American Ghost Hunter at Waverly Hills!

Well I'm finally sitting down today and writing this. Yesterday was absolutely exhausting on so many levels, but let's just start from the beginning.

My mother bought tickets for my birthday to go see American Ghost Hunter in Louisville at the Waverly Hills Sanatorium. For those of you who don't know, and I can't imagine that a lot of you do, AGH is a documentary about paranormal investigator Chad Calek's life. Ever since his youth in Persia, Iowa, he was plagued by a haunting that seemingly had an effect on his mother. He teamed up with Ryan Buell, who most people know from Paranormal State, who executive produced the film to help him get to the bottom of the haunting...but I don't want to give it all away.

I decided to take my best friend, Ashley, along. She's not 100% comfortable with the paranormal, but she deals with my insanity.

We took off from my house at 10 a.m. on the dot. My GPS had told us it would take 3 1/2 hours to get to Louisville, so I figured it would give us enough time to stop and get lunch on the way. Boy was I wrong.

Somehow we added an extra ten minutes on as we were going through the small towns on the way to the interstate. We got past Cincinnati just fine, with some slow drivers who didn't know how to change lanes, but who doesn't run into that?

As we cross the Kentucky border, I split off from I-75 onto I-71 and not 2 miles later, traffic is at a dead stop. Construction. I impatiently watch as the minutes keep adding on to the GPS's arrival time. Finally, after about 10 minutes of waiting, I whipped the wheel and got off the exit to my immediate right. This is where my GPS saved us, because it took us completely around the construction area and back into flowing traffic. But the down side, we had added about 25 minutes on to our journey.

We go on the rest of the trip without a hitch...that is until we actually get to the location. Waverly Hills' address says, "Paralee Ln, Louisville, KY," which was plugged into my GPS. We get to Paralee Lane and a sign there says, "Exit Only." At this point I start freaking out. I'm in a place I don't know and have no clue how to get somewhere. How people ever made it places without technology I have no idea. Ashley looked up Waverly Hills on her phone and sure enough there was a phone number. She got directions and we finally arrived.

We pull up to all 180,000 square feet of Waverly Hills Sanatorium. I had seen this place on so many TV shows and in so many pictures, I couldn't believe I was actually here. The building was amazing in itself. The former tuberculosis hospital had windows only on the bottom floor, which were brand new, I'm sure as part of restoration efforts. Tens of thousands of deaths happened at this place from the White Plague before a cure was found. So many emotions are held in this building, and I was standing mere feet from it. Unfortunately, I never took a step inside.

Now, I love when people turn to me about paranormal occurrences they've had. It makes me feel, special. But ironically as we were pulling in to the sanatorium, my phone goes off. It's my younger brother, who is currently in Wyoming playing baseball. He starts shouting something I can't make out because he's talking so fast. I told him, "Whoa, slow down. What happened?" "Ash!" he said, "you HAVE to bring your EMF detector out here!" I just snickered a little at the irony of the situation and said, "why?"

He proceeded to tell me that before he and his roommate went to practice that morning, they cleaned their room, but when they came back his roommate's bed was completely flipped over. "We couldn't have done it because we were at practice!" he shouted. He then proceeded to tell me about him trying to find out if something was there by provoking it (I blame this on the fact that I've made him watch too many episodes of Ghost Adventures). "If there is a f***ing ghost here do something! Don't be a f***ing p*ssy and just do sh*t while we're gone!" he shouted. "Ash, I'm not kidding," he said, finally calming down, "the door opened on its own." I was extremely excited to hear about this, but we were also still running late. So I said a quick good-bye to my brother and got out of the car.

I took one more glance at the sanatorium and I was ready to go. I take two steps towards the opposite end of the building, when I stop dead. Chad Calek and Ryan Buell are walking in themselves. I grab on to Ashley and go "Holy crap it's them!" She proceeded to tell me not to make an ass of myself by freaking out. I kept it mostly cool until we realized we had no idea where to go.

After embarrassing ourselves a little by just standing around, we finally figure out where to go and make our way in. The documentary viewing was inside of a sort of annex of the sanatorium, where there was little air flowing, but enough to make sure we didn't pass out. It was a total of 95 degrees in Louisville, so I tried to come prepared with a bottle of water, but that was gone within an hour.

Before we watched a second of the documentary we got to partake in a meet and greet with the cast. We lined up to meet Ryan, and for him to sign the book I had recently read of his, Paranormal State. I made it through smoother than I thought I would. Generally when I get nervous I make an idiot of myself. I made some small talk with him, he signed my book and we took a picture together. Then it was Ashley's turn. She just wanted a picture, so I took her phone from her to take it. Buuuut stupid me got nervous and couldn't remember how to take the picture. She finally told me, and after I took a picture of them both snickering at me, we thanked Ryan and walked away. I took a quick picture with Chad and we found a seat in the second row.

Chad surprised us all by announcing that we would be watching his documentary before American Ghost Hunter, that he made at Waverly Hills. But not everyone can see the whole thing. Part 1 is posted online for the public, but Part 2 has been seen by very little people.

We had a short break to walk around, because everyone needed to get up. Those chairs weren't exactly comfortable. Ash and I walked back out to the car to take a few pictures of the sanatorium, then took our seats again.

I won't say too much about the plot of the movie, because I think you should witness it for yourself. Chad's story is interesting in itself because he had just reconnected with his parents and brother. He had to make huge sacrifices in trying to resolve the issue of this spirit that had done so much damage to his family. I will tell you that a problem his mother had been having when he was younger, that he was told had been resolved when they moved, had not gone away.

I think what Chad went through was unbelievably hard. To face closure on something that had literally haunted him his entire life was indescribable. If the tour comes to your city I definitely recommend going to see it. They told us that it's more than just a paranormal movie, and it really is. I hope this comes out on DVD...even though I'm broke I will be putting money down for it.

I won't bore you with the lame details about our drive back...but I thought I'd share with you our wonderful adventure to Waverly Hills. I hope to investigate there one day!