Michigan
Algonac
Marrow Road Ghost
Algonac, an old area was first settled in
the year 1805 and Pointe de Chene (Oak Park). Indian agent
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft coined the name, Algonac from an
Indian tribe. The suffix “ac” meaning place
and “algon” from the word Algonquin, meaning
this is the “Indian Place”.
In 1922 Christopher Columbus Smith and his
four sons, Jay W., Bernard, Owen, and Hamilton, established
the Chris Smith and Sons Boat Company in Algonac. Known
at the Venice of Michigan around the turn of the century
and then the Speed Boat Capital of the world, a tribute
to Cris Smith and Gar Wood who made speedboat history here.
Gar Wood’s stucco house sit on the bank of the beautiful
blue waters of St. Clair River. The water way here connects
Lake St. Clair with Lake Huron.
They all would have heard this story of the
“ Marrow Ghost” many times, for it is a story
that has lived on through oral tradition for over a hundred
years.
We do not know much about the “lady
in the wood”, except that she came as one of Michigan’s
early settlers to better life for themselves and for their
children. She had to leave what was felt to be civilization
to a place where what they considered savages roamed the
woods.
Many left a life of comfort in the East to
endure the hardships of being pioneers in the raw woods
of Michigan. Most of them were young, as is the “lady
of the woods”. Most of them were farmers as were most
of the settlers who came. They had to be able to live of
their own and subsist with little help from others. She
would have been a passenger in a wagon with hard wooden
seats that would have bumped and heaved, as would a ship
in high seas.
Her husband, assuming that she was married,
first had to find the land that he could cultivate. The
land was heavily timbered and it would have taken time to
find the land and then to register it. Then the backbreaking
work would begin.
It took years of hard labor to clear the land
of its trees and used the lumber to build a log house for
his family. Good drainage was important and the settler
would have avoided the swampy, marshy land, which they knew
brought malaria and ague.
That would explain why the ‘lady of
the wood’ or more recently called the “Marrow
Ghost” is seen in the area where she is seen. The
land is fertile and covered with trees and berries. She
would have spent much of her time in a garden to satisfy
the household needs for vegetables and fruit.
Being close to the water was also important
for the early pioneers for it helped them bring in supplies
and sell whatever product they could manage to sell. Detroit
was a major port and access to that port was important.
This place was an isolated area. The State of Michigan did
not become a territory until 1805. The area we now call
Algonac only had four taxpayers in 1821.
Across the river the Osawatomie, Ojibwa and
the Ottawa camped. A fearful situation for those unaccustomed
to the dress and the ways of the Indians. The Algonquin
Indians were lighter skinned and taller than the Osawatomie.
Their summer villages were fairly large with
rectangular, bark-covered or woven brush houses. In the
fall, after their buffalo hunt, they separated into small
hunting camps of extended families. In the winter their
homes were oval, dome-shaped wigwams.
The warriors wore their hair long except in
times of war when they shaved their heads except for a scalp
lock to which they attached some broach of porcupine hair
with an eagle feather or some other kind of adornment. They
painted their faces during times of war with red and black
paint and must have been a fearful sight for the pioneers
who were on their own when it came to protection.
Indian Women spent their days close to their
camp. They wore their hand parted in the middle with a single
long braid, which hung down their back, much like the India
Indians of today.
The story of the “lady of the woods”
is the tale of a distraught woman is still looking for her
baby. This theme repeated over and over since the early
days of the 1800’s.
The story about of Marrow Road, between Warmouth
and Holland Roads and the sounds of a woman wailing, searching
in vain for her baby is repeated time and again. She is
a young woman with a newborn baby. Why she choose to abandon
her child, no one knows. She took her baby into a clearing
of what was then a very wooded, secluded and an overgrown
area.
It was in the winter and the baby would have
had very little hope of survival out there all alone. With
the baby wrapped only in a small shawl. she laid him on
the snow-covered ground and returned to her home. It appears
that after hours of guilt and self-blame, she regretted
her decision and went into the coldness of the winter night
to retrieve her child wearing only her nightgown, verified
by those who have been fortunate enough to see “the
Marrow Ghost”.
Cold and wet, she continued to search in the
dark, but she could not find her baby. Although she could
hear the baby’s cries, she could not find the direction
the cries were coming from. With tears streaming down her
face, she stumbled in the darkness through the woods as
the cries of her child got fainter and fainter and then
they stopped altogether.
Searchers found the woman the next day by
searchers summoned by her husband to search for her. After
wandering in the woods all night, they found her miles away.
