Escape From Waverly Hills Sanitorium

He was a patient at the Kentucky Waverly Hills Sanitorium where the walls are still stained with blood in some places and the ghosts of former patients still wander the halls.  

The police surrounded the abandoned building that had closed its doors in 1961 after multiple reports of patient abuse and maltreatment using electroshock as punishment and frontal lobotomies to placate those patients with a record of violent or any sort of antisocial behavior. 

Looking down on the scramble of activity in the courtyard in front of the ugly brick building born of gothic architecture with sharp archways rising four stories from the ground where two dozen armed police officers surrounded the entrance with their eyes all focused on the fourth floor where he stood peering out a pane less window.  

Chief Windthorp grabbed the bullhorn, “Come out peaceful with your hands over your head.”

All the men could hear was the maniacal laughter of Horace Greenway as he ran down the hall of the fourth floor corridor. 

“Howard!” The chief called out.

“Yes sir.” A tall thin man dressed in a blue uniform hustled over to the Chief’s side as he crouched behind his patrol car. 

“We may have to gas this idiot out.” He jammed his finger into Howard’s chest. 

It was almost like a movie on a Hollywood set.  Horace Greenway had escaped from a psychiatric institution in Louisville after he had murdered a young lady from the university.  The attack on Becky Wadsworth was horrendous and sadistic with lurid details that filled the newspapers until his conviction a few weeks ago.  The prosecutor was seeking the death penalty as recompense to the nature of Greenway’s attack on the young woman, but due to his history of mental illness was unable to obtain it and instead Horace Greenway received a long stay at the Brook State Psychiatric Hospital.  

Disguising himself as one of the staff orderlies, Horace managed to slip out of his confinement reaching the general public where he was considered a threat to himself and others.  Upon notification, the entire Louisville Police Department went on red alert with an APB for apprehension of Horace Greenway.  

Now parked in front of the abandoned horror house known as Waverly Hills Sanitorium, Police Chief Windthorp had some of his men inside where they would have to scale four sets of stairs to reach Greenway and a team of four men armed with tear gas canister launchers ready with their fingers on the trigger awaiting his order to launch.  Men inside the building also wore gas masks in case he ordered them to launch.  

As his men reached the third floor, Horace Greenway stepped onto the pane less window sill.  Chief Windthorp froze as did the others standing nearby.  He picked up his bullhorn, “Mr. Greenway, please step out of the window.  Help is on its way.”

As soon as he finished his sentence, Horace Greenway, with the entire world watching, launched himself into the air and let gravity take over.

His collision with the cement parkway was deemed not appropriate for broadcast and Chief Windthorp knew in an instant, Horace Greenway did not survive his leap.  In a matter of minutes, his prediction was confirmed, Horace Greenway was deceased.

“Hey Joe.” Chief Windthorp greeted Dr. Joe Hitchcock, the coroner as he walked to where Horace Greenway’s body lay face down on the cracking cement where only dandelions dared showed their faces. “Pretty gruesome, eh?” 

“Day doesn’t go by when it is any other way.” Known for his dry sense of humor, Dr. Hitchcock squatted next to Horace’s body and shook his head.

“He escaped from Brooks earlier this morning.” Chief explained as Dr. Hitchcock turned the body over where both got a clear view of Horace’s smashed in face. “Ugh!”

“I’ve seen worse.” Joe sighed, regaining his feet as his assistant laid out the body bag Horace would soon occupy.

Placed in what was known as cold storage, Horace was placed on a slab still inside the bag and rolled into the storage locker.

“Why do you suppose he jumped?” Jimmy Daniels, his assistant, asked. 

“Haven’t the foggiest.” Dr. Hitchcock shook his head as he entered the information on the autopsy report. 

“He was crazy.” Jimmy locked the locker.

“I’m sure he was, but that doesn’t matter at this point, now does it.” He flashed a cold stare at Jimmy as he had done on many other occasions.  Jimmy smiled, turned on his heel and left cold storage without another word.  Dr. Hitchcock did not even look up from his clipboard as his assistant exited the room.  

At about three o’clock in the afternoon, Dr. Hitchcock opened the locker containing the remains of Horace Greenway.  Sliding out the slab where he had been resting for the past few hours, Dr. Hitchcock opened the plastic black bag.

“Your turn, Mr. Greenway.” He removed the bag so he could complete his autopsy.  Using a recording device that hung around his neck in order to keep his hands free for the operation he was about to perform, he spoke into the small microphone, “Notes on Mr. Horace Greenway, male, sixty-eight at the time of his demise today, November 3 at 11:13 am.  Patient died upon impact with the ground after leaping from a fourth story window.”

He began to cut at the loose skin under his neck and with careful precision he removed the skin from Greenway's head.  Removing a bone cutting saw from his workbench, he began to cut his patient’s skull.  Once he had removed the top part, the bone came off easily in his gloved hand.

