Eloise

Eloise began as the Wayne County Poorhouse, founded in 1832 and moved in 1839 to a farm in what was then Nankin Township, west of Detroit – a place so remote that some residents refused to go to the “awful wilderness.” Over the next century it grew into an enormous complex comprising a poorhouse (later an infirmary), a general hospital and one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in the country. It took its name in the 1890s from Eloise Dickerson Davock, the young daughter of Detroit’s postmaster. Eloise had its own police and fire departments, farm, railroad and power plant, and at its peak during the Great Depression around 10,000 people lived there.

Its residents were people the wider world had no other place for: the destitute, the elderly, people with tuberculosis, and people living with mental illness, epilepsy or dementia. The inventor Elijah McCoy spent his last year there. Psychiatric care followed the methods of each era, some of which would be considered harsh today. As psychiatric treatment changed, the hospital shrank: farm operations ended in 1958, the psychiatric division began closing in 1977, the last patients were transferred in 1982, and the general hospital closed in 1986.

Between 1910 and 1948 about 7,100 people who died at Eloise without family to claim them were buried in the Eloise Cemetery, marked only by numbered blocks. Most of their names were lost for decades; volunteers have since matched names to more than 4,000 of the graves, and a state historical marker, funded through the efforts of former Eloise nurse Patricia Ibbotson, honours the site. The cemetery is owned by Wayne County, fenced and posted against trespassing.

Most of the campus has given way to a shopping centre, a golf course and condominiums, but the Kay Beard Building – the former psychiatric admissions building – still stands beside Michigan Avenue, along with a smokestack and a few other structures. Its brooding bulk and history have made it the subject of ghost stories, haunted-house events, a 2017 horror film and paranormal TV, including Destination Fear. The stories should not obscure the people who actually lived and died here.

Visitors and investigators report voices and footsteps in the empty halls of the Kay Beard Building, doors slamming, figures at windows, cold spots and equipment malfunctions. Stories also describe shadowy figures and lights in and around the cemetery.

The Kay Beard Building (the former admissions building) and the surviving smokestack area along Michigan Avenue, and the fenced Eloise Cemetery. Most reports come from organised events and investigations after dark.

Eloise inspired the 2017 horror film Eloise and has appeared on Destination Fear, Expedition X and Ghost Brothers. Local historians and volunteer archivists have worked to recover the names and stories of its residents.