THE STAIRS
(Suzie)
The first five years of my life was a considerably happy one, despite my parents just barley making ends meet. In order to pay the bills my parents purchased a large, old-fashioned farmhouse complete with barn, etc. Upon signing the paperwork for it, they discovered it had been semi-rebuilt in the late 1900's after a large fire claimed much of the North side of it. I was born in the house and never really thought anything of the occasional strange feelings or sensations I had around certain areas of the house. I didn't know anything about paranormal activity then or things like that....I just remember wanting to play and have fun. The place that I began having undeniable problems with, was the large "L shaped" stairway that led to the bedrooms from the living room. Because it was an "L shape" it had a landing (a small rectangle where both portions of the stairway met). I always felt a strange feeling throughout the South side of the house (the original part of it) and the stairway, being the strongest of them. I had three separate instances in which I fell down the stairs while no one was around, lucky, none of which injured me. But after the 3rd instance, at age 4, I refused to go up the stairs anymore. As crazy as it may sound, gut feeling tells me that this strange feeling I felt around the landing, somehow contributed or was to blame for these accidents. I also had bedroom experiences that were so terrifying that I just like to tell myself they were nightmares, though deep down I know they can't be. The worst experience I ever had came while my parents had moved into a downstairs bedroom while their room was being remodeled. I had to go to the bathroom during the night, which was downstairs as well. This left me with no one to walk me down the stairs, but I knew if I ran fast enough nothing bad would happen so I remember bits and pieces of going alone, returning, and seeing something floating in the landing area. I saw a big white blob with maybe a head-shaped mist formation on it's top, but it wasn't very clear at all at the time. That was the only time in my life, besides a few of the bad "nightmares" that paralyzed me with fear. It's the worst feeling in the world, to feel you have no control. I wanted to talk to it but couldn't and at the same time I wanted my Mom and Dad but couldn't do anything, not even breath. I must have stood there for 10 seconds, it looking at me, me looking at it, and then it was gone. At the age of 5, needless to say, we moved out of that home, and built a new one where I have not had one experience, or one nightmare, thank goodness. I tried putting my experiences in the past, not wanting to feel that I was crazy....up until I was in my teens. I was at a family gathering and was reminded of it all again when the topic of paranormal activity came up. My mother told me the story of the fire, and that the neighbors had told them of the deaths that resulted in it. My mother also admitted she too had seen a woman floating around the landing, while going to the bathroom on a hand full of occasions, during the night. I don't remember it being a woman, just a white misty looking ghost with a semi-head. She said when I came screaming to them describing the same thing she'd seen, they made the decision then, enough was enough and that's when we were out of that house! I have to say, it makes me very leery of ever living in a home someone else has lived in, or died in, no less!
BLOOD CEMETERY
(Drew)
In late August in 1966; two friends of mine, Dan and Tom asked me to go with them to a party on the beach at Lake Michigan. I was about 15 years old at that time. Ghost stories were being told around the campfire by almost everyone there, most of which I had already heard.
As the night went on a young girl about 17 years old started telling a story about a family of doctors with the last name of Blood. It was out on Round Lake Rd near Dewitt, MI, about 100 miles from the beach party, but only 20 miles from my home in Lansing. The Bloods had a lot of land where the whole family lived. The most interesting part was that they had a private graveyard on the property and that the whole area was haunted. She said that she saw gravestones that dated back to1800.
On their prom night she and some of her friends decided to go out to the cemetery. They looked around at the headstones for a while. As it started to get dark the fog hung thick and a full moon was rising, so they started trying to scare each other. Then the young girl's prom date decided to go into Dr. Blood's house because he thought no one lived there any longer. They waited about an hour or so, and when he didn't return they got scared and headed for the Dewitt police department. When they went in to tell the police, the officer on duty said "Don't you kids know any better, old Dr. Blood lives out there and he doesn't like anyone trespassing on his property". He also went onto say that he thought "Dr. Blood was harmless and he's in his 80's" so, he didn't think there would be any problem. They all returned to the property, but to everyone's shock when they got back, the whole house was ablaze. The fire department was called, but in vane, because the house burnt to the ground. The next day there was a search party, but the only thing that was found in the rubble were the remains of the young man that had gone into the house the night before. The paper reported that his hands and feet had been bound. Dr. Blood's remains were never found.
