Northville Psychiatric Hospital, Michigan

BANG! BANG! BANG! She was banging on the picture window so hard that I thought it might shatter under her fists. Dolls abandoned, I got up from my spot on the floor and ran to find my grandparents, who met me in the dining room looking just as terrified as I was. My grandmother held me to her body, stroking my long, curly dark hair and whispering, "Everything's okay, baby." And everything was, surprisingly. My grandfather went to the living room, stepping over toys and my tea seat to get to the window I had been playing beside. Pulling back the curtain and flicking on the light to illuminate the back porch, he was met by the face of a twenty-something black girl, face wet with tears, dressed in a dingy white gown. "I'm hungry!" she cried, "Can I have a peanut butter sandwich? Please? God, I'm hungry!"

It took some coaxing to get her to calm down. A promise of a peanut sandwich that my grandparents would bring out to her, but never did. The Northviille police came to get her instead. She wailed, kicked and screamed, and ultimately, was returned to the Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital. This sort of thing happened all the time. I live a very short distance from the hospital, so when patients wandered, it was usually down my street. Every time a patient wandered into our yard, it was very unsettling. I was young and didn't understand mental illness. My home was invaded by strangers on an almost daily basis. Being a little girl and playing in the yard on my swing set, nothing should happen. Patients from the nearby hospital shouldn't come into your yard, talking in tongues, looking at you with sunken, yellow eyes, and rotted teeth.

Most of the patients frightened me. Some were loud; screaming, crying, pleading for help. Some would just come and hide on our back porch to escape the abuse that happened. I never really saw them as individuals, I saw them in groups; sad girls (who usually cried that they were being raped and abused, which did happen), sad old people (who just wanted to go home and asked us to call their sons and daughters to come get them), scary ones (just as they sound: scary. They were usually the ones that yelled), and the quiet ones.

The "quiet ones" remind me of zombies. One night, up late at night watching cartoons, I caught a glimpse of something moving outside through the small slit in the drapes. Peeking through, I saw him. A quiet one. These patients, when they came to the house, were always silent. They never engaged you. They seemed to have their own agenda and therefore, harmless. This quiet one stuck out to me for reasons I don't know. It may have been the moonlight. The outline of my property is lined with trees and the middle of the yard is perfect for viewing the night sky. It was a beautiful night; a bright full moon that lit up the neighborhood. My entire neighborhood has no streetlights and my neighbors don't have very bright yard lights, so for the most part, it's always pitch black. That night, I could see him perfectly, glowing blue.

He was wandering aimlessly around the backyard. White shirt, white pants, bare feet. Typical of an escaped patient. He was elderly, tall, lanky, bald, and sickly. His eyes were to the sky, mouth hanging open even as he shuffled slowly through the grass. After circling the 'clearing' for a long while, he stopped. Eyes still to the sky. He stood there looking up for hours in one spot. The patients, I believe, gave me my anxiety. I stayed up for hours, peeking out the window, always having that fear that the next time I peeked out, his face would be in the window. But, that never happened. He just stood there... From eleven o'clock at night until two in the morning. Then a little after two, his body finally moved like someone had unpaused him and he shuffled towards our house. I crept to the front of the house and peeked out the blinds, watching as he reached the front yard and started to wander down the dirt road back towards the hospital.

It was extremely unsettling.

I was glad when they finally closed the place down in 2003.

Opening picture

The city of Northville, and Northville Township, was already well known for medical facilities because of the hospital for sick children and most notably a 1,000 acre sanitarium opened in the 1920's with the specific purpose of housing patients suffering from tuberculosis that were crowding local hospitals. So when looking to solve the solution of overcrowded hospitals again, this time with mentally ill patients, Northville was chosen again. Northville State Hospital (NSH) when it opened in 1952 was considered one of the best psychiatric hospitals in Michigan and was a solution for the inadequate mental institutions that suffered from overcrowding and patient mistreatment. The 450+ acre property was once abundant with trees and wildlife and was cleared out to make use of the land and erect 20 wards and the main building that in its prime was, and still is, the most notable feature: the eight story building that was once called the "Palace of Glass." It greets you in the main entrance on the North side, where these days everyone parks their cars at its gates to stare up at the decrepit red building.

