Paranormal Factor

There is a small, forgotten cemetary outside of town towards Oakley. If you follow Juddville Road until you reach M-52, you will see it there on the left; on the side of a hill. If you go past it at night it is very eerie as many cemeteries are.

One night, my brother drove by it and seen a white, whispy figure leaning over a gravestone. It was a tall, slender man, slightly stooped. He had a hat (possibly civil war hat and uniform?) on as he looked solemnly at the grave. His cheeks and eyes were sunken in and he was bearded. He had an emanciated appearance, almost starved.
He was a solitary figure holding a lantern and looking straight down. The ghostly lantern gave him a ghastly green light. He did not acknowledge my brother. He also reminded my brother of the man on the mountain in a Led Zeppelin album.

We tried driving past at night again, but witnessed nothing. The cemetary is actually closed, and there haven’t been any recent new burials there that we are aware of.

9-6-08

I am going to add a little to this story as it has brought back a memory of something that occurred to myself, my husband, my daughter, her cousin, and her friend at the abandoned golf course that butts up against the cemetary you mentioned on M52.

It was winter and we had just moved back to Michigan from Arkansas. The country club had always been the place to go sleding in the winter so we packed up and took a trip out there. Usually we weren’t the only ones enjoying the hilly landscape, but this time it was just us and the blowing wind. I remember we were having a lot of fun, the kids had went exploring while my husband and I made snow angels and a snowman to pass the time. My husband had commented on the fact that if you looked over the gorge that divides the country club from the cemetary you could see where the ground had begun to errode and some of the caskets were becoming visible somewhat, we talked about how creepy the place was and that if one of my loved ones were buried there I would surely want the place fixed.

After a little while the kids returned, my daughter and her cousin carrying a bunch of rags on the end of sticks. I am somewhat of a germ freak and I hollered at them to get rid of the stuff as it was just garbage. My husband wanted to know where they had gotten the torn up and very dirty fabric from so they led us to the other side of the grounds and showed us the place under some very tall pine trees. The ground here was not covered in snow, just a thick bed of pine needles and huge cones scattered around. They showed us where they got the rags and low and behold there were also a pile of bones close by the same area and a strange piece of plastic that may have been part of a hat.

I am niave, I will admit it, and my first thought was a deer or dog (the bones were larger than belonging to a small animal) which had died here or been dragged here by another predator or hunter. I dismissed the rags at once, not associating them to the bones, I saw no skull to discern what animal the bones belonged to so we each voiced our opinion as to what we believed they were. Not once did any of us think that the bones were human, although the cemetery was just a few yards away. Why would bones be here and not there? It just didn’t make sense to even think it.

Anyway, we packed up some time later and returned home. A few months went by and then Spring was upon us and all of the snow had melted. It was late March and my husband and I were watching the eleven o’clock news and suddenly a report began about the bones of a transient man who had been missing since 1972, they had been found on the very same country club grounds, in the very same spot as we found the mysterious bones. The reporter was standing in the copse of trees and I recognized them instantly as the same ones we stood under in January. My husband and I exchanged glances. It was just too weird; to have uncovered the half-hazard deathbed of a man who no one had been able to find so many years ago.

Of course, we kept the ordeal to ourselves and didn’t mention it to anyone. Who would have believed us anyway? I had forgotten about it until I read the above mentioned story. Wonder if the ghost that was seen could maybe be the same man whose bones my daughter, her cousin, and friend found? Maybe he haunts that area not knowing he is dead. I don’t know really, but my imagination says I just might not be far off from the truth.

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