What he saw made him gasp.  Losing his grip on the bone, it shattered against the tiled floor.  He was standing there shocked at what he saw with the bone cutter still in his hand.  

July 30, 1960

Waverly Hills Sanitorium 

Patient Horace Greenway attacked one of the nurses on H-Ward this afternoon after lunch.  Dr. Ploughweight has determined that patient surgery is the only option left.  In medical review, he has determined that Horace Greenway will be scheduled for a frontal lobotomy as soon as possible. 

“What on earth did they do to you?” Dr. Hitchcock asked as Horace was able to answer him.  Carefully he scooped out the remains of Horace’s brain and put it on the scale.  It would measure less than three pounds with the tare on the paper used to place Horace’s brain on the scale.  His question was, however, picked up by the recorder.  It would be a question that would haunt him as the autopsy continued. 

August 15, 1960

Waverly Hills Sanitorium

Patient is recovering from a medical procedure performed at 08:00 hours this morning.  Surgeon removed the frontal cortex from Patient Horace Greenway so he would no longer assault other patients and staff as he had many times in the past.  Therapy has not been effective.  Electroshock has not been effective either and so Dr. Ploughweight determined that the only effective treatment would be a complete frontal lobotomy.  

“He was at Waverly Hills Sanitorium.” Dr. Hitchcock read the records from his chart. “Holy Mother-of-God.  Patient from October 3, 1945 to July 26, 1961 and was released to Hazelwood Sanitorium and remained until November 2, 1985.”

He read on about how Horace had been convicted of assault on a woman in 1940 and sent to the state penitentiary.  During a parole hearing he was given the option of staying his term in prison or enlisting in the army to go fight Hitler in 1942.  He chose enlistment stating how he was happy to escape prison.  He managed to survive D-Day when many of his company did not and he marched into Germany where he promptly assaulted a German widow, dumping her body into her own farm well.  Psychiatrist Thomas Forsythe determined that Horace suffered from a mental disturbance brought about by “shell shock.”  Upon returning to stateside as Allied forces ended the Third Reich, Horace was hospitalized after attacking another woman he talked to on the city bus while he wore his army uniform.  After a psychiatric evaluation, Horace was diagnosed with a mental illness resulting from his war experiences. 

“Saw one of my buddies get cut in half by a shell.” He told the evaluating doctor who wrote it down just like Horace had said it. 

Label as non-violent, Horace was taken on a community outing from the hospital when he murdered a woman who was selling perfume at Macy’s.  He dumped the body in a trash receptacle. He mentioned a body chute at Waverly Hills, but no one understood what he was talking about.  

His label was changed from non-violent to violent.  Added to his records was the phrase, “do not release until further evaluation.”

Back then you spend your life locked up in the looney bin for the rest of your life.

Meanwhile, Horace worked at the infirmary where he helped stuff dead bodies down the chute. He watched a doctor administer an injection that stopped the heart of a patient that he would later put in the body chute.  

“It could have been me.” He would later lament in the process group.

The more he read, the sicker he became.  Dr. Hitchcock had heard of some of the horror stories from the past in the treatment of the mentally ill, but now he was reading about it first hand.  While in medical school, his professors never presented a first hand account of the horrors of some of the treatments used in the previous hundred years, but now he had his hands on a document that verified every myth he had been told about.  

Sitting alone in his upscale apartment, he heard noises he could not explain, noises he attributed to a faulty heating system as the ghost of winter was rushing out of the Ohio River Valley.  

“Dr. Hitchcock, I cannot tell you about some of the things they done to me in that place.” The voice was clear, but not recognizable to him.  He turned off the television, but all he could hear was the wind.

His sleep was interrupted by nightmares of white robed patients screaming in the hallways, defecating on themselves as they wiped it on the walls.  

His brain was half the size it should have been.  No wonder he ran back to that haunted place.  His brain was telling him he was better off dead.  His mind, filled to capacity with nightmare images, could not take anymore.

His pillow was wet.  He had been crying in his sleep. 

The next day he read more of the historical documents as he left Horace’s body rest in peace in the cold storage. Jimmy came skipping wearing his earphones plugged to his brand new Walkman.  

“Hey boss, whacha doin?’” He smiled.

“Reading a horror story.” He answered knowing his assistant could not hear him.

“Cool.” Jimmy thumbs-upped him which drove Dr. Hitchcock crazy.  At this point, Dr. Hitchcock did not wish to tell anyone about his discoveries with Horace Greenway.  

His next stomach grinding section came when he read the subsection “Suicide Attempts.” 

In this subsection, they recorded a number of suicide attempts until he earned the label “Unsafe to Himself.” 

He had dealt with cutters and self-harmers, but when it came to suicide attempts, he had learned in most cases these were a cry for help, but if these cries went unanswered, the result would be a successful suicide attempt.  That’s what Horace Greenway had done.  

Seventeen.  Seventeen attempts that had been recorded by Waverly Hills at least.  

