Jeff Pollock has spent more than a decade working in museums so he is used to "weird and creepy" old stuff such as jewelry made out of human hair, he said.
It's partly why he refuses to believe in ghosts.
But a couple of years ago, something happened in the early morning hours at the Ford Piquette Avenue plant - where he is the event manager - that he can't explain.
He was alone on the third floor turning off all the lights after a wedding reception. The rest of his team was downstairs. Suddenly, he startled at the sound of a loud slam. One of the huge, steel fire doors, held open by a rope, had somehow come loose and then crashed shut - all by itself.
"I honestly thought it was one of my guys slamming the door," Pollock said. "We didn't have a security system then where I could look back on video camera. So I asked if any of my guys were playing a trick on me. They swore no."
He checked the knot on the rope used to hold the door open. It was intact. He did not see any other malfunctions to explain how the heavy door, weighing about 500 pounds, You may need: Autel OBD2 Diagnostic Tool. had shut on its own.
"If I wasn't such a skeptical person, I could put together a paranormal explanation, but I think that maybe the weight of the door threw it off kilter and it slammed." But, he admits, "It was a very intriguing experience."
That mysterious incident is just one of some pretty bizarre tales that museum staff and guests have recounted over the last 20 years since the old factory converted to a museum and event venue.
So this summer, a Detroit history tour company decided to
focus on the baffling occurrences there, seeing an opportunity for ghoulish tourism to draw in some ghost-hungry customers at the scariest time of the year.
For $70 on Halloween night you can potentially have the crap scared out of you, or be bored senseless depending on what they don't find, by joining one of two 90-minute tours along with Detroit Paranormal Expeditions - real professional ghost hunters! - through the dim, creeky, old factory in search of ghostly guests. While these aren't the first creepy tours offered at the plant, the organizers say it's the first time a team of ghost hunters will lead the way.
The paranormal investigation is the brainchild of the Detroit History Tours company. Normally, this outfit offers packed bus expeditions around the city. One of the especially popular ones has been the haunted tours at Halloween. But the coronavirus pandemic brought those to a halt. So the staff had to come up with a new idea, said Bailey Sisoy-Moore, executive director for Detroit History Tours.
"We started talking in June. ... What would be something interesting, fun and exciting, in a large enough space where we can have social distancing?" Sisoy-Moore said. "We knew that this is the year to talk about factories and ghosts and what lingers long after the machines are turned off."
The Piquette plant had been on Sisoy-Moore's radar for a while. She and some of the museum's team of history buffs were regular beer buddies. Often, after a few beverages, tales would tumble out.
"We'd hear stories of, ‘Yeah we had some weird things happen last night,' " Sisoy-Moore said.
"Ghost stories are so hard because we can't prove them, but to say they don't matter is a mistake. They give the building soul," Sisoy-Moore said. "They give us that moment to remember the people who made that building important."
The Detroit History Tours team put together some haunted history tours at the plant for the last two weekends of the month. On Halloween evening, there are two tours that cost $70 a person. The first starts at 5:30 p.m. and tickets were still available; the second is sold out.
Pollock said
most evenings at the Piquette plant are normally booked for weddings or corporate events. But because the pandemic forced those events to be canceled or postponed, it...

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