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When The Walls Whisper Back: Steve Gonsalves Meets His Match At Waverly Hills
Normally Steve Gonsalves is not scared of ghosts, but recently he was.
Steve, a star of Ghost Hunters who along with Jason Hawes, Dave Tango, and Grant Wilson has handled paranormal incidents for the Syfy reality series for more than 20 years, in a recent interview conceded that he feels cold sometimes and shared his scariest experience.
“That haunted location was Waverly Hills in Louisville, Ky., a hospital for people with tuberculosis, very sad but over 60,000 people died in just the three years,” Steve told E! News exclusively. “There is so much activity there all the time and it’s always right in front of you, ghosts moving around, doors slamming. Things moving, voices yelling out of thin air and it happens as soon as you walk in.”
Echoes Of The Past: Waverly Hills Sanatorium’s Haunted History
According to Steve, “That place is amazing.”
Waverly Hills Sanatorium stands as a memory of the tuberculosis epidemic that was the cause of the major challenge in Jefferson County in the 1900s. Its website claims that a huge five-story building was required to be made to accommodate all the patients in the area when it was built. The sanatorium turned into a healthcare facility, a place to heal, for almost 50 years. In 1961, the hospital had to close its gates due to the progress in medicine. After that, because of the many and overwhelming reports of ghosts experienced by those who walked through Waverly Hills, it was decided to open the sanitarium again in 2001 for the public to take tours.
When Awe Meets Unease: Steve Gonsalves Feels The Weight Of Waverly Hills
It’s worth mentioning here that Steve has encountered ghosts numerous times but he confessed that Waverly Hills was the place that really made him shiver.
“I cried,” Steve recalled of his time at the historic site. “I had only wanted to go there for so long and it is so nice and it is stunning. The creepy drive comes up with all the trees covering it and, when you see it just unveiling itself, I was getting emotional. It’s just absolutely beautiful.”
To Steve, haunted places are not the ones where ghosts are, but where people have had their most intense emotions and he made that point at Waverly Hills.
“The sadness and the grief that stuff happened there…you get a little emotional,” he continued. “I thought it was wonderful.”
History As A Catalyst: Steve Gonsalves Sizes Up Franklin Castle’s Fear Factor
However, Steve guessed that another historical place—the Franklin Castle in Cleveland, Ohio, that he toured for Cutwater’s Real Spirits Inside giveaway—would be equally frightening.
“History and the characters that were there do function as a big catalyst in a haunting, Steve explained. “And in this case, you have a lot of history, you have a lot of mystery as well.”
Actually, the winners of the sweepstakes claimed that they heard footsteps on empty floors, and doors opening and closing vigorously without any cause.
In case you are not able to Waverly Hills or Franklin Castle this spooky season, Steve also confessed that there is a horror movie that always gives him a sudden fright too.
“John Carpenter’s The Thing,” he revealed. “For me, it is absolutely necessary not only at Halloween but throughout the whole year.”
More Celebrities Who Revealed Their Most Terrifying Experiences
Courteney Cox
Friends star Courteney Cox told Howard Stern that a delivery man once came to her door and told her that she was not alone.
“I answered it, got my package and he said, ‘Do you know this house is haunted?’” Courteney recalled on a 2022 episode of his SiriusXM show. “And I say, ‘Really? Why?’ He goes, ‘Because there is someone standing behind you.’ And I thought, ‘Oh s–t.’”
It wasn’t her only spooky experience. Courteney also thought of a fright in London.
“I had just arrived,” the Scream alum said. “So yeah, I was a little jet-lagged but I wasn’t sleeping. I was sitting there, I closed my eyes to try to sleep and all of a sudden I saw these really scary faces—like old faces. I was like, ‘OK, stop, stop, you gotta stop.’ And then all of a sudden I was like, ‘Mom? Dad? Auntie Em?’ I don’t know. I just kept seeing all these weird things.”
Courteney Cox: The One Where A Delivery Guy Spots A Ghost (And London Gets Even Creepier)
Courtney after witnessing the lights flicker and seeing a plant move, called her long-time love, Johnny McDaid to the scene.
