Waverly Hills Sanatorium - Part 2

If you missed part 1, click HERE and you can see how this whirlwind weekend came to be!

So now let us continue ... I believe we have our group together and are heading into the darkness and down into the Death Tunnel, a.k.a the Body Chute!

In my new pajama top ??? with our tour guide

500 feet long, no power, no lights. Heading down the chute, you walk on the left hand side where there are steps. The right side is more like a ramp ... for rolling gurneys to the bottom. The story is that the tunnel was used for transporting corpses to the bottom without the living patients seeing how many people were actually not surviving the tuberculosis plague.  Some in our group were feeling timid, but not me! I was more than happy to volunteer to lead us down to the bottom of the chute. I opted to spend most of the night without a flashlight, but for this part we did have to use one to at least see the steps. 

View from the entrance - I have an amazing flash on my camera.

Along the way we saw a ton of graffiti - and considering 3 of us had just shared a huge margarita in a bucket, the naughty images did cause us to giggle. I mean we weren't drunk or even tipsy by the time we got to Waverly, but we were still in a silly mood.  About every 25 feet there were holes in the ceiling - acting kind of like a vent. That gave us our only glimpse of light, which was just from the moon. Mostly I used my flash as a way to see. (Oh yeah, and I had my EMF detector out and ready for action - as seen in the photo to the left!) I just wanted it to be as dark and scary as possible!  

At the start of the night we all partnered up. I insisted everyone have a "buddy". Sara and Jason, being married, got to be a pair. My buddy was Marshall. He is/was my step-brother? Let's not even go there with that side of my family right now!

Why did they let me go out in public looking like that?? I blame it on the tequila!

Eventually we were at the bottom. When my friends and I turned around, most of the group had chickened out and went back up! We hung out at the bottom for a while, just checking things out and hoping that something scary would happen. The ground outside of the chute was covered with a lot of old debris that appeared to have been inside the building at some point many years ago. It was too dark to get a good view of it at the time. We really wanted to explore the wooded area, but it wasn't allowed.

Occasionally we would hear noise over toward the right side of the above photo.  Since we obviously couldn't prove or disprove any sounds, we gave nature a break and decided we probably just heard whatever sort of Kentucky nightlife was in the area.

It wasn't until we started walking back up that I had my first REAL moment of curiosity about what I was hearing. Sara, Jason and I were the only ones left to walk up. It was a rather dark trek up to the top! Seeing as I led the group to the bottom of the chute, I wanted to be the last one to go up. This gave me a chance to linger and go up slowly, leaving opportunity to feel more alone. However, "alone" is not how I felt.

I would always put a great distance between myself and my friends. And every time I did something would happen behind me. I'd stop walking for a while to make the gap larger, and it was like I was hearing footsteps coming up behind me. Obviously nobody was there, but on at least 3 occasions I really felt like I was being followed. It was awesome!

Looking behind me on the walk up to the entrance.

This post went on long, so I'll continue inside the building in the next installment of Waverly posts!