POT POURRI

Tours offer Halloween enthusiasts visits to former psychiatric hospital and funeral home

WESTLAND, Oct 28: It’s not enough these days for some Halloween enthusiasts to be scared by actors dressed up in spooky getups at makeshift haunted houses: They want the “real” thing.
At a former psychiatric hospital in suburban Detroit and a former funeral home in Toledo, Ohio, visitors can embark on guided paranormal investigations or even set out on their own with rented equipment, such as a handheld electromagnetic field (EMF) meter.
“Guests that come here on our paranormal tours, they get touched, they get grabbed, handprints on clothing, whistled at,” said Justin Cox, founder of Michighost Paranormal, which leads paranormal investigation tours of the Eloise Asylum attraction’s upper floors, where patients were treated. “Everything that you can imagine has happened here, and we’ve heard it all.” The facility began as a 19th-century poorhouse and operated under various names as it expanded into a complex with dozens of buildings. By the late 1920s, it was one of the nation’s largest public health facilities.
“In the paranormal field, we believe that trauma leaves energy, which creates hauntings. This place had a lot of tragedy, a lot of trauma, so we believe it’s super haunted,” Cox said.
Family members of patients and others with ties to Eloise have argued against offering for-profit amusement at a site where vulnerable people suffered. The upper floors of the asylum feel alive Most of the complex’s buildings were razed in the 1980s, but a five-story, red-brick structure that came to be known as the Kay Beard Building still stands and is home to Eloise Asylum. It’s there that Cox and his team lead guests on tours of the upper floors, including a room with a bathtub used in hydrotherapy sessions. It’s not uncommon for guests to get in the tub.
And if you “think you can handle the night here, we offer that as well,” Cox said about their overnight stays.
Eloise Asylum haunted attraction’s lead makeup artist and scare actor, Lexi Carter, has gone on the paranormal investigation tour. She said the upper floors feel alive. Paranormal investigators use spirit boxes to scan radio frequencies for sounds they believe could be messages from spirits. (AP)