Season 09 Episode 16: Primum Non Nocere

stories you hear on the show. But it's also a home for something more personal, my fiction, my strange amusings, and the odd fragments that don't belong anywhere else. Search for Richard McClain smith on substack, or go to Richard mcclainsmith dot substack dot com to find out more and subscribe. If you'd like a little bit more of me and Unexplained in your week, join me on substack and let's

keep exploring the unknown together. New writing most Tuesdays. Deep beneath Edmondson County, in the central belt of Kentucky, there is a hidden world of rock and shadow. Mammoth Cave is the largest known cave system in the world. To date, over four hundred and twenty square miles of passageway have

been surveyed, with additional mapping every year. The vast honeycomb structure encompasses cathedral like vaults, claustrophobic tunnels, and the so called bottomless pit that drops for one hundred and five feet straight down, ready to swallow anyone who takes an unwary step. It's an awesome but alienating environment. Yet for a short while in the nineteenth century, it was home to a very particular community, for whom it offered a

last possible antidote to their dwindling hope. Doctor John Crogan was a physician and native of Kentucky who specialized in the study of tuberculosis or tea. Elsewhere in the world, the disease was known as consumption scropula or a host of other names. In Kentucky, they called it the white plague. Tb attacks the lungs and respiratory system, consuming the sufferer's energy and ability to breathe, until finally they choke on their last breath. For most of humankind's history, it has

been a death sentence. As late as the eighteen eighties, it was approximated that one in seven human beings worldwide died of TB or related conditions, and though the first major progress towards a vaccine was made in nineteen o six, widespread success in treating the disease would not arrive until after the Second World War in the form of antibiotics. But in eighteen forty two, Doctor Crogan had a plan.

Crogan was a believer in the humoral tradition of medicine, the idea that ailments were due to an imbalance in one or more of the four humors that supposedly regulated the body. As mentioned in our Charles Walton episode a few weeks ago. These were yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm, and the white plague, according to Dr Crogan, could be blamed on excess flem brought about by unregulated

temperature and humidity. The answer, therefore, was simple, find a place offering a consistent, dry environment that could help stabilize the patient's imbalanced system. Mammoth Cave fit the bill perfectly. Dr Crogan's ambition was to turn Mammoth Cave into a luxury underground health spa, but he began his experiment with just fifteen people, eleven tb infected patients, four companions, and the child of a patient. They would be fed and served by the enslaved people that had been included in

Dr Crogan's purchase of the cave. The group entered it in the winter of eighteen forty two with the intention of remaining within indefinitely, or until sufficiently recovered enough to leave. They lived in roofless stone huts, and their only source of light was from oil lamps and fires, both of which filled the caverns with noxious fumes, no doubt ailing

their already weakened lungs. To add to the indignity of their suffering, the patients became unwilling exhibitions for tourists, who saw them as a novel addition to the long running cave tours. Those who encountered the commune spoke of pale, skeletal figures scuttling in and out of the lamplight. The caves reverberated with the constant sound of coughing. The experiment ended after just five months. By then five of the

group had died. At each death, the bodies were laid out on a low flat stone they called corpse rock. Moore would die upon leaving the cave, no doubt further weakened by their time underground, Dr Crogin himself eventually became infected with TB. He died from the disease in eighteen forty nine. It isn't known how many of the enslaved people that he forced to take part in this failed endeavour also died as a result. Stephen and Charlotte Bishop

and their six year old son Thomas were three of them. Stephen, who was considered one of the first explorers and guides of the cave system, was only thirty eight when he died. We can only assume as a result of contracting TB. The fate of his wife and son are not known. Subsequent visitors to the cave have reported hearing strange noises around the site, now known as the Tuberculosis Wart. In particular, they describe hearing shuffling feet, muttering voices, and a carerus

of harsh, persistent coughs. As eerie as that echo of the past may be, it is neither the sole nor most lingering trace of Kentucky's battle with tuberculosis. The disease would return to wreak havoc again, and next time the medical establishment's fight back would have loftier ambitions and leave an even more haunting legacy. You're listening to Unexplained, and

I'm Richard MacLean Smith. When the White Plague returned to Kentucky in the early nineteen hundreds, it was Jefferson County that took the brunt as the most densely populated area in the state. Situated along the Ohio River wetlands, Jefferson and in particular the city of Louisville, was the perfect environment for a highly contagious disease to run rampant. At the turn of the century, it had the highest TB

infection rate in the nation. Scant progress had been made in treating the disease beyond the convalescence and quarantine at the core of doctor Crogan's Mammoth Cave project, and though the authorities had no desire to follow in the doctor's subterranean footsteps. Like him, they sought to remove the infected from society, placing them somewhere clean and comfortable. To attempt

what recovery they could, they looked to the sanatorium. The concept was still relatively new in the early twentieth century, built around the idea of nourishment and dry, fresh air. The sanatorium was not a million miles away from what doctor Crogan had envisioned. Whereas Krogan went down into the earth. However, the more modern sanatoria prized higher altitudes, as doctors theorized that increased external pressure would better match that of the

body's interior, enhancing the flow of oxygen carrying blood. The first sanatorium design specifically for the treatment of TB was built in Germany in eighteen sixty three. From there, the model spread across the high altitude regions of Europe before making the leap to the United States. New York was home to the first American facility, the Adirondack Cottage Sanatorium, which opened in eighteen eighty five. Others followed in North Carolina, Arizona,

and Oregon. By nineteen eleven. Need for such an institution must truly dire in Jefferson, Kentucky, especially as the recently commissioned plans for a new Louisville hospital included no provision for TB patients. Instead, the local board, the Tuberculosis Association, were given a twenty five thousand dollar grant to build their own bespoke hospital. They cast around Louisville for a likely sight, and soon honed in on a plot of

land known as Waverley Hill. Waverley Hill was named by the school teacher who taught at the one room school that occupied the site. She was a huge fan of Walter Scott's Waverley novels and had named the school accordingly. Her landlord had appreciated the whimsy and applied the name to his whole property. When the Tuberculosis Association purchased the land, they kept the name. At some unspecified point in time,

and s was added, pluralizing it to Waverly Hills. The name stuck and has ever since been synonymous with the haunting heritage of early medical practices. Waverley Hills is a primary node on the American Atlas of Bad Places. It began humbly. The first iteration of the sanatorium was a simple wooden structure with space for forty patients. In the early stages of the disease, they were split into two wards,

each housing twenty patients. These were more pavilion tents than buildings, allowing for the best possible airflow, but presumably less than comfortable in the baking sun. Or pouring rain. At first, the only solid structure was the two story administration office,

where the skeleton staff did the best they could. And it should be said, unlike many supposedly haunted hospitals, Waverley Hills as little history of wanton cruelty, patients were made as comfortable as possible, seated by large open windows or unspacious porches. For maximum ventilation. Sunlight was key, and specialist sun rooms were set up to subject the lungs to

bacteria killing UV light. This approach has since become recognized practice in the treatment of TB Sadly, other practices were somewhat less efficacious, such as the art of vinumouth or axe procedure, in which balloons would be inserted into the patient's lung and inflated, often with disastrous results. I will leave it to your imagination to guess at what those might have been exactly. Even more extreme cases saw the removal of muscle and rib from the chest, theoretically allowing

the lungs more room to expand. It was an extremely violent last resort, and often if the surgery itself didn't kill the ensuing infectioned it. This need for more extreme treatment led to the first expansion of Waverley Hills. In December nineteen twelve, the first solid wards were built at Waverley to care for another forty patients with even more severe symptoms. These were busted in en mass from the overrun Louisville City Hospital. Two years later, in nineteen fourteen,

the Children's Pavilion was completed. This housed up to fifty young people, but the tragedy of the arrangement was that, in addition to children with TB, the pavilion also housed the uninfected offspring of Waverley's adult patients if they had nowhere else to go. At the time, it wasn't understood that TB largely spreads from person to person through the air. As such, Waverley Hills almost certainly introduced healthy children to the fatal disease. At this point, Waverley had an official

capacity of one hundred and thirty patients. Sadly, this was a drop in the ocean of cases afflicting Jefferson County, and the hastily assembled wooden canvas was proving no match for the Kentucky winters. It wasn't until October nineteen twenty six that the far more substantial. Waverley Hills, as it is known today, was finally constructed at five stories high with rue for four hundred and thirty five patients. It was a welcome but foreboding sight. Built from red stone

