The Legend of the Michigan Melonhead Children of Allegan County

Many ‘Haunted Michigan’ aficionados have heard this tale before, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat it to refresh the memories or to initiate the uninformed. It's the Michigan legend of the Melonhead children, who are said to live in the woods near Saugatuck and Holland.

Long ago near Grand Rapids there was a hospital that was treating children suffering from water on the brain - a condition called hydrocephalic - that causes large, swelled heads. Due to lack of funding, the hospital shut down, but what to do with the children? Since there was no staff to take care of them, and no family members came forth to retrieve them, the children had nowhere to go. Little by little they exited the hospital on their own and found refuge in the nearby woods and began taking care of each other.

The term 'melonhead' supposedly came from students at the old seminary which is now the Felt Mansion in Holland...evidently, the name was coined to describe the 'smart kids' and somehow got all twisted and tied in with the hydrocephalic, forest-living children. Over the decades, they have also been called the "wobbleheads".

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As for a different, darker tale, it is alleged that the children all lived in the mansion at one time and suffered abuse at the hands of their doctor. Having tolerated enough, the children murdered the doctor and proceeded to dismember his body; they figured it would be easier to hide small human pieces rather than a whole corpse, so they got rid of the parts by throwing, hiding and burying them throughout the mansion grounds. Afterward, they left the mansion and began dwelling in underground caves that were left over from an old, abandoned zoo.

So who was responsible for spreading the story of melonhead kids living in the woods? After trespassing on the grounds, a group of thrill-seeking teenagers claim they saw ghosts of some of the children and shadows that depicted the murder and dismemberment of the doctor.

The Felt Mansion is believed to be haunted to this day, and others have sworn they have seen these strange children in the woods...they say if you turn your car headlights on & off a few times, you might experience a sighting...or something else...

It doesn't really matter if you believe these Haunted Michigan legends or not...but remember, every haunted story usually begins with some truth...