watching
Terror in the Woods I learned of a new ghostly thing in Louisville...a state park in the middle of town "E.P." Tom Sawyer, that has the abandoned ruins of Lakeland Asylum...a basement and cave. Louisville is an amazing place...Waverly Hills. Pope Lick Trestle. The Kentucky Derby. AND asylum ruins....if I ever get back, will check this out. AND stay on floor 13 of The Brown Hotel.
This story originally appeared in October, 2014.
It’s a cool autumn afternoon, and we’re walking through the woods of E.P. Tom Sawyer Park, behind the archery range. One of us keeps muttering “We’re going to die. This is how we die. I can’t believe this is how we’re going to die.” We know this is an exact quote because we’re taping the whole experience. We’ve heard there are ghosts in Sauerkraut Cave, and if we see one, we want evidence.
We’ve heard about a series of underground spaces, caves and tunnels in the Louisville area, some built before the days of prohibition in order to move shipments from the docks into downtown buildings without braving the streets; some used by bootleggers to smuggle contraband between the city and the river; some simply used for storage. We first heard about Sauerkraut Cave on a Reddit thread and decided it would be the first stop on our tour of the Louisville Underground.
As we round a corner, the cave comes into view: a yawning black opening in the side of the hill, decorated with graffiti and impressively large. Nick Price, the Park Naturalist, has informed us the cave turns into a tunnel that goes “all the way out to Hurstbourne.” He has further advised us not to try and go too far back into the cave, because in certain places you have to go into the water, or crawl through mud, or go “where the snakes might be.” The cave itself is reinforced with brick walls and pillars. There’s a drain to one side of the cave and stacks of old tile on the other side. Toward the back of the cave, the ceiling lowers and the tunnel tapers back into absolute blackness.
E.P. Tom Sawyer Park was originally part of a parcel of land given to Isaac Hite, a Virginia militia officer who fought in the French and Indian War. Hite lived on the land and ran a mill and was most likely the one who began altering and using Sauerkraut. After Issac Hite was killed by Native Americans, the land ended up in the hands of Lakeland Asylum for the Insane, sometimes called Central Kentucky Lunatic Asylum, Lakeland Hospital or Central Kentucky Asylum for the Insane. In the days of the hospital (from around 1900 to 1986), the cave was used as a storage place for tiles, pipes and perishable goods, such as giant cans of sauerkraut — thus the name.
Lakeland Asylum has stories connected to it that are typical for other “lunatic asylums” of the early twentieth century: reports of ice baths, electric shock therapy, lobotomies, ill treatment, wrongful death and escapes run through the history of the hospital.
By the 1940s, the facility was hundreds of patients over capacity and there was an unknown number of people buried on the grounds. According to Samuel W. Thompson’s The Village of Anchorage, “In these institutions are housed 4,571 unfortunate people, occupying quarters designed to accommodate no more than 3,500; people of both sexes and of all races and colors; people of high and low degree, educated and ignorant, talented and feeble-minded, farmers, merchants, musicians, artisans, engineers, lawyers, clerks, cooks, teachers, doctors and wives of all classes of men.”
The general legends surrounding Sauerkraut Cave claim it was a point of escape for inmates. The tunnel in the back of the cave could have perhaps led them to freedom beyond the grounds of the asylum, but it was dark and flooded. Without today’s gear and flashlights, fleeing patients may have been more likely to drown or freeze in the flooded tunnel than to make it to the other side.
Patients who successfully escaped were likely to be sent back, as the facility was isolated, and anyone who stumbled across them would know where they had come from. “Patients were escaping all the time," Price explains. “Anyone who lived around here would call all the time, wanting to get a glass of water, use the phone, get a ride to Louisville or Anchorage.” Newspaper clippings from the era of the Asylum support his statement.
Some stories say the cave was where pregnant patients (who had not been pregnant when they entered the facility) were taken to give birth. Some even go so far as to say that the babies were disposed of in the cave.
Today, the cave is covered in graffiti and surrounded by tales of paranormal activity. Price told us he’s tagged along for several paranormal investigations: “(Paranormal investigators) say it’s kind of a sad place. There’s people trapped there, spirits trapped there. There’s a man who’s angry and they say he’s not letting any of the other spirits go.” The most recent paranormal investigation was done a few days before our visit, by Serious Paranormal.
The entire investigation can be accessed online here, along with some recordings that allegedly have paranormal voices or sounds on them. Photographs have been taken in the cave that show a “big man with a burly beard, an angry man” leaning against the tiles, says Price. “But there’s a lot of water vapor in the cave, which can cause distortions in pictures, like orbs.”
