about.
Around midnight, the band enjoyed a break and I remained with my new acquaintances before a large round of drinks. “Provide for us a toast to the night,” laughed my intoxicated lady.
“To a delightful night,” I said, noisily. “Favorable luck and long life to everybody present.”
Old Wisconsin Tavern
The swarm of people went quiet when they heard my words. A stillness developed, streaming over like a wave, until you could have heard a pin drop. As I looked uneasily about me, I saw the skin gradually peeling far from the joyful faces, until all that remained were bone, dead skin, and empty eye sockets. The young lady in my arms was only a skeleton in a rotten blue dress. With a gasp of horror, I dropped my mug and jumped far from the skeleton. The mug hit the floor with a blast. What’s more the lights went out. I shouted in dread and fumbled in reverse, hammering into a stinky, noxious heap of dry hay. I desperately attempted to find my path to the exit. As my eyes acclimated to the darkness I recognized the exit way. I surged towards them, shriveled and boney hands snatching at me as I ran. At that point I was out in the moonlight and running to my car.
I jumped into the car and made the path as quickly as I could go. My headlights lit up a condemned shelter with a large portion of its roof missing and support beams drooping inward. I slammed the pedal to the floor and drove as quick as possible.
Some way or another, I discovered my way home and used the rest of that anxious night stirring with the light on in my room.
Up until today I have no clue where I was. I heard later that people in Vernon County once in a while hear bizarre music coming over the hills around evening time, however nobody can recognize its source.
Inside my mind, I can still see the beautiful faces of the people partying the night away in that busted old tavern.
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John Henry was a relentless man, yes sir. He was conceived a slave in the 1840’s however was liberated after the war. He went to act as a steel-driver for the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, don’t ya know. What’s more John Henry was the strongest, the most effective man working the rails.
John Henry, he would use his day’s penetrating openings by hitting thick steel spikes into rocks with his reliable shaker hunching near the gap, turning the drill after every forceful blow. There was nobody who could match him, however numerous attempted.
Historical Marker erected to memorialize John Henry at Big Bend Tunnel
That being said, the new railroad was moving along right speedy, much appreciated in no little part to the forceful John Henry. In any case approaching right smack in its way was a compelling adversary – the Big Bend Mountain. Presently the huge supervisors at the C&o Railroad concluded that they couldn’t go around the mile and a quarter thick mountain. No sir, the men of the C&o were going to experience it – penetrating directly into the heart of the mountain.
A thousand men would lose their lives before the extraordinary foe was won. It took three long years, and before it was carried out the ground outside the mountain was loaded with stopgap, sandy graves. The new shafts were loaded with smoke and dust. Ya couldn’t see no-how and could barely relax. Anyhow John Henry, he worked energetically, boring with a 14-pound sledge, and setting off 10 to 12 feet in one workday. Nobody else could match him.
At that point one day a sales representative tagged along to the camp. He had a steam-controlled bore and asserted it could out-penetrate any man. That being said, they set up a challenge without even a moment’s pause between John Henry and that there drill. The foreman ran that brand new steam-drill. John Henry, he recently hauled out two 20-pound pounds, one in each one hand. They bored and penetrated, dust climbing all over the place. The men were crying and cheering. Toward the end of 35 minutes, John Henry had penetrated two seven foot openings – a sum of fourteen feet, while the steam drill had just bored one nine-foot gap.
Statue of John Henry at Big Bend Tunnel
John Henry held up his mallets in triumph! The men yelled and cheered. The commotion was so uproarious, it took a minute for the men to understand that John Henry was tottering. Depleted, the strong man collided with the ground, the hammer’s moving from his grip. The swarm went quiet as the foreman hurried to his side. Yet it was past the point of no return. A vein had rush in his mind. The best driller in the C&o Railroad was dead.
A few people say that John Henry’s resemblance is cut directly into the rock inside the Big Bend Tunnel. Furthermore in the event that you stroll to the edge of the darkness of the passage, now and again you can hear the sound of two 20-pound sledges penetrating their approach to triumph over the machine.
Entrance of Big Bend Tunnel
Marker on John Henry Statue
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