By Pam Fleming STAFF WRITER
Lee BeGole may not be Novi's chief of police anymore, but he can still tell a good ghost story.
And tell them he did during the Oct. 26 Novi Rotary Club meeting at the United Methodist Church on Ten Mile Road.
Although BeGole, 86, was recuperating at home following recent hernia surgery, Rotarian president Todd Lockhart was able to bring at least his voice to the group.
Lockhart set up a speaker phone during the club's annual Halloween meeting so BeGole could spin some spooky yarns for attendees.
Rotarians also presented a distinguished service award to their fellow member BeGole at the meeting he will receive at the next meeting he attends.
Judy Ward, formerly of Novi, said she'd known BeGole since she was a teenager working for her brother at Novi Pizzaria.
"He and all of his guys used to come in and chit-chat and have something to eat," she said.
She and BeGole even share the same July 4 birthday.
"He was the pillar of Novi," Ward said. "Everybody knew Lee, and he was well-liked."
Scary video shown to group
Before Lockhart got BeGole on the phone, he showed a video produced from a ghost story BeGole had shared from Oct. 9, 1950.
Around 1 a.m., two old friends who had just left a local tavern were driving down Grand River Avenue when something strange happened.
They spotted two women in old-fashioned clothes walking together.
The men reported the incident to police, but because they'd been drinking, they're account was hard to believe.
The next day, however, Novi police officers investigated the area where the women were spotted and found two forgotten gravestones deep in the weeds that belonged to two sisters who died in the 1800s.
Church bells are ringing...
BeGole said one Saturday about midnight during his first or second month on the job, he heard the bell in the Methodist Church ring.
BeGole looked inside the church and in the dim light saw a small figure walking up the aisle. He woke up Frazer Stamen, former township supervisor.
Stamen said, "That's Maria. She takes care of the church, and cleans the bell rope every Saturday night."
The story goes that even after she died, officers would hear the church bell ring sometime on Saturday nights.
"After that, every time that bell would ring, within a day or two, somebody we knew had died," BeGole said.
Northville High pranksters
The second ghost story BeGole told was about a call to the Novi police from Northville police years ago.
A couple returning to Northville after an evening in Detroit reported seeing a funeral procession emerging from a small cemetery at Eight Mile and Meadowbrook roads.
"They said they saw the procession carrying a coffin," BeGole said.
Novi police officers went down to investigate but found nothing.
A few nights later, there was a similar call. Again, Novi police responded and found no funeral procession.
Then, one late October night, Novi officers decided to check out the cemetery a third time and saw a dim glow in the cemetery and a funeral procession ? figures dressed in ragged clothes carrying a coffin.
The officers rushed from their squad car and found a cardboard coffin and learned that a group of Northville High School seniors had fooled them all.
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