Muirdale
A Haunting Place
I have a recurring dream. I’m walking into an old bathroom. It looks to be from the early 1900s. The tiled walls are white, old and cracked. The floor is worn. The pipes are exposed and the toilet soiled. There’s an indented area that at one time could have been a shower, yet there is no plumbing or showerhead. There is a slight ramp going into the center of the room, with a weathered thin metal railing alongside it.
It was uncanny. This bathroom was very much like the one I walked into recently, fully awake in 2025. I wondered if my recurring dream was a premonition. The room was in an old sanatorium in Milwaukee called Muirdale. It ceased being a hospital in 1969 and is now leased as office space.
Muirdale was originally constructed as a tuberculosis sanitorium in 1915. Medical treatments were conducted in this single tall building of five floors. At one time there were also cottages on the property. They were for patients who were closer to recovery and didn’t need the same level of treatment as others. One of the cottages housed children and was called a preventorium. The cottages have been razed and only the main building remains. Between 1915 and 1935 over 10,000 patients received treatment at Muirdale.[1]
I was there that day for a meeting. As I walked the eerie hallways, I had a strong feeling of déjà vu. I had been there before and not in a dream. The interior still looked like a very old hospital, despite being repurposed as a business space.
The place is creepy. Old elevator doors are covered up with wallboard and paint, but the original push buttons remain. I especially got a chill on the fifth floor where my meeting was to be held. This floor is where the sickest TB patients were housed, and many died here.[2]
For some reason the big wide hallway on this floor looked familiar. In the 1970s the building was used as a care facility for elderly persons with mental illness and was renamed Rehab West. Beginning in the early 1960s my mother spent many years in the Milwaukee County mental health system, sometimes staying months at a time. It’s possible she could have been a patient here in the 1970s. She was not elderly but there were not enough places for everyone who needed help in those years. I may have visited her here as a teenager. I remember a long hallway with drab green walls and a large, locked door at the end. Rows of chairs for visitors lined the walls. Shouts, mumbling, and crying could be heard from beyond the door.
My mother’s stay in a frightening old building would not aid her recovery, especially after she was given electroshock treatments and drugged with strong tranquilizers. The thought of this added to my unease inside the building. I have no proof she was admitted here, but my intuitive reaction to the place was strong. If my mom wasn’t in Rehab West, she was certainly in a place that looked very much like it.
Later, I learned there are many ghost stories associated with Muirdale. The old sanitorium is known by ghosthunters as of one the haunted landmarks in Wisconsin. It is said to sit atop an indigenous burial mound.[3] That, along with the fact that many people died in this building, make it ripe for ghosts.
There was not a cure for Tuberculosis until the 1940s. The isolation at the sanitorium reminded me of the cure porches of the early 20th century near Saranac Lake, New York, in the Adirondack Mountains. People traveled by train from New York City to rent a porch at a private home. As part of what was called isolation therapy, patients would stay outside in glass enclosed porches, hoping the fresh air could help them recover. Unfortunately, this didn’t end well for many of them. Perhaps leading to unsettled spirits like those at Muirdale.
According to American Ghost Walks, many apparitions have been sighted at the old Muirdale building. Among them, a nurse that smokes a cigarette. Outside workers have seen a man staring out at them from a fifth-floor window, when the building was empty. Inside, coughing noises have been heard, along with cries for help. People working late in the office building hear doors slamming up and down the hallways, where doctors would have gone from room to room.
The day I visited the converted office building, I went into two separate bathrooms, each on a different floor. They were identical. Both showed signs of long-time neglect, and the chilling feeling of a time gone by. Strangely, the rooms had never been updated.
Previously I was unaware of Muirdale’s haunted history. My plan is to go back there on a moody weather day. Dark clouds, rain and thunder would set the scene. I’ve encountered my share of ghosts in my life. I’m curious to see if anything paranormal happens if I visit again.
For me the haunting means more to me than finding ghosts. Like the recurring dream, my mother’s past in facilities like Rehab West (Muirdale) haunt me with feelings of sadness for the suffering she went through with mental illness.
On a positive note, I believe she is doing quite well now on the other side and would enjoy joining me for a bit of ghost hunting.
[1] Wauwatosa Fandom.com
[2] American Ghost Walks
[3] Wauwatosa Fandom.com