Ghost Story #11: The National Avenue Ghost

The Detroit Free Press, May 10, 1873

This is a general story of tenants named Wilcox being scared out of their rented abode by strange groaning, sobs, grunts, furniture shaking and slamming doors.

As the story goes Wilcox and his family moved into the house on National Avenue (now presumably Cochrane St.) near Grand River in April of 1873. The first two nights were peaceful but then came some of the aforementioned ghostly stirrings.

First were groans as if a small boy had eaten too many cucumbers and suffered from a swollen belly. Which was followed by a grunting from something akin to a wayward pig that had somehow entered the house. Lastly, came the sobs of a forlorn woman and then furniture began shaking.

Wilcox, understandably shaken, searched the house in vain for the source of the clatter. He assumed that it must be coming from under the house but since there was no access below that was ruled out as a source of the disturbance.

A week of silence afterwards was broken by the shrieking of a woman at midnight. Master Wilcox searched the house as the cries echoed through the structure. Doors began to slam and the agitated spirited threatened him with a frightful proclamation, "I will kill you."

The family, unable to sleep and terrified by the haunting and unable to procure lodging for the next evening, stayed the night with neighbors. But the ridicule of the unbelievers sent them back to their ghostly dwelling.

All was fine for a week or so when the haunting began anew. The family once again deserted the house for the safety of their neighbors' homestead.

Sergeant Bachmann of the local precinct checked the house for traps and sources of the noise but nothing could be uncovered. Of the neighbors interviewed by the sergeant all were convinced that the activities in the house were of a paranormal nature. Free rent was offered to the skeptic though that might have been more of a marketing angle for the owner than a decree of belief.

A Free Press reporter and Bachmann agreed to stay in the house over night to ascertain if it was a hoax or a legitimate and the results follow.

The Detroit Free Press, May 11, 1873

Sgt. Bachmann and the reporter followed through on their plans to investigate the spirited abode. After experiencing many of the same frights in harrowing fashion the pair effected a more concerted effort into finding a rational explanation. That they did.

It was discovered that a trap door existed in the kitchen ceiling. Called a garret (from the old French word guerite, which means "watchtower") it was a room at the top of the house just below the roof. The garret held the majority of the answers to what plagued the dwelling.

A half-barrel with an open bung sat nearby a hole in the garret window which caused the wind passing through the vessel to make a sobbing sound that approached mirroring a waif's cry.

A clattering noise which the reporter attributed to sounding like a goat prancing across the hardwood floor was found to be a broken dinner plate under the garret window that was being scraped with a piece of loose tin from the casing.

The slamming doors were blamed on a hole in the parlor glass and a piece of missing plaster from the ceiling where trapped wind released its natural energy into a faux-demonstration of supernaturalism.

There was no accounting for who or what blew out the candle in the middle of the duo's melee with the phantom, the threat on Mr. Wilcox's life, nor for the headless woman seen in the cemetery by the good sergeant in his previous trysts with spirits of the night.

Or it just might be that the house was actually haunted as the aforementioned remedies offered up as so-called scientific proof didn't stop further paranormal activity.

The Detroit Free Press, April 19, 1874

Two additional families occupied the house and explained similar frights. As with the previous tenants the more recent tenants fled the location in fright as well.

The owner went so far as to nail shut the windows and installed a self-closing lock and hinge. Yet, the safeguards did little to fend off mysterious displacement of the enclosures. Two nights spent in the home accompanied by a pair of mates solved neither the haunting or its source.

Ghost Story #10: A Horrid Hag Hisses

Kentucky New Era, February 6, 1963 (enlarge)

As soon as I saw this story in a Google News search I recognized it as one that Gundella recalled* in The Martin Street Myth from her 1976 publication The Werewolf of Grosse Pointe & Other Stories. Though she attempted to change the names of the participants, as authors are wont to do to protect the identity of involved parties, she slipped up on the third page and stated the name of one as Patterson despite having renamed him Dan Stonehouse. Other than that the stories are pretty much identical.

