American Ghost Stories

Michael A. Kozlowski

Description

50 accounts of of ghost encounters, haunted places, and brushes with spirits from around the United States

Scary stories for reading while glancing over your shoulder

Reports gleaned from documents and witness accounts

Geographic organization makes finding information quick and easy

100 color photographs and illustrations bring the text "to life!"

Thoroughly indexed

Authoritative resource

Ideal for anyone who likes a good scary story; sure to appeal to paranormal devotees and afficionados of the supernatural

Publicity and promotion aimed at the wide array of websites focused on the paranormal, supernatural, unexplained, and horror.

Halloween promotion targeting more mainstream media and websites on a popular topic

Promotion targeting national radio, including Coast to Coast and numerous other late-night radio syndicates looking for knowledgeable guests

Promotion to local radio

Promotion targeting magazines and newspapers

Minnie Quay – Forester, Michigan
Ruth’s legs were getting tired and it was still a long way back to the bonfire. She could she the flicker of the flames from here but that was about it. When Bobby suggested a walk along the beach, she knew he had more than that in mind. But a little necking was okay with Ruth, she wasn’t some kind of prude. The walk was nice. She and Bobby had only been going steady for a couple of weeks, so there was still a lot of the fun, small talk that comes with new relationships. Who’s your favorite band? What’s your family like? That kind of stuff. They’d walked farther than she realized, the moon reflecting off the water of Lake Huron, soft waves lapping at their feet, holding hands and talking.

They’d walked past the old pier and were nearly to Forester Park by the time they’d picked a spot to stop and “sit a while.” That was nice, too. At least until Bobby decided to get a little more handsy than Ruth was ready for. It would have been fine if he’d just stopped when she asked him to, boys get excited, after all, but when he tried to untie the top of her swimsuit for the third time, Ruth gave him a slap to let him know she was serious.

He’d stormed off and that was why Ruth was trudging through the sand by herself, in the middle of the night. The walk back always seems longer, she thought, especially when you’re happy one way and mad the other. Ruth was sad as well as angry. She liked Bobby. She thought he was different than the other boys in this rural community.

Ruth wrapped her arms around herself. It was getting chilly and she hadn’t bothered to grab her jacket when they had left the bonfire. There was a storm coming in and the weather was turning quickly. Ahead of her she saw a figure in the moonlight, maybe 50 yards away. Had she caught up to Bobby? Was it someone else from the bonfire? She yelled, “Hey!” but the figure didn’t seem to hear. Probably not surprising. The wind had really picked up and the waves from the Great Lake were coming in with increasing force. They’d need to clear out soon.

Ruth quickened her pace. The figure was moving away from her, toward the bonfire. It had to be Bobby.

“Hey!” she yelled again. This time the figure stopped. But after just a moment, they started moving again; this time, down the beach, toward the water. “What the…?” Ruth wondered.

By the time Ruth reached the spot where the person had turned and gone into the lake, at the spot where the remnants of the old pier remained, the figure was well out in the water. Too far out, it seemed to Ruth, for the figure to be anything more than a head bobbing among the waves but she could see the person’s whole body, as if it were standing on the water. And now she was close enough to make out some details.

It was definitely a female – long hair, the curves of a young woman, a long dress. The figure suddenly seemed to glow, a pale white, as if she had absorbed the moonlight and it was emanating from within her. Ruth was mesmerized.

The figure raised her arm and beckoned for Ruth to come toward her. The water of Lake Huron never truly gets “warm” but it was particularly chilly on this late summer evening. Ruth didn’t notice. She didn’t notice much of anything.

Ruth was barely aware of the water reaching her waist. She gave little thought to the foolishness of her actions. She was entirely focused now on the figure. It was a girl. Perhaps Ruth’s age, maybe a few years younger. The dress she wore seemed dated. Like one that one of the girls in the nearby Amish community might wear. The girl’s long hair was tied back with a ribbon.

What did she want? Why was she in the water? Was she standing on a rock? An old piling remaining from the pier?