Overview / Map

The hospital was not only known for just its modern construction, but modern treatment, as well. They were one of the first hospitals to successfully incorporate an art and music program as part of patient treatment. It allowed patients to paint, learn to play an instrument, and put on plays in the auditorium. And from that success, they were able to create a home economics class and class for studying mechanics. Some patients even were able to hold jobs at the hospital, such as working in the laundry facility, the kitchen, and tending the grounds. If none of that interested a patient, there was also a movie theatre, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, and a bowling alley. All features were supported by the self-sufficient hospital's steam plant that provided the buildings with electricity and heat throughout, even in the underground tunnels.

Steam plant pipes / Steam plant / Plant from outside / Library / Book with Braille / Bowling alley / Pool / Gym / Auditorum / religious services

Unfortunately, in the 1970's, Michigan cut the mental health budget and closed some of the programs, leaving doctors to then treat their patients with high doses of psychiatric drugs instead of interactive, therapeutic treatment they were once used to. Michigan also closed local hospitals and NHS became overcrowded, treating over 1,000 patients in a facility only meant for 650. Patients were kept out in hall ways, in the gymnasium, and wherever they could throw a cot on the ground. By the 80's, the Detroit News began releasing investigative reports about what was going on inside the hospital; neglect, rape, and murder, just to name a few. Patients were mindlessly staring at televisions and chain smoking, sleeping out in hall ways. Some patients had killed other patients. They also died at the hand of the staff, during a fight or in the aftermath of being abused and raped. Many committed suicide from hanging or leaping off the roof of the eight story structure. This is when the patients began to escape on a steady basis and the nightmares for me began. One staff member summed it up when she reported, "People are not treated at Northville; they are warehoused."

By the 90's, Michigan was weeding out nearly all of its mental institutions. Northville State Hospital became more important so to speak and so its name was changed to the Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital. But by the end of the 90's, the buildings were run down and abuse ran rampant. It was hell on earth for the patients kept there. The announcement of closure came in 2002 and by 2003, the grounds had been completely emptied of patients and staff. There were rumors that patients had been loaded onto a buses and released in Detroit, which I wouldn't doubt in the least. But most reports said they were moved to out of state facilities or into less expensive facilities, like half way houses.

Now, you can hardly see the buildings on the property from the road. Though, if you walk along seven mile road towards Haggerty, you can catch glimpses of what used to be; an overgrown basketball court with grass so tall it's half way up the post, an old building with green curtains still hanging in the window. It's been returned to the wildlife, who I personally believe deserve it. (But unfortunately, recent construction on the corner lot now made of a small horde of restaurants caused more animals to lose their lives when the city allowed hunters to come in and kill off some of the deer population.) The property went from hand to hand, sold and resold, had dreams of becoming a nature park, and even had families of construction workers living there at one point, but now it remains mostly empty.

Main entrance / One of the basketball courts / Another court / Hall way / Receptonist desk / Mural / Patient room / Hall way / Pink hall way / Private patient room / Exam room / Courtyard

Teenagers and adults alike are fascinated with the place. If they lived near it, they wouldn't be. There have been over 500 arrests in a year from trespassers. I get the appeal. It sort of intrigues me too as someone who is fascinated with the paranormal. But I know what it was like before it was abandoned, when it was open and running, with escaped mental patients terrifying me as I tried to live a normal childhood, and so the excitement and thrill has been dulled. I grin a little whenever I see kids and adults parking down my street, like none of the neighbors will notice a band of 20+ people with their 10 cars parked along what I'd say was a "short street." Some even park in the lot of a daycare right across the street from the hospital, which is unsettling on its own, and the bravest ones park right in front of the hospital.