One of the searchers that afternoon found a freshly dug grave. When they unearthed it, a pine coffin was found. Upon opening it, they found the body of Mrs. Blood. She was dressed in a red gown, with her arms, legs and head cut off. There had been no coroner's report of a body being buried there or any police report of any murder.
The girl at the campfire that night said that the ghost of Dr Blood; to this day, roams the cemetery at night with a shotgun in one hand and an ax in the other.
That night was the last time I ever heard or saw the young girl who first told me about Blood Cemetery, but it wouldn't be my last experience with the Blood family.
"My Story"
After I returned from Lake Michigan, I told some of my friends the story I had heard. Some told me there own stories about how they had been scared out at the cemetery. Mark said he had seen a ghost of an old man wandering the graveyard as if he was lost. Another friend said that he saw an apparition of an elderly man carrying a body and it appeared to be headless and armless.
Another 2 years would go by before I got the nerve to visit this so-called haunted cemetery. You see I never quite believed these "ghost stories" until I saw the most BLOOD CHILLING things for myself.
The first time I went there was with Dan and J.C. It was a steamy hot July night. The moon was big and full and it lit up the night sky as if it were daylight. The fog was drifting over the cemetery as it rolled in from the lake. The feeling in the air was electrifying.
At the entrance to the cemetery were two old rusted iron gates and hanging above was a sign saying "Blood Cemetery". By the light of the moon you could see the old grave stones. Some had been toppled over and some were broken. The weeds were about knee high. There was a smell of jasmine in the air.
After looking around for a few minutes, I decided to scare the two of them. I had taken one of my mother's old white nightgowns and hung it from a fence post, when I was sure they weren't looking. There was a slight breeze in the air that night and I thought it would look like it was floating in the breeze. Just as I was about to put my plan into action, I heard J.C scream. Dan and I went running over. He told us that he had seen a woman's figure in a long red gown. He said that she appeared to be headless and armless and was coming right toward him, when she disappeared into thin air. I thought that he had seen the gown I had hung on the post. I took Dan and J.C over to see where I had hung the old nightgown; thinking surely what J.C had seen was my little joke, but when we got there the gown was gone.
Feeling a little spooked from what J.C had thought he'd seen we started our way out of the cemetery to leave. On our way out I said to Dan; who was quit a bit taller that me, pull the sign down and we'll take it home with us.
Our night at Blood Cemetery was pretty uneventful, except for the woman in the red gown. We went back to Dan's farmhouse, where he lived with his Mom, Dad, 2 brothers, and 3 sisters. It was late when we got there, so the 3 of us went to bed, after putting the sign on top of Dan's dresser. The next morning when we got up we had breakfast and got cleaned up. Dan told his father about the sign we took the night before. With instant anger, his father demanded to see the sign. But this task proved not to be so easy, because when we went to the bedroom to get it, IT WAS GONE! Dan questioned his brothers and sisters, but they all swore they hadn't seen it, let alone take it.
After a couple of days of looking we were sure that Dan's brothers and sisters had nothing to do with the missing sign. We drove back out to Round Lake. When we got to the cemetery, there it was hanging above the old rusty gates, just as it was two nights before, looking like it had never been disturbed.
Several more years had gone by, when I ran into some friends at a restaurant, on Halloween night. They talked me into going out there again. (After all it was Halloween)! When we got there, the weeds were about chest high and the fences were falling down. One of the guys in the group called us over, he was shining his flashlight on a headstone. We couldn't believe what we were seeing. There lying over the grave was a large piece of glass about 6 feet long and about 2 feet deep. Incased in it were a dozen long stem roses imbedded in the center.
Just about that time we heard a shotgun blast. We ran back to our vehicles and the right side of Dan's car had been shot, along with the windows shattered. Needless to say we got the hell out of there. With people seeing ghosts, hearing things and the car being shot up. I swore I would NEVER go back out there again. But I've learned you should never say "NEVER"!
When I was about 26 or 27 years old, I was riding with some motorcycle enthusiasts. It was a beautiful June day. The skies were blue and clear. It was hot, but who cares when you're on your bike. My girl friend Chris rode with me on the back of my bike. She had heard so many stories about the Blood family, she decided to bring a camera with her. We looked around at the rundown graveyard and Chris was taking pictures. After a few hours we decided to leave and all of us started down Round Lake Rd. We were about 150 yards from the cemetery, when Chris and I hit a snapping turtle. The bike went out of control and we crashed into a tree. I suffered only minor injuries, but Chris had broken her back. She was paralyzed from the waist down. She was able to walk again after a couple of years, with the aid of crutches. (The curse of Blood Cemetery had struck again).
