Human Remains Found Washed Up in Westland Cemetery: 1980

The thing I like best about this cemetery is not the legend, but the entrance gate. It’s cool and gothic, like something you would expect to see in a creepy movie.

The graveyard in question is the William Ganong Cemetery - also referred to as Butler Cemetery. It is rumored to be one of this state's most haunted and most legendary – definitely one of the most talked about - cemeteries, located on Henry Ruft Road in Westland.

So just what is the tale?
In 1980, a psychic was investigating the graveyard when she came across (what she thought) was a blond wig. It wasn't. It was the scalp taken from a woman. In the vicinity of the scalp were pieces of bone, shards of a coffin and shreds of a white dress.

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While authorities speculated a coffin had washed aground due to heavy rainfall - or possibly some animal dug it up - the psychic had a feeling it was the remains of something more diabolic. Then the occurrences began. Traffic accidents began mounting up on the curve near the cemetery, killing one man and injuring numerous others. This led to superstitious locals spreading the rumor that the spirit of the woman (whose pieces washed up with her coffin) was causing accidents.....

Unfortunate motorists claim to have seen an attractive blond woman standing in the road in front of their vehicles; when they swerve to miss hitting her, they go off the road and crash. This section of the road has been lazily called "Bad Curve".

She's been called a beautiful blonde and (typically, as in other graveyards) the 'woman in white.' She appears not just in the middle of the road but has been seen wisping her way through the graveyard, disappearing like mist and sometimes walking with a man dressed in a grey uniform.

Some people say they've heard screams coming from the cemetery.

In 1832, a local farmer gave part of his land to the community to be used as a cemetery. No more people are being buried there, and the cemetery has become overgrown with weeds and grass and is eerie even in broad daylight. It has approximately 350 corpses buried there, and some say when the mobile home park was built around it, they didn't bother to move some of the graves...just like in the film Poltergeist.

Some residents of the mobile home park believe their homes were placed over some graves whose headstones were removed, but not the bodies. Therefore, this could be causing some of the extra paranormal activity that goes on in that area: sounds of clanking, footsteps, weeping, whispers and more when the cemetery is empty and nobody’s around.

This cemetery is just down the road from another "Haunted Michigan" location, 'The Eloise Asylum'. These two paranormal locations would be a good double-header for you someday...