Mammoth Cave tuberculosis hospital
In 1842–43 Dr John Croghan housed tuberculosis patients in stone huts deep in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, believing the cave air would cure them. Several died, and the huts became the centre of the cave's ghost stories.
1842 CE · 37.19, -86.10 · status: legend
The account
Croghan bought the cave in 1839, along with enslaved guides such as Stephen Bishop, who explored and mapped much of it. The cure failed and Croghan himself died of tuberculosis in 1849. Two of the huts still stand on the tour route, and guides and visitors tell of coughing sounds and figures in the dark. The cave also yielded the body of 'Lost John', a prehistoric miner crushed by a boulder, found in 1935.
The sceptical view
The hospital is documented history; the hauntings are anecdotes told on tours, with no evidence beyond the suggestive setting of total darkness and echoes.
Connections in the atlas
- 'Lost John' of Mammoth Cave
- 'Etidorhpa': through a Kentucky cave to the Earth's core
- Floyd Collins and Sand Cave