Strange Deranged Beyond Insane
Everything paranormal and unexplained. History of buildings old hospitals any haunted locations along with personal experiences. Famous murders in Michigan. Ufo and extraterrestrial. Urban legends of Michigan. Folklores witches and tribal tales. Horror movies and unexplained curses and deaths on set.
Strange Deranged Beyond Insane
Haunted Michigan: Amanda's Ghostly Encounters and Flint's Eerie Past
Ever wondered what it’s like to share your home with unseen visitors? Amanda, a new follower from TikTok, shares her spine-tingling experiences living in a haunted house in Flint, Michigan. From the eerie request of a ghostly little girl asking to play, to doors mysteriously opening on their own and her dog's terrified reactions, Amanda's haunting tales will leave you questioning the reality of the supernatural. We also reflect on how her family copes with these uncanny phenomena and the importance of having a supportive partner when confronting the unknown. Plus, I'll reveal my passion for the paranormal, inspired by my favorite book, "Haunted Flint" by Roxanne Rhodes and Joe Schapani.
Take a chilling tour through Flint’s ghostly past as we explore its eerie cemeteries, haunted mansions, and ghost towns. Discover the spine-chilling stories behind notable sites like the mansion built by former Mayor George Keller, Oak Grove Sanitarium, and the Flint Cultural Center. We delve into the impact of Flint’s economic decline on its haunted atmosphere and share our plans to investigate other spooky locations such as the Whaley House and the Holiday Inn Express. With tales of lifelike statues in cemeteries and bad energy lingering in certain spots, this episode promises to be a thrilling journey into Flint’s haunted history.
Good evening everyone. It's your host, melissa at Strange Strange Beyond Insane. All right, so tonight I have a story from a new follower that I just recently got on TikTok and, like I said, she wants to share her story and I asked her if I could put it on the pod and she said absolutely, please tell my story, ok. So this is Little Husky Therian. Hello, my name is Amanda and girl. I got stories from childhood to adulthood and the most recent that I have for you is this house that we bought in 2019.
Speaker 1:I believe that it's the side of Flint. I think there's a lot of spirits lost over here. That it's the side of Flint. I think there's a lot of spirits lost over here. They've talked to me and I've seen them and my kids have seen them. They are in denial. They said it was easier to accept that way. Lol.
Speaker 1:When we first started moving in, me and my boys brought a load over in our truck and they were inside. I came outside middle of February it was 1130 at night and I opened up my truck door and a little girl sounded about five years old asked me if I wanted to play with her. I thought that it was my youngest that snuck into the truck or something and rode with us. I started yelling her name, checked around the truck and nobody. It was just dead silence, no footprints, nothing. I went inside and I was like, did your sister run through here? And they were all like no. And I said dang, when we first brought the house, my boys wanted to spend a night here alone, just them. So I let them. They were so scared that they didn't sleep. The lights kept flickering, the handles kept turning and then they closed all the doors and when they came out at daylight they were all opened.
Speaker 1:There's a ghost here and I named him Fred. Lol, I seen him all the time. He looks like my husband. I started talking to him and he just keeps walking and I'm like, dang, do you hear me? Ha ha ha. No response. That's how it always is. Now I'm like, oh, that's just Fred. Haha. I will be driving down the street and a group of little kids will chase a ball in front of my car and I'll hit the brakes and then they vanish in thin air. I was riding with my friend and I thought she was going to hit a guy. I still remember what he was wearing when he vanished.
Speaker 1:I summed it up to this side of Flint being haunted. Flint has been known for a lot of death. Either that or I'm just crazy, I don't know. I started watching the paranormal on here and documentaries on TikTok and I tried to find answers for myself. It's crazy because I've literally seen spirits among demons, angels, all of it since around four years old. And I replied with yes, flint is very haunted.
