The Legend of the Glowing Tombstones - Forest Hill Cemetary
The glowing tombstones of Forest Hill Cemetery - Old mystery
uncovered, but phenomenon still baffles area residents.
Jim Crees, Editor - From Jim Crees – received 10-22-03 - The
Pioneer - Osceola Edition
For
many years, people throughout the Evart area (and indeed
around the state), have reported an eerie phenomenon
emanating from Evart’s Forest Hill Cemetery as darkness
settles on the countryside. As evening’s dusk gives way to
nighttime's darkness, certain headstones in the cemetery
begin giving off an easily noticeable light. These
tombstones shine, or glow with a diffused light - not a
direct beam, such as from a flashlight, but more like a
phosphorescent shimmer, as though someone were holding up a
giant Timex Indiglo watch. Many have tried to resolve the
mysterious lights in Forest Hill, giving what would seem
perfectly logical explanations.
Anywhere between three and nine glowing cemetery markers
were seen on different nights during three weeks of testing.
Strongest light seemed to shine from three markers in the
northwest-most
section of the cemetery, with weaker, yet still obvious
illumination coming from smaller points running up the
slight hill as the southwest. The glowing was visible under
all meteorological conditions - cloudy and clear skies had
no affect on the phenomenon.
One theory is that the glowing from cemetery markers is
simply the reflection of car lights on U.S. 10, but the
height of the Rail to Trails ”berm”² and the amount and
height of vegetation between the cemetery and the highway do
not allow for a direct bounce of light.
Another theory is that the cemetery light is a reflection of
lights from nearby Evart, but using mirrors to check this
idea, it was shown that the quality of light reaching the
cemetery from distant businesses and city lighting was too
diffused to be as readily visible as the glowing actually
is.
For local lodging options check -
www.southmilodging.com and
www.northmilodging.com .
The reflection theory was also shot down by a simple check
of angles and trajectory. A reflection should remain a true
reflection as long as the angle of observation between the
source and the person seeing the reflection remained
constant. This is not the case at Forest Hill.
Another reflections theory holds out that the glowing is a
reflection of bounced city light “bouncing” off low cloud
cover, but the flowing is apparent on cloudless nights too.
An early idea was that the headstones themselves contained
some sort of phosphorous material, or something with
absorbed light during the day, and released it after dark.
If this were the case, the glow should be visible from close
up, not only from a distance. The light, however, cannot be
seen from close up, in the cemetery itself. It’s
interesting to note that the location of the glowing
tombstones seems to shift as the cemetery expands. Reports
of the phenomenon, both in the distant past and today, have
those headstones exuding a muted light generally placed
along the western border of the cemetery.
While this reporter believes there is certainly a logical,
physical explanation for the glowing tombstones, weeks of
checking, observation, triangulation, charting of angles and
other tests have yet to come up with a reasonable
explanation for the phenomenon. Throughout the years,
however, more “mystic” reasons have also been given - some
of them based on historic facts involving the rich past of
Evart and the surrounding areas.
One tale often repeated earlier this century, but virtually
forgotten today, involves the railway crews laboring on the
ever expanding Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad. While
investigating the “whole story,” one cannot ignore popular
myth, and one story told in bits and pieces in the Evart
Review, the now defunct Tustin times, and the long closed
LeRoy Eclipse from early this century fits with a good
number of history facts. As the F&PM tracks moved
westward toward Ludington, (also called Pere Marquette
before adopting its present name), funds for continued
construction petered out for a short while, leaving the
railroad’s terminus just west of Evart.
It took a while for the financial straits affecting
construction, (brought about by an economic recession
throughout the U.S. in the late 1800s), to be resolved.
While work was delayed, construction crews remained in base
camps along the rail bed, pulling down miniscule wages for
back-breaking work maintaining the length of track already
in place. Many, if not most of these workers were Italian
and Irish immigrants. In the immediate Evart area, Italian
laborers dominated the railroad employment ledgers.
