This building was also known as the Wayne County Poor House – an establishment in Westland that was erected in 1839 and later turned into a hospital for the mentally ill. The original poor house property covered 902 acres and housed 70 buildings. Nowadays, it's just 50 acres and eight buildings.

Through the years the facility served as a general hospital, mental hospital, poor house and TB sanitarium. It had a bakery, employee housing, farm, fire department, police department, a post office, and school among others. By 1930 the asylum had 10,000 inmates.

The hospital closed in 1984…but something still remains. People have seen all types of apparitions – ghosts, if you will – but mainly one of a woman in white. Others have said they heard the screams and moans of the spirits & tortured souls of deceased mental patients. Some of the therapy treatments many patients endured included electroshock, insulin shock, and lobotomies. With the growing rumors of the old asylum being haunted, some curious visitors - whether they broke in or not - claim to have found jars stuffed with human body parts along with eerie photographs of asylum patients. Aside from seeing apparitions, a feeling of being watched is prevalent, and some explorers say they've heard screams and moans of the spirits & tortured souls of deceased mental patients.

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A long-forgotten cemetery was uncovered in 2015, which ghost-hunters say explains a lot of the paranormal activity. The graves were all covered over and forgotten over time, and people who drove by on Henry Ruff Road just looked out into a grass/weed-covered field, not realizing there were around 7,000 dead mental patients buried there. The last burial took place in 1948...and once the graveyard was discovered, it only took a short time for the rumors to fly about the whole field being haunted by the long-forgotten souls that are buried there. Now there are little bricks to mark the dead.

Most of the buried were either poor or had no known relatives to take care of funeral arrangements... others were dropped off & committed by family members who never came back for them. So, from 1910-1948 the field turned into the asylum graveyard by necessity.

The former asylum is located at 30712 Michigan Avenue in Westland. The cemetery is on Henry Ruff Road, half a block east of the old asylum. Turn right (south) and the graveyard is on the right hand side of the road...no signs mark the cemetery except for the ones that say "No Trespassing."

The old asylum is now officially registered as an Historical Michigan Site, gives paranormal tours, and opens every Halloween season with it's own “spook house”. Take a look at the gallery below which shows the insides of the old Eloise asylum, as it looked in the late 2010s.

Inside the Haunted Eloise Asylum

MORE QUIRKY MICHIGAN LOCATIONS:

Jackson County Poor Farm/Infirmary

Starr Commonwealth and Other Michigan Homes For Children

Abandoned Michigan Orphanage

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