M = Mysterious

Did I ever tell you I have a small obsession with abandoned mental intuitions, insane asylums, and their cemeteries?

It started when I was in grade school.  My mom and I had gone up to Traverse City to visit my dad in the hospital and she took me on a little tour around the grounds of the Traverse City State Hospital, closed at that time.  Her sister had spent a little time there and my mom had gone to visit her.  As we drove through the grounds, she pointed out windows, doors, buildings etc. and what they were when she had been there.  I couldn't help but get lost in the mystery of my imagination at what the interior looked like, what the patients endured and why they were 'locked up' in the first place.  Did you know in the late 1800's a husband could lock up his wife just by stating she was insane, or for not properly caring for her husband - cooking, cleaning, laundry,etc. ?

I've read a few books on the asylums in Michigan - Traverse City's asylum was the 3rd built in the state, 2nd to Kalamazoo and Eloise (Detroit) - and the reasons people were admitted, treatments and then the RAPID decline/closing of so many.  My favorite book was Angel's in the Architecture by Heidi Johnson.  The pictures were taken in Building 51 at Traverse City before it was redone.  There were three or four photos in that book with a mysterious haze where I wasn't quite sure what I was seeing and I'd flip from one, to the other - back and forth - trying to figure out just what was there.  I'm still not sure!  My other favorite, Beauty is Therapy: Memories of the Traverse City State Hospital which describes much of the history with a ton of photos of the hospital in it's day.

Jeremy took me to Kalamazoo a few years back, though there isn't much left, we did walk a little bit around one of the remaining abandoned buildings built in the 50's/60's, maybe.  I tried to peek in the windows but, there was little to see besides the inlaid marble floors and peeling paint.  Not to mention it's across from the Kalamazoo Public Safety and well, I didn't want to meet any more police!

Someday, I'll get to Eloise, or what's left of her.  There are many, many stories of the grounds and cemeteries of Eloise being haunted and I have to admit, when visiting Traverse City SH and Kalamazoo's SH, I did have quite an uneasy feeling, similar to being watched or followed as well as kind of a pit or sinking in the heart/stomach.  Certainly a sense that you are not alone.  It's totally creepy!  Most of the institutions had their own farms, raising cattle for meat and milk/butter, pigs and chickens, also growing their own gardens.  They had the best greenhouses with record winning plants/flowers.  The patients tended to all of it, supervised of course.  They certainly walked and wandered the grounds leaving their mark everywhere.  Most of these people worked the grounds over and over, day in day out, and likely when they passed on they continued to work as they had in life.

Thomas Story Kirkbride designed many of the asylums back in the 1800's.  Most of them now abandoned, are described as "Kirkbrides" for their style of architecture.  Thomas Kirkbride believed the mentally ill could all be healed and the best way to treat them was "in a healthy environment with respect and decorum."  These buildings were AMAZING!  Three and four story brick, with marble floors or hardwood floors, ornate clock towers, huge foyers with beautiful staircases.  It seemed such a shame to waste it on the mentally incapacitated that may never see it or never care.

Sadly, so many people passed on in the care of these institutions.  So many of them, their graves are only marked by a number and the records of those numbers are long, long gone.  Most of the "Kirkbrides" have stood abandoned, boarded up for decades with all of their mysteries held safely inside.  Many of the beautiful "Kirkbrides" have been demolished.  It breaks my heart every time I hear of another one gone.  Very few have been renovated but, the sheer size of them makes it such a difficult task - not to mention the lead paint and the asbestos.  Building 51 in Traverse City is one such renovation, now knows as The Village at Grand Traverse Commons.

I'm going to leave you with some art, the subject being these institutions and their mystery. Recently some drawings surfaced by an artist known as "The Electric Pencil", he was a patient in the 50's. His story and the drawings are quite interesting.  Also, my high school art teacher did a series on The Traverse City State Hospital.  Please, take a look, afterall, "Beauty is Therapy".