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| Photo by Andrew Jameson CC Flickr |
Before its demolition in 2015 the Fenton Seminary, which
stood at 309 High St and State Road, was one of Fenton’s most haunted locations
and definitely the one with spookiest aesthetic.
I first discovered this haunting beauty back in 1990. My boyfriend at the time had grown up in the Fenton
area and wanted to show me the spooky place all the kids were afraid of. They
all heard rumors about how haunted the place was. The house was bought and sold
numerous times but no one would stay in it very long.
We drove there one night and the visage of this
hulking stone structure against the backdrop of darkness was utterly
terrifying. I was so scared I wouldn’t even let him pull into the driveway.
I don’t spook easily and it is rare for me to have
such intense feelings of fear, but when I do, I know to trust my gut. Even back
then I knew that something was wrong and
we shouldn’t even step foot on the property.
Even though the place terrified me I was fascinated
by its history. I told my friend Jenny about it and she got her cousin who was
in college studying architecture and design, to contact the real estate agent.
He got the keys to the place so he could sketch it. She invited me to join her
on the exploration.
So I returned during daylight hours to visit the
spooky stone structure. We walked around the main levels and explored a bit. It
was remarkably clean for a place that had been empty for years. I planned to
explore the entire building but after a rocking chair started rocking by itself
in one of the second-floor bedrooms and a door slammed on me in another room I
decided to cut the exploration short. That was enough spooky for me. I didn’t
get to see the basement or the sub-basement which Jenny said had a stream running
through it. Later I saw some of the photos she took. There were so many orbs,
weird lights, and strange blurry smudges in them none of them came out very
clear.
Several years later another friend told me about his
experiences in a haunted house in Fenton. Turns out it was the old seminary. He
detailed a story about a group of teens that would sneak in and party in the
place. They had a nice spot on one of the upper floors. One night he needed a
place to crash and ended up in the old place all alone. He heard a strange and
creaky squealing noise then a small door on the wall popped open. It was a
dumbwaiter and something jumped out at him. He didn’t get a good look at it; he
just took off running and flew down the stairs. Whatever it was had sharp claws
that tore the back of his t-shirt to tatters. He showed me the shirt that he
had kept as a reminder to never return to that cursed place. The shirt looked
like Freddy Krueger had raked his razor-sharp glove across it.
Locations that used to be seminaries, asylums,
hospitals, and nursing homes have tons of supernatural activity, probably from
all the people that lived and died in the location. Even if nothing “bad”
happened there, residual energy builds up. My theory is that a location where
many people go out of this world creates a doorway. Like a hospital, where
people die every day, a gateway opens and sometimes something might slip
through that shouldn’t.
The building was originally built to be a Baptist seminary
in 1868. It was a preparatory school for students attending Kalamazoo College. Later,
around 1886, it was given to the Baptist Aid Society as a retirement home for
ministers and their wives and was used as such until about 1938.
In 1899 a fire gutted the interior and destroyed the
roof and the original two-story veranda with its balustrades and divided front
steps. “The three-story stone structure was originally constructed in the
Second Empire style, complete with a mansard roof, dormers, and rounded arch
windows. During the building's reconstruction in 1900, the porch was altered to
feature two stone piers, the front stairway was built as a single flight, and
the third story was eliminated and replaced by a truncated hip roof. The new
roof's details included a centrally placed stepped gable dormer flanked by
fanciful metal dormers.”
For a short time in the 1940s, it was a learning
center for kids. It was later used as an apartment building. In the 1950s the
elderly filled the halls while it was a nursing home. Several times it was
privately owned but residents never lasted very long. It had been mostly vacant
since 1967.
In November 1982 it was added to the National
Register of Historic Places. For years it was one of Fenton's most prominent
19th-century structures.
Penny Crane purchased the building in the mid-1990s
with hopes of returning it to its original glory.
Soon after purchasing it in 1995, she opened the
monstrous structure to the public as a haunted house. With every window and
doorway closed off from the outside world, the interior was dark and shrouded in
mystery.
I bet it was terrifying. The multi-story monster
would be so easy to get lost in.
Fenton city officials quickly closed the haunt’s
doors and condemned it until the proper permits could be approved for
renovation. Crane fought with the city for years to lift the condemned status so
she could transform the monastery into a usable facility. For over twenty years
she struggled to try to renovate the building. She even tried to walk away from
it once but the ownership reverted back to her.
The hulking 10,000 square foot building would have
been the perfect set for a horror movie. People would get spooked just looking
at it. Dark, decrepit, and filled with dark corners and spooky shadows it was
an entity all its own. The massive stone stairs lead to a chained off entrance
while a tattered condemned sign hung from a ground-level door. A no trespassing
sign hung on one of the windows. I’m sad I missed out on that.
In 2004 the building had a fire.
In November 2013 the building was severely damaged
by storms. In 2014 it was damaged by more storms and a portion
of the structure crumbled. Also in 2014, the city of Fenton took ownership for $20,000 of back taxes that were owed. In 2015, it was deemed a dangerous building
by a structural engineer and was demolished in September of that year.
Bricks and other materials from the old seminary have
been used to erect a monument that now stands in Section B of Oakwood Cemetery in
Fenton.
The land the seminary once occupied is now an empty lot. My son suggested we pull into the driveway to take photos. I had the same reaction I did the first night I laid eyes on the building. Nope.
The land still emits that energy even though the structure is long gone.
I tried to take photos of the lot with my cell phone camera, first, my camera went to a black screen and wouldn't do anything. I closed out the camera, opened it back up and everything rippled across the screen. My daughter saw the weird ripple as it happened. We were spooked and noped through the intersection to reassess and turn around. She pulled out the big camera and snapped a few photos with it.
It's just a grassy lot. Doesn't look spooky at all.
