A chilling yet sweetly sad story aired just now on WDIV 4 news.

An amateur group has discovered and is now uncovering the overgrown "potter's field" cemetery of the former Wayne County Eloise Hospital complex. Eloise has served as poor house, mental hospital and tuberculosis sanitorium.

About 400 grave markers, simple concrete markers with a only a number on them, have been revealed so far.


Up to 7000 may be there, under the overgrown sod. Most of those buried are thought be victims of TB, the poor and the unclaimed dead.


Does anyone else find it remarkable that it would be completely overgrown - that not at least one relative would visit and maintain the marker of a loved one from so many? Maybe there was but it was not mentioned in the piece. Time has also passed. It was said they burials took place between 1910 and 1945.

Link to Wikipedia entry on Eloise Cemetery