A nurse had hanged herself in one of the rooms and it was rumored her ghost still wandered the hallways.

How many others had made that cry, but it went unanswered until Horace lifted their body into the chute?

“Got this new group from Ireland.” Jimmy said as he put his feet on his desk which further disgusted Dr. Hitchcock. “Called, get this, U-2.  Just like the airplane.” 

Dr. Hitchcock held up a black and white photograph of Horace’s autopsy which was a signal not to disturb him as he read.  Jimmy nodded and went back to listening to his music without disturbing the doctor. 

December 17, 1958

Waverly Hills Sanitorium

“I will escape from this place.” Horace told the process group facilitator named William Fantone.

“How?” William responded.

“Fly outta of this place.” Horace laughed.

“You got wings?” Fantone asked.

“God gave me wings.” He laughed this time his laugh was a high pitched maniacal chortle.  Fantone called him a half brained maniac.  

Half brained? What an idiot this guy had been.  Wasn’t he paying attention? But then that was thirty years ago.  Why now?  Why did Horace Greenway thirty years to show that nincompoop that he was serious about his threat? 

Sometimes, Dr. Hitchcock reasoned the successful attempt comes when nobody is expecting it to happen.  At Waverly Hills, there were all sorts of eyes like Foucault's Tower, where you were always being watched. 

He pulled out some of the more recent records where treatment had been administered at a community mental health center until more bodies began to show up at the city dump.  The older he got, the more Horace was not as careful disposing of the bodies as he had been in his younger days when he still had his entire brain.  

At one of his hearings, Horace remarked, “I envy them when I strangle them, because their story is over while I still have to live through mine.” 

Like hitting a solid wall, Horace’s words reached out and wrenched Dr. Hitchcock’s heart.

Of course, his existence had become a heavy anchor to him.  Horace was hoping someone would show up with a gun and end his life.  Death by Police it was called.

He had gone back to Waverly Hills to escape the only way he knew how.  He had gone back to show the living and the dead how intent he was about escaping.  Who could blame him for what he did?

Every document he read from Greenway’s file had been put in his hands by the deceased.  He had been led through Horace Greenway’s troubled life history by man who now lie in Vault #25.  No one would grieve for this man.  His past history of violent assaults would condemn him, but Dr. Hitchcock would not be one of them.  He had seen the entire story of this man who had suffered so acutely for his shortcomings without anyone who really understood.

“I will not be your judge.” He whispered as he put the file where he had taken it from.

“Hey, did you say something?” Jimmy snapped his earphones from his head.

“No, nothing.” He shook his head as he closed the drawer of the file cabinet.

There was no body chute.  There was nobody to sign the certificate as next of kin.  He would need a higher approval which he had gotten before.  Then the body would be released to the county.

Just like the body chute at Waverly Hills.

He stopped as if he was frozen by that single thought. 

He parked on the busted cement parkway and looked at the behemoth structure spread out before him.  Swallowing hard, he began his walk to the front doors which would not prevent someone from entering this place.   

He shivered as he walked through the front door.  It was haunted.  He could feel it as he strode past the reception desk that was once fully staffed thirty years ago.

“Can I help you?” The voice evaporated as soon as he heard the question. 

The giant staircase led to the next landing and there was one after that and so on for four stories.  

Huffing and puffing his way to the fourth landing, there was a sign clearly stating this was a restricted area.  This was the ward where the sickest of the sick had been housed. The checkerboard tiled floor seemed to scream out in the scant lights left from street lights outside. 

The door with the red warning sign on it opened without much resistance when he put his shoulder to it.

Shadows seemed to seep out of every dark corner.  Voices echoed in empty spaces.  None of these voices seemed happy.  This was a place of misery.  This was a place of great suffering.  He felt as if he had entered a sacred cemetery, hallowed ground as it were.  

The Electroshock Room was labeled on one of the doors he passed. Creatures of the night who had been undisturbed for decades ran for darker corners. 

He came to an open bay.  This was the place Horace had stopped on his way to the window clearly visible from the empty space.  

Escape.  Escape.  Escape waits for you.

Self determination and control were fought in this very place.

Eyes of the tower were constantly watching.

Slowly he walked to the window.  He put his hands on the place Horace had touched in his final moments of his tortured life. 

His brain weighed half as much as a normal human brain weighed.  Under two pounds, because they had removed the frontal lobe to prevent Horace Greenway from exercising his self determination.  The final control was put in place.  

After thirty years, he came to this window and launched himself into the air.  Four stories did not seem insurmountable, but as he looked down, he felt the gravity tug harshly at his sleeve.

“God bless you, Horace Greenway.  God bless you.” He said as pulled himself back into the empty room from his perch in the window sill.

As he walked away, he swore he could hear a whisper of voice.

“Thank you, Dr. Hitchcock, thank you.” 

He turned around quickly, but there was nobody there.