Stalking Shadows (8 page)

While I’m unclear about what happened to the infant skeleton, I’m very clear about the increase in paranormal activity after the baby was discovered; the mother was there protecting her baby, even though the baby was long dead. One should never underestimate a mother’s love and devotion to her child.

After this discovery, there was a half-hearted attempt to restore the old place, but according to the Historical Society, the home was suffering from too many structural problems to be saved. Some people admitted there’d been a lot of strange things going on at the old homestead that no one could, or would, explain.

When I went to Iowa to visit a friend of mine she told me about this house, and I had to investigate. While my friend was at work, I raced out to the house.

The first time I went into the house, I saw an old wicker rocking chair at the top of the stairway. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that it was slowly rocking back and forth. There wasn’t even a breath of wind outside, so I knew the rocking wasn’t due to natural causes. As I watched, I saw the spirit of a young woman appear in the rocking chair, and she appeared to be holding a baby, who was tightly wrapped in a white blanket. I couldn’t see the face of the baby, but could distinctly make out the top of the baby’s head. I could also hear the woman softly crying as she slowly rocked back and forth, hence the name, Weeping Woman.

I slowly made my way to the staircase, trying not to startle her. I tested each step under my foot and worked my way slowly up the staircase. I stopped mid-way up the stairs, because the woman rose from the chair and moved across the open loft toward the center bedroom at the far end of the second floor.

I slowly climbed the rest of the way up to the loft, to follow the phantom woman. In retrospect, I should have taken time to inspect the floor of the loft before I ventured farther, but a sagging loft floor was the last thing on my mind. Halfway across the loft, I felt the floorboards give way under me and I fell through the floor.

Somehow, I landed on the old sofa in the living room of the first floor and once I got my bearings, I looked up toward the gaping hole in the floor above me. I gingerly got up off the sofa and, once I was sure I wasn’t too seriously hurt, I scampered back up the stairs, but I couldn’t see any sign of the ghostly woman and her baby.

It took a bit of research, but I found the woman who now owns the land the old house sits on. When I sat down to talk to her a couple of days later, the first question she asked was as if I’d seen the Weeping Woman. I nodded yes, and asked who she was.

The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, told me that sometime around the end of the Civil War, a young couple lived in a house that once stood close to the existing structure. While the husband was away fighting the war, the young, pregnant woman was left alone. Just days after the birth of the baby, the young mother received news that her husband had been killed in battle. Now either she smothered the baby, or the baby died of an illness, but according to the story, the baby died and the young mother threw herself out the second story window, with the baby in her arms.

According to legend, the woman didn’t die right away, but laid outside the home for a couple of days before her grief and injuries took her life. The woman told me that historical documents exist which verify that the family lived in the house around the time the Civil War ended, but I couldn’t verify the circumstances surrounding the death of the woman that lived there during that time.

Another story related to me by the landowner, which is only loosely tied to the house, is about the time the building was being used as a stagecoach stop, and there was a stagecoach coming in from the west.

The stagecoach was ambushed by bandits and all of the passengers aboard were murdered. The stagecoach was found in the clearing across the road from the station the next morning, overturned and in flames.

The bodies of the passengers were found a short distance away, all neatly buried in a ditch. However, in 1981, when an old humpback bridge was taken out and replaced by a series of culverts covered by a concrete bridge, the skeletons of two women and three men were uncovered by the excavation. This discovery bore out the sketchy tale and the bodies were reburied in the local cemetery, on the other side of town, miles from where they’d laid all those years.

There have also been reports about a ghostly Model A Ford that will come careening off the gravel road, and crash upside down in the creek that runs by the home of the Weeping Woman.

No one seems to know where this car came from or who was driving it, but the story is that on an icy winter night, an accident occurred. The car hit the uprights of the wooden humpback bridge at the bottom of the hill, and flipped into the creek.

The bodies of a young couple were found almost a mile downstream a few days later. A small boy of about five years old was found at the same time in the old house. Although the boy lived, thanks to the “nice white lady” that took care of him, he seemed completely traumatized by the ordeal. Eventually he was sent back east to live with relatives.

In recent years, the ghost car has put in several appearances, one night literally running a lumber truck off the road and into the creek. The driver and his assistant were able to bail out of the truck and land in a ditch unhurt, before their runaway truck crashed to a stop in the creek. The men looked, but could find no sign of the old car that ran them off the road.

Efforts to save the old homestead have long been abandoned, due to the paranormal activity and lack of funds. However, there is one brave soul who did build a log house on the other side of the road. It took him five years longer to build than he’d planned, because the site was plagued by one mishap after another.

In 2010, just one year after the house was finished, he went out into the woods and took his own life, for reasons only known to him. A journal kept in his home and located after his death, told a tale of haunted happenings in and around the house across the street. Although no one knows why the man chose to end his life, the speculations run wild, as they do in a small town, and they all lead to the haunted house across the street that is home to the Weeping Woman.

Many years have passed since that day when I first met the Weeping Woman. The house is little more than a pile of rubble now, and the only thing standing is the lower half of the massive fireplace.

The log home across the street is also empty, and the local wildlife has already started to reclaim it.

Although the locals claim that on a quiet, moonlit night, if the wind’s blowing just the right way, you can hear the mournful sounds of a young woman weeping, as she rocks back and forth, holding her dead baby.