Another thing of note is the name of the Free Press reporter being misrepresented as "Nea Shire." Part of that was my fault as I edited the column and accidentally chopped off the "l" on Neal's name. The other half is the "Office Cat's" fault in misspelling Mr. Shine's last name as Shire. On to the story.

The William Adams family lived in a rented house at 5508 Martin Street in Detroit in the early 1960s. The source of disturbance in their residence was a secluded bedroom that appeared to have been added onto the original house. Mr. Adams, a graveyard shift factory worker at Cadillac, used the addition to sleep during the day so as not to be disturbed by the normal bustle of activity in the homestead.

At first the haunting was relegated to him having bad dreams that caused him to wake up screaming and wondering if the incidents were actually occurring. But when his grandmother visited from out of town and experienced sounds which seemed as if somebody was trying to enter the room she refused to sleep there again. The family dog was likewise terrified and after spending one night in the room refused to enter it thereafter.

In late January of 1963, a week before the article was published, Adams' cousin Patterson stayed over on his passing through Detroit en route to his home in the South. He had no forewarning of the room's history and retired to bed when Adams left for work at 11:30 on the evening of his layover. Almost as soon as he retired he felt himself being turned over in bed. Startled, he turned to see a woman with long hair facing away from him and looking into the kitchen through the connecting door. He assumed that it was Mrs. Adams but soon realized that it wasn't and screamed for her while leaping from the bed. Just then all the lights in the house went out.

Bounding through the door he met Mrs. Adams in the kitchen where both were struck silent with fright. Groans and the rotten smell of sulfur emanated from the bedroom. Neither could sleep afterwards and waited the night for Mr. Adams to return home. He was apprised of the situation and called the police. A search of the house and basement turned up nothing unusual.

Mr. Adams was a non-believer up until that point and remained skeptical even then. An experience a few days later would change that sentiment. He lay down in the bed as usual but this time heard a noise in the room. He turned over to look what it was and an horrific face with a hissing mouth faced him accompanied by the return of the acrid stench.

Adams raced from the room pulling at his hair in hysterics until he reached the front room where Patterson and Mrs, Adams were sitting. Adams was so shaken that Patterson had to cover him in a blanket and comfort the frightened soul. An hour later they moved out and only returned a few times during the daylight hours to retrieve their belongs.

Below is Gundella's rendition of the story:

Apparently Rod Steiger wrote about this story as well.

Jackie Hopper's Pet Rock Cemetery

The Miami News, October 21, 1976

As a concerned citizen, Jackie Hopper, a Detroit tavern owner, did what anybody would do when she heard that pet rocks were going hungry: she built a graveyard awaiting their demise. Having come across an newspaper ad bemoaning the fact that the treasured pets' well-beings were in peril without an adequate food supply, she prepared for the worst and constructed a pet cemetery for the soon-to-be passing stones. Or so the newspaper legend goes.

Hopper told a slightly different story in her autobiography, Passing Through: The Jackie Hopper Story (Yes, even bar owners write books!), stating that one morning a kid had chucked his pet rock through the bar window and came in to retrieve it, claiming to have dropped it. The caretaker of the bar quipped that he was going to start making coffins for pet rocks and Mrs. Hopper encouraged the notion by stating, "You do that. I will make a graveyard."

It was then she began to gather the materials necessary to transform one of the vacant lots she owned across the street from her establishment on Junction and McGregor in the southwest side of the city. Using artificial turf for grass and white cement blocks for a border and tombstones she adorned the graves with candles and flowers.

Expecting nothing to come of the matter, except for perhaps an opportunity for vandalism, she was surprised when all of the major newspaper and television outlets began arriving the following day to cover the story.

Not only was it newsworthy but it became a neighborhood rite of passage for the children to tend to and beautify their rock grave sites. Some children even went so far as to have a sleepover to protect their cemetery.