As the water reached Ruth’s chest, she felt a feeling of warmth wash over her, even though the cold lake water should have had her shivering. She felt comfort. Peace. There was a sense that she needed to reach the girl. An inkling that everything would be just fine if she did.

She could see the girl much more clearly now, smiling back at her, still beckoning for Ruth to come forward. Just as the water reached her shoulders Ruth heard a voice from the beach, yelling her name. “Ruth! Ruth, where are you?!”

The girl in the water, thirty feet or so from her now (was she moving further into the lake?), was smiling at her but, as the shouts from shore continued, the smile fell, and she appeared sullen. Ruth could feel an immense sadness. The “glow” of the girl seemed fade. Ruth was suddenly aware of the cold water and, as if on cue, a wave covered her face, causing her to choke and spit on the cold water. When she recovered, the girl in the lake was gone. Ruth turned in circles looking for her but she was nowhere to be seen. Ruth’s body suddenly ached from the chill of the lake and her limbs felt weak, barely feeling like her own, difficult to move.

“Ruth!” she heard from the beach. She tried to call back but now her teeth were chattering and her chest felt tight. With effort, she began trudging back toward the safety of the shore. She stumbled more than once, her head dipping below the waves, the cold water now a shock to her system. On her hands and knees, crawling painfully over the rocks in the shallows, Ruth made it to the beach, rolling on to her back and summoning what strength remained to call out for help.

Ruth’s friend, Louise, had been the one calling for her. When Bobby showed up back at the bonfire without Ruth, Louise had gone looking for her. She heard Ruth’s cry for help and ran to her friend. Helping Ruth up and wrapping her own jacket around the drenched girl’s shoulders, Louise helped her friend back to the bonfire.

Once Ruth was able to warm up and recover, Louise asked her what she had been thinking. Was she trying to kill herself? Why would she wade out so far into the lake? Especially by herself. When Ruth explained seeing the figure and the unshakeable urge to follow her into the lake, Louise’s face drained of color. Ruth knew what her friend was thinking even before she said it. As she had sat by the fire, getting the feeling back in her extremities, Ruth had had the same thought.

“Do you think it was Minnie Quay?” her friend asked.

I’m just now realizing what seems like a preponderance of young, female ghosts in the Midwest. I wonder if there some sort of cultural or geographical reason behind that?

Regardless, this story has a particular significance to me. Ruth is my mother, and she had this experience when she was 17 years old. My mom grew up in Forester, Michigan and her family still resides there, working the land and raising cattle. My brothers and I spent many summers with our grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. We all have primary or weekend residences there today.

It seems we’ve always known the story of Minnie Quay. It was another book that I was working on, that involved Minnie’s legend, which led to the writing of the book you’re reading now. Over the years, as with most stories mostly handed down through oral storytelling, the details have muddled some, but the gist of the tale remains unchanged and corroborated by official documents and local historians. At its core, it is a classic, tragic love story.

Forester isn’t much of a town, these days. The “gas station” hasn’t had working pumps since before I can remember and hasn’t been a going concern for longer still. The small store full of knick-knacks and penny candies closed a few years ago. There is a tavern and a church, and that’s about it. If you blink, you’d miss the town altogether.

In the late 1800’s, however, Forester was a significant port along the shores of Lake Huron, bustling from the timber industry. The town was often bustling with sailors stretching their sea legs while their ships were moored to the Forester Pier, which extended some 950 feet into the water.

The year was 1876 and Minnie Quay was 16 years old. She lived in Forester with her parents, James and Mary Ann, and her younger brother, James, Jr. The Quay’s ran a local tavern and Minnie fell in love with one of the sailors who would frequent the bar when in port.

It was a clandestine affair and, when her parents found out, they forbid her from seeing the young man, even resorting to locking her in her bedroom to keep her from meeting up with the sailor. When he sailed off in the Spring of 1876, Minnie was not even able to tell him goodbye. She was devastated.

Heartbreak turned to grief when, only a few days later, news reached Forester of a ship that had succumbed to the gales of one of Huron’s infamous storms. Minnie’s lover had perished, along with the rest of the crew, when the ship sunk to the bottom of the lake. Minnie was inconsolable.