I've since heard lots of stories since our terrible accident.
In 1989, 2 high school girls were out to have some fun on Halloween night. The news reported that their car went out of control about a 1/4 of a mile from the cemetery. Their car plunged into Round Lake and they both drowned.
The County has now put up a hurricane fence around the cemetery, with razor wire strung along the top. And I've learned that at least 4 or 5 Blood sons from each generation have become doctors for the last 150 years. And a couple of years ago, Lansing named one of their Halloween haunted house's after Blood Cemetery.
If you're ever out on Round Lake Rd, and you see a full moon rising, DON'T visit Blood Cemetery.
HAUNTED HOUSING
(Cristal)
In the early 90's, my husband was in the military and was stationed at Selfridge (A base near Detroit). I later found out that the housing that we were living in at the time, had once been hit by a tornado and people were killed. One of the odd things that happened was that the front door was always opening and shutting by itself. Another thing that would happen was during the time I was trying to break my daughter of her binky (her blanket that she would drag everywhere). I would put it up on the fridge or in the laundry room. When I would leave the room, I'd come back and find my daughter would have her blanket again. I couldn't figure out how she'd gotten it, because these two areas of our home were gated off. Once I walked into her bedroom and watched as a book fell from where it was floating in the air onto the rocking chair that was moving. I asked my daughter about it and she said "Nana" was reading her a story, yet she was the only one in the room. The final thing was shortly after I had our next daughter. I got up in the middle of the night to get some water and saw that the light to the baby monitor was on. It does this when ever it is picking up sounds or noise in the room. I turned up the volume and heard a female, male and child's voices talking. They were discussing how happy they were that there was a new baby in the house and how beautiful she was. The child asked the baby's name and the woman replied it was Holly Nicole, that's what our babies name is! I ran into the room to find no one there. We moved shortly after that.
THE NIGHT SHIFT
(Barb)
I was working in a group home in central Michigan from 1996 to1999. During this time, the group home was transitioning between owners. So I actually had to work for two separate companies and two separate sets of clients, along with a different staff. In brief, only myself and the building were the same. The building seemed fine during the day time hours, but as night fell the feeling of the building changed. When working for the first company that had the home; there was really no staff that was there at night except for myself. So, I had no way of comparing notes with anyone else to see if they too had been encountering things. I decided to chalk it up to a wild imagination and possibly job stress. Being as there were only three staff employed to run a 14 bed group home, stress wasn't such a far stretch of the imagination. Either way it worked for me at the time. Soon the home changed hands. For a brief period; perhaps a month, I worked in another home while the previous was being redecorated and prepared to reopen. Then after the month, I was transferred back to my original building. When returning to the original group home, I again was working mostly midnights, and for a time was working them alone again. Nothing had changed while I was gone.......something was still going on in that building. I would be cleaning the bathroom off from the dinning area and would hear the dinning chairs being moved away from the tables. When I turned to check to see who it could be, nobody was there and oddly, the chairs were not moved. I would leave the kitchen area and when I would return, the refrigerator would be standing wide open, when I knew I hadn't left it that way and there was no possible way a client could have gotten up and gone back to their room without me seeing them. Small things like that mostly, just enough to keep things interesting mostly. There was a room separated off from the living room area of the home. It was a small room with half walls up about mid way and windows the rest of the way up to the ceiling, all the way around the room. So you could be in this room and see everything that was going on in the living room area. This was the designated smoking room. Clients and staff would smoke in this room. When sitting in the smoking room at night, with the lights in the living room area off and only the smoking room lights on...... you could see flashes of something......often. Quick glimpses of something but never long enough to be able to tell what it was you were seeing exactly. Sometimes low to the ground like a small animal and other times higher up like perhaps a person. But you could never really be sure what it was you saw. As time passed and clients filled the rooms I was given a midnight partner to work with. You would think this would be a relief since I had always worked these shifts alone. But I quickly found that my shift partner would be seeing and hearing things also, and would come to me about it. That quickly ended my theory about it being possibly a wild imagination or stress. One night my shift partner and I were working at opposite ends of the building. At some point during the night we ended up meeting in the central hallway from opposite ends. At the exact same