Adults weren't immune to the fad either. There were traffic jams at the intersection, a slow stream of foot traffic through the bar to drop off flowers and even firemen parked nearby in case a rock needed resuscitation. If that weren't enough, people were calling in to reserve plots for future burials and there were plans to expand the cemetery to other vacant lots owned by Hopper.

Then, nearly six months after it all began, it ended one night in an act of thievery. Some scrooge, or perhaps even the Nain Rouge himself, pilfered the graveyard of all 35 markers and pet rocks and scampered off into the night to revel in his deviancy. The Free Press wrote an article on the matter entitled "Ghouls Get Pet Rocks" but the attention was to no avail, as the culprit(s) were never caught and the cemetery returned to its former vacancy.

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Forewarned (By a Witch Doctor)

The Detroit Free Press, March 9, 1910

Mrs. John Skowerinski was no Rose Veres. Hell, she wasn't even a middling Samantha Stephens but rather a congenial neighbor who came face-to-face with a real life witch named Josephine Gawronski. Mind you, she was neither a witch in the impractical sense of the word; broom, pointed hat, a brood of black cats primping by a smoking cauldron; nor the practical tradition, but one in the metaphysical realm. More simply put, a lunatic.

This was confirmed when Gawronski invited Skowerinski to her home for the sole purpose of attacking, beating and bloodying the unsuspecting woman. Surely, she must have done something to provoke this episode of senseless brutality. Gawronski's reasoning? Skowerinski was a witch who had put a spell on her attacker and inflicted upon her a stomach malady.

As queer as it may sound to the progressive thinker it was a common superstition among our forebearers up until the last 50 or so years. In Mrs. Gawronski's defense she was also a sick woman. Physically ill, that is, with catarrh of the stomach. Not deathly ill but sick enough. Which may or may not have led to her mental afflictions and plans for retribution against Mrs. Skowerinski, but it was a prime mover in the matter.

With the onset and continuation of her illness unabated, she apparently received a diagnosis from a medical doctor but was unsatisfied with his determination. So Jospehine decided that she needed a second opinion and called upon an east side witch doctor who convinced her that she was bewitched. Encouraged to think back to a galvanizing moment before the symptoms occurred she recalled a wedding party a month or so earlier where Skowerinski had secured Gawronski a drink and then possibly wished an incantation against her. To reverse the effects of the spell she would have to accost the witch and draw blood. Which she did. Once completed, for good measure, Gawronski made the poor prone woman chant thrice, "I take it back."

Needless to say, the catarrh persisted and the witch doctor was summoned once more. Whereupon he proclaimed Mrs. Skowerinski innocent and ordered another woman beaten! That woman apparently didn't come forward to tell her story. Skowerinski did though in the form of a lawsuit. Whereby the gathered raucous anti-witch revelers in support of Gawronski were admonished by Justice Lemke for their beliefs in superstition. He deemed them worthy of a spanking and Mrs. Skowerinski $25 in damages.

L'abeille de la Nouvelle-Orleans, May 19, 1910

Maude Roose: Ruse or Raphael Reincarnated? [UPDATED]

The Detroit Free Press, November 17, 1922 (enlarge)

In the world of art comparing an amateur's rendering on the easel to one of the master painters is akin to matching up skill sets of a little league baseball player with those of the legendary Babe Ruth. Simply put, there is no meting out similarities between the two. Whether it was through hubris or naivete, Detroiter Maude Roose did just that.

Roose, a clerk in her 20s and a resident of the city since 1910, found interest in painting after talking to the master Raphael himself via a medium. She had come upon spiritualism with much skepticism but after being put in touch with her deceased father and grandmother--who forecast a promising future for the young woman--she patiently awaited the rewards of her faith. The grand master was such a gift.

