Freaky

Last night, the past came alive with a TV show that I usually watch (when I actually watch television).

There's a show on the Sci-Fi Channel called "Ghost Hunters," in which the TAPS team was called in to investigate the Waverly Hills Sanitorium, located near Louisville, Kentucky.

Right away, when I heard the "sanitorium," my mind raced back to more than 10 years ago with our personal experiences with the local sanitorium. But watching this show and looking at the building itself, Waverly Hills was much bigger than the actual Riverside Sanitorium that I knew so well back in the days when I was in high school.

As the TAPS team and the camera roamed the hallways (5 floors at Waverly, compared to 3 at Riverside) and the basement (including the morgue), the halls were decorated with graffiti, much like they were at Riverside. I was literally back inside Riverside once again, feeling the same creepy feelings that I once felt once I stepped inside and into the impending darkness.

These sanitoriums were built for a specific purpose: to house the tuberculosis patients that had contracted the illness during the 1920's. Both of the sanitoriums were built at the same time to accommodate the patients and the architecture was almost similar in design (more internal than external -- Waverly Hills's architecture is much more striking).

My personal experiences with Riverside was one that was more curious than anything. There is was: an empty shell of a huge building, windows all busted out with paint peeling off the walls. A few office desks and broken bed stands still remained, but other than that, nature took its course at Riverside. At the back of the building, there was once a large, sweeping lawn that stretched itself down to the Minnesota River, but was now occupied by heavy undergrowth and trees.

I was a senior in high school (fall of 1995) when I first stepped into the ruins of Riverside. Our main purpose: just to explore. We all had heard the rumors of Satanic rituals that would occur in the basement of the building, so we decided to check it out ourselves. Of course, the only time we would go out there would be after football games on a late Friday night (bringing some girls with us in the meantime) and we would walk the building, armed only with flashlights.

Later on, as we became more accustomed to Riverside, we would plan "scaring raids" in which people would already be situated out there (wearing masks or make-up paint) and we give tours to scare the shit out of people. It was never in my mind that Riverside was haunted by any means, but still -- it gave a person the biggest case of the whillies when anybody stepped inside.

Unfortunately for Riverside, it meet its fate a couple of years after I had graduated from high school. Watching "Ghost Hunters" and seeing the TAPS crew investigate the Waverly Hills Santorium really brought back great memories, almost to the point that I was going to call a few people up because they had to check this out!