Speaker 1:And then I did say this is awesome, can I tell your story on my podcast? And she said heck, yeah, you can tell it. So she says that numerous things have happened and if you want to hear any more, I can give you my number and we can talk over the phone. So her and I have exchanged numbers. We have been texting um more, so on here, um, we haven't really gotten the chance to talk, but I would like to have her on here, um, because I would like her to tell it. You know it always sounds better when someone else is telling their own story. She did share another quick story. She said that our dog actually gets so scared at night and he will not go outside to use the bathroom unless we go with him, but he immediately starts shaking because he's so scared.
Speaker 1:So I do have a book collection and I one of my books that I have is Haunted Flint. All right, you guys. So I did find my book. It is called Haunted Flint and this is written by Roxanne Rhodes and Joe Schapani. Um, on the bottom it says Haunted America and I did get this in 2022. I'm still 12 years old and I write my full name in the book and I put Melissa Kozlowski, 2022, weirdsville Records in Mount Clemens, michael invited us to like a little mini, like presentation, and God, who was there?
Speaker 1:Um, one of the guest speakers was I'll come back to that Um, he's really cool. He's been on unsolved or he used to write for unsolved mysteries, but anyways, I want to get into this book. Um, okay, so I think this is really cute. I just want to you know the, the part where they write to their um To my husband, robert, and my children, robbie, aerie and Tim. Thank you for all your love and support and for dealing with my obsession of all things spooky. I love that. And then the other one reads To my partner, phillip, who has always supported me and put up with my craziness by listening to me tell stories about hauntings and murders and if I ever write a book, it would definitely be to my partner, paul, because he has put up with a lot. I'm always I wouldn't say my whole life is dedicated completely to paranormal and anything strange, strange, beyond insane, but it is a big portion of it and I do feel very grateful that I do have a supportive partner and has helped me start this podcast and all of the things that I have been doing in the last four or five years. I'd say.
Speaker 1:And okay, so the contents. So first one is Flint is a ghost town, a curse on the land. First one is Flint is a ghost town, a curse on the land. A haunting on the hill, a mansion with murderous history. We have visited that. That's a really cool place. We had gotten a lot of evidence built on a cemetery. The Holiday Inn Express. I did not know that, so we will have to go there.
Speaker 1:A haunted mansion, the Whaley House We've been there. We have not went inside but we've been by there. A House with History. Stockton Center at Spring Grove, a Ghostly Production. The Capitol Theater, carriage Town Filled with History. Avondale and Glenwood Cemeteries I know we've been to Avondale and then Sunset Hills and River Rest cemeteries, with it says, with lifelike statues. We've been to. You know what? Carissa and I went to Sunset Hills Cemetery. That is creepy. There's statues of children that look like they're dancing or running around in a circle and they're all bronze. Very, very, very eerie.
Speaker 1:And there's a whole story for that. Oak Grove Sanitarium, the Flint Cultural Center and Central High School, spencer House of Mortuary, the Flint Tavern Hotel, the Dryden Building, the Cornwall Building, the Cat's man House, buick City, the Flint River, downtown Flint, flint Park, amusement Park and Devil's Lake. Okay, so let me get into. Okay, yeah, so, the curse on the land. The Native Americans called the river that runs through Flint I'm going to try Pio Wonka Wink, which translates to the River of the Flint or River of the Firestone. The Flint River has a rocky riverbed, but it isn't Flint Rock. So why was the river and later the city named Flint?
Speaker 1:In several Native American legends, flint is a twin brother to hero God Skyholder, also known as Nanabazo, the grandsons of Sky Woman. They are the major players in many Native American creation myths. Okay so, um, and then it talks about Native American burial grounds. Okay, a familiar tale of hauntings, especially for horror movie lovers, is a Native American burial ground. Disturbing the spirits is never a good idea, even if you do it by accident. Anyone remember the terrifying 1980s movie Poltergeist? So you guys get the hint right. So lots of Native land in Flint, which obviously there's Native land everywhere. So that has a lot to do with um hauntings. So I do want to check out this holiday in express, okay, the whaley house. We'll get back to that because we did, we, I know we do want to do an investigation there. Um, I want to find one. Second, the house on the hill, okay, and so right here it talks about, like the history, the fall of flint.
