A Real Haunted House: Waverly Hills Sanatorium

Experts estimate that around 62,000 people died at Waverly Hills Sanatorium during the tuberculosis scare of the early 1900s. Ghost experts say these patients never left.

Located in Louisville, Kentucky, Waverly Hills opened as a treatment facility for tuberculosis patients in 1910. Today the sanatorium is considered one of the most haunted places in America.

Visitors can experience the mystic, mammoth building themselves with an overnight stay for $100 per person or a half-night stay for $50. A cheaper alternative is the paranormal tour Waverly offers at 8, 9 and 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

A brief introductory video begins the tour with clips from the Ghost Hunters episode filmed at Waverly Hills for the SciFi network. The Ghost Hunters do not like to hastily admit buildings are haunted, but cannot shake the suspicion that some supernatural force is at work in the sanatorium

The paranormal tour then drags you kicking and screaming (just kidding) through all the building's "hot spots." First stop on the tour: the body chute, a 500-foot long tunnel built to accommodate guests of the hospital who did not want to see dead bodies being removed from the premises. At one point in the building's history, Waverly Hills was experiencing a death an hour within its doors.

Tourists are allowed to walk halfway down the tunnel with a warning. If you have lung or heart complications, or are claustrophobic, you may want to skip the dark and narrow body chute.

The tour continues through the building to Room 502, where a pregnant nurse supposedly killed her baby and then hung herself. Again, visitors should be warned that many people, especially pregnant women, have felt sick upon entering 502 and have had to exit the room prematurely.

On the fourth floor, visitors are led through a shadow people hunting exercise. Shadow people, unexplainable manifestations and movements of human-shaped shadow, the guide will explain, are the most often experienced paranormal activity in the Waverly Hills. Because of this, the use of flashlights, which remove shadow, are discouraged in the halls of Waverly.

Other visitors report experiencing cold spots inside the building, mysterious images later captured on their cameras and electronic voice phenomenon recordings.

Tour guides report strange occurrences like the elevator running even though there has been no working electricity in the building for years. Security guards sometime see rooms lit up from the parking lots outside.

The question is, what ghostly encounters will you have at Waverly?

The paranormal tour costs $20. Waverly Hills suggests reserving spots for the tour in advance. A haunted house is run out of the building around Halloween each year. More information can be found at their Web site (http://www.therealwaverlyhills.com).