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http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/laporte...9192f065dd.html

La Porte County's Top Ten Most Haunted

10. K O P

Kingsbury Ordnance Plant (Kingsbury Fish and Wildlife Area) Located in LaPorte County, the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant was ammunitions plant built for the U.S. Army in the time of World War II. 13,454 acres were acquired and the plant was built between 1940 and 1941. The first munitions was completed in 1941. The plant hit a peak number of employees in May 1942 with 20,785 people building 20mm to 105mm shells for the war. In August of 1945, the plant began to close down since it was no longer needed. The plant was reopened in 1951 for the Korean War. Korea was the last military use it would see. The Army sold the land in 1959. Today hunting, fishing, and camping are the

main uses of the land, long with some industrial companies. It is now known as the Kingsbury Fish and Wildlife Area. It is also host to a bigfoot type creature who likes to scare campers there at night. I have been there during the day and have been to some of the old buildings I couldn't enter one because I smelled gas in the air, but building was so old no gas lines were connected. Found out that during the war there were gas explosions that killed workers there.

9. Gravity Hill

This is a fun spot for the kids ( my grandkids love it ) It is located on county line road between Michigan City, In and Westville, IN. You put your car in natural and the car will drive by itself. The speed goes from 10 mph to 35 mph depending on what kind of car you have. It was said that at one time a school bus was hit by a train so now when you stop the children of the train push you over the tracks. It is fun to do and the kids love great spot.

8. I Street Clinic

Formally the old Zimmerman House, Well I can still remember the house I was 5 yrs old when it still stood on the corner of I sty. and 10th st. in La Porte. My older brother and his friends would go into the home at night. From what I was told the home held a beautiful charm to it, but it was also haunted. The owners heard door bells ringing and when answering the door no one would be there. Coins rolling down the long winding stairs with no one throwing them. Well the ghosts are still there even if the home isn't. They now haunt the clinic many nurses have heard steps in the hallways when locking up for the night. The elevator will run by itself, whatever ever walks there walks alone !!!!!!!!!!!!!

7. Saugany Lake

This is a very small lake located off of State Rd. 2 east of La Porte. I have heard for years and also from someone who had a relative working for the government that most of the UFO sightings in the northern part of the U.S. have been in this area. There is also a local legend that no person will ever drown in that lake because it is protected by the ghost of Chief Saugany an old wise Indian.

6. Range Road Pond

This is the area where the body of 16 year old Rayna Rison was found. Rison disappeared in March of 1993 after leaving the animal hospital where she worked after school. Her body was found 30 days later in the pond. When going out to the pond to see what we could pick up on there was a heavy feeling of unrest. There was also a feeling of being watched. I would suggest when going out into this area DONT GO ALONE. The spirits are not at peace there.

5. Soldiers Memorial Park

Now this has some stories to it. It is said that there was a young boy who drowned in Pine Lake and his spirit walks the trails in the woods there and also walks Waverly Rd late night. When I was a young girl about 10 my brother and his friends would go down to the lake at night to party. Well two of his friends and him were walking back to our house ( we only lived about 4 to 5 blocks from the lake ) and they got to where the big street light was when all of a sudden they saw a small boy. They thought the boy might have been about 7 or 8 years old. Well they couldn't figure out what a small boy was doing out at around midnight. They were walking towards Pine Lake ave and the boy was walking toward them, when he got closer to them he looked at them with a grin that went ear to ear. When they watch him walk by then he disappeared. Let me tell you when my brother and friends got home they were out of breathe and shook up. My mother to them to that was sign for them to behave.

4. Orr Lake Rd

Legend has it that at one time a Doctor and his wife and beautiful young teenage daughter lived on this road. This was back sometime in the 1800's. It was still a time of sicknesses that there were little or no cures for. Well one day the doctors wife got very sick within 24 hours

she died, then his lovely daughter died a day after his wife. The poor Doctor was beside himself not just with the loss of his wife but his lovely daughter too!!! Well this Doctor was just not into healing but also into a new way to persevere the human bodies, instead of burying his dead he put both his wife and daughter in big pickle barrels and it is said that on a full moon you can see him and his man servant ( which his man servant has a hook on his right hand HOOK MAN ) going into the woods with a lantern and if you look closely you will see the bodies of the wife and the daughter being dunked up & down up & down, this keeps the bodies from going bad and keeps them forever young.

3. Devil's Bridge

This is an old road that was used by the gangsters during the probation area. It is said that the mobsters would leave a body or two there on their way to Chicago. I have seen images of bodies there and have gotten some wonderful orb shots.

2. Patton Cemetery

Belles last man is buried here. There is said to be a lot of weird things as I have friend who lives right across the street from there. Well he works late nights and when he comes home he has heard people talking and he has looked over into the cemetery and seen no one there. It is a great place to get pica of orbs too and wonderful place to go ghost hunting.

1. Posey Chapel Cemetery

Wow I have to say this is La Porte's number one spot. Almost anytime I have ever been there I have heard or seen something. The list is endless there. Great shots of orbs too ! You can hear and see paranormal activity there always so this is what makes Posey the number one spot. It is a ghost hunters treasure.

