Peck Building

A historic commercial building in downtown Grand Rapids. The building was once home to John and Hannah Peck, whose notorious murder by their son-in-law Arthur Waite in 1916 became a national sensation.

The Peck Building is a 6,500-square-foot, ten-bedroom Queen Anne-style structure on Division Street in Grand Rapids. Built in 1887 by the Peck family, who had amassed a considerable fortune in the pharmaceutical business, the building housed both the family's residence and their drugstore on the ground floor. The Peck Drugstore operated for over a century before being sold to Revco in 1967 and eventually closing in 1988. But the building's most enduring legacy is not its commercial history. It is the site of one of the most talked-about murder cases in the nation in the early twentieth century.

John and Hannah Peck, the family patriarchs, were murdered by their own son-in-law, Arthur Warren Waite. Waite was the son of a Grand Rapids grocer who had recently graduated from dental school. He married Clara Peck, the young heiress to the Peck family fortune, and set about acquiring that fortune by the most direct means possible. Waite began slowly poisoning his in-laws, introducing toxins into their food and drink over an extended period. When the poisons proved too slow, he resorted to more aggressive methods. The case became a national sensation when the details of Waite's calculated campaign of murder came to light. He was convicted and executed for the killings.

The spirits of John and Hannah Peck are said to remain in the building that bears their family name. Hannah's voice is most often heard as a whisper, soft and indistinct but clearly female, sometimes heard near the stairways and in the upper rooms of the residence. John's phantom has been seen standing near his former office on the ground floor, a solid-looking apparition that has startled passersby looking through the windows. The Pecks appear to be watchful rather than malevolent, as though keeping guard over the property that was the center of their family's life and the site of their betrayal.

The Peck Building is a featured stop on the US Ghost Adventures Grand Rapids Ghost Tour, which takes visitors past the building and recounts the full story of Arthur Waite's calculated murders. The tour has been described as one of the most popular paranormal tourism experiences in West Michigan, and the Peck Building's dark history gives it a central place in the narrative. Whether the Pecks remain to protect their legacy or to stand witness against the man who destroyed their family, the building on Division Street has not been empty since 1887.