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
Halloween Wonders: Tilson Street's Transformation and Michigan's Hidden Gems
Experience the magic and mystery of Halloween in Michigan as we take you on a journey down Tilson Street in Romeo, renowned for its spine-tingling decorations and historic charm. Discover how one woman's passion for the holiday transformed an entire neighborhood into a Halloween wonderland, captivating thousands of visitors every year. We also venture into Clinton Township to explore the enchanting Chaos on Coleman Street, another must-see for Halloween enthusiasts. Along the way, you'll uncover the unique historical ambiance that sets these communities apart and amplifies their eerie allure.
But the excitement doesn't stop there! Prepare to be amazed by a treasure trove of fascinating facts about Michigan. From its unmatched freshwater shoreline and the quirky floating post office, JW Westcott II, to Detroit's pioneering history in phone numbers and concrete roads, there's so much to learn. Get to know the state's rich musical heritage, including Glenn Miller's hit song and the origins of Gibson guitars. Plus, quirky laws, legendary tales, and notable alumni from the University of Michigan will keep you entertained and informed. This episode promises a captivating exploration of the Great Lakes State that you won't want to miss!
Good evening everyone. Welcome back to Strange During Should Be On Insane, and I am your host, melissa, and I want to talk about Michigan and one of Michigan's creepiest, most fun streets that go over the top for Halloween, and this is called Tilson Street. So this article reads that a small Michigan town is listed up with Salem, massachusetts, and Sleepy Hollow, new York, and they're saying it's the top, one of the top Halloween destinations to visit. And I can definitely say yes to that because Tilson Street is amazing. It attracts a lot of people. So it's for families, for kids, date night going with your friends out of towners you know you've got people coming in from out of town. That's the place to take them All right. So this article reads this is from Travel Meg Romeo, michigan, a small Michigan town, the population of 3,767 people, is known to have having one of the scariest streets in the state and it has just been listed as one of the top places to celebrate Halloween. The list of the top of town, top of towns and cities to celebrate Halloween in the US Again comes from this article, travel Mag, which included the village of Romeo in Metro Detroit, known for terror on Tilson Street.
Speaker 1:Literally every single homeowner on Tilson Street has extreme outdoor Halloween displays and they've been doing it for decades. Michael, if you're listening, you should actually live on Tilson Street. I did talk in a episode last year. I had Michael on here as a co-host, and Michael lives in Mount Clemens and he goes all out for Halloween. He has vintage decorations. He could probably decorate five houses and still have some decorations left over. I would love to see Michael Street do this. I hope one day every house does the same thing he does and we can have another Tilson Street. Okay, so the family-friendly displays attract hundreds of, even thousands of people each night leading up to Halloween. That's a lot of people on one screen and it is always always busy, very jam-packed. It all started with Vicki Lee more than three decades ago. Her birthday falls on October 31st. Her mother used to decorate their home when she was growing up and when Vicki's kids were young she also started doing over-the-top displays. Eventually the neighbors joined in.
Speaker 1:Travel Meg wrote about Tilson Street. Each year, the town draws thousands of visitors as local residents decorate their historic homes, turning them into mesmerizing spectacles. Elaborate and oh yeah, okay. Elaborate and spooky decorations, including pumpkin carvings, ghoulish animatronics and hauntingly beautiful light displays, adorn the houses. All of the houses on Tilson Street were built in the 1800s, which there is a lot of paranormal activity on this street too, in the town of Romeo. So we are in and out of Romeo a lot. You know myself and our paranormal team. There have been like a lot of fires that they cannot explain. So this is just like a really, really cool town. So Tilson Street was built in the 1800s, which adds to the atmosphere. It's free to park on Tilson and the neighboring streets if you can find a spot. It's also free to walk up and down the street.
Speaker 1:Tilson is located between 31 and 32 Mile Road, just west of Main Street, and there's another candidate for Michigan's scariest street. So this is Chaos on Coleman Street. I don't know if it's Coleman or Coleman, I think it's Coleman. It's located between 14 and 15 miles just west of Gratiot and Clinton Township in Metro Detroit.
Speaker 1:Here you will also find an entire street of homes decorated for the holiday, one of the coolest things on Tilson Street. I just um seen it in the last couple years. Uh, I don't know if it's at an actual house, I think it is. It's like on a corner house. They have this huge ass moon. It's like the size of I don't know, like the front, like a garage door. The whole garage door is like the size of, like the moon and even like the width and the depth of it. It's amazing Really, really really cool pictures that you can get in front of it, because it shows your bodies as silhouettes and I actually really, really want that moon. I know last year when I was looking at them they were sold out already, so maybe this year I will get that. It is pretty expensive, I think they're like around $400. So, with that being said that Michigan can be very spooky, here is 52 things you probably did not know about Michigan.
