THe Newton-Allaire House in Cheboygan Michigan

Tonight's story is a personal one.  The most haunted place I have ever visited is my family home, the Newton-Allaire house in Cheboygan, Michigan.  This house has been in my family for almost 150 years.  As long as I have been alive, it has been the residence of my grandmother and my great-aunt.  Recently they both departed the home leaving it empty.   The house itself is a beautiful 8 bedroom Victorian  within walking distance of the down town.  My grandmother spent much of her life painstakingly restoring the house so that it is as historically acurate as possible.   She often speaks of the house as a person and loves it as if it were her child.

This seems appropriate to me, because the house has always seemed alive and the house has always been alive with ghost stories.   My father once told me that there was a spot in the house that turned ice cold at midnight.   At night, the house is filled with odd noises and bizarre lights.   One of the last times I stayed there, I was awoken int he middle night to find my night table shaking and what sounded like a train passed through my room.  My mom says she awoke one morning to find a ghost holding her hand.   The same trip that I awoke to the loud noises, I had travelled to a wedding as well.  My wedding clothes were carefully nestled at the bottom of my suitecase.   I never used them during my stay at the house and I never touched them, however after I left,  my family found them laid out in an unused room.  They were laid out like someone was going to wear them.

When I was little several sets of family photos came back from the house filled with white blobs.   My parents, reluctant to believe in ghosts, tossed the photos and blamed it on bad photography, but I always knew the house was filled with the ghosts of our family.  The house was alive with them and I think that is why I never wanted to leave.   I still miss it and I often hope the ghosts aren't too lonely.

Woodland Hospital in Cullman, Alabama

My husband works at a small hospital in Alabama.  Although this might seem uninteresting,  this hospital is always a source of interesting gossip and fascinating stories.   One of these stories comes from the many nurses my husband spends his days with.   Apparently, not so long ago there was a hospital in Cullman Alabama called Woodland Hospital.  This hospital is now closed, but the nurses that used to work there remember a ghost named "Homer" all too well. 

Homer wandered the halls of this small hospital causing distress in all who saw him.   According to one nurse,  she was walking through the hospital one day when she felt a coldness spread out over her and she suddenly felt distressed, as if there was something wrong.  She turned just in time to see a door slam behind her and hear her coworker run screaming in the other direction.   Her coworker reports that she saw a ghost walk by the nurse and brush up against her closing the door behind her.

These nurses aren't the only ones that felt this dark presence at this hospital.  Many employees have reported seeing the deceased wandering empty rooms, hearing toilets flushing by themselves, hearing phantoms voices, and seeing ice machines start by themselves.  The stories of "Homer" and the other ghosts that have wandered these now forgotten halls are numerous.  It is my hope to do a part two of this story after I talk to more employees and go to see the hospital myself.

Pere La Chaise

I have been doing a lot of research for this blog and my research has lead me to many wonderful books and websites.  I recently visited a site that listed than ten most haunted places in France.  I have already written about one place on the list, Chenanceau, and there are several places I have yet to explore, but the second most haunted place on the list called to me.  

The second most haunted place in France is the famous cementery, Pere La Chaise.   As far as I can tell, this necropolis is one of the most beautiful places on earth and the art lurking in the shadows of death in this strange museum put the art in the Louvre to shame.  Pere La Chaise is the most visited cementery in the world and is the final resting place of numerous famous people including Jim Morrison, Chopin, and Oscar Wilde.  The cementary is named for Louis the XIV's confessor.  Napoleon took the land and turned it into a cementery in 1804.   Since that time the number of brilliant people buried there has grown over time turning a stroll through these hallowed grounds into a small history lesson.

It is not surprising that this cementary, filled with so many dead is considered haunted.   Any google web search will pick up hundreds of photos of ghosts wandering the tombs and stories of tourists catching fleeting glimpses of phantoms.   The stories are so prolific I will not do them the injustice of innumerating them all, but will instead give you a photo journal of this unforgettable museum of death. 

Fort Gaines

Dauphin Island has long been one of my favorite haunts.  It is a lonely, little island off the coast of Alabama that has beautiful, white beaches and great views of dolphins leaping just off the coast.    It has been missed by much of the tourist trade that has made Pensecola and Gulf Shores unbearable for me.  It is quiet and lovely.

The island itself has a long history that has shifted with the shifting sands of the island itself.   Daupin Island was initially name massacre island by the French until it was given a more comforting name by colonists.  The French colony on Daupin Island was short lived, however, and was the site of a notorious pirate attack that left the island abandoned.

The island's strategic positioning made it unforgettable, however, and it was taken by the US for the construction of a fort in 1812.  The construction of this fort was as doomed as the the original French inhabitants of the island.  Due to poor engineering, poor planning, and stupidity the fort was constructed in an area that was quickly flooded and reclaimed by the shifting waters of the gulf.     In 1853, a new engineer was brought in and the construction had to begin again.  The new engineer was not so dim as the first people to work on the Fort and construction of the new Fort Gaines was completed in 1858.