While “stuck” in the Evart area, these Italian workers made
use of facilities in and around the growing village,
including the various houses of ill-repute and “watering
holes.” Conservative village fathers (on the urging of
extremely popular village mothers!), tried to control this
activity, but during the hard times accompanying the
recession, any type of cash flow was more than welcome in
the hard-scrabble “frontier” towns.
Nevertheless, editorial comment in the Evart Review from the
early 1870s recall the indignation felt by the more proper
citizens of this village: “We would hope the town fathers
and marshals will retire to the residence of Miss Clarese
Bow, late of Chicago and now of Hemlock Street in this
village, to encourage her to stop the nefarious activities
she is taking part in at great profit to herself, but at
great loss to the soul of this village.” But the
Italian workers paid little mind, having now where to go
after a hard day’s work, and few “proper” people with whom
to socialize. Unfortunately, in the spirit of the time, the
Italians were not accepted. In fact, they were so looked
down on that a neighboring newspaper, the Hersey-based
Osceola County Outline reported, “How strange to hear that
Italian workers from the railroad line near Evart were
refused entrance to a local bowery, although Negro laborers
were drinking there freely.”
The Italians had one camp located south of the tracks, just
below the western-most hillock in what is now Forest Hill
Cemetery. (This was at a time just previous to the
relocation of the village cemetery, from the area now
occupied by the DNR building to the present site.) Actual
railroad construction had temporarily ground to a halt in
the Winsorville, (or Winsor) - platted area in the general
vicinity of Chippewa Plastics Industrial Facility. A lot of
work was nevertheless, being carried out in the area of The
Depot, which railroad service facilities being built and
prepared for the “boom” times expected following the
recession.
Italian crews were sometimes taken from their camp to the
day’s work site by “crew cars” towed by locomotives, and
occasionally by wagons and draft horses hired from the local
community. Once out on the job, however, the workmen were
often left to their designs, and had to return to camp by
foot following a hard day of labor. On the way back to their
camp in what is now Forest Hill Cemetery, the workman would
often stop for a drink. Early reports by the town marshal to
the Common Council (later called the City Council), point to
one main drinking establishment visited regularly by the
Italian crews. Located near what is now the Evart Township
Hall was a “tavern” which apparently tried to cater to the
taste if the thirsty Italians by offering them a copy of
their favorite drink from the “old country” - spirit called
Grappe. The marshal, quoted in the Evart Review, told
village fathers this drink was manufactured by “. . .
cooking a mixture of cheap Detroit gin with wild grapes and
leaves taken from scrub land, giving the spirit a strange
taste, and making a concoction which has devastating effect
o n the foreign men.” By the time the workers were ready to
stagger back to camp, it was already dark and the frontier
countryside was mildly threatening to those men more used to
Italian cities than the wilds of northern Michigan.
Back at the Italian camp, one of the cooks had the job of
helping guide the men back “home.” (The Italian work force
employed their own cook who could turn out the food and fare
they were used to. F&PM railroad paid this man’s wages, much
to the chagrin of local ladies who were used to the income
brought in by their cooking for logging and railroad crews.)
At dusk, the cook would walk the short trail leading from
the rail bed to the Italian camp lighting signal lights,
called in the workers lingo “goozeniks.” These lamps were
simply old tin cans filled with sand and saturated
with kerosene or fuel oil. A torn piece of burlap acted as a
wick, and the sand impregnated with fuel would keep the
lamps burning along the pathway all night long.