in the Victorian Gothic style. It s brought outward on long wings from a central entrance hall, and was dotted with windows that, although provided access to light and fresh air for its patients, seemed also to peer down at approaching visitors, like the many eyes of a gigantic spider. This was Waverley Hills in its final form as a sanatorium, a grand edifice to the final decades of humanity's besiegement

by the White Plague. The widespread introduction of the strepto mice in antibiotic in nineteen forty three saw a rapid decline in the need for convalescence, and by the nineteen fifties the hospital had become largely redundant. In nineteen sixty one it was closed down for good. Thousands of patients met their end there. Exactly how many, it's possible to say. The lowest estimate is six thousand deaths, while some claims

multiply that up to ten times. The truth, however, will remain forever lost, as patient records were kept off site at an office in Louisville and destroyed in the huge flood of nineteen thirty seven. Regardless, Waverly Hills saw its fair share of individuals shuffling grimly off this mortal coil, and it's no surprise that there are stories. The earliest reports that something more malignant than bacteria lurked in Waverly

Hills date back to nineteen twenty eight. This is the year in which a nurse named Mary Hillenburg hanged herself from the light fixture in Room five oh two, a nurse's station on the fifth floor of the building. It's often been rumored that the fifth floor was reserved for TB PAP patients who also suffered from severe mental illness. In truth, the top floor was in fact reserved for the most severe infections, whether the t B had reached

deep into the bone itself. These patients were placed nearest the heleotherapy department for ready access to sunlight on the roof or in a UV room. Most poignantly, the children of the hospital had a swing set built on the roof. Still, the fifth floor was a grim place to work. The precise cause of Mary Hillenburg's suicide is debated. Some speak to the tragic futility of her daily tasks, pushing back

against the inevitable deaths of those under her care. The more often repeated theory is that she was pregnant out of wedlock and took her own life out of shame, but some dispute the story. In May twenty ten, the team at Darkness Radio hosted a paranormal conference in Kentucky and invited guests to join them on a late night excursion to the abandoned shell of Waverly Hills Sanatorium. Among the visitors to the ominous property that night were self

described mediums Lynn Sutherland Olson and Rhonda Sheenler. Even in daylight, such buildings, their sheer size, their monolithic uniformity, and the combination of tragedy and death that's harboured within will send

a shiver up the spine. But at night, as the moon peeks out intermittently from behind the scudding clouds above, with the black mass of the Gothic style sanatorium looming over you, the dark rooms behind its windows even blacker still, the eeriness can become all consuming, and so it was with no little trepidation that Lynn and Ronda, along with the handful of other visitors attending that night, entered the building's front doors, before pressing on into the seemingly endless

labyrinth of darkened corridor beyond. As the visitors found out, each felt their own way along whatever strange essence of the past they seemed to have tuned into. As they all steadily wandered deeper into the building, Lynn and Roonda eventually found their way to the third floor. It was there that Lynn claimed that something suddenly made contact with Roonda.

She called herself Mary. Though Lynn and Roonda were aware of Room five oh two and its unsettling reputation, both claimed not to have heard the name Mary associated with it before. As this apparent entity spoke to Roonda, she in turn relayed the story to Lynn about how she'd met her untimely end in room five oh two. Arriving outside the room some time later, both Lynn and Roonda immediately sensed a wicked energy emanating from inside of it.

Ronda claimed to sense Mary's presence again and quickly struck up another conversation with the apparent entity. Linda, meanwhile, claimed to pick up an equally tortured presence in the room's adjoining bathroom. Writing about the experience later on her own WordPress site, Linda claimed it was the spirit of a former intern, the man who'd supposedly got Mary pregnant, which some believed was the reason the woman had taken her own life. Only that wasn't the end, according to Lynn.

It was some weeks later that Lynn and Ronda decided to try and reconnect with Mary once again. This time, the story Mary apparently gave Ronda was very different. The man Lynn had apparently met in the bathroom of Room five oh two wasn't just the father of Mary's unborn child. He was also their murderer, or one of them in any case, According to Lynn, when he discovered Mary was pregnant, he convinced her to have an abortion to save himself the shame of fathering a child out of wedlock with

a woman that his parents apparently didn't approve of. Lynn recounted a vision of Mary's hanging body with her lower half drenched in blood, supposedly from the botched abortion. Rather than wait for her to bleed out, the intern, along with three colleagues, had decided to hang her instead and make her death like a suicide. Though quite how they were planning to explain away the blood from a botched

