Daniel P.
Yelp
With the hysteria surrounding SARS CoV-2 on the wane touristing is an option again so I got a ticket and went inside! yea for inside! it was a bright, warm Sunday afternoon when I got to experience the story of Waverly Hills. Despite being advertised as a historical tour some mildly annoying holdovers from last night's spooky tour were pushing for more of the same, and, while I was hoping to avoid it entirely it is still pretty easy to ignore the drivel.
Close to 70 people showed up for this go so we got split into 2 groups and went our separate ways meeting up at the fourth floor for true-life stories about how historical events gets twisted up in the retelling and turn into spooky stuff - it's a bit like CNN but not as creepy. our guide seemed un-interested in the actual history of the sanatorium but was keen on relating the less savory bits of life and death on the grounds; the various and misguided procedures that were performed and curious treatments administered in the name of science. shocking things by modern standards, but not implausible since the disease and treatments were not well understood. people were ignorant of so much and they were afraid of what was happening and they wanted so badly for it to stop that the unthinkable started to sound less and less unreasonable p as the people in authority gave assurance it could help! but it didn't, much, really, at all...
All in all it was a good tour. kinda cool seeing the building and features up close. more facts and figures would have been nice beside the speed of construction, the built-in headphone jacks, (everywhere), mortality rate, facilities, treatments and rooms, ect... but I suppose all that can be looked up online with a little effort. satisfying people's silent morbid curiosity truly needs to be done in person, so they do it like that.
in closing: during your visit you begin to get a sense of the huge costs associated with infectious disease. more than mere money, the toll on people's lives and livelihoods is overwhelming. new plague, old plague, it's all the same: mental illness, leprosy, consumption, the CoVidiocy, whatever... at the end of the day more than our health has been compromised and the normalcy we return to won't be the one we left.