Front Porch Mysteries with Carole Townsend
Author and veteran journalist Carole Townsend shares remarkable tales from the South, tales of mystery, terror, and wonder. Townsend has built a career on the premise that truth really is stranger than fiction.
Here in the South, we love our stories. We begin in childhood huddled around campfires, whispering of things best spoken in the dark, confiding in our small trusting circles. Why is that, do you suppose? I have researched and investigated Southern history for more than 20 years and I believe it has to do with this region itself. There's a lot that hangs in the ether here and much that is buried deep in the soil. There's beauty here in the South and shame and courage and, make no mistake, there is evil. There's always been the element of the unexplained, the just out of reach that we can all feel but can never quite describe. And the best place for telling tales about such things is the comfort and safety of an old front porch. So I invite you tonight to come up here with me, settle back into a chair and get comfortable, pour yourself a drink if you like, and I'll share with you some of the tales best told in the company of friends, tales that prove that truth really is stranger than fiction, and I'll turn on the light. You're going to want that. I'm Carole Townsend. Welcome to my front porch.
Front Porch Mysteries with Carole Townsend
Waverly Hills: Beauty And Bloodlines
A picturesque hill in Louisville once held America’s fiercest struggle against the white plague—and the echoes haven’t faded. We follow the unlikely path from a one-room schoolhouse to a sprawling, five-story sanatorium where doctors chased a cure with fresh air, rest, and desperate procedures that often hurt more than they healed. When loss became routine, a 500-foot tunnel meant for supplies turned into a discreet route for the dead, shielding hope while the numbers climbed.
We share the verified history: the geography that fueled contagion, the rapid expansion to hundreds of beds, and the relentless math of a disease that moved through families and neighborhoods with chilling speed. Then we step into the lore that refuses to die—Room 502 and its tragic nurses, the rooftop echoes of children’s songs, the phantom chef in the kitchen, and the body chute where whispers still seem to travel. Whether you’re drawn by Tudor Gothic architecture, the sociology of isolation, or the psychology of hauntings, Waverly Hills offers a rare crossroads of public health, design, and folklore.
Streptomycin closed the sanatorium, but the building lived on as Woodhaven, a troubled nursing home that added another layer of sorrow before the state shut it down. Today, tours invite skeptics and believers alike to test what they think they know. We connect those past chapters to the present: drug-resistant tuberculosis, millions of new cases, and the hard truth that environment, policy, and memory still decide outcomes. Press play for a grounded, empathetic look at Louisville’s most haunted landmark—and stay to decide if the voices are myth, memory, or something in between. If this story moves you, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the show.
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Louisville, Kentucky, a city founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark, is named for King Louis XVI of France in appreciation for his support during the Revolutionary War. It's one of the oldest cities then west of the Appalachian Mountains. Louisville is the founding city of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad. It was the home of Boxer Muhammad Ali, the Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Fried Chicken, the University of Louisville, Louisville Slugger Baseball Bats, and it's home to Fortune 500 insurance company Humana. It's safe to say that Louisville, Kentucky is a thriving modern city, and it's nestled into some of the most beautiful country I've ever seen. Gently rolling hills, deep blue-green grass, and lush horse farms also mark the Louisville landscape. The history of a city like this is quite interesting. The area's geography influenced Louisville's history. Nestled in the Ohio Valley, Louisville doesn't get a healthy amount of fresh airflow. Wetlands along the banks of the Ohio River were the perfect breeding ground for the white plague or tuberculosis, and in the early 1900s, the people of Louisville were hit hard by that dreaded disease. This overwhelming phenomenon prompted the construction of a new hospital dedicated solely to tuberculosis patients. In an attempt to contain the disease, the Board of Tuberculosis Hospital was established in 1906. Waverly Hills Hospital sits on land that was once home to Major Thomas H. Hayes. Since the Hayes family was so far away from any existing schools at the time, Mr. Hayes decided to open a local school for his daughters to attend. He started a one-room schoolhouse and he hired a teacher. Due to this teacher's fondness for Sir Walter Scott's Waverly novels, she named the schoolhouse Waverly School. Major Hayes liked the peaceful sounding name, so he named his property Waverly Hill. And the board of Tuberculosis Hospital kept the name when they bought the land and opened the sanatorium. In 1910, the Waverly Hills Sanatorium was opened. It was to house between forty and fifty tuberculosis patients. As need grew, the hospital was expanded. Eventually, a five-story hospital was built, so that no patient in need was turned away. And tragically, there were many in need. There are so many stories, many of them you and I have yet to mine, and we southerners love to share them. Why is that? Perhaps it's because we love to tell stories, sometimes with flowery language and interesting side roads. We tell stories about family, about friends, about politicians, and about life. And sometimes, when we turn and face our own history and the stories that lie buried there, we muster the courage to share those two. What