Given the tragic history of the house, I’m not really surprised at the amount of paranormal activity occurring there. I believe that most of the activity is residual, meaning there isn’t a ghost present, just a period of time replaying itself, over and over like a tape recorder. However, the presence of one or more intelligent entities is not out of the realm of possibility.

Yet, because of the tragedies that have befallen that one parcel of land, one can’t rule out the possibility of all that negative energy attracting a demonic entity that would amplify the apparent paranormal activity already occurring there.

Furthermore, it could help explain the suicide of the neighbor across the street. You see, demons need to feed— and they feed on energy—lots of it. Since the home of the Weeping Woman wasn’t occupied by a living soul, it would make sense that a demon would search out the closest available living being, so it could feed.

Being in the presence of a demon, or having a demon occupy your home, isn’t pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it would be downright terrifying and could, given the right set of circumstances, cause a person to commit suicide. While I personally haven’t read the contents of the journal that poor man left behind, the fact that, according to local gossip, he wrote about the abundance of paranormal activity in his house and in the home of the Weeping Woman, could substantiate the theory of a demonic entity having a hand in the man’s death.

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Chapter 7

What’s Going On Around Here?

In an area near where I live, on the eastern coast of Michigan, there appears to be an overabundance of concentrated paranormal activity. While I believe some of it is residual energy, meaning there’s no ghost present, just a moment in time replaying itself over and over, there are also some intelligent entities that interact with the living. Some of these spirits are simply haunting a place they loved or knew when they were alive, but others, not so much, and there are a few theories as to where they came from and why they are here.

Part of the subdivision that I live in, including my own house, is built on fill dirt, excavated when the state built a freeway many years ago. Some of these displaced spirits may have been tied to the land and came with the fill dirt when it was excavated.

Another possible scenario is that many of these spirits are from an old town that used to be on the shores of Lake St. Clair and once stood in the same area as the houses do now. The town was flooded out many years ago. A cemetery and remnants of the town have been found underwater, close to the shores of the lake.

Whichever theory you choose to go with, these are their stories.

The Tragic Ghost of Minnie Quay

Among southeastern Michigan paranormal investigators, there are certain stories of hauntings that have become legendary. The ghost of Minnie Quay is one of those stories.

Minnie Quay lived in the town of Forester, which is nestled on the coast of Lake Huron a few miles north of Port Huron, and quite a distance from my own home. When Minnie Quay lived there, Forester was a bustling lumber town and an important shipping port for boats hauling lumber all over the Great Lakes region.

The Quays—James and his wife, Mary Ann—came to Michigan from New England to take advantage of the booming economy during that time, and to raise their daughter, Minnie.

Four warehouses sat by the shore and a long pier extended out into Lake Huron. The townsfolk would rush to the docks every morning to see which ships had come in, and to hear news from other parts of the region.

Like many girls in shipping towns, Minnie fell in love with one of the sailors who visited Forester when his ship was in dock to be loaded or unloaded. No one is exactly sure of the sailor’s name, but speculation runs high, as it always does in a small town. Because of the Quay’s high status in the community, the relationship was frowned upon, not just by the townsfolk, but by her parents as well.

Finally, unable to reason with the young girl, James and Mary Ann forbade Minnie from seeing the sailor. Thinking this was the end of it, life went on as normal during the long winter, which stopped shipping traffic.

In the early spring of 1876, as the story goes, news reached the town of Forester that the ship Minnie’s sailor worked on had been sunk by a terrible storm. There were no survivors.

Minnie was devastated and beside herself with grief. A few days after hearing the news that her beloved man was dead, Minnie committed suicide by walking off the end of the pier into the frigid waters of Lake Huron. Her body was recovered, and she was buried in the Forester Cemetery at the north end of town, but as you can imagine, she is not resting in peace.

It’s been said that Minnie’s ghost walks along the shores of Lake Huron, crying mournfully as she searches for her lost love, whom she is never able to find. It’s also been reported that she stands in the water where the old pier once stood and tries to beckon young women into the water, to join her in her watery death.

There also have been several reports of her being seen in the bar that stands not too far away from the old pier, now nothing more than a few weather-worn pylons reaching out from the waters of Lake Huron, and which stand as a grim reminder of the tragic story of the young girl. Minnie was only fifteen at the time of her death.

The town of Forester is no longer a shipping port and in the winter is practically deserted, all but for a few residents. However, in the summer the area is teaming with campers and vacationers who come to the shores of Lake Huron to fish, boat, and relax.

I have to admit that as fascinated as I am with the ghost of Minnie Quay, I haven’t really gone looking for her as of yet. The area where she drowned is now on private property. There is a house in Forrester that has a plaque marked “Quay,” and many people believe this is where she lived, but a local told me that’s not the original home of Minnie Quay.

Every summer, tourists will flock to the area to camp and enjoy Lake Huron. As they sit around the campfire late at night, they will tell the story of Minnie Quay and keep her legend alive.

The Houses on the Lake

Our street seems to be particularly active, with two houses besides my own that I know of having some type of paranormal activity. Although sporadic in nature, the phenomenon itself is still intriguing. What’s so curious about it is that our houses are in very close proximity to each other; one is across the street from mine, and the other is two doors down from the house across the street. My husband and I are friends with both couples and I’ve been to their houses frequently.

The House Across the Street