abortion is any one's guess. Either way, there really was a Mary Hillenburg who was found hanged in Room five o two, and, regardless of the truth of how or why, the room inevitably developed a sinister reputation soon after, and perhaps an energy all of its own. Four years later, in the winter of nineteen thirty two, another nurse is said to have thrown herself from the room's balcony. Though several colleagues tried to stop her, she slipped by them

and leapt, plummeting to the lawn below. Unlike Mary Hillenburg, this other nurse's name has been lost to time. Is it a true story, did something in the room somehow make her do it? Or is it simply one more legend folded into the history of Waverly Hills. Whatever the case may be, what is certain are the many complaints and claims made by staff and patients who spent time

in the eerie property over the years. Many are said to have reported feeling cold spots in the rooms on even the most humid of days, or a feeling of intense depression that dissipated the moment they left. Several nurses claimed to see a dim female shape dressed in white

and a disembodied voice screaming get out. Two months after Lynn and Ronda's visit, in twenty ten, one of Waverly Hills's current owners, Charlie Mattingly, was apparently alone at the property when a woman arrived, claiming to be working on post production for a paranormal show that had recently filmed. There After Charlie led her into the building, she climbed the stairs from the main hallway and quickly slipped out

of sight. Slightly irked by her uninvited arrival, Charlie called the number he'd been given by the production company to check her credentials. The company told him that they hadn't sent anyone to Waverly Hills that day. Charlie radioed his security staff and two members of the team were promptly dispatched to find the mysterious woman. They eventually caught up with her on the third floor landing, where she admitted she'd lied to gain admittance, so she apparently wouldn't give

them her name. She explained that she was a medium who'd been drawn to the third floor of the old sanatorium after making contact with the spirit of a young girl named Mary. Charlie was immediately skeptical. Accounts of the hospital's apparent hauntings were hardly kept secret, and Mary was just about the most obvious name the so called medium could have plucked out of the air. He was about to demand she leave when she suddenly jerked to attention

and fixed her gaze on a nearby door. Since he didn't want to man handle a stranger, Charlie was content to let her cross the corridor and wander into the room beyond. This was Mary's room. She said, if you look in the closet, you'll find her things. By now a little curious himself, Charlie obliged, but when he opened the closet, all he could see was dust and scattered debris. But before he could say a word, the woman stepped up beside him and said, you're looking in the wrong place.

She pointed to the back of the closet, where a crack in the plaster exposed a cavity. Charlie reached in and felt several loose objects. First, he pulled out a metal fork, which everyone present could only look at in confusion, followed by a single small house slipper. Then he reached behind the plaster again and withdrew three brown photographs. The first was of a stretch of rural road, empty and

tree lined. The second captured a group of four middle aged men sitting on a wall, seemingly at rest from work. The final photograph was of a young woman with a shy smile and long brown hair. On the back, in neat cursive was written the name Mary Lee. At this point, according to Charlie, the mysterious woman gave a slight smile and left the room. Despite calling her back, she apparently ignored them, descended the stairs and left the hospital. No one to this day knows her name or who she

really was. Every floor of Waverly Hills has its own share of legend and encounter. On the ground floor of the north wing there is a pair of old, stained wooden doors. They give access to a grim concrete tunnel running five hundred and twenty five feet on a downward slant. The tunnel was once equipped with a pulley car system to carry supplies from the bottom of the hill. However, at the peak of the hospital's capacity, the death shoot, as it was morbidly named, was used to discreetly transport

bodies down to a receiving hearse. During those peak years, over a thousand bodies made their final journey through this dark conduit. It's no surprise that such a micabreough feature has become an epicenter for much of the hospital's alleged uncanny activity. Several ghosts are said to appeer in and around the tunnel, including the shade of an old man

and his dog. Tina Mattingly, the wife of Charlie and co owner of the property, told BuzzFeed reporters that while locking up after a guided tour, she saw a tall, disheveled man with long, thinning hair. He didn't move, simply stared Caught in the beam of her flashlight. Tina jumped back in shock and lost sight of him. After collecting herself, she began to explore near by rooms, looking for what she presumed was a member of the tour or an intruder,

but the man was nowhere to be seen. Returning to the main corridor, she looked down to where a German shepherd dog was lying calmly on the floor. She called to it, but it refused to move. After a second, it was gone. According to Tina, I didn't see it disappear. It didn't get up and walk away. It just wasn't there any more. Tina likes to think that even if what remains of the old man is stuck in the grounds of the hospital, then at least he's with his

best friend. The apparent ghost most associated with the tunnel and ground floor is similarly benign. Many visitors claim to have interacted with the shadow of a young boy who, legend has it was named Timmy. According to law, Timmy first came to the hospital in nineteen thirty when he was six, accompanying his infected parents. When they died in the upper wards, Timmy was placed in the children's hospital, where he first caught the disease and then succumbed to it.