I have seen everything living so close to the hospital. Some funny; teenagers running across the front lawn and then all of a sudden police spot lights being turned on them. A lot of people don't know that the property usually has police officers back in there, their black police cars hard to spot in the darkness of the woods. There are also silent alarms along the perimeter. If you walk onto the property, it notifies the police (although this is recent). As a member of the city, I can go onto the property without the threat of an arrest. Yes, I have been hassled by police officers before, but they can't arrest me unless I'm doing something wrong, like vandalizing, etc (but I've always left when they've asked me to). They're only trying to protect you; people have fallen through the floor, the place is extremely polluted with asbestos and the grounds are full of medical waste, lead, arsenic, oil, barium. When people go onto the property (who are allowed to), they wear hazmat suits. Seriously. That was enough to scare me off. A lot of things happen on the property that I've always been curious about. Giant trucks are always going in and out. Hazmat suits comb the area often.

I've also seen some not so funny things, including the hazmat suits. Arrests, rescue missions, my road has been blocked by ambulances and been a real nuisance and inconvenience. I've seen blood, disfigurement, and scenes out of horror movies. A guy and his buddy went onto the property with his gun. He dropped his gun, shot himself in the leg, and later had to have the leg amputated. Blood stained a path from the main building to the road from his buddy dragging him through the grass, down the old drive way, and onto the road to call for help. The blood trail remained there for a long time.

I honestly don't feel bad for the adults. But the kids... Just this past summer, I was driving home from work and had to stop just before my street because the road was blocked off by ambulances and police cars. Normal. So I parked the car and waited. There were children, maybe ten, very young, crying and hugging each other. Of course someone got hurt, happens all the time. What I saw after sitting there a while still haunts me. An EMT was carrying a small boy in his arms. The kid's eyes were wide open, dead, almost protruding from a crushed skull as blood poured out of his mouth like it was a faucet, fresh red blood covering the front of his white t-shirt and blue jeans. His body was bent in a strange way, bent in ways that human limbs were not meant to be bent. One leg was backwards, the other was sticking out to the side, bent back with bones protruding, and his arms were bent in the same fashion; wrong. Just... wrong. They quickly put him onto a stretcher and covered his body so they could wheel it past the group of children and onto one of the ambulances. He'd fallen from the roof after playing a game with this friends, hanging off the side to see who could last the longest before they gave up.

Another child I saw still lives in town and is a teenager now. When she was recovered, I was there, once again blocked by emergency vehicles. They carried her out in their arms and her face haunts me even to this day when I see her as I'm going about my shopping in town: Her face was.. twisted. Her jaw was wildly out of place, hanging down and off to the side, lips looking like they were going to rip from the strain of her face being stretched. Her arms were up against her chest, fingers splayed out like they had been twisted and broken one by one, and her knees and feet were turned inward and facing each other. Dark eyes were wide, eye brows raised, neck bent drastically, cries pouring out of her mouth that couldn't move. Straight out of a nightmare. She'd gone exploring with her dad and two older brothers. They'd left her alone in the library while the two boys ran around the building and the father, who said he was only interested in the "history aspect" of the building, walked slowly around, mostly waiting for his children to grow tired of the place and want to leave. The boys heard nothing until his father screamed. The father had heard foot steps from his daughter looking around the library and then he heard loud crunching and snapping, at first assuming that it was the boys tearing something up or his daughter dropping or ripping books. When he went into the library, she was in that very state, laying on the floor and not making a sound. She's in a wheel chair now, face still somewhat contorted, limbs still bent, and she's a near vegetable, only making groaning noises and cries, eyes peeled wide open, and having to be fed via feeding tube.

Those are only just three of many things I have seen. And I haven't just seen trespassers, either.

