Haunted in Ann Arbor, Michigan: The Gandy Dancer Restaurant

Hey – ya want some good food, a little history, and a chance to experience some paranormal activity? Then here’s where you should go: the Gandy Dancer Restaurant in Ann Arbor.

This elaborate – yet creepy – building was built back in 1886 and was originally one of the Michigan Central Train depots. Of all the MCT depots, this one was considered to be the absolute best on the line. Thick stone walls, arched entrances, stained glass windows and huge fireplaces. Sounds like a good setting for a haunting, right? There are a few good reasons to believe that hauntings are very possible.

Legend says that the unclaimed bodies of those killed during wars – especially World War I - were brought here and stored in the basement. As the years went by, the bodies were removed but some believe a number of souls remained. The paranormal activity caused by these abandoned souls include lights being turned upside-down, glasses flying off the shelves, and the apparition of a man wandering through the halls.

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According to one witness on the Michigan Haunted Houses site, “me and my two little cousins took a picture, and the three of us were quite surprised when there were four people in the picture; standing behind us is very clearly a woman wearing a dress with an old fashion hairdo.....and she does not look very happy.”

On TikTok, one person says “I was called to look at the roof in the early 90s so we went up in the attic and It had doors that would open and shut by themselves.”

In September 1940, an incident occurred that some feel may have been the basis for some of the paranormal activity. Some kids put a railroad spike on the tracks – the reason is unknown, except maybe they wanted to see what would happen. Well, they saw all right. A freight train hit the spike, derailed, and killed a man named Walter Flinn.

Before being turned into a restaurant, the train station’s last big to-do was in 1960, when both presidential candidates made whistle stops there: John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

Soon afterward, Chuck Muer bought the station and revamped it into the luxurious restaurant it remains to this day (with great seafood, by the way). He named it “The Gandy Dancer”, a slang term for the railroad workers that were employed at the former Michigan Central Station.

As a final, odd post script, Chuck Muer disappeared while out at sea and was never found or heard from again.