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  The Ghost Of The Greiving Gentleman
Chapter 2 Page 19
Location of haunting: Northview Cemetery in Dearborn, Michigan. The cemetery is located at the intersection of Cherry Hill and Outer Drive.
Date of investigation: Spring 2002
Northview cemetery is as attractive as cemeteries go. Well-manicured lawns cover a sweeping acreage. Across from one of its borders is a city park. It is from this vantage point that the gentleman ghost was first encountered.
Allison Ridge (real name with held for reasons soon apparent) was going through a rather distasteful divorce. As luck would have it, so was her new boyfriend. At times such as this, it’s practically imparative to have someone to confide in, and, naturally, they choose one another.
“things weren’t exactly going well very for me “ says Allison.
Martin and I weren’t comfortable meeting out in the open yet, so we had to find places to meet that were sort of out of the way. On this particular night, we agreed to meet at the park next to the cemetery around eleven.
It was a pleasant enough October night, a bit on the chