Steve Gonsalves from Ghost Hunters reveals the most chilling paranormal he has ever experienced.
Generally speaking, Steve Gonsalves is not scared of ghosts. The Ghost Hunters star, who has spent more than 20 years on the Syfy reality series investigating paranormal activity with Jason Hawes, Dave Tango, and Grant Wilson, recently shared his scariest experience to date and acknowledged that even he gets chills sometimes.
“It's going to be a place called Waverly Hills in Louisville, Ky., and it was a tuberculosis hospital, very sad but over 60,000 people died there in just a three-year period,” in a special interview, Steve clarified. “The frequency of activity there is incredibly high and it's always right in front of you, apparitions moving around, doors slamming. Things moving, voices yelling out of thin air and it happens as soon as you walk in.”
In Steve's words, “That place is really cool.”
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A relic of the TB outbreak that struck Jefferson County in the 1900s is Waverly Hills Sanatorium. As per to its website, when it was constructed, a large five-story structure was required to accommodate all of the patients in the vicinity.
Thanks to medical advancements, the hospital remained open for business for almost 50 years before closing in 1961. The facility reopened in 2001 to allow public tours after the overwhelming number of people who toured Waverly Hills' halls reported experiencing ghostly encounters.
Even though Steve had encountered spirits many times, he acknowledged that Waverly Hills truly chilled him.
“I cried,” Steve acknowledged that he had visited the historic place. “I wanted to go there for so long and it's so beautiful and it's gorgeous. You come up this creepy drive with all the trees shrouding it and, when you see it just reveal itself, I started getting emotional. It's just absolutely beautiful.”
Steve believes that haunted locations are not only places where spirits live, but also places where intense feelings have been experienced, and he experienced this at Waverly Hills.
“The sadness that happened there and the grief…you get a little emotional,” he went on. “I thought it was fantastic.”
However, Steve had a hunch that another historic site, the Franklin Castle in Cleveland, Ohio, would be as terrifying. He provided a true haunted tour of the castle for Cutwater's true Spirits Inside contest.
“History and the personalities that lived in a place do work as a big catalyst in a haunting,” Steve stated. “And here you have a lot of the history, you have a lot of mystery to the history.”
In fact, the sweepstakes winners claimed to have heard footsteps coming from deserted floors and doors slamming and opening without warning.
In case you are unable to visit Waverly Hills or Franklin Castle during this eerie season, Steve also acknowledged that there is a horror movie that consistently gives him jump scares.
“John Carpenter's The Thing,” he divulged. “That, for me, is required viewing not just at Halloween but all year around.”