“I was like, ‘Johnny! Wake up! I am seeing ghosts!’ She remembered. “And he had all these waves around him too. And he says, ‘Courteney, you are dreaming.’ I said, ‘No, I just woke you up! How can it be that I am asleep?’ He goes, ‘Well, I am asleep. There are no ghosts.’ I was the one who saw them definitely.”
She finally ended up saying that it was a simple statement that seemed to work.
“I said, ‘Thanks for coming last night. That was really nice. Do not come back tonight because I have to sleep,'” she revealed. “And I didn’t see them again.”
Demi Lovato: Childhood Whispers From “Emily” And A Closet-Dwelling Guest
Demi Lovato claims that her childhood house in Texas was a place of a ghost.
“I was a little girl, and my mom came into the room where I was talking to something,” the singer said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2013. “And my mom was like, ‘Who are you talking to?’ I told her, ‘It’s the little girl in the picture. Her name is Emily.’ Then later my sister also did that when she was around the same age. However, this time she said, ‘It’s the girl that lives in the closet.’”
If that example didn’t make you feel like you’re having a heart attack, this one might. Demi remembered inviting friends over and telling them, “Watch, something will happen.” And although the friends would initially be skeptical, she said, weird things would happen after—such as when her friend texted someone saying “I think this place is haunted” and the word “definitely” was sent back several times.
Demi Lovato: Texts On Repeat And A Rogue Balloon That Turned The Corner
The Grammy winner brought back the memory: “‘He’s like, ‘Why’d you send it so many times?’ ‘I didn’t send it that many times,’ he goes.'”
Not convinced yet? Demi has more evidence.
“My uncle was watching TV, and out of the blue, a balloon came down the stairs,” she informed Ellen DeGeneres. “What balloon, by the way, just floats down? And then it turns the corner.”
Joey King: Bruises That Seemed To Come From The Other World
Joey King was a scared kid during The Conjuring shoot but she had an off-camera frightful incident too.
“In the possession of the mom in the movie, bruises happen all over her,” the actress said during a 2020 episode of The Howard Stern Show. “And so when those scenes were being filmed, I started to get a lot of bruises on my body in very unusual places like my stomach, my chest, like what?”
Joey first said the makeup team thought it was a joke—that she was taking their fake bruises.
“They were trying to remove the fake bruises they had put on me with rubbing alcohol and oil but they were actually taking off the real ones,” The Act alum continued. “I’m like, ‘I’m telling you the truth, I’m not making it up.’”
Worried, Joey got blood tests done after visiting her doctor.
Joey King: An On-Set Illness Full of Mystery That Disappeared in No Time
“Out of nowhere, I was informed that I had this blood-thinning disorder called ITP, which is a condition where basically most of my red platelets were taken from my body without any explanation,” she remembered. “I have never had any problems with my blood in the past. I still haven’t had any blood problems since then. And no one in my family has it.”
Therefore, Joey claimed that she had to visit the hospital twice a day during the shooting of the 2013 horror film.
“The Kissing Booth star told Howard, ‘When I got home, my platelets were in perfect condition.’ “Like, I was back to the normal numbers and I haven’t even once since had a hint of that disorder.”
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Ariana Grande: A Night At “One Of The Seven Gates To Hell”
Just keep breathing while you read about Ariana Grande’s horrifying event.
The one-time Grammy winner revealed to Complex the “ghost/demon experience” she had in Kansas City in 2013. After a stay in a haunted castle, Ariana said, “the next night we wanted to go to Stull Cemetery, which is known as one of the seven gates to hell on Earth.”
“I was very ill with a feeling of total negativity over the whole car and we got the smell of sulfur which is the sign of a demon and there was a fly in the car randomly which is another sign of a demon,” she told the outlet. “I was like, ‘This is scary, let’s leave.’ Before leaving, I rolled down the window and said, ‘We apologize. We didn’t mean to disrupt your peace.’ Then I took a picture and there are three super distinct faces in the picture—they’re faces of textbook demons.”
