Own Wayne County's Haunted Asylum for just $1.5 Million

The Eloise, once Wayne County's largest psychiatric facility and bonafide poorhouse, went up for sale this week for $1.5 million. Once a massive, sprawling campus housing the county mental asylum, a hospital for the poor and a tuberculosis sanitarium, the Eloise had its own zip code, and was named after the daughter of Detroit's postmaster. The Eloise had a police force, a fire department, railroad stations and a powerhouse. The facility operated its own farms, and even had a herd of dairy cows.

By 1984, the medical and psychiatric facilities had closed, and the massive 280-acre site has been subdivided. Parts of the campus now live on as such charming items as a golf course and a strip mall. Today, the complex that once had 10,000 residents, has just two functional buildings used as county offices. With possible bankruptcy a consideration, Wayne County is selling off assets, the remaining Eloise properties among them.

Often featured in ghost hunting videos, the Eloise is considered one of the most haunted places in Michigan, and was even the setting for an up-coming horror movie, also called Eloise, starring Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Eliza Dushku. That project itself seems haunted—filming wrapped in 2014, and was quickly followed by a lawsuit over intellectual property rights and wrangling over distribution. Eloise has no release date.

The sale includes the site's remaining occupied structures, the Kay Beard Building and Building D, a 5-story office structure. Also included are the property's powerhouse, bakery and firehouse. If these buildings were in Detroit proper, they'd already be loft conversions. Westland, named for the town mall, is a sleepy suburb a good 40-minute drive from downtown, but the property backs up to an 18-hole championship golf course, so perhaps Eloise's next incarnation will be as a resort. A haunted one, of course.

·Eloise Complex [Loopnet]
·Eloise, former mental asylum, for sale for $1.5M [Detroit Free Press]
·What's the status of the 'Eloise' film thriller? [Detroit Free Press]
·Wayne County: Gilbert has interest in Guardian Building [Detroit Free Press]
·Inkster Valley Golf Course [Inkster Valley Golf Course]