Speaker 1:Okay, so while Florida may bear the title of Peninsula State, michigan is the only state consisting of two peninsulas Upper and Lower. Sault Ste Marie, founded in 1668, was the first European settlement in the Midwest and the third oldest one west of the Appalachians. Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1846 for all crimes other than treason, becoming not only the first state but the first English-speaking government in the world to do so. There are no longer any living Wolververines in the Wolverine State. There was one discovered in Huron County in 2004. The first one spotted in 200 years, but it has since passed on and now has been stuffed and mounted. The I'm sorry one of the world's largest registered Holston herds can be found at Green Meadow Farms in the appropriately named village of Elsie. That's funny. The world's largest limestone quarry is located near Rogers City.
Speaker 1:Colon don't know if it's colin or colin, it let's just say colin despite the unfortunate name, is never oh. So it is. Colon, despite its unfortunate name is nevertheless quite the magical place. It's a former hometown and, unless he's pulled a houdini and managed an escape the final resting place of harry blackstone senior. It's also home to several magic supply manufacturers abbott magic company, sterlini magic manufacturing company and fab magic. The first air-conditioned car was manufactured in 1939 by Detroit's Packard Motor Car Company.
Speaker 1:The Yoopers are a band from UP. They're famous for signing about deer hunting and farts parts Youpers. Everyone on the UP, not just the guys in the band, refer to people from the rest of the state as trolls because they live below the Mackinac Bridge. Other nicknames are Flatlanders and Loppers, the latter name being short for Lower Peninsula. In Michigan you get 10 cents back for recycling a can, which is the highest payback rate in the country, while the state also has the nation's highest recycling rate. No surprise there, right, because you actually get money. They're also losing over $10 million a year due to out-of-staters fraudulently trying to cash. In. Blame the border states Indiana, wisconsin and Ohio, which don't offer any canned refunds at all.
Speaker 1:Traverse City is the tart cherry pie capital of the world and hosts a week-long national cherry festival each year and that's in July. And I have been to the Cherry Festival in Traverse City and they do have the best pie. That is the Grand Travis Cherry Pie. It's so good and if you've never had it you should try it, even if you don't love cherries. Battle Creek, a city well-known to anyone who ever sent off for a prize earned by saving up cereal box tops, is the cereal capital of the world due to the presence of the Kellogg Company. Kellogg's, by the way, offered its first mail-in cereal box prize back in 1909. Werner's Ginger Ale, which was created by a Detroit druggist I don't think that's the right choice of words. It's possibly the oldest soft drink still on the market. It's definitely the oldest surviving brand of ginger ale.
Speaker 1:The Michigan Dog man, a kind of werewolfish type beast, was first spotted in Wexford County in 1887 and several times thereafter. More recent sightings have mostly been linked to a 1987 radio station hoax, as well as related to 2007 video which was later debunked on MonsterQuest. Um, so the melon heads of Ottawa County are a whole other breed of Michigan cryptid. They were said to have originated as children with hydrocephalus who lived in an insane asylum near Holland's Felt Mansion, but they somehow mutated, went feral and escaped into the surrounding woods where they still lurk, waiting to leap out and attack. The bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald the wrecked ship made famous in a Gordon Lightfoot song is on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at the Whitefish Point Light Station.
Speaker 1:Michigan has the nation's longest freshwater shoreline. If you straightened out lake superior shoreline alone, it would reach from duluth to the bahamas duluth I'm sorry you guys duluth to the bahamas. Michigan touches four out of the five great lakes more than any other state Huron, michigan, erie and Superior. This is the one that I love. The JW Westcott II, which operates out of Detroit, is the world's only floating post office, as it delivers mail to ships as they pass under the Ambassador Bridge. The Suggatuck Chain Ferry, built in 1838, is the only remaining hand-cranked chain ferry in the US. Michigan is home to the first three tunnels in the world that connect to two different countries the St Clair Tunnel, which connects to Port Huron and Sarnia, ontario, and the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel and Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, both of which connect you guessed it to Detroit and Windsor, ontario.
Speaker 1:Detroit residents were the first in the nation to have phone numbers. It seems that by 1879, the city had grown so large that operator were no longer able to route the calls by name alone. A one-mile stretch of Detroit Road was paved with concrete in 1908, making it the world's first concrete paved road. The world's largest weather vane was built by Whitehall Metal Studios of Monotauge Whitehall Metal Studios of Monotauge. It's 48 feet tall and it stands at the corner of the Dowling and Water Streets. The Ella Ellen Wood that was weird to say. A schooner that used to transport lumber from Monotauge to Milwaukee, went down in a storm in 1901. While the ship was not recovered, its nameplate did manage to float back to Montauk, all on its lonesome, a year later.
Speaker 1:French-canadian lumberjack Fabien Furener, who worked for a lumber company in the Grayling area in the late 1800s, was said to be an inspiration for the legendary Paul Bunyan. Oscoda claims to be the official hometown of Paul Bunyan, as the first published story about him appeared in the Oscoda Press in 1906. Oscoda puts an annual Paul Bunyan festival each September. Okay, asanaki has a giant statue of Paul Bunyan and Babe, his blue ox. Unlike certain other statues of Babe, in this one he really is an ox, aka a steer. The Frederick Meyer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids has a 24-foot high bronze statue that, while completed in the 1990s, was based on a design by Leonardo da Vinci. Petoskey Stones, which are the state stones of Michigan, are made from 350 million year old fossilized limestone. Awesome.