The weak sunshine filters through the trees, but it doesn’t make us feel warm or comforted. We venture into the blackness, armed with our cell phone flashlights, and notice little more than interesting graffiti, broken beer bottles and a tattered seat that appears to have been ripped directly from a car. There is a strange feeling to the exploration: like entering a room full of people who’ve had a terrible argument right before you arrived.
It feels malicious somehow; but whether our perception is altered by our previous knowledge is up to you to decide. After a few minutes of exploration, picture-snapping and jumping every time a bird chirps or a twig snaps, we are thoroughly terrified and 100 percent ready to leave. We see no ghosts. That doesn’t make us feel any better.
In 1986, the Lakeland Asylum, then known as Central State Hospital, was moved to a new facility adjacent to LaGrange Road. It is still operational there today. Sauerkraut Cave is currently open to exploration, but we highly recommend you take a guided tour.
Written by Elizabeth Myers and Michelle Eigenheer. Photos provided by Michelle Eigenheer and Elizabeth Myers. Historical Photos and press clippings provided by Nick Price.
From "The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding," published 1907, Chapter IV, Betty's Novel:
"It's some crazy man escaped from the Lakeland asylum," began Kitty, but her words were cut short by another shot, then another and another and another, in such rapid succession that they lost count. A series of piercing screams from Lucy, up-stairs, made their blood run cold, but the shrieks were not half as terrifying as the sight of Gay staggering back out of the hall. As they sprang towards her she leaned against them limply."
"Lakeland Asylum" was actually the Central Kentucky Asylum for the Insane. Built in 1869 in Anchorage, it initially housed juvenile delinquents and was called the Home for Juvenile Delinquents at Lakeland. In 1873, it became a lunatic asylum and was renamed the Central Kentucky Lunatic Asylum. By the time "The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding" was published, the name had been changed to the Central Kentucky Asylum for the Insane. The facility cared for patients with psychiatric disorders, mental retardation and brain damage and was located next to where Louisville's E. P. Tom Sawyer Park stands today. The original building shown in the post card above was bulldozed in 1996.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, escaped lunatics were an every day hazard of life in Pewee (Lloydsboro) Valley. The Central Kentucky Lunatic Asylum was located only a few miles outside the city limits and inmate escapes occurred with some frequency. In her book, "Jennie Casseday of Louisville : her intimate life as told by her sister, Mrs. Fannie Casseday Duncan." Mrs. Duncan offers this humorous anecdote about an escape that occurred while Jennie and she were staying alone at the Rest Cottage in Pewee Valley the week before it opened:
"I think I must tell right here a story that is so illustrative of Jennie Casseday's faith and humanness as to bring a smile whenever I tell it. She went to Rest Cottage a week or so in advance of the opening of that summer Home so as to get rested before the girls came out. Her nurse and I went with her. One day her nurse asked to spend the night in town and Jennie gladly accorded the privilege. When bedtime came we were surprised to find that the woman who had been employed as a housekeeper had given the cook permission to spend the night out, and had herself left the home without leave. That year the Rest was located not far from a lunatic asylum and sometimes there were escapes from it and wanderers through the neighborhood. Also the house was on the line of a railroad and tramps were not infrequent. I was consternated -- worse than that, frightened. I went to my frail little sister and said in despair: "What shall we do? You and I are alone in this house for the whole night. There is no house very near and if there were, I could not leave you to go for assistance. What can we do?"
Jennie gave me one of her gentle smiles and answered, "We can trust God. That's not so bad a thing to do, is it?" "Yes," I said, "but the lunatics, the tramps, and the possibility of your sudden illness?"
"Do you think they are not also in God's hands?"
So we went to bed and Jennie went to sleep almost at once. But I was very wakeful until past midnight. In the morning, the colored man, who came early to do the milking, had a horrid report. He told me that at 4 in the morning a lunatic had got loose and came to Rest Cottage and danced right under Jennie's window in a wild sort of dance. He had on nothing but his cotton underdrawers and he had a big tin washpan on his head and a long iron flesh-fork in his hands. Searchers came and got him at daylight and took him back to the asylum. I was rather elated with this news and carried it at once to my sister's bedside. "Aha, Miss Trustful," I said, "let me tell you what happened last night and maybe you will not be so trustful again." And I told it all, adding such gruesome reflections as came to me.
"Were you frightened?" she asked.
"Frightened? No I did not know he was there or I would have been, sure."`
"Did the man hurt you or me?" she countered.
I had nothing more to say and Jennie closed the incident by quoting: "Except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh in vain."
page by Donna Russell
