Traverse City State Hospital

Opened in 1885 as the Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane, the facility ran for 104 years on an unusual "beauty is therapy" philosophy before closing in 1989. The 62-building campus has since been redeveloped as The Village at Grand Traverse Commons.

The Traverse City State Hospital, originally known as the Northern Michigan Asylum, was established in 1881 after lumber baron Perry Hannah, known as "the father of Traverse City," used his political influence to secure its location. Under the supervision of architect Gordon W. Lloyd, the first building, known as Building 50, was constructed in Victorian-Italianate style according to the Kirkbride Plan, an architectural philosophy developed by Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride that emphasized natural light, fresh air, and spacious grounds as therapeutic tools. The hospital opened in 1885 with forty-three residents and operated continuously for 104 years, closing in 1989.

Building 50 is the last Kirkbride building still standing in Michigan, and the hospital's first superintendent, Dr. James Decker Munson, implemented a treatment philosophy summarized as "beauty is therapy." Patients worked in extensive gardens, orchards, and farms on the grounds, and the campus was designed to be a self-sufficient community. At its peak, the Traverse City State Hospital sprawled across hundreds of acres and housed thousands of patients. But the idealism of the Kirkbride Plan and Dr. Munson's philosophy couldn't withstand the realities of overcrowding, underfunding, and the brutalities of early twentieth-century psychiatric treatment that characterized American asylum care.

Over more than a century of operation, patients lived, suffered, and died within the hospital's walls. Many were buried on the grounds in unmarked graves. Visitors have reported hearing voices and footsteps echoing through the corridors of Building 50 and the surrounding structures. Lights have been seen flickering on and off inside buildings that have no functioning electrical wiring. Icy presences have been felt moving through hallways, and in extreme cases, visitors have been overcome with sudden nausea and dizziness that cease the moment they leave the building.

On the trails behind Building 50 stands the Hippie Tree, a massive old tree that became a gathering place for counterculture visitors in the 1960s and 1970s. According to local legend, a portal to Hell can be found beneath the Hippie Tree, and the area around it is considered one of the most active zones on the property.

The hospital campus was saved from demolition and redeveloped beginning in 2002 as The Village at Grand Traverse Commons, now home to shops, restaurants, office space, and residences. Haunted Traverse Tours offers ghost tours of the grounds, and Michigan's official tourism website features the hospital as one of the state's most haunted locations. The living now work, dine, and sleep in spaces where thousands of patients spent their final days, and if the reports are to be believed, some of those patients have not yet been discharged.