Driving home one night, I saw what I thought was a white sheet in the window. The windows on the main building are bare, so I immediately assumed it was from kids. It moved. It flowed with the wind and then fell from the window inside the building and out of sight. Not entirely strange. Anything "ghostly" is attributed to kids fucking around. All day, every day, people are there. I saw it again a couple of nights later, this time on the roof. Again, not strange, kids that wanted to fall off the roof and die messing up there, I'd bet. This time was different.. I noticed it wasn't a sheet, it was a dress. A long, white dress, on a body with a face that was too dark to see. There aren't any lights and it was just a normal night as far as the moon was concerned. I didn't report it. Whenever I see something there, I think nothing of it, and know the police are tired of going out there if they aren't there already.

I saw it now and then over the next month. The same white dress, either on the fifth floor or the roof. I was convinced at this point it had to be someone who thought they were a "witch" or something. Just a hunch. Younger people these days are still into Wicca, without understanding what it really is, but are always trying to stand out. Black is "out of fashion" for witchcraft and so now it's white. That's just what I assumed. Everyone went through these phases, just as I had. Things went on as normal. Arrests. Ambulances. I assumed "white dress" hadn't been caught, because it was becoming almost consistent, being there every night when I drove home from work.

One night, I closed all the curtains as was a habit of mine after having lived with mental patients peeking in your windows, as normal and lied down on the couch. The TV was on only a few seconds before BANG! BANG! BANG! Truth be told, whenever there is banging on my window, I always think of her. Who I'd always childishly referred to as "peanut butter sandwich girl." Also childishly, I rolled onto the floor and crawled into the dining room and into the kitchen, peeking at the small window above the sink that looked out onto the back porch. I was too afraid to look out there. The knocking didn't come again. Sleeping was out of the question, I was paranoid while checking the yard through the window, turning on the yard lights. I'm pretty sure if any of the neighbors were up, they'd think I was nuts.

I continued to see the white dress. First from afar... and then one afternoon, I saw it right before my eyes. I stepped out the door that lead into my garage and went to the garage fridge where we usually keep animal food for the wildlife and overstock of whatever groceries we bought. Most of the time we keep pop in there, so I was headed out to get a Coke. I don't remember looking over to the door that lead out onto the back porch, my focus was on stepping out to the right towards the fridge, grabbing a pop, and turning back around to head back inside. When I turned around, I was spooked so bad I fell against the fridge with a burning gasp.

She was crawling through the doggy door. I was stupid to have never noticed it. A door big enough for my grandpa's sheepdogs would be big enough for a human to come in! Hell, the raccoons used it to get into our garage sometimes! I wanted to run, but she was between me and the house door. A black woman in a white dress, panting softly with wisps of whines, slowly crawling her way through the dog door. I recognized her right away. She was older... but it was in her eyes. Those frantic, pleading, sad eyes. She was crying softer this time, reaching out towards me as if to tell me that she meant no harm, but she was scaring me anyway. "Please... I just want something to eat.. I just want a peanut butter sandwich."

When I get scared or upset, my throat tightens up. I just nodded my head, that's the only thing I could do. My heart is beating to be let out of its cage and I couldn't feel my legs. After I've seen all the blood and guts, you'd think that something like this, a seemingly harmless woman, would scare me less. But I've been fearing this for years. Seeing her again. Seeing any of them again. I could handle blood and guts. I couldn't handle when my nightmares came to life.

It took the same path as it did last time. I told her to stay outside from behind the 'safety' of the glass storm door while I made the sandwich. Meanwhile, I actually called the police and watched her sit down at the picnic table on the back porch from the kitchen window. I couldn't think straight. I felt dizzy. It's been years, ten years since the hospital shut down and even longer since I first saw her. Did her family live near by and take her in when it shut down? The police weren't forthcoming with any information. They told me they didn't know her identity and so they couldn't tell who she was just by looks, that I could call the station later to find out what happened. I did. But they never took my call. I was very insistent on knowing, telling them all about what the police officer had said to me at the time, and they still wouldn't release the information or just flat-out hung up on me. When I went up there, they escorted me out of the police station after I told them what I was there for.

They were looking to get rid of me, but they'd be coming back to my house that winter when another familiar, unwanted guest paid me a visit.

Edited: For broken links