Speaker 1:For most of a century flint was a successful vehicle manufacturing area. Businesses thrived and the economy was good. People came to flint for work by the. By the 1920s there were so many people coming to flint that the housing market couldn't keep up. People slept in makeshift shacks along the river because there wasn't enough housing for all the workers. What follows is a summary of Flint's downfall. So the sit-down strike. So that was 1936 through 1937. During World War II, flint was a major contributor of tanks and other war machines.
Speaker 1:Thanks to all the manufacturing faculties, flint is a prominent city built around the automobile industry. In the 1950s, flint had one of the highest median incomes in the United States, as well as the highest rate of home ownership. Gm's US employment peaked at 600,018,365 in 1979, making it the largest private employer in the United States. The city's population reached to 200,000 by the 1960s. At its height, gm employed around 85,000 people in the plants throughout the city. By the late 1980s that started to change. The first major closure was the Fisher Body Plant in 1987. The 1990s showcased a city trying desperately to hold on as it slid into economic despair, Buick headquarters moved from Flint to Detroit in 1998. In 1999, the Buick City complex closed. In 2002, it was demolished Throughout the 2000s. Many remaining factories in the area were closed by July 2008,. Only 7,100 GM jobs remained in the Flint area by 2014,. Estimates indicate that at least half of population had left. Fewer than 100,000 people remained within the city limits and 40% of them lived below the national poverty line.
Speaker 1:So it talks about urban decay. There's obviously a lot of crime. So you know like when there's depressive things happening, bad things happening. Bad energy brings energy. You know. Bad energy, you know like Murphy's Law. Okay, so a haunting on the hill, a mansion with murderous history, a haunted house is a memory palace made real, a physical space that retains memories that might otherwise be forgotten or which might remain only in fragments. Under the invisible weight of these memories, the habits of those who once haunted these places, we feel the shoulder of the ghost. Okay, so this was a okay so a ritzy Flint subdivision known as Knob Hill has quite a haunting history.
Speaker 1:The home was built in 1916 by Flint Mayor George Keller. The beautiful three-story Georgian colonial home stands tall in the classy Knob Hill neighborhood across from the Michigan School of the Deaf and Powers Catholic High School. The first owner, george Keller, was the mayor of Flint in 1917 and served a one-year term. He was followed as mayor by Charles Stewart Mott in 1918. In 1919, keller served another one-year term. The home was later purchased by Grace McDonald, widow of Flint Mayor Bruce J McDonald, who had served in 1904. So Grace McDonald was the first president of the Flint's YWCA. The first president of the Flint's YWCA. She was very active in the women's voting movement. In the late 20th century the home was bought and sold several times.
Speaker 1:Despite the house's grisly history, former owners Samuel A Ragnon and Dr Vladimir Schwartzman adored the architecture of the home and coexisted with the ghosts of Crescent Drive during their separate times in the mansion. They said it added to the mystical and the uniqueness of the place. It didn't bother me to live there at all. In fact I enjoyed the little added suspense that it gave you. It made some people uncomfortable, but it was always fun. Ragnon enjoyed the airy atmosphere which made his Halloween parties a huge success. Sounds like you, michael, if you're listening. I threw a great Halloween party there one night, he said. There were a couple of hundred people there, the house was totally decorated and it was just awesome. But one time things got to be too much even for him. Doors slamming strange noises. Ragnon reported that one night the noises became so loud that the police were called, but nothing and no one was found.
Speaker 1:The haunts are thought to be tied to a grisly murder that occurred on the site I'm sorry, on the site and to the home's close ties to another murder. Both murders involved women who were killed by their sons. Things first turned ugly in this beautiful home in 1933 when Grace McDonald was bludgeoned to death by her 17-year-old son, belfie, I think in her upstairs bedroom. This blood-chilling scenario was repeated 46 years later after Helen Wersering purchased the house. She never had the chance to move into the home, as she was shot to death by her 20-year-old son, mark, and buried outside of their cottage in Holly.