came before us? Who were the people and where were the places that lived and breathed long before we arrived? What was carved from stone, one with blood, and plucked out of time that brought us to where we are today? The answers are very often not pretty, and sometimes they're downright chilling. Still, they beg to be told, and our favorite stage for telling them is a welcoming front porch. So sit here with me tonight, won't you, and let's talk about a time more than 100 years ago that's both factual and fascinating. Pull up a chair, and it's cold tonight, so grab a warm blanket. We'll keep each other company and we'll keep watch against the night, because it's at night when these stories come to life. It's at night when we believe that the characters and the places can live and breathe again. And who knows? Perhaps they can. Listener discretion is advised. It's important to understand that in 1910, patients in Waverly Hills rarely left the hospital alive because at that time there was no cure or even an effective treatment for tuberculosis. Waverly Hills was quite possibly home to the greatest number of deaths under one roof ever in the United States. It's said that 63,000 people died there over the years, but that number is based solely on records that can be found and verified. Many records were lost through the years or simply not kept at all. Experts actually put the number of deaths at Waverly Hills at around 123,000 and maybe more. At the peak of the tuberculosis crisis in the United States, it's been said that doctors at Waverly Hills were losing at least one patient every hour. You see, tuberculosis or consumption, as the disease was also commonly called, had a voracious appetite once it entered the patient's body. It was spread easily through the air by an infected person. In the 1800s, it was responsible for an estimated quarter of all deaths in Europe. Tuberculosis is a cunning disease, surviving over 70,000 years by shifting and changing in response to treatment. In ancient times, the disease was treated by using a king's touch or by using a talisman. There are records of patients being isolated, banned even from hospitals, and left to die alone. One hundred years later, in the 19th century, tuberculosis was defined as being, quote, the captain of all these men of death, end quote, because of its epidemic proportions in Europe and North America, causing one in every four deaths. Isolation was still part of the cure. Over the years, Waverly Hills Sanatorium would become a self-contained community. Laundry facilities, a maintenance garage, a butchery, as well as several hundred acres of farmland were established on what became known locally simply as the hill. It had become a place of mystery and intrigue and fear. 123,000 deaths. Dr. Dunning S. Wilson was medical director of Waverly Hills. He had a staff of dozens of physicians, nurses and nursing students, chefs and a driver. One can only imagine how the many deaths at his hospital haunted him and how helpless he must have felt as he watched the white plague take his patients with no mercy. In early 1911, the city of Louisville began to make preparations for building yet another new hospital. The need was great, but hospital commissioners decided in making those plans that there would be no provision made in the new hospital for the admission of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. And the Board of Tuberculosis Hospital was given $25,000 to erect a larger hospital for the care of advanced cases of the dreaded disease. On August 31st, 1912, all tuberculosis patients from the city hospital were relocated to temporary quarters in tents on the grounds of Waverly Hills pending the completion of the hospital addition. In December of that same year, a hospital for advanced cases opened for the treatment of another 40 patients. In 1914, a children's pavilion added another 50 beds, making the known capacity around 130 patients. The children's pavilion was not only for sick children, but also for the children of tuberculosis patients who could not be cared for properly. And the sad fact of the matter was that those children would probably contract the disease and die also. Eventually, the hospital was expanded to hold 400 beds, and those beds stayed occupied even as patients died at a horrific pace. Why did the white plague spread so rapidly? Well, when tuberculosis germs are active in the body, the person feels sick. Now, when that person coughs or speaks, sneezes or sings, those in close proximity can easily be infected, as consumption is an airborne illness. When a person breathes in tuberculosis germs, those germs settle in the lungs and they begin to grow. From there, they move through the bloodstream to other parts of the body, such as the kidney, spine, and brain. It's a fast-moving disease, and patients eventually died of septic shock, malignancy, cirrhosis, or renal failure. Patients took on a sickly anemic pallor, which explains the name white death or white plague. Treatment for white death was a mystery to doctors. They prescribed fresh air and rest for their patients. So patients were often taken outside at Waverly Hills to breathe in the air, even in the bitterly cold winter months. When these treatments didn't prove helpful, experimental treatments were used. One of these involved surgically implanting balloons inside the patient's chest and then inflating them to increase lung capacity. This therapy was bloody and painful, and in the end, it was useless. Another therapy removed some of the patient's ribs to make room for lung expansion. Sadly, no matter what physicians prescribed for their suffering patients, death came knocking. And with so many succumbing to death daily, a problem arose. What to do with all those bodies. When the hospital was being built, a 500-foot tunnel was constructed that allowed workers to bring coal and supplies up from the railroad to the buildings. The tunnel was warm and it provided shelter