A Haunting Halloween at The Whitney Mansion

I love everything about Halloween - the mounds of sugary candy, the extravagant decorations, and the avant-garde costumes! It’s all just extra AF. I can barely contain my excitement for October 31st to roll around. I started decorating our apartment with haunted purple and orange trees and wreaths with lights and ghosts in early September!

Since Halloween is my absolute favorite day of the year, and since Ethan and I are both just as extra as the day its self, we of course went all out celebrating.

In Detroit, there’s a mansion that was once owned by a lumber baron named David Whitney. The mansion is massive and eerie and haunted, as most mansions from the 1800s are. Not only has the mansion been semi-recently restored and turned into a fabulous up-scale restaurant, but on certain days of the year - like Halloween - they know how to throw one hell of a party!

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We arrived in style, both in his silver 5 Series BMW - which we took especially to look fitting for the valet - but also in our perfectly planned costumes. I went as a bumble bee because I had the perfect Nina heels and gold velvet Hollister dress to wear for the occasion. He wore a black suit and a evil crow mask. Little did we know until someone awkwardly pointed it out to us that we had unintentionally matched costumes and gone as “the birds and the bees”. We were both pretty embarrassed about not catching that one, but we owned it.

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Champagne was handed to us upon arrival, and our 5-course filet mignon dinner was served in one of the many grand halls of the mansion. The food was absolutely exquisite, just as it should have been. I was in heaven.

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After dinner and our ghostly toast on the staircase of the mansion, we proceeded to wander upstairs and listen to the dinner theatre of haunted broadway music performed live for us while we sipped more wine.

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Next, we were taken downstairs into the basement of the mansion for a magic show, which was nothing less than impressive as the magician made things disappear and tore apart dollar bills and somehow put them back together. The atmosphere of the entire evening was light and beautiful. I don’t know how long it had been since I had had that much fun.

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Finally, we were taken outside to the carriage house, which is known to be incredibly haunted! Accompanied by a medium and two professional ghost hunters, we were told stories of the unbelievable spirits that lingered in that house. After getting to see some pretty unexplainable things and even a few terrifying moments where I could swear one of the ghosts in the room was actually interacting with me personally (ask me about it sometime, I’d love to share), we retired to our tables for a history lesson of the mansion and some spooky chocolate mouse cake.

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An impeccable evening and a perfect way to spend my favorite occasion. The location and experience couldn’t have been more fitting and my company couldn’t have been more wonderful. Many thanks to The Whitney for throwing such an incredible party. It was a hauntingly good Halloween.

Cheers to that.