Raphael imparted to her that his early death deprived him of future endeavors he had oft ruminated upon. Some 450 years later his weary spirit had come to her to complete the arduous task. Further masters such as Hals, Rueben and Murillo joined in to aid the tutelage. They even directed Roose to an art store on Grand River and the Hayward studio at 513 Shelby street.

Borrowing from each in her five week stint at Hayward, she completed several works which Raphael dreamed up but sickness prevented, all with the spirit guidance of their ghostly hands. Included were a life sized portrait of "Christ" and "Christ and the Rich Man's Son." Though sometimes tedious to bring to fruition, with the aid of the spirits--and occasionally the public library--she produced marvelous canvases utilizing minimal experience and technique to semi-perfection.

The Detroit Free Press, November 18, 1922

F. Harold Hayward, instructor at the academy which bore his name and a well-versed artisan himself, had no answer for the adept touch of his mysterious pupil--while also noting similarities between the works of Roose and Raphael--simply quipping, "It's a puzzle to me." Being a practical man he discounted the notion of a spook or spirit-hand guiding Miss Roose but could offer no reasonable alternative either. Though he did muse upon one mitigating factor, "She has inspiration." while motioning to the painting of Christ. Divinely inspired? We shall never know.

Even the reporter from the Free Press seemed convinced in a back-handed way, noting that the hand of Christ seemed to be reaching out towards him and touching the ethereal believer within that had long been maligned by academics and the study of humanity at large. The mystery, indeed, was both the question and answer itself.

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April 30, 2016

The unfortunate thing about online research is that sometimes the sources run dry. As was the case with this story. Not due to a lack of material but because the parameters of the searches are confined by the available databases.  

The Detroit Free Press Historical Archives through Pro Quest--which I have a free subscription to via my public library--abruptly end in 1922.

Such isn't the case with Newspapers.com but they charge $100+ per year to use and searches are limited to a dozen or so a month. Which is not a feasible expense for me since I have an 8-year-old child to provide for. But enough of my postscript preamble.

A recent post on Wet Canvas provided the impetus for this update. Also shown there is a press photo of Miss Rouse that is selling on eBay which wasn't available at the time of my original blog.

And if you dig deep enough on Google you can find the photo below which was available on eBay a few years back:

Both coincide with the newspaper articles posted above though I've doctored them a little with my minimal photo editing skills and my even less discriminating palette, considering that I am red-green colorblind.

Regardless of our pratfalls here's the "big" update:

The Owosso Argus-Press, May 19, 1923

Six months later Miss Maude was showcasing both her Spiritualism and artwork alongside Charles Whaley, who had some notoriety himself in the movement:

Though he probably didn't get the kind of respect that he desired:

The Owosso Argus-Press, May 28, 1930

As for Maude: whether her career continued or she faded away into further obscurity has yet to be revealed to me. I shall update further when or if the pertinent answers come my way.

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August 1, 2017


It's hard to believe that it's been a solid year and a quarter since I last updated the story but since that time I have purchased both a Detroit Free Press and a Newspapers.con subscription (the latter cross-cancelling out the other) and not only do I have a minor update on Maude Roose, with the prospect for many additional developments, but also several leads to other so-called spirit painters from the Detroit area.

Detroit Free Press, November 27, 1927

She joined Vaudeville in 1927! Or at least was set to. I've yet to get around to a follow-up but will in due course. Having briefly browsed other articles she is listed in many Spiritualist advertisements around that time as well so it's likely that more interesting things will be gleaned from the archives. I shall update the blog with further related articles very shortly. Other photos of Roose appear on this post.

Detroit Free Press, February 21, 1928

In this article that I just found the supposed "girl with the radio mind" was double-billed with a Russian ballet which the theater thought would be a clashing combination. Miss Roose, of the opinion that her week-long show would open the world of Vaudeville back up to her after she apparently performed and failed there previously, sought to sue after her cancellation. Whether or not she won the suit she always had the editorship of the Psychist Almanac to fall back on.