Ever since Michigan was first settled by the Chippewa, the Potawatomi, and Wyandot Indians, it has been a place known for its spirits and ghosts. Spectral entities seem to lurk around every corner. From Addison where the ghost of a girl spins a pinwheel without the assistance of a breath of wind to Ypsilanti where drivers spot an eerie nurse walking disjointedly down the road only to have her vanish after being passed, the ghosts of Michigan have scared up quite a reputation.
A building in Augusta, known as the Brook Lodge Hotel, owned now by Michigan’s State University is said to contain a ghost that stomps loudly around the building when no one is present. Guests reportedly hear a piano playing throughout the grounds when visiting the cottage at the edge of the creek. Several who have stayed at the Doctor’s cottage have requested to be moved to a different room when suddenly eerie sounds will jolt them out of their sleep, and be overcome by an unusual sense of uneasiness.
In the town of Borculo there is a well known local restaurant which at one time was an old schoolhouse run by a cruel schoolteacher named Ms. Van Moss. Over the years, Ms. Van Moss had accumulated a reputation as a teacher who was not afraid to implement drastic martial force to get her students to pay attention. It is said that one day she struck a misbehaving child so hard that the child died instantly. Patrons at the restaurant report their silverware mysteriously being hurled across the room, but the staff know it is merely the spirits of the area throwing another tantrum. Occasionally a morose child has been seen sitting alone in one of the booths staring out into the room without speaking a word.
Elsewhere, the Clinton Township has a garden known as Cadillac Memorial Gardens East where longtime locals to the area will recall 20 years ago when a man escaped from a mental institution and burglarized the front office. He then slit his wrists and neck, and was found by staff the net morning talking to himself beneath a blanket on the floor. The man didn’t die, but some say it was more than just mental illness that drove him to mutilate himself when he entered the area. Ten years later a suicide would take place in the cemetery as a man, distraught over the loss of his parents would kill himself in an effort to be reunited with them. Groundskeepers as well as visitors have reported seeing the spectral image of a man dematerialize in the area. Some say the dead even communicate with the living, asking to be exhumed. Several graves have been dug up, but each grave is held secure by a specially designed vault lid. A police officer several years ago (or so the story goes) shot a child and then went insane after being acquitted and tried to dig up the corpse, though no one knows why. Screams as well as whispers are heard in this cursed place at all times of the night.
No doubt this is just a scratch on the surface of what ghosts Michigan holds in store. Hundreds, if not thousands of locations are scattered all throughout the territory, and when the sun sets eerie sounds mingle with the sounds of city life and that which lurks beyond the inhabited lit areas of civilization, emanating from the dark unknown beyond.