Fort Gaines was of critical importance in the Civil War and the Confederates used it as a base for blockade running.  Fort Gaines was also important in the Battle of Mobile.  Union Army commanders, Admiral David Farragut and Major General Gordon Granger, came through the bay amid fourteen ships, with the orders to shut down the fort.  The guns in Fort Gaines fired doing damage to the Union Army. Then, Admiral Farragut gave the notorious order, "Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!" The Union army succeeded in its task when Fort Gaines surrendered to avoid hand-to-hand combat. Eighteen-hundred men died in the Battle of Mobile despite the surrender of the fort.

Fort Gaines is one of the most popular haunted sites in the nation.  The ghosts of dead soldiers have been captures on film by tourists and paranormal investigators.   All types of visitors have reported hearing mysterious footsteps, voices, and seeing ghosts.   MTV will even feature it on it's haunted television special.   I have been to Dauphin Island and Fort Gaines numerous times with my family and have never witnessed any of this activity.   More than anything I have been haunted by the lonely beauty of the island that has been ravaged by history and nature.  It remains one of my favorite places and I will face all manner of ghosts to wander the quiet shores of this island.

Shing Shun Lawyer

From: Mr. Tanaka Wong
Subject: Attorney needed(from Mr. Tanaka Wong)
Date: January 4, 2010 12:57:44 AM PST
To: undisclosed recipients: ;
Reply-To: jamesmorgan33438@gmail.com


Shing Shun Engineering Factory Co. Ltd
Address: Flat 22A, Yally Industrial Building,
6 Yip Fat Street, Wong Chuk Hang,
Hong Kong

Tel/Fax: +852 28734438

04-01-2010

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The Haunting on Larrabee Street

This haunting story has always been one of my favorites because it does not have a history.   The haunting on Larrabbee Street has often been compared to the Amityville case, however, the house on Larrabee Street didn't have the history the Amityville house had.   It is a haunting that is unexplainable.   The spirtit that haunted  Allen and Deborah Tallman came from nowhere.

The Tallman's moved into the house on Larrabee Street in Horicon, Wisconsin in 1986.  At that time, they had a little girl and a boy who was about 6 years old.   Deborah Tallman was pregnant.  The Tallman's loved their new home and began a fairly typical America life in their new home.   Although they loved their new home, The Tallmans immediately began having difficulties in the house.  They were plagued by a rash of sicknesses and their cat went crazy, climbing the walls and screaming all night.   Deborah was close to her family and her family usually spent a considerable amount of time visiting Deborah.   These visits began to decrease in frequency following the Tallman's move into their new home.   Both Deborah's mother and sister indicated they felt sick in the Tallman home.   They felt sick and suffocated.

It took more than a year for the haunting to escalate and culminate in the events that lead to the Tallman's fleeing their comfortable home.  Deborah had her baby girl and the children began to complain more and more about things in their room.   The little boy said that a hideous, diminuative, old woman would come into his room at night.  The little girl was plagued by visions of monsters.   The Tallman's grew more and more tired as their children kept them up night after night.    Even their attempts at time away from home were thwarted when the babysitter saw furniture moving on it's own. 

The children's nightmares could be brushed off as childhood fancy, but when Allen began to hear things and see things the Tallmans called their preacher.   The preacher came into the home and told the Tallmans that their home was in the grips of something from the devil.  He told them that the only way to dispel the evil that had been growing in their home was to go to church more.    The Tallman's listened to the preacher to no avail.  Things got worse.   Windows in the basement relocated on their own, the refrigerator door remained open on it's own, the children continued to be visited by nocturnal terrors.  Allen saw the garage catch on fire and when he rushed to extinguish the flame he saw a green eyed demon above the door.  Allen even saw a full bodied ghost that rose from the floor in a a kind of fog and took form just long enough to tell him that he was "going to die."

Desperate, the family called the preacher again.  The preacher came and told them to play church music all the time.  The family listened.   They listened and their was a brief reprieve before the entity came again.  This time the entire family and the babysitter saw the specter just long enough to turn them all white with fear and send them fleeing into the night.

After the Tallman's left their home,  the house became a local sensation and lines wrapped around the neighborhood with curious spectators hoping to catch a glimpse of some random terror.  Many spectators claimed to have been successful in their desires.   Many claimed to see snowblowers running up and down the driveway by themselves and furniture being flung around inside the house.  Of course, none of these stories have ever been confirmed, but the stories themselves turned the Tallman house into a local legend that grew with time.   Stories of the house being a gateway to hell and blood dripping from the ceilings proliferated and a media frenzy swept incidents out of control.

Despite this,  and despite accusations that it was a hoax on the Tallman's part,  the Tallman's have shown nothing but the desire to stay out of the spot light.   They've turned down interviews and even rejected Oprah when she invited them to be her guest.   They seem happiest forgetting the horror on Larrabee street.

Ghost Pictures

Sadly, I missed a day of blogging yesterday and to make ammends for my missing ghost story I went wandering in the woods in the freezing cold in search of an old, abandoned cementary.   The cementary is about one hundred years old and is almost completely forgotten.  For an avid hiker seeing small cementaries in the wilderness is not that uncommon of an experience.  I had been to this one before and with my new ghost story blog in mind,  I drug my family out into the darkness, turned the flash off the camera, turned off the flashlights, and took pictures of the cementery.  I then turned the flash back on and took pictures with the light of the flash.   I have included both sets of shots here.  I can account for some lights in the distance that belong to houses, but the rest I'm not sure about.  I'll leave it to my readers to decide.