Web sites spreading spooky legends from Grosse Pointes, Roseville, Eastpointe, Shores
BY KIM NORTH SHINE
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
The story goes that inexplicable, frightening sights and sounds have emanated from the bathhouse at the Grosse Pointe Woods Lake Front Park: lights turning off and on by themselves, showers doing the same, a figure of man appearing in shaky glass wall.
What started as a local legend now has a home on a handful of Internet sites devoted to compiling ghost sightings and haunted places.
But are these really ghostly encounters or just fantastic storytelling?
One Web site, www.theshadowlands.net, tells the Grosse Pointe Woods bathhouse story, as well as others from St. Clair Shores, Eastpointe, Fraser, Roseville and more Pointes locations.
As stories go, the Grosse Pointe Woods bathhouse one is pretty good, but not true, says the city's recreation director Melissa Sharp.
"That's a story that one of the lifeguards made up. ... It was a story, they made it up to scare all the first-year lifeguards," she said.
While the story originated with a small circle of local teens, it took on a life of its own thanks to the Internet.
Sharp says there's nothing to be afraid of, that everything is in working order and the claim that a construction worker hanged himself as the bathhouse was being built is a complete hoax.
Also at the Shadowlands site is the eerie tale of visitors to First State Bank at 10 Mile and Hayes in Eastpointe, seeing the image of a teller who was murdered in 1946. She stares back at visitors who stare into the glass of the drive-through window, but only late at night when car lights are turned off.
Pretty creepy, huh?
Problem is the bank wasn't built until 1965, said the bank's Gary Moy.
"I've never heard that story. I've been here 32 years, and this is the first time I've heard of such a thing," Moy said.
However, after a brief inquiry, Moy found employees who had heard of the disgruntled teller.
"Some of our older employees have heard this story, but it's just a story that doesn't have any substance to it," said Moy, who nevertheless was entertained by the work of fiction. He figures people just want to let their imaginations give them a good scare.
"It's more fun than fact," he said.
In Roseville, at the Beth Moses cemetery on Masonic, Internet sites report stories of a woman in white walking amidst the headstones.
And another ghost story persists at Grosse Pointe North High School. There, in the middle of the night, lockers will open and shut, according to Internet stories.
Grosse Pointe North principal Tim Bearden has heard of the tale that details the school's haunted hallways.
He heard about it from school newspaper reporters who were working on a story, and he found it amusing.
"I think we're dealing with more of an urban myth thing here," he said. "No one has ever reported anything like that to me. I can't say I've seen or heard anything like that."
Down the road at East Detroit High, there are said to be strange happenings in the auditorium. There are reports of "apparitions being spotted. Cold spots are felt on the stage as well as a strange presence being felt from time to time," according to the Web sites.
These tales -- whether fact or fiction -- once were told the old-fashioned way: in school halls, at family dinner tables and around campfires.
Today, thanks to the Internet, they spread like wildfire without ever coming face-to-face with a human.
At the Shadowlands site, which is run by a New Jersey couple, the tales run all year long, not just at Halloween.
Recently, however, the Web site operators added this: "Latest News: Happy Halloween! 50 new stories added. Updates to 49 states and 10 countries on the Haunted Places Index."
The Web site also comes with a disclaimer warning ghost hunters not to trespass and encouraging them to seek out organized ghost-hunting organizations and books before starting any serious inquiry into ghost stories.
According to the Shadowlands site, there are 12,000 reported stories from around the country on its Web site, which has a state-by-state index.
As for the local folks who live, work and play at these places, there is a mix of guarded skepticism, outright denial and belief in some stories.
Over at St. Gertrude Church in St. Clair Shores, Paul Lippard, director of family life and Christian education, has heard the stories about the cold spots that are said to be tell-tale signs of ghosts inhabiting the upstairs floor of the religious education building, which is at Jefferson and St. Gertrude.
There's a logical reason for the coldness, he said.
"It's an old building. Cold air can get in," he said.
While the Web sites claim that the church is built on top of a cemetery, that is not true, he said. The cemetery that belonged to the church's predecessor parish, St. Felicity, is actually beneath Lake St. Clair, he said.
He said the story was brought to his attention by students, who enjoy getting scared, who will get so caught up in the feeling that there is a ghost that they scream from fear created in their own head -- or they scream to creep out the other kids.
Lippard has a history with another St. Clair Shores Catholic parish that is said to be haunted by a custodian who was murdered there.
The fact that a custodian was murdered at St. Margaret's of Scotland, where Lippard worked for 12 years, is true.
But stories of his haunting the church seem only to be "just stories. There were always stories," he said.
Lippard finds the stories amusing, but he can't help but pull some spiritual guidance from them.
"Don't worry 'bout ghosts in this life," he said. "Worry about where you're going next."
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti ... /710280413
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