She was delirious with fever and ranting about her baby
that she lost in the woods. No one believed her story was
true and was just the result of her fever and her emotional
condition. Her husband was not aware of any child. Is it
possible she was able to conceal her pregnancy?
The only other people who lived in this area
were the Indians. Is it possible that the infant was the
result of a love affair between the woman and an Indian
brave without the knowledge of her husband? Is this why
she tried to hide the infant? Was she leaving the baby in
a pre-arranged place for the father to take? We may never
find the answer.
Overcome with grief, no one could comfort
her. This situation went on for many years until she finally
hung herself from a tree, near a bridge, which crosses over
a shallow creek, just South of Swartout Rd.
The original bridge is gone and the roadway
filled in so there little trace of the former landmark of
the ghost researchers.
On certain nights, the young woman’s
ghost returns to the field in search of her lost child.
Travelers coming down that road can still hear the woman
crying to her lost child. . Many claim they have seen this
woman staggering through the wood in the dead of night.
People hear the sound of a baby’s cry at the same
time at night and coming from the same area.
Many people have reported stalled cars and
headlights that dim or fail to work altogether when they
drive through that area on Marrow Road. Then just as rapidly
as it happens, it reverses. Stalled cars start and headlights
light sometimes brighter than before
The local newspapers the Anchor Bay Beacon
and The Voice has reported on this phenomena through the
years for the subject has local interest and for those who
have encountered the “Marrow Ghost support the story.
This story was taken from Anchor Bay Beacon,
1987
Unsolved Mysteries was not able to help solve
the case. A Detroit television station’s investigation
was a disappointment to all interested parties in the city
of Algonac.
It looks like the Morrow Road Ghost will keep
its shroud of darkness, despite the effort of a local woman
to shed light on the legend.
This woman is Mary Lewis of Clay Township.
She began her search two years ago after her son encountered
the disturbing apparition. Late one night he was driving
on Starville Road just across from the woods on Morrow when
his van suddenly stalled and refused to start.
He heard a baby crying in the distance and
saw the pale figure of a woman with bloody hands kneeling
beside the road.
He could hear her whimpering and she kept
looking back toward the woods. Lewis said. As he watched,
a lamplight came from the woods to her and then, she disappeared.
He could no longer see her lamp.
Mary Lewis did a lot of research at the local
library and found similar reports of these ghostly encounters
in the same area. “Everything that had happened to
my son was in those articles”, she said.
After a story appeared in The Voice during
March 1993, Lewis received about two- dozen letters from
others who had seen the woman or other strange lights in
the area. “One letter was from a man who saw it 25
years ago.” Mary Lewis said. “As far as I am
concerned, that road is definitely haunted.
Legend has it that a young woman abandoned
her baby in the woods off Morrow, north of Holland sometime
in the last century. ; After returning home, she had a change
of heart and returned to search for the infant. But she
searched in van, trying to follow the weakened cries of
her lost baby.
Some say she died of grief and illness caused by exposure
to the elements. Others say the young mother hanged herself
after the futile search.
Lewis thinks a parapsychologist or medium
might be able to make contact with the spirit and put them
to rest.
She wrote to television’s “Unsolved
Mysteries” last year and seven months later, she received
a polite rejection. “They get too many stories,”
Lewis said. “They get thousands every week.
She also wrote to reporter Mick Wendland of
Detroit’s WEIV. Wendland took up the challenge and
recorded interviews with people who had seen the ghost.
The reporter, Mike Wendland set up camp on
Morrow Road to see if he could spot the disembodied woman.
The late-night stakeout was interrupted however, when someone
saw the red light on his camera and thought he was poaching
deer.” She wasn’t surprised that the search
proved unsuccessful; the ghost only appears in the late
Fall and Winter, she said.
“And, of course, when you take a camera
out there you won’t see anything,” she said.
“People see her when they don’t expect to see
her.”
She was disappointed that the reporter seemed
to make fun of the legend. Wendland told viewers that a
parapsychologist would be investigating further, but Lewis
said that he was counting on response from his report to
generate interest from those in the field.
So far, Lewis has received just one call.
“ It was from a magician-illusionist”, she said.
“I want a good psychic to come up her and walk this
road”.
But the lack of documentation is not likely
to end the legend. “Most people I talk to really believe
in it”, Lewis said.
Most of them drive to the scene in cars. No
one wants to walk this dark and lonely road. They might
come across some body they really didn’t intend to
see.
The Voice
August 3, 1994
By Donna Remer
Voice Staff Writer
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