One story related in parts in both the Tustin Times and the
Evart Review tells the name of this immigrant cook and his
son, both employed by the F&PM railroad. Guido Bandura was,
the papers report, the well-loved cook. His son, Marco,
worked the line as a “scimmer” - a worker who kept the scrub
brush trimmed well away from the tracks, (basically a “make
work” job until full-scale construction could begin.) One
night, while returning from work west of town, Marco came on
two of his fellow Italians who had been drinking heavily at
the worker’s tavern. The two were seen in a heated argument
on the railroad bridge, and were threatening each other with
bodily harm - both being armed with knives. The young man
tried to calm impassioned spirits, while quietly disarming
the two drunken laborers. Suddenly, one of the men staggered
against Marco, catching him off guard and causing him to
stumble against the bridge guardrail. Losing his balance,
the cook’s son flipped over the railing, falling head first
into the Muskegon River. He apparently was fatally hurt in
the fall since, by witnesses accounts, he never showed signs
of trying to reach the bank. Another worker who saw the
young man¹s fall, ran all the way to camp to raise the
alarm.
He met Guido, Marco’s father, on the path where he was
lighting the Ogoozeniks.² Abandoning his lamp lighting
duties, the hysterical father raced to the river and,
spotting his son’s body in the rapidly flowing water (the
river was high with the spring melt-off), threw himself in
the river to try and save his son. Later, workers from the
Italian crew reported Guido never knew how to swim, and in
fact, feared having to cross even the most placid creek. His
son’s situation, however, drove him to undertake a futile
rescue. Neither of the men were ever seen alive again. At
daylight, Marco’s body was discovered twisted in the
branches of a fallen tree near where the South Main Street
bridge now crosses the Muskegon. Village officials, and
friends of the young man from the Italian camp, managed to
pull the body to shore. Because of conditions, the drowned
worker was buried in a hastily dug grave somewhere near what
is now the intersection of South Oak Street and 11th Street.
A circuit priest out of Grand Rapids later performed a
graveside ceremony, but there are no reports as to whether
this body was ever moved to a proper cemetery. The body of
the father, Guido Bandura, was never recovered, although
alarm was raised all along the Muskegon, in various lumber
camps as far as Hersey. (One group of loggers at a camp near
Cat Creek attempted a daring night rescue of what they
believed to be a human body, on to discover, after seriously
endangering their own lives, that it was a large coyote,
dead and entangled in a floating pile of brush.) Shortly
after the tragic incident, workers from the Italian camp
began reporting, the goozenik lamps along the pathway
leading to their camp were being lit, or more correctly were
glowing after the passing of an ethereal man walking the
trail from the rail bed to the cook shanty.
Italian laborers come back to camp from their work along the
tracks reported seeing the goozeniks directing them back
home, but on reaching the path none of the makeshift lamps
were actually lit. When numerous workers began reporting a
distraught figure crying out the name “Mark” or “Marco” the
entire Italian contingent of workers packed up camp and
shifted their center near where the wastewater office now
stands.
F&PM railroad officials tried to house a group of Irish
workers, along with a small group of black laborers brought
up from Detroit, at the abandoned camp. Within weeks,
however, this second group of men left the site reporting a
ghost-like apparition who wandered the pathway bending down
and lighting lamps which weren’t there - but which left a
glow noticeable from quite a way off. Railroad officials
disbanded the camp, moving all equipment to a site west of
the Muskegon.
Soon afterward, Evart’s city fathers purchases the property,
and laid out the boundaries of what would become Forest Hill
Cemetery. For generations, reports surfaced about glowing
lights along what was once the pathway from the railroad
tracks to the Italian camp. As late as 1933, a report in
the Evart Review quotes an old railroad man as saying: “ . .
. that old Italian jack is still lighting the torches,
waiting for his boy to come down the tracks after a day’s
work. Some say you can even smell cooking coffee from the
cook shack if the wind’s right.” It is very difficult
trying to verify some points of this story through sources
other than the newspapers of that time. Coincidental
information, however, seems to point to some validity in the
old, oft repeated story.
As for Guido Bandura still lighting signal lamps in Forest
Hill Cemetery - something does glow at different points
within the cemetery. Whether these points of light be
ghostly signals from a loving father to his missing son, or
whether they can be explained as some natural phenomena are
a matter of interpretation.
Nothing can be proven - and many have tried.