Weird Michigan News

Weird Michigan ...Your Travel Guide to Michigan's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets

Now in progress! I'm busy traveling to every corner of the Wolverine State to find the weirdest legends, roadside oddities, people, vegetables and minerals. I can honestly say I've been to Hell and back as of last week. Hell was cool. And I had Christmas in July (see photo taken of me in pumpkin board). I'm still traveling and still working on it so please send stories of your spooky road or haunted house or cemetery experiences, or any other tips. I'm looking for a good photo of the Denton Road Bridge in southern MI, by the way, and first-person experiences. Be sure to tune in to the History Channel Monday nights to see Weird U.S., starring my editors Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman who started the whole thing with their weird magazine Weird New Jersey. And if you want some idea of what the Weird Michigan book will be like, check out Weird Wisconsin which I co-authored with Richard Hendricks. These are hard-cover, full-color, full bore blasts of all the good stuff you won't find in your regular history or geography books, which is why I enjoy researching them so much.

I also have to give many kudos to the Michiganders I've met so far, from Ishpeming to Detroit. They have been unfailingly helpful, friendly and smart, and I owe so much to so many.

Another Michigan Stonehenge

You saw my story on the Nunica Stonehenge project. Now there is another one, except it's taking a little longer and is a bit more ambitious.National Geographic's been there already. See it at

http://www.flashnews.com/news/wfn1050726J10109.html

A Phantom Hotel Robber? (March 2005)

It's hard to explain it any other way. A hotel clerk at the Weathervane Inn in Montague looks up in the middle of an ordinary morning in March and is shocked to find herself staring down the barrel of a rifle. The man pointing it at her says nothing. She screams. The man simply turns and walks away without asking for money or saying a word. No one else sees the man, a gues in the parking lot saw nothing at the time the man should have been running through it, the police could find no clue as to the man's identity or location. Many guests heard the clerk scream, however. What would motivate anyone to silently, wordlessly, aim a gun at someone in a public place for no apparent reason? If it were a specter, that would at least explain why no one else saw anything, and why nothing was heard or demanded. The story was first reported in the Muskegon Chronicle 3/29/05.