Traverse City State Hospital

The Traverse City State Hospital, founded in 1885 as the Northern Michigan Asylum, treated people with mental illness for a century before closing in 1989. Its Victorian buildings have been restored as the Village at Grand Traverse Commons, with shops, restaurants and homes. Locals tell stories of unexplained activity there, and the Village offers guided walking tours of the historic buildings, an unrenovated patient cottage and the 1883 steam tunnels, including an evening Asylum Twilight Tour. The tours treat the site's ghost stories as local lore, and the former patients who lived and died here deserve respect.