Public Road View
Green Lake is a private lake in West Bloomfield Township with no public access; the club and lake association are members-only. View only from adjacent public roads. Do not enter private property.
- Duration:
- 15 min
Walter Flanders's 1910s Estate Clubhouse on Green Lake
West Bloomfield, MI
Age
All Ages (members and exterior viewing)
Cost
Free
The clubhouse is members-only. The surrounding lake is private and has no public access.
Access
Limited Access
Private property; not publicly accessible
Equipment
No Photos
Walter E. Flanders, an automotive pioneer who built and sold the Flanders Motor Company, assembled a roughly thousand-acre estate around what is now Green Lake in West Bloomfield Township during the 1910s. The estate included all of the lake itself, farm outbuildings, a greenhouse, a Craftsman-style residence, and an elaborate garage building.
The garage was the property's most unusual structure. It included an automobile turntable, a billiard room, a ballroom, and a two-lane bowling alley — the entertainment infrastructure of a wealthy collector in the early automobile era.
Flanders moved to Virginia in 1919. He died in a 1923 automobile accident. The Aviation Country Club, an early aviation enthusiasts' organization, purchased the estate in 1920 and adapted the former Flanders garage as its clubhouse.
The Green Lake Association took ownership of the clubhouse in 1949. Today the lake is a private, non-combustion-engine lake managed by the association on behalf of property owners. The clubhouse continues to host members and serves as the legacy structure of the original Flanders estate.
The property's place in southeast Michigan industrial history — its connection to Flanders himself, to the broader pre-Big Three Detroit automotive ecosystem, and to the early aviation country club movement — is more substantial than its haunted folklore suggests.
Sources
Local tradition holds that the Green Lake clubhouse — the former Walter Flanders garage with its preserved early-twentieth-century bowling alley and ballroom — is host to a child apparition. The most-circulated account describes two teenage boys retrieving items from the clubhouse one night and seeing a third figure standing between them in the window reflection — a small girl in a white dress, roughly nine or ten years old, a head shorter than they were. Both boys reported turning to look and finding no one there; the reflection persisted long enough for them to confirm what they had each seen before vanishing.
Other reports in the same submission describe pictures on the clubhouse walls being found tilted at varying angles after every closing — straightened, then immediately returned to off-center positions when staff check again. Footsteps reported on stairs no one is using, doors that open and close on their own, and bowling pins scattered with their balls strewn overnight despite the alley being locked with a single key.
The Shadowlands narrative is the only available source for this material. No independent investigation, local press, or West Bloomfield Township historical documentation has been located that corroborates these accounts. The clubhouse remains private and operates as a members-only facility; visitor access for paranormal investigation is not offered.
The folklore should be read as community-submitted oral tradition associated with a wealthy private property whose actual industrial-era history is the more substantive draw.
Green Lake is a private lake in West Bloomfield Township with no public access; the club and lake association are members-only. View only from adjacent public roads. Do not enter private property.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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