time, we both noticed up toward the ceiling of the hall, a smoky cloud like mist. We couldn't smell smoke or any other odors, but our training said if we saw smoke we were to evacuate our residents and call the fire department. So we did as we had been trained to do. Upon investigation by the fire department there was no fire and no longer any smoke in the hall. They crawled all over the place even above the ceiling and could find no cause of the smoke we had both seen quite clearly. Before leaving, one of the firemen told us it wasn't the first time they had been called to that building for the same thing with the same results. Which made us feel somewhat less foolish for evacuating 14 sleeping residents. Due to budget cuts, I wasn't able to keep my shift partner for long and I was back to working midnights alone. On one occasion I was standing in the office with my back to the office door ( which was open) doing something at the desk. I heard one of the clients come into the room behind me. There was a client who had a habit of doing this and he had been up and down all night so this time I decided to pretend I didn't notice him there. I continued pretending to be focused on what I was doing. I could feel him right up behind me very close, and I could hear him breathing. I wondered how long he would stand there before he got bored and went back to bed, when he saw I wasn't going to acknowledge him. After about 3 minutes I heard him clear his throat softly. I sighed inwardly, knowing I wouldn't be able to ignore him much longer. Then he said "Excuse me." So I turned to find out what he wanted, to encourage him to return to bed. Only when I turned....... there was nobody there. It had only been a second since he had spoken, so he couldn't have left the room already. I checked the hall outside the office anywaydid bed checks and found all residents sound asleep. OK, now I had a really good case of the creeps. The next morning I was talking to the home manager and told her what had been going on in the building at night. All of it from the beginning. Until this point I hadn't told her any of the events that had been going on. And once I did tell her, I immediately wished I hadn't said anything....... she didn't believe a word of it. She actually thought it was funny. She said (laughingly) that she should hide a video camera in the building to get shots of me telling the "spooks" to leave me alone. She got a good laughbut I wasn't laughing. Toward the end of my time working in the building there was an occasion where the home manager, myself, and another midnight staff were all in the smoking room together in the morning. We somehow got on the topic of the "spooks" in the building and their activities at night. Still the manager found it all very funny. As we were sitting there talking (with the long florescent over head lights on) a distinct dark "blob" flew from the wall on one end of the room, past the light and out the other side of the room. As it passed the light; you could actually see the light dim in the area it was at, because the light was being covered by a semi transparent black "blob". I saw it clearly, the other midnight person saw it clearly, yet the group home manager seemed undisturbed by it. We both asked "Did you see that?"..... to which she replied "It was just a power surge." and laughed. I've seen power problems enough to know that they do not come in the form of a flying black blob. One of the last midnight shifts I worked before transferring out to another home......... the smoke alarms were malfunctioning. Protocol during these malfunctions is to do bed checks every 15 minutes through out the night. Following protocol, I was doing my rounds of bed checks. It was approximately 1:00 am. I got to the room of a very sweet woman who was one of my favorite residents. She always slept with her bedside lamp on. Every night without fail, her lamp would be on. Her bed and night stand ( and lamp) were across the room from her door. So when the door was opened, it cast no shadow in the room ( if the hall lights were off). I opened her door, frozen by what I was seeing. There was my client sound asleep in her bed....... and I was watching a huge black shadow move slowly away from her bed and disappear into the wall opposite. The shadow was huge. Floor to ceiling tall, no obvious shape to it really, just a huge mass of a black semi transparent "shadow". It did not move in connection with anything like the door opening or the clients movement. It just slowly moved back from the bed and disappeared into the wall opposite the bed at a slow, steady pace. I checked the client more closely then I normally would because I really didn't know what to make of this and she appeared fine and sleeping peacefully. I didn't bother reporting this to the home manager. I guess I had been laughed at enough by this point. That building has changed owners several times over the years, but from my knowledge, has mainly been used as a care giving facility in one way or another since it was built. Over the years running into one person or another who has worked in the building for whomever the current owner would be, it appears that the haunting was common knowledge among staff. Where the haunting originated from, who was haunting it or why, nobody appears to know. I don't think anyone has ever investigated to find out. It would be nice to know though, and maybe then the manager (who is still there) might find it less amusing.
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