HAUNTED MICHIGAN: Newaygo High School’s “Girl in Black”

Newaygo is a small town in west central Michigan, near the Muskegon River. On the southern part of town off East Street, lies Newaygo High…with its own haunted story.

Behind the school is a large pond…in between the pond and the school is a patch of woods. It’s within these woods that a ghost of a former student is said to appear.

The student was a 16-year-old girl who didn’t mix well with the other kids in school. Some called her a social outcast, a punk, a goth, a loner. During free periods she would wander out to the woods by herself to read, smoke, eat, contemplate, or listen to music.

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It was a day in 1985 when she went back to the woods and was never seen alive again. Once she found her comfortable spot, she didn’t notice the rattlesnake that was coiled up nearby. The snake bit her hand, injecting its venom. She must have been in a hurry to get back to the school for help, for she collapsed in the woods and died.

Since she usually went unnoticed by the other students – faculty too, probably – her absence was overlooked for quite a while. Since the day her body was found, the apparition of a girl with spiked hair and dressed in black has been seen keeping her distance from whoever comes into the woods. Those who have been in the woods also claim to have smelled the smoke of her cigarettes.

Urban legend or true? To this day, there are those who say ‘she lives’ back in the woods behind the school…

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