American Horror Story and Waverly Hills Sanitorium

American Horror Story is one of my favorite television shows.  This is probably no surprise.  I have been waiting all year for the new season and it hasn't disappointed.  This year;s American Horror Story moves out of the haunted house and into the haunted asylum.  Haunted Asylums are my absolute favorite.  My own horror novel, Circe, is set in the haunted Searcy State Hospital in Southern Alabama.  As a psychologist, the hauntings that happen in such places of healing are particularly tragic and terrifying to me.

Interestingly, the asylum in American Horror Story reminds me of one of the best known haunted locations in this nation.  It bares a striking resemblance to Waverly Hills Sanatorium. Of course, Waverly Hills was never an asylum.  However, the hospital in American Horror story was once a tuberculosis hospital.   According to the first episode,  the asylum used to be a tuberculosis hospital where over  40,000 people died.  When it was a tuberculosis hospital, there was a tunnel beneath the hospital where the bodied were pulled out of the hospital for disposal.  They call it the death shoot. Waverly Hills also had a long tunnel beneath it.   In this tunnel, motorized carts were used to pull the bodies from the hospital to be disposed of outside of the hospital.  According to some rumors, as many as 100,000 people died in Waverly Hills.    Waverly Hills was opened in 1910 and is located outside of Louisville, Kentucky.  It has become a popular paranormal location and is considered by some to be the most haunted place in The United States.  I have to wonder if  the inspiration for this season's American Horror Story wasn't drawn from this amazing real life haunted location.