He is apparently seen throughout the grounds, but mostly at the tunnel entrance. Timmy has become the focus of most ghost hunting expeditions to Waverley Hill, both because of the mass of physical phenomena associated with its presence, but also because the playful spirit of a six year old boy is a far less fearsome prospect than other lingering residents.

After all, no one wants to meet the Creeper. Of all the entities encountered in Waverly Hills, the shadowy figure known as the Creeper as the most fearsome reputation, said to have been encountered all over the hospital, but most associated with the second and fourth floors. The Creeper is said to be a humanoid figure seemingly made from nothing

but corporeal shadow. Those who claim to have seen it, and there are many, describe it in unnervingly consistent terms as a dark figure with arms that seem too long for its body, and everything below the waist into an ill defined mass. It rarely approaches directly and is most often spotted from the corner of a nervous eye, crawling along the walls or ceiling when the visitor's back is turned.

Many photos have been taken of strange, out of place shadows in the halls that make no sense in relation to light sources. In the early twenty twenties, a woman named Moira was taking part in a guided tour of the sanatorium when she started to feel a little too unnerved by the stories of death and disease. While the tour guide was showing off the heliotherapy rooms on the fifth floor, Moira excused herself and descended to the second

floor to use one of the renovated bathrooms. Stepping inside, she was immediately surprised by a distinct chill in the room, despite it being a pleasant day outside and the windows being closed. Moira was about to enter a cubicle when she heard the unsettling sound of heavy dragging coming from the corridor beyond. Then the door slowly groaned open. Moira fixed her attention on the middle of the doorway, where

a human would be framed, but it stayed empty. It was only when her gaze jerked upwards when she saw the long, dark arms reaching around the upper segment of the door. Moira claims that a human torso then pulled itself into the bathroom and crept across the ceiling in a series of uncanny jerking movements. The thing, whatever it was, is said to have pursued Moira into a cubicle before she eventually managed to run away and rejoin the group. After reporting what had happened to the tour guide, she

was met with only a knowing smile. Despite years of research and apparent encounters, no one has ever found a cause, backstory, or explanation for that most sinister of Waverley's residents, Co owner Tina Mattingly claims that some troublesome patients were kept from roaming the halls by having weights attached to their legs. If any staff heard the dragging of the irons, they would know that someone was out of their room, though

this has never been verified. For the next half century after it ceased to be a sanatorium, Waverley Hills went through various owners and reincarnations. From nineteen sixty two to nineteen eighty it was a geriatric care facility, which was eventually shut down amid controversy about patient cruelty, including the liberal application of electroshock therapy. After that, it stood empty

for twenty years. One developer, J. Clifford Todd, had plans to reopen it as a prison and, failing that, luxury apartments, but in the end couldn't raise the capitol. A subsequent owner had plans to demolish the hospital and replace it with the world's largest statue of Jesus. The project fell short of its fundraising aims, and Waverly Hills continued its lonely vigil as just another dilapidated ruin on the edge of an American town, gathering shadows and rumors along with

its dust. Finally, in two thousand and one, a full forty years after it closed its doors on the last TB patient, the property was purchased by the Mattingleys. Rather than demolishing the ruin, the Mattingleys turned it into a museum and leased it to the Waverly Hills Historical Society, who run regular tours of both the history and the hauntings. Today, if you dare, you can run your own personal expedition into the facility and spend a long night alone inside

what some claimed to be America's most haunted hospital. But the precise nature of just who or what you might encounter there seems destined to forever remain unexplained. This episode was written by Neil McRobert and produced by Richard McClain smith. Thank you as ever for listening Unexplained as an Avy Club production podcast created by Richard McLain smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced

by me. Richard McLain Smith Unexplained. The book and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation or a story of your own

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