October 31, 2001
Residents share ghost stories
Legends include Central Grade School, Bass Lake mystery
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
From rumors of a dead janitor, tales of Abe Lincoln's head spinning and a host of ghosts on the condemned third floor, Central Grade School ranks as one of Traverse City's main source of supernatural legends.
Tales of spooky happenings at the school have been passed down for generations, with parents who attended the school hearing some of the same stories from their children.
Parent Jennifer Rhodes is a former student and current parent of Central Grade School children. She continues to hear the same tales from her school days.
"You still hear it, how Lincoln's head turns around or the whole statue shook," she said, referring to the statue of the 16th president situated in the Lars Hockstad Auditorium. "Once a month or so, the kids saw the ghost come down from the third floor."
With a sealed third floor and the oldest elementary school building in the district, it is a ripe breeding ground for tales.
"Students in my room were telling me about the ghost of a girl up there who wouldn't listen," said Leanne Lanphear, an interpreter at the school.
Used for junior high students, Central Grade School's third floor was closed in 1970 when West Junior High opened. Even before that time, stories of ghosts circulated but afterward they became more prevalent. For years until the space was condemned and sealed in 1995, however, teachers at the school had a special use for the site.
"We would plan these wonderful field trips up there," recalled Mary Harmison, a second-grade teacher who said she had one student who was too petrified to go up there. "That was the best place to go, the third floor. It had holes in the wall and a science lab with pickled animals in jars. It was forbidden and the kids loved it."
With Halloween upon us, stories of ghosts and hauntings leap to mind. Like any other town, Traverse City has its legends.
Local author Larry Wakefield documented some haunted houses around the region in his book "All Our Yesterdays." He wrote about mischievous ghosts who bounced a croquet ball at one house on North Elmwood and others who tormented families who lived in a rental log cabin formerly located at Hannah and Barlow. Family after family fled from these happenings.
Wakefield also recounts the Bass Lake Mystery in his book, a story that was well-known around Long Lake Township for years but has since died out.
A successful farming family named Ealey disappeared one night in the mid 1800s before a planned trip to visit relatives in Indiana. No trace remained of the family except in their bedrooms, which were spattered with blood, and some children's clothes in the woods nearby.
Suspicion fell on jealous neighbors. These men turned up with the family's horses, linens and other belongings, but defended themselves by saying the Ealeys asked them to care for these items in their absence.
No one ever confessed to the suspected mass murder. But the house got a reputation for being haunted, with bloodstains that would not wash away. No one would ever live there because of this, Wakefield wrote.
Clairvoyant Robert Clayton does not believe in hauntings. After 30 years as a professional clairvoyant and a lifetime with psychic abilities, he has come to believe that spirits would not waste their time hanging around to torment those left behind.
"They are gone and done when they die," he said. "I've been in this business for 30 years and there is nothing frightening to me."
Living next door to Oakwood Cemetery, Clayton frequently walks around the cemetery grounds and said the energy there is very positive, even loving, with no hint of upset or haunting. However, Clayton has met an energy he believes is the first sexton, Roderick Gray, who died in the 1800s.
On the few occasions where he has encountered Mr. Gray, it is always a fruitful and friendly meeting.
"He has suggestions that I pass on now and then, especially about the older parts of the cemetery where they don't have records," Clayton said. "He looks just like his pictures: short, beard with a pipe - an old Scotsman."
Clayton's wise words about hauntings might calm the latest generation of schoolchildren at Central Grade School. The words of third-grade teacher Cathy Griffin might provide even more solace.
Griffin, a teacher at the school for 32 years, believes she knows the source of the third floor ghost rumors. She heard this explanation from a former high school student who went there. Combine the school's large air ducts with kids and you have a source for spooky noises.
"There are spaces between the lockers on the second floor and the kids found out there were old air ducts behind them," she said. "They would slide in the space between the air ducts and the lockers and make ghosts noises and scratch. That's where it all started."