Ariana Grande: The Photo That Read 666 MB And A Midnight Black Cloud
Ariana, the “Thank U, Next” singer, said she removed the picture after she attempted to send it to her manager, but an error message popped up that said, “This file can’t be sent, it’s 666 megabytes.”
Ariana also remembered a time when she saw a huge black cloud right next to her bed.
“I started crying,” she told Complex. “I was on the phone saying, ‘What do I do, what do I do?’ and they said, ‘Tell it to eff off.’ I thought, I’m not going to do that. It’s going to upset it, so I’m just going to chill and not feed into it because all it wants is fear. It feeds on fear. I saw it leaving my bed and going to the front of my bed and then I fell asleep on the phone. I woke up and it was not there.”
Octavia Spencer: A Protective Spirit Who Runs Off The Wrong Guests
To be honest, Octavia Spencer looks like she doesn’t mind having a ghost in her house.
“I grew up watching Westerns,” she told in a 2021 episode of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “When I bought this house, it was a guy who did Westerns that owned it. So I must have been a fan of his. I think he is my protector. I love him because he kind of sorts out the bad people that shouldn’t be there. He runs them out.”
The star has a theory about the way the ghost drives them out «If they stay at my place, they don’t want to come back, she said. And that is how I know that they do not belong there. Because if you are a person that belongs there, everyone will say, ‘Oh, your place is so welcoming. It’s so great. And that is how I feel about it.
Octavia Spencer: House Rules For A “Shady” But Beloved Ghost
Even though Octavia confesses that her ghost can be “shady” when she is not around—like a door slamming and a light flashing—she still appreciates his presence. However, the Hidden Figures star is not sending out vibes to other spirits.
“I love my ghost,” she told the interviewer. “I just don’t want you bringing your ghost to my place. I don’t want anyone’s ghost thinking that they can hang out with my ghost. Because my ghost can scare me, but he doesn’t scare me. We have boundaries.”
Jennifer Aniston: Appliances Blasting And A Call To “Clear The House”
Jennifer Aniston actually refers to a ghost which haunted one of her ex-houses in Los Angeles and that she wasn’t right in her mind with the spirit.
“The dishwasher would start to go, or the coffee maker would start to go or the stereo would just turn on at full volume,” the Friends star told James Corden on a 2018 episode of The Late Late Show. “And it was terrifying.”
So, she said it was suggested to her by someone that she should get a professional to “clear the house” with the spirit.
Jennifer Aniston: A Cracked Dish, A Shattered Ashtray, And A Ghost With Opinions
“I had someone come to my house,” the actress from The Morning Show recalled. “They brought frankincense, put it in a little dish and started saying all these things. And the very first corner that she went to, the dish broke.”
But that was not all. Jennifer was explaining that in addition to the dish, a “really, thick, thick, thick 1975 ashtray that was sitting on the table” also broke and then the specialist told her to go out as she was going to talk with the spirit.”
Regarding the message? “He hated my roommate,” Jennifer said and then added that she moved out and never told the roommate. “I feel awful but I couldn’t say, ‘It doesn’t like you.’ I mean, that would be awful.”
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Miley Cyrus: When A House Fire, Elvis Memorabilia, And A Restless Spirit Collided
Miley Cyrus might be able to tell you that some ghosts just will not give up their fight.Once the singer talked about a spirit that she thought inhabited her house.
“I had a friend whose parent had passed away,” she told in a 2020 interview with 102.7 KIIS FM’s JoJo Wright. “And when they did, they knew how much I love Elvis [Presley] and gave me all of their Elvis memorabilia.”
Unfortunately, Miley said the collection was obliterated in the fire of her house in Malibu in 2018.
The Grammy winner also had a family photo of her friend’s mom, hanging somewhere in one of the rooms of her L.A. house.
Miley Cyrus: Smoke, Signals, And A Spirit Set Free
“That fire changed everything and after that she started coming to my place in L.A a lot,” Miley said. “It was like she kind of went up in this smoke of all this Elvis stuff.”
Miley saw the fire as a kind of “release” for her friend’s mom who had passed and she ended up taking the photo down.