Speaker 1:The Detroit metro area sits atop a gigantic salt mine. According to some estimates, there's enough salt down there to last for 7 million years 70 million years, holy shit, at the world's current rate of consumption, pass the potato chips. The nation's first tribally owned casino was king's club casino, operated by the ojibawi ojib, I think, ojibawi Indians of Bay Mills. During the war of 1812, detroit was hotly contested territory. It was surrendered to the British in 1812, but the first attempt to retake the city was in 1813 in the River Raisin Massacre, which had the highest number of American casualties of any battle of the war. Detroit was finally recovered some nine months later during the Battle of Lake Erie. The Cross in the Woods Catholic Shrine in Indian River has a 31-foot-high crucifix, and it is the largest one in the world. Wow, 31 feet high. The nation as a whole learned how to spell the name Kalamazoo well sort of In 1942, when the Glenn Miller song I've Got a Gal in Kalamazoo hit the top of the charts. The Kalamazoo Mall was the first outdoor pedestrian shopping mall in the United States. Kalamazoo was also the original home of Gibson guitars, and a budget model produced in the 60s and the 70s was called the Kalamazoo.
Speaker 1:A Roseville man who dropped a couple of F-bombs after falling out of his canoe was convicted in 1999 under a law that had been on the books since 1897, prohibiting indecent, immoral, obscene, vulgar or insulting language in the presence or hearing of any woman or child. In 2002, the conviction was overturned by the Michigan Court of Appeals and the law was struck down at the same time. It is still against the law in michigan, however, to continuously re I think it's supposed to be re-approach. It says reproach god, assuming you can even figure out what that means. That's funny. In 2008, the city of flint passed a law that gave police the authority to arrest anyone whose pants sagged so low as to expose their undies or their bare butts. The local plumbers union has evidently declined to comment or comply. Brighton and Grand Rapids have laws against being annoying. Grand Rapids have laws against being annoying, although Grand Rapids, obviously unwilling to foot the bill for jailing its entire population, is planning to abolish that law ASAP. Some of these are so funny. Grand Rapids itself became very, very annoyed by a 2011 Newsweek website article that listed it as one of the America's dying cities and fought back by making a video featuring practically everyone in town lip syncing to the song American Pie. The video went viral on YouTube, which prompted Newsweek to disclaim the original article.
Speaker 1:All right, so the original name of the University of Michigan, which was founded in 1817, was Catholic. I don't even know that word. Yeah, try chanting that at a football game. Catholic. I don't even know that word. Yeah, try chanting that at a football game. Catholepneumatized. Wow, that's weird.
Speaker 1:The University of Michigan has been nicknamed the Harvard of West, which led Harvard alum JFK, in a speech that he delivered during 1961 campus visit, to refer to himself as a graduate of the Michigan of the East. Famous UM grads include Scobes trial defense attorney Clarence Darrow, swedish diplomat turned Holocaust hero, roel Wallenberg Vader, voicing actor James Earl Jones, material Girl Madonna and former Prez Gerald R Ford. Michigan State University was the first agricultural college in the US. Msu's got its own allusions, I'm sorry. Its own allumes, including the famously missing former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, actor Robert Urich, director Sam Raimi and NBA superstar Magic Johnson. I didn't know, magic Johnson went there.
Speaker 1:Edsel Ford, son of Henry and no relation to Gerald R, may forever be associated with Detroit's biggest flop, but he died 14 years before the line of cars bearing his name came out. Edsel himself would most likely have done a much better job with the design. He was, after all, responsible for the body of the super successful Model A, as well as its braking and transmission systems. As its braking and transmission systems, there's, like you know, like when I read off articles, I realize how many typos there are. Like they, I'm like reading and I'm like this doesn't even make sense. Um, I should actually do a podcast on that and about the typos and obviously someone's not doing their job and not proofreading. Okay, so Grand Haven is famous for its singing sand beaches, which make a whistling sound when you walk on them, and my favorite, hamtramck, has an annual Punschki Day celebration devoted to the greater glory of this Polish version of a jelly donut. So, yeah, that is about Michigan and, like I said, one of my favorite ones.
Speaker 1:Now that I actually just found out about a couple weeks ago that we have a floating post office, I asked my husband, um earlier, which I always say why do I need Google when I have a husband? Because he does know a lot of facts. He's like loaded with information. I asked him if he knew that and he was like no, I didn't. I was very surprised that Paul did not know that. Um, yeah, so that's really cool, you know, you learn something. But anyways, for all of the listeners, if you ever visit Michigan um, right before Halloween or you know, let's just say spooky time definitely check out Tilson Street. It is definitely somewhere you want to go. And again, these displays that you are seeing and the level of detail and just intricate work that goes into them, these people, these homeowners, they make them all themselves. It is such a cool thing to see. All right, you guys, thank you for listening and we will be chatting soon.
