Standing in the center of the Kalamazoo Regional Psychiatric Hospital is an ornate brick water tower that looks like it’s out of a fairy tale as if Rapunzel is going to let out her long golden hair out one of the windows. The hospital is no fairy tale of a place and was one of the largest hospitals of its kind when it opened as the Michigan Asylum For The Insane in 1859. To supply water to the hospital a water tower was constructed in 1895. To complement the feel of the hospital architect B. F. Stratton from Detroit was commissioned to design the water tower. The hospital changed names in 1911 to the Kalamazoo State Hospital and in 1978 it changed again to the Kalamazoo Regional Psychiatric Hospital.
Like with any large psychiatric facility there are stories that go along with it to make you wonder if it is haunted. A doctor was stabbed to death by a patient in 1904 and a nurse was strangled to death when a patent lured her into the basement in 1954. I am not sure if there are any spirits still residing in the hospital, but I am sure that the old water tower has bore witness to many things good and bad as it stands tall looking over Kalamazoo and the old hospital.
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