from the weather. But in the wake of the devastation of tuberculosis, this chute also provided a solution for the discreet disposal of thousands of bodies at Waverly Hills. Corpses were secreted away through the tunnel to meet the hearses that waited at the end of it every day for years. By sending the dead away in secret, those who still clung to life in the hospital would not see their likely end played out before their ever hopeful eyes day after day. Thousands of the dead. Thousands of souls. This singularly unique phenomenon begs the question: is it possible for tens of thousands of people to die, their souls depart without a trace? There are those who say without a doubt, no. Waverly Hills has been dubbed the most haunted place in the world. There is no shortage of stories that give credence to that name. One of the most famous stories is that of room 502. Records indicate that in 1928, Nurse Mary Hillenberg committed suicide in that room. The story goes that Mary hung herself from a light fixture because she was pregnant with the child of a Waverly Hills doctor. The two weren't married, but that wasn't the reason Mary ended her life. She killed herself because she feared tuberculosis contamination for both herself and her child. In 1932, another nurse jumped to her death from the window of that same room, 502, and years later, a homeless man was murdered in that very same room. Today, visitors to Waverly Hills have reported hearing the words get out whispered as they entered room 502. One man reports having photographed that room while visiting the sprawling hospital, and when he reviewed his photos after that trip, he clearly saw the shadow of a woman's body suspended from the ceiling. The man claims that he hadn't heard the stories about room 502 before taking that photo. On the roof of the hospital, where children who were housed there would play and get their fresh air treatments, the song Ring Around the Rosie can be heard over and over again. Children are singing it. In the kitchen area of the hospital, a man in a white coat is often seen. When he appears, cooking smells permeate the kitchen. Bread, thick stews, and fragrant desserts. On the third floor, which served as the children's wing, a girl without eyes is often seen, and there's a boy there that's bouncing a ball. Visitors have reported hearing the sound of that ball bouncing on the floor and against a wall when they're on the third floor. Doors slam shut by themselves. Lighted orbs float above the grounds outside, and inside, voices whisper and chatter. The so-called death tunnel has a dark energy of its own, and ghost hunters have braved it for years. They report hearing voices, clapping and slamming, laughing, and an invisible but palpable presence. One man visited the hospital recently, and he spent a great deal of time in that tunnel or what became known as the body chute. He shared videos on social media, and in those videos, whispering voices can clearly be heard coming from the shadows. Viewers were spooked, and understandably so. What, if anything, is happening at this hospital that saw so many fight for their lives and lose that battle? The reports are many, and they're all very similar in nature. I suppose you'd have to travel there and tour the hospital yourself and make up your own mind. Whatever you believe, certainly there was endless suffering at Waverly Hills. Did all that anguish and suffering merely dissipate? Did it simply vanish into thin air once the last body was hauled away in the back of a hearse? Maybe it did. Waverly Hills is actually a beautiful example of Tudor Gothic architecture. Before it was designed as a structure, listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the hospital had been left to deteriorate. It had fallen into grave disrepair. At one point, there were plans to turn the vast, rambling structure into a hotel, but that plan never came to fruition. The building was used as a nursing home named Woodhaven after the hospital closed in 1961. The nursing home housed dementia patients, the mentally ill, and patients who had lost their mobility. There were many stories of inhumane treatment and neglect there, and because of those reports, overcrowding and severe understaffing Woodhaven failed miserably. The state of Kentucky closed the nursing home in 1980. Today, Waverly Hills is visited by thousands of people every year. People in search of history, of architecture, and of the paranormal. The movie Death Tunnel is a 2005 horror movie found at the Waverly Hills Sanatorium. Today parts of the hospital are open for tours. Tickets for these tours, of both the hospital and the tunnel, cost $1,000 to $1,500 each. Paranormal enthusiasts and history buffs alike find Waverly Hills irresistible, and even skeptics have come away from the sanatorium, believers. Even though the doors to the sanatorium were closed with the discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin, it seems that for whatever reason, not all of the residents have left. In 2023, tuberculosis is estimated to have infected 10.8 million people and caused one and a quarter million deaths, making it the current leading cause of death from an infectious disease. About 8.3 million people across the globe were reported as newly diagnosed with TB in 2024. The disease, as is true for the past 70,000 years, has become increasingly drug resistant. Let's hope that there isn't a future need for a Waverly Hills sanatorium.
Carole Townsend:I'm Carole Townsend, veteran newspaper journalist and six-time award-winning author. You can find me on social media and check out my website at Carol Townsend.com. As always, thanks for listening, and if you're enjoying these tales of Southern history and lore, I hope you'll tell your friends. Subscribe to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Play, iHeart, and anywhere you listen. The World Health Organization, CDC.gov, the Waverly Hills Sanatorium.com American Haunting England.com
