Haunted house actors at Eloise Asylum want to make even the big bad guys scream
Dressed to scare, they creep around the dark corners of rooms on two floors of fright.
They come from all walks of life, a retired Detroit schoolteacher, an administrative assistant at a college and a head chef at a nursing home.
Just try and spend the 48 minutes it takes to get through 60,000 square feet of space inside Eloise Asylum, a haunted house in Westland — when that cold October night hits your face, you'll be relieved the thrills and chills are over and yet you'll find yourself walking away with others, laughing at how fun and intense it all was. That's the goal for the actors inside — along with the professional hair, makeup artists and costume designers who work to make them look so terrifying, all to create experiences, and memories.
Don't believe me? Just ask Dr. Bjorn Nightblood, played by Gerald Meirthew, a car mechanic from Wayne who has been scaring people at Eloise for three years. He's on the sub-level of the haunted house, and not hard to miss. He's the creepy guy who glows in the dark, with an orange smile and a green claw on his right arm surrounded by heavy fog, dim lights and an animatronic alien named Gwar the Devourer, who jumps out as you quickly move past the doctor.
"For me, it's about seeing the look on the customers' faces, not knowing what to expect and absolutely terrified, jumping out of their skin," Meirthew said. Sometimes, people come through not scared at all — and that's OK for him. "So I make it fun. If I can't scare you, I'm going to give you a show. Either way, you're going to laugh, you're going to smile, you're going to scream. Something's going to happen."
John Hambrick bought the Eloise Asylum building in July 2018. When making it into affordable senior living space didn't work out, friends told him to make it a ghost tour experience, which in 2020 turned into a haunted attraction. "Let's face it, Eloise wasn't a nice place for a long time, right? People that were there were ill, poor, mentally and physically challenged, they struggled," Hambrick said. "It had a gray cloud over it for so long, and I'm bring fun, joy, scares, memories and that's the thrill for me. That's why they come here."
From elaborately built sets to real life props, Hambrick had a goal. "We shot for the moon and we knew we had to come out of the box swinging," he said. "Presentation is everything, right? We want to be the best."
Even when groups of people think they can conquer the fright that is Eloise Asylum, Meirthew sees it as a challenge. "We always get that group of bikers walking through and nothing scares them. Well, that fog rolls into the room, and now I'm gone," he said. "When I surprise them and get them by the back of the shoes, and I watch a 6-foot-2 biker squeal and make the greatest girlie sound in the world, which scares the rest of them, it's the best. I can still hear their screams in my head, and that's the goal for me — to find those big, bad guys, and remind them we're all human."
Eloise Asylum is open Friday and Saturdays from 7 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., and Sundays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. It's $45 for general admission, and $75 for VIP. More info can be found at .
