Paranormal Road Trip: Destination Detroit with Laura Bickle

Come on boys and ghouls!  It's time to hop on Route 666 for a spooktacular Paranormal Road Trip.  This week's stop is Detroit and our special guide is Laura Bickle author of the Anya Kalinczyk series.

The Anya Kalinczyk series is set in Detroit, Michigan so it seems fitting that our guide for this week's Paranormal Road Trip be the amazing Laura Bickle.  Let's see what terrifying places Laura has planned for our tour.

Detroit's Top Five Spooky Places

As Detroit is the setting for my Anya Kalinczyk series, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to explore spooky places in the Motor City. By day, Anya Kalinczyk is an arson investigator for the Detroit Fire Department. By night, she’s the rarest kind of spiritual medium, a Lantern. While other mediums allow spirits to use their hands and voices to communicate, Anya devours and incinerates them. With the help of her fire salamander familiar, Sparky, and an eccentric group of ghost hunters, Anya chases down unseen threats to her city.

Sparky and Anya have visited some of these chilling sites. Others are still on their bucket list. See what you think about some of these five spooky places in Detroit!

The Detroit Salt Mine. Unknown to many residents, a salt mine has stretched beneath the streets of Detroit for more than a century. The mine is vast (more than a hundred miles), cavernous, and smells like the sea. It’s easy to imagine that there are all kinds of light-averse creatures lurking in the dark. Anya and Sparky found a slumbering dragon in the depths of the mine, one that could devour the city if disturbed. What kinds of creatures might others find in this hidden underworld?

The Majestic. Many of Detroit’s speakeasies and bars date from the time of Prohibition, and a fair share of them are rumored to be haunted. The Majestic Theatre has been touted as the site where Harry Houdini gave his last performance (though there’s still some debate about that). Regardless, it’s rumored to be haunted by shadowy figures and ghostly applause. It’s still open for a variety of shows and one’s choice of food and spirits.

Northville Regional Psychiatric Hospital. If this site isn’t haunted, it should be. The abandoned psychiatric hospital sits on the outskirts of Detroit, crumbling in place, since 2003. Weeds grow through the pavement, and the mid-century disintegrating building makes me think of a post-apocalyptic landscape. Stories of madness and untimely deaths have peppered its history, and no one really knows how many patients passed through its on-site morgue.

Fort Wayne. A perennial favorite of ghost hunters, the historic fort has gathered a collection of restless apparitions, disembodied voices, slamming doors, and untraceable footsteps. Built in 1854, the site has a nest of underground tunnels and its own partially-excavated burial mound that’s over 900 years old.

Michigan Central Station. Once a busy hub for rail travel, this magnificent building has sunk into disrepair. It seems that very little glass remains in its beautiful façade, and the interior is little more than a shell of what it once was. Anya and Sparky have investigated Michigan Central Station, where they discovered that it’s a way station for ghosts traveling from our world to the spirit world beyond. Hopping the wrong train can take one to dark corners of the underworld.

Are there any spooky places in your local area that you’d like to share? Is there any place that you’ve visited that you’d bet your bottom dollar was haunted? Please share in the comments below!

Thank you Laura for giving us such a haunting tour of Detroit!  

To learn more about Laura Bickle and her books, please visit her website.  You can add the Anya Kalinczyk series here on Goodreads.

Readers, was this your first visit to Detroit?  Have you experienced anything supernatural in and around Detroit, Michigan?

What did you think of Laura Bickle's picks for spooky places?

Last week on Paranormal Road Trip we visited Tokyo, Japan with Steve Bein.  Next week we'll be traveling to Bruges, Belgium with E.J. Stevens (yep, that's me! *wink*).

Join us for another spine-tingling Paranormal Road Trip...
if you dare!