Former Asylum a Haunting $1.5M Development Opportunity

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A 50-acre Wayne County commercial property listed for sale for $1.5 million isn’t for the faint of heart.

Legend has it that the Eloise Complex, which once housed a mental asylum, is one of the most haunted places in Michigan.

It now consists of five buildings, including the 1800s fire station, a decommissioned power plant, two maintenance buildings and a five-story building. Situated on beautiful grounds, it has almost a half mile of frontage on Michigan Avenue, backs up to an 18-hole championship golf course and has a parking lot for 100 vehicles.

According to a real estate listing by broker Mike Deighan of O’Keefe & Associates in Bloomfield Hills, the Eloise, as the property is known, is a “phenomenal redevelopment opportunity.”

It’s also the site of some reportedly phenomenal paranormal events, according to the website HauntedUSA.org, which said:

“... The Eloise tunnel system, where staff members transported patients from building to building, has been rumored to house medical waste and other strange items from a bygone era in medical science. A golf course exists today above where these tunnels once ran.

“Explorers were rumored to have discovered jars of human body parts, documents outlining strange medical procedures, and creepy snapshots of patients in the abandoned buildings that were torn down in the 1980s. More recently, a spectral woman wearing white has been rumored to be seen in the upper floors and on the roof of the old D building ... Some have reported hearing strange moans, screams, and roars on the old grounds.”

The “old D building” is the Kay Beard Building, a 150,000-square-foot structure that is in “fair condition,” according to the listing. It still houses some offices, including Wayne County’s Head Start and Senior Services offices, but those offices will move elsewhere in the first quarter of 2016.

In 2014, the psychological thriller “Eloise” was filmed at the former asylum.

» Photos via O’Keefe & Associates