Union Mills

Between 12:00 and 2:30 am a ghost has been seen walking into Hanna along the Railroad tracks. Back in the 1980's a Guy was killed by a train in the same area and about the same time.

Most of the residents in Union Mills, Indiana are joyfully uninformed of the ghastly enigmas this town keeps; when the darkness of night commences; things get menacing. The undeparted are here in this town as the local residents will reveal. Not everyone trusts in the stories the local residents tell, but frightening things certainly take place here in Union Mills in the moonlight hours.

A prickling at the nape of your neck ... a noise you can't explain when no one else is home ... you listen, feeling foolish but unable to dispel the sense that something - well, spooky, is going on.

Silly. You don't really believe any of that.

Up and down The Beach Coast, there are other folks who don't believe any of that, either - but they know what they've seen and heard.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Robert Zimmermann, 89, chats easily about paranormal activities in his La Porte house. Well, former house. The mansion completed in 1850 at the corner of I and 10th streets in La Porte gave way in the 1970s to a medical clinic - where peculiar activity has continued to mystify some very down-to-earth professionals.

The mansion was home to the Gwynnes from 1904 to 1948, and to Robert and (the now late) Gerree Zimmermann from 1953 to 1963.

When Robert finally asked Madeleine Gwynne Kinney if anything unusual had occurred when her family lived there, he was amazed to hear eerily similar events had been visited upon both families:

* Half a dozen coins dated before 1900 suddenly cascaded from nowhere to the floor of a small closet.

* Loud clanging, like chains against sheet metal, was heard, but no source of the noise was ever found.

* The crank-style doorbell made in 1849 rang but no one was there - nor were there any footprints in the freshly fallen snow.

* Footsteps advanced and retreated on the creaky staircase.

* In the attic dormer window a woman was sighted wearing an 1800s-style dress. "I went right up in the attic, and no one was there," recalls Robert.

Unseen hands

Now, about the clinic where the house once stood: La Porte County Historian Fern Eddy Schultz - who gives programs on La Porte County hauntings - says quite frankly she's a "non-believer" in ghosts - but tells of her nurse friend at the clinic who says instruments laid out simply disappeared, then turned up elsewhere. Elevators went up and down empty, drawers and doors opened and shut unassisted, and an empty bathroom was locked from the inside.

So ... who is it? Opinions range from a Pottawatomie Indian girl who died in a camp that once occupied the site; or perhaps one of two sisters who lived in the house; one was killed when her buggy was hit by a train at the 2nd Street crossing and the other sister died heartbroken when a fiancé failed to materialize after an extended trip West.

Spooky Specters

Schultz tells of a house still standing at C and First streets in La Porte that was once the Civil War Hospital for Camp Colfax. Afterwards there were reports of soldiers wandering around the streets, walking up steps and disappearing into the house - you know, through the door.

Schultz says a ghostly creature was said to roam Indiana Avenue and disappear into the Ruth Sabin Home. At West Beach in Michigan City near the Indiana State Prison water works, there appeared a tall man so mysterious and spooky that people ran from him in terror.

Schultz tells the tale of a young couple parked along a secluded section of Orr Lake Road in La Porte decades ago. The car wouldn't start, he got out to look under the hood, she heard scraping on the roof of the car, got out and - wait for it - found him hanging from an overhead branch. Then she, too, was murdered. But ... then how do we know she heard scraping? Perhaps the second version explains: he walked to get help for the car, came back, found her hanging.

Schultz has checked newspapers and hasn't found anything to substantiate the story.

Darn.

Diana of the Dunes and Other Beach Coast Tales

Don't be disappointed. The ethereal Diana of the Dunes really did exist, with the rather ordinary real name of Alice Mabel Gray. The legend: sightings of a beautiful woman swimming au naturel in Lake Michigan, occasionally prefaced with a bracing run along the shore. The reality: Gray, born in 1881, was rather plain.

Though well traveled and highly educated, she lived in seclusion on the beach near Ogden Dunes for many years - and was indeed said to skinny dip. You can read more about the dedicated environmentalist in Hoosier author Janet Edwards' new book, Diana of the Dunes: The True Story of Alice Gray.

Another real-life lady - oh, let's just call her what she was: a murderer - Belle Gunness, has been the source of many a ghost story, says Schultz. The turn-of-the-century serial killer buried enough poor souls on her La Porte farm that one or more of them are thought to haunt the site. And some claim to feel Belle's presence there.

But no one can figure why the pavilion on the site of Posey Chapel, on 1000 N near the Michigan state line, "is a busy place at Halloween," says Schultz, when teens congregate in hopes of glimpsing the big black dog that causes vehicles to crash, or to see the baby buggy rolling out of nowhere. Perhaps it's the police watching the teens that inhibits ghostly wanderings these days.

Feeling intrepid? Travel Orr Lake Road at night and you'll understand how, despite its natural beauty, it can prompt a spooky chill. But don't get out of the car.



Read more: http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/laporte...l#ixzz1afa9QBom

[Ang]

Very interesting! Thanks for this post.