ELOISE ASYLUM, WESTLAND MI

On the Westbound side of the Michigan Avenue Parkway in Westland Michigan, Eloise Psychiatric Hospital operated for decades from 1913 to 1982 in the Kay Beard Building among dozens of other buildings. After multiple post-Psychiatric uses, the building went into disuse in 2016. In 2020, it was given new life by a team of haunt owners and builders from across the country in a bid to make it the most elaborate Halloween experience out there. Get that this was during the Pandemic and ensuing inflation so, they had quite a challenge on their hands. Eloise Asylum is now truly a theatrical masterpiece. They have access to another three floors of the building for unique elements on top of the First Floor – Medical/Asylum theme (Eloise Asylum) and Basement – Experimental/Alien/Mutant theme (Subfloor 1 – Nanking Project).

 

When you find the correct driveway into the Parking Lot, there is plentiful space for hundreds of vehicles. This place is only a few years old but, IT IS POPULAR! The edifice is a five-story tall brick Hospital shaped like two capital E's laid back-to-back. Around the side is a suitable Security tent that helps keep the place safe. A decent walk past this tent up to the Box Office, you look to your left and see an extensive Midway. After getting your ticket slips, you make your way into a plaza being assaulted by Sliders and surrounded by carnival food trailers. I eventually got myself Deep Fried Oreos and Kit-Kats.

 

Around a corner from the Merchandise Shack is a beautiful installation called Deathly Gardens. In this side-display, you will walk past around ten animatronic Jack O'lantern Creatures made by some of the best animatronic artists in the industry. Photo-ops abound in this area and you can even access a food vendor from inside. Crossing the Midway diagonally takes you to the first queue line for Eloise Asylum. Depending on which ticket you have, you can either move right up to the Main Entrance or weave back and forth through a tent and finally have a straight shot to the door. When I was making my approach, I was trying to setup my Stopwatch on my phone as quickly as possible but, understandably all staff members were warning me not to have my phone out at the top of the stairs. They don't want any unauthorized pictures of the tremendous artistic work that took weeks to build and dress.

 

You should be forgiven for thinking you stepped into a second queue upon entering the ornate, column flanked front door because the structure of the foyer does the same weaving as the tent and its ropes outside. You are in fact inside the first house at this point and the dressing is spectacular. It almost looks like a mix between a Funeral Home and a Government building how they used the exceptionally high ceiling and a continuing presence of columns interspersed with many antique lamps and phones and other detail pieces completely enraptured in cobwebs. The actors here preview a theatrically trained, highly chilling corp of creeps. The makeup is a similar visual style in all areas of the house. A boxy, gray-based, deep framing of facial features and a dimensionality rarely seen in Haunted Attractions.

 

Deeper into the house, there is a set of aesthetic features that come up regularly and are very interesting. The first is the use and mimicry of the outside walls of the building and its windows to instill greater authenticity including a simulated thunderstorm outside. The second is the use of central corridors that are connected by doors and are traversed by winding in and out of various Medical rooms. I have seen this at home in Everhaunt and Frightworld minus the doors with translucent glass. The third is rooms that emulate real conditions in a hospital whether it be General or Psychiatric but, with warped perspective. There is a surgery room where the surgeons are elevated and much taller than you, there is the “stretching” Solitary Confinement hallway and a number of strange Padded Wall rooms.

 

The actors are a feature meant to create unease as there are fewer jump-scares compared to haunts of equal caliber. The Asylum house is a light touch haunt and the actors are very good at unnerving even the strongest of souls. Within the halls are so many artifacts of the past that you really do lose your sense of time and place. The music within is a mix of Swing and Jazz from the 1920's and '30s of the height of Eloise Hospital. All dressings are of a mid-20th Century design and color. This Asylum really is like a time machine with actors that make you nervous to the core.

 

Coming back out into the Midway area, you see present-day civilization again but, are still corralled into the world of Eloise Asylum by a single, shared queue line that disappears down a set of stairs to the Basement. Here you meet with the front door of a wholly different experience: Subfloor 1 – Nankin Project.

 

Subfloor 1 is a slightly shorter but no less impressive element to this attraction. Entering, you turn left past a massive Caution symbol indicating something like an Industrial or Experimental theme and into the darkness you go. When you emerge, it's a Laboratory unlike any else on Earth. Human experiments, Alien experiments, psychosis, manipulation and Alien Invasion. They have machines that defy gravity and implant thoughts. The aesthetic is one that surpasses the depth of just about every other haunted house of the same theme.

 

On the largest scale, the most impressive thing is how many monsters they stuff into this place. All animatronic, they attack from all angles. Another great thing about this house is the lighting and sound. The lighting includes giant panels and strobes, chasing hallways and hidden spotlights that bring otherworldly glow to a bunch of the scenes. In this house, most of the actors are wearing masks or prosthetics to more transform there faces to the appearance of mutant or alien. There are definitely more jump-scares here than in the Asylum so, the Adrenaline plus the booming sound and surrealism of the house make it a bit different from the “Time Machine” that is Eloise Asylum.

 

Both houses are incredible feats of design and for that alone, I recommend everyone within a five hour single night's drive distance to give this attraction a shot. The prices vary through all of September. However when October rolls around, the full price is $45 GA and $75 VIP. Thank you for reading!