Northern Michigan Asylum: A History of the Traverse State Hospital is the most comprehensive history of the collection of building and grounds written to date. From the Preface to the Index, author William Decker, M.D., former Medical Director of the Kalamazoo State Hospital and author of the award winning Asylum for the Insane, explores little known facts about the planning, construction and operation of the array of buildings that comprise the Traverse City State Hospital. Built in 1885, it was the third asylum to be built in Michigan. Dr. James Decker Munson was its first Medical Superintendent, filling its cottages with people from the poorhouses, attics, and hospitals who were labeled, at that time, insane or lunatics. Always at full or exceeding full capacity, which was 500 in 1885, the yellow brick buildings housed 2,200 souls in 1973 with rooms designed for one patient to then hold four beds dormitory style in each room. The population finally declined and leveled off.

The dead tell stories. Are you listening? The ghosts of the past come calling in this edge-of-your-seat paranormal mystery. A decades old unsolved murder, women who speak to the dead, and a malevolent asylum doctor. Don't miss the Northern Michigan Asylum Series.

An intimate photographic journey into 115 years of history inside a nineteenth-century asylum.

Northern Michigan Asylum, which opened in 1885, was known during most of its years as Traverse City State Hospital. More than 200 photographs and images are provided, including many of the features and buildings long gone. It was run during its first decades by Dr. James Decker Munson, who left his legacy in the landscaped grounds and the medical center that today bears his name. Traverse City State Hospital served the mental health needs of a large part of Michigan for 104 years until its closure in 1989, housing a population as large as 3,000 in its many buildings.This book traces the history of this great institution, from the local and mental health context in which it was founded, through its growth, development, and decline, and finally to its renovation and preservation as a vital part of the Traverse City community.

Based on the popular Lost In Michigan website that was featured in the Detroit Free Press, It contains locations throughout Michigan, and tells their interesting story. There are over 50 stories and locations that you will find fascinating.

Meet the man against insanity. His laboratory? The sadly sinister wards of the 3,000-bed Traverse City State Hospital. His apparatus? Only his own eyes and hands, plus the hands and eyes of more than one hundred nurse attendants. And for his experiments, the patients whom staff referred to as the "cats and dogs"- the seemingly incurable psychotics resistant to all treatment and far beyond hope."Maybe we're not scientific here," Ferguson admitted. "I know we're different than they are in the big medical schools. We don't treat diseases - we try to treat sick people."In this book, originally published in 1957, author Paul de Kruif tells the story of Dr. Jack Ferguson, a family physician who originally made a name for himself by perfecting a three-minute lobotomy. In 1954, he arrived in Traverse City, Michigan, ready to perform 500 lobotomies on the so-called incurably insane. Yet he never got around to even the first one. Instead, using an unscientific combination of chemicals, copious notes and loving attention, he began one of the boldest drug therapy experiments ever attempted in a mental institution, helping to reshape how the mentally ill are treated in this country and abroad.