Some days later, Minnie was left to tend to her 6-year-old brother, while her parents were out; Minnie’s father worked at the local mill and one could infer that her mother was running the tavern. In any case, it was just Minnie and her brother, James. In the afternoon, while James was napping, Minnie walked into town. Several witnesses saw her and waved to her, Minnie was popular and well-liked, but she seemed to be in a daze. She walked past the Tanner House, which still sits on the corner of Forester Road and M-25, across the road from the old pier. The group there watched in stunned surprise as Minnie walked out to the end of the pier and threw herself into the churning water of the lake.

The alarm went out and the men of the community rushed to save Minnie, but it would be more than an hour before her lifeless body was pulled from the cold waters. Minnie was dead, presumably in an attempt to join her lover in the afterlife.

Minnie Quay, age 16, was buried in Forester Cemetery. According to many, she does not rest in peace.

Stories like the one my mother shared, are not uncommon. Minnie’s ghost, distraught and forlorn, has been reported to walk the beach around the area where she died and to roam the graveyard where her earthly body rests. It’s said that she beckons other young girls, particularly those suffering heartache of her own, to join her in her attempt to find her lost sailor and the love that taken from her while she was alive.

Her ghostly apparition has been known to appear on the road near the cemetery, startling drivers, and it’s said that one local girl did, indeed, drown herself in the water of Lake Huron after seeing Minnie’s ghost.

Across form the Forester Inn, the local tavern, sits a dilapidated home. Above the door is the name “Quay.” I have heard alternate stories about this being the house Minnie actually lived in or that of a relative. Either way, this is another location said to be haunted by the teen beauty’s spirit.

Minnie’s tragic tale is more than just a local legend. The story is reasonably well known and “city folk” have occasionally come looking for her specter, but Minnie has become a rather protected spirit. Some years back, Minnie’s story was detailed in a Port Huron newspaper and an entire congregation, from a Detroit church, arrived in Forester with plans to hold an exorcism in the cemetery. It’s reported that local law enforcement staked out the cemetery kept the group from performing their ritual. In another instance, infamous Detroit “witch,” Gwendella, had plans to conduct a séance to communicate with Minnie’s ghost. She was met with fierce resistance by residents of the area.

As I mentioned, I have a home in Forester. It is literally within a couple of miles from where this tragic tale took place and I have been to Minnie’s grave many times, often taking visitors to see it while I share the story. We always make sure to leave a token on Minnie’s headstone. I can’t say that I’ve experienced any of the supernatural or paranormal phenomena that others have but I am always certain to cross my fingers when I drive by. And while I tend to be more of skeptic than many, driving past the cemetery always manages to raise the hairs on the back of my neck and, deep in the way back of my consciousness, I half expect to see a girl in old fashioned dress walking along the side of the road, on her way to the lake.

Minnie’s original headstone, which bore a crack that the local children mused Minnie’s spirit seeped out of, has been replaced. The modern marker bears the family name and that of Minnie, her parents, and her brother, all buried together. Visitors often leave tokens – small toys, coins, little rocks polished by the incessant waves of the lake – on the grave marker, a superstition as old as Minnie’s story. And while the locals have a certain fondness for their hometown ghost, they would be quick to warn you not to take her story lightly or you may find yourself fighting for breath in the cold, churning waters of Lake Huron.

About the Author
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction

1. Southwest Shockers
2. Pacific Panic
3. Restless Rockies
4. Paranormal Plains
5. Midwest Malevolence
6. Shadowy Southeast
7. Deep South Dread
8. Mid-Atlantic Mysteries
9. New England Nightmares
10. Otherworldly Outliers

Further Reading
Index

Sujets

• Special Interest
• Unexplained Phenomena
• Interest group (disambiguation)
• Body (disambiguation)
• General officer
• Spirituality
• Supernatural
• General
• Brad Steiger

Informations

• Publié par: Visible Ink Press
• Date de parution: 19 septembre 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781578598366
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 10 Mo

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