“She smoked cigarettes and I could definitely smell smoke coming from the guest room, which is where the photo is,” she said. “My dogs would go insane. When I would be down, my dogs would lose their mind. It actually happened only a couple of nights ago—I feel like I saw her sitting on the couch kind of mocking my dogs, which is something she totally would’ve done. And my dogs were going crazy.”
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Keanu Reeves: The Floating Jacket In The Doorway
You should probably hurry over to listen to the ghost story of Keanu Reeves.
The Matrix star has only once talked about that mysterious moment in his family’s New York apartment when he was 6 or 7.
“There’s a door,” Keanu explained on the 2014 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!. “All of a sudden, we’re looking over there and this, like, jacket comes waving through the doorway. Just an empty—there’s no head, there’s no body, there’s no legs. It’s just there, and then it disappears.”
Although the John Wick actor seemed quite calm, the nanny was surely very scared.
“I was a little kid, and I was like, ‘Well that was interesting,’” he remembered. “And then I looked at the nanny and she was like this [jaw open]. And I’m like, ‘Oh wow, so that was real. Oh, OK. Wow! Cool!’”
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Vanessa Hudgens: From a Childhood Experience with a Toy to Calling It a “Gift”
Vanessa Hudgens is not the type that would vehemently deny any spiritual contact.
Actually, the former Disney star appears to even welcome her ability to communicate with spirits. “I’ve accepted the fact that I see things,” she told The Kelly Clarkson Show, “and I hear things.”
One incident with a duck pull‑toy that kept coming to Vanessa’s mind, when she was 8 years old, is the story that she shared.
“There was one of those on the dining room table,” The Princess Switch actress went on, “and I started walking and it just started going alongside me.”
At the moment, Vanessa wants to know more.
“I kind of shut it down for a while because it’s scary,” she said to Kelly Clarkson. “The unknown is scary. But I was recently thinking, ‘No, this is a gift and I am the one who has this ability. So, I’m gonna touch it.’ And I very recently did my first real paranormal investigation with all the equipment.’”
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Hugh Grant: The Little Boy In The Corner And A Call To A Ghostbuster
What we have here is a narrative about a kid.
In an interview in 2016, Hugh Grant mentioned that one of his sons would frequently “stare into a corner” of his room.
“The actor—now a father of five—was telling The Late Late Show: ‘Parents were also starting to see. One little kid would come up and say ‘Who is the little boy next to the wall?’ Yeah, relations and nannies, completely out of control.’”
Therefore, Hugh took steps to resolve it himself. “I’m a rational person, well-educated, not an idiot,” the Love Actually alum said. “I find myself dialing a ghostbusters.”
He also said that when the ghostbuster arrived at the house, he was carrying some sticks along with him.
Hugh Grant: Sage, Sticks, And A Stubborn Specter At The Window
“Her sticks just went crazy in his room,” Hugh remembered telling. “She kept saying, ‘Oh, I can’t take it here. I’m going to be sick.’ I don’t think any of it was true. Then she burnt about seven pounds of sage, hit a little drum, played an instrument or something and sang. And she said, ‘The spirits have gone.’”
But were they really? Hugh said he had asked his son the next morning if he had felt happier the night before.
“He said, ‘No, there was a little boy at my window,’” the Notting Hill star recounted. “So I guess we have to change our address now. Yeah, too haunted.”
Brian Cox: The Rocking Chair That Crossed The Room
One by one, these event scenes of Brian Cox are still memorable and eerie to think of in Edinburgh years ago.
“It was my intention to sleep when all of a sudden I could hear this rocking sound,” said actor on a 2023 episode of The Jonathan Ross Show, “and the chair was the one that was rocking. And it was rocking across the room in front of my bed.”
Though it stopped at some point, Brian Cox was still completely bewildered by the chair that rocked itself and moved across the room.
“I was beneath the covers already,” he continued. “Because I thought, ‘S–t, this is f–king terrible.’”
The star of Succession had some sleep but was very surprised upon hearing the chair the next day.
“There was the chair,” he added, “and the floor was covered with these scratch marks.”
