HAUNTED MICHIGAN: Two Tales of Ann Arbor Apparitions

Here are a couple of ghostly tales that have seeped out of Ann Arbor:

MERCYWOOD MENTAL HOSPITAL
Mercywood Hospital was a mental hospital that stood at 4038 Jackson Road. In 1925, it was a 40-room sanitarium that served the area. In 1986 the health services were relocated to the new Mercywood Health Building on Huron River Drive.

When the sanitarium was still operational, many bizarre things were being witnessed or experienced by maintenance workers, security guards, staffers, and nuns.

The nuns lived in a convent that was located behind the hospital. The convent was not without its own uneasiness; it was believed that some of the questionable goings-on, noises, moving objects, and voices the nuns were experiencing were caused by deceased mental patients.

Visitors and workers were strongly aware of the insanity that was within the hospital, some say evil. The dread of insanity can sometimes be confused with evil, and that may have caused fear in some.

Security guards would be working at night and hear the elevators going up and down by themselves. Even though boiler rooms make all sorts of noises, the guards claimed to hear even stranger sounds coming from the basement. There were many personal belongings of the mental patients that were stored down there – they also had a recreation room in the basement, where they would play pool and bowl among other activities. It’s believed that some spirits of the deceased patients were in the basement, reliving their past life.

Visiting the hospital after it shut down could be especially unnerving when one would come across deranged scrawlings, ramblings, graffiti and gibberish written on the walls.

It has been demolished and a motor mall was built in its place.

HURON HIGH SCHOOL THEATER
Ann Arbor’s Huron High School also has reports pf paranormal activity. In the late 1970’s, a teenager named Mary was lighting director for a school play. She was on the theater catwalk taking care of some lighting when she lost her balance and fell, headfirst on the stage. It’s said that the pink dress she was wearing either got tangled, or it got caught on something that made her lose her grip and balance. Since the accident, actors, stagehands, and students have seen a figure on the catwalks, wearing a pink dress.

The theater has a prop room, where it’s customary for the would-be actors to spray paint graffiti and their names on the walls, commemorating their theater experiences. It wasn’t too long after Mary’s death that her name appeared, written in bright, sharp, blood-red paint above the doorway. If that wasn’t enough, her name was written upside-down.

The sanitarium may be long gone, but the school is still around…maybe they’ll grant you a tour of the theater…

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