Speaker 1:The first murder occurred in the early morning hours of May 27, 1933. Grace McDonald went to her bedroom where she was packed and ready to go to the family's lake house for the summer. Mrs Flower, the household maid, reported that Grace's son, belfie, followed her to her room. He wanted to talk to her. Belfie was a troubled boy. He ran with an unsavory crowd and was rumored to be a sadist. He and his mother were always at odds. And was rumored to be a sadist. He and his mother were always at odds. She could not control him. At one point she requested that he should be locked up and he spent two days in jail under the name John Smith. Neighbors claimed to see and hear the mother and son fighting all the time. He once chased her out of the house with a pistol. The day before the murder, grace and Grace had an officer stop by to talk to Baffle about his behavior. She thought it might scare him straight. Instead, it seems it made things worse. Okay, so that is. I thought there was something about a little girl too. The brother accidentally killed her, the cousin did.
Speaker 1:I do want to check out this house, a house with history, stockton Center at Spring Grove. I mean there are so many places in Flint and then, like all these times that we try to think of somewhere to go out to, I mean here we go, carriage Town. So the Carriage Town area is the city in the heart of Flint. Early Native Americans camped in the area and Flint's first settler, jacob Smith, made his home there in 1819. Factory 1 on Water Street dates to 1880, when it was built by the Flint Woolen Mills Company. In 1886, william Crapo, billy Durant and business partner Josiah Dallas Dort leased the faculty for the Flint Road Cart Company, which became the Durant Dort Carriage Factory. So there's a lot of history in Flint.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, I have seen this grave. I've seen, okay, glenwood Cemetery. We have been here. And Avondale is where we got chased out, chris and I, by a man running at us. We were in the car, in her car, and he was carrying a lantern and um, first we heard him whistling and then we heard like him shuffling, like his feet, and then we heard his voice and he kept saying hey, hey, hey. And as you guys know, flint isn't the best area, especially right um at that cemetery. So we, like, took out, we, she put the pedal to the metal, we were out of there. So there's, we do need to go back. Um, yeah, sunset Hills and River Rest cemeteries we have not. This is the one I was telling you guys about. Okay, here it is right, here, um, crack the whip. And this is the kids running like in a circle. Um, all of the statues look very real. So, yes, so that's just a little sneak peek into flint, but, um, anyways, you guys, this book is awesome.
Speaker 1:Haunted flint by roxanne rhodes and joe chapani. Chapani I S-C-H-I-P-A-N-I Great book. I still haven't read all of it but, like you know, back here on the back of the book it says sinister secrets in Flint's history. Home to ancient burial grounds, unsolved murders, economic depression and a water crisis, flint emits an unholy energy with ghostly encounters. Colin O Thomas, stockton's ever-villagent ghost, keeps a watchful eye over his family home and of Spring Grove, where guests occasionally hear the thump of his heavy boots. Well, that could have been who we heard that night. Restless spirits, long separated from their graves, lurk among the ancient stones at Avondale Cemetery. All right, you guys. So check out this book. You can order it on Amazon. You don't have to go to a you know library or anywhere that sells books, obviously, I've ordered a lot of stuff on Amazon, very pleased.
Speaker 1:Um, we also have a local author that I have met um several times at conventions. Um, nicole Beauchamp. She is um awesome. I follow her on Facebook. I follow her on Tik TOK. Her books are cool. She has a lot of cool content. She's been on a lot of like TV shows and interviews. I'm sure she's been on numerous podcasts, but anyways, you guys so that story from one of my followers on TikTok. I hope you guys enjoyed that.
Speaker 1:And again, you guys send me stuff on TikTok, message me. You can also send me your stories or requests or anything through our email, which is GhostSisters2124 at Gmail. Again, tiktok Facebook. You can also go onto Buzzsprout and look at Strange, strange Beyond Insane. And you guys can write me some fan mail, anything you want. You know whether you like an episode, you don't like an episode, recommendations, constructive criticism. If you want to hop on here and be a guest speaker, I'm always for that. Any way, you want to do it I'm cool with. I love that. I have listeners and I love that I have people that want to engage on here. Thank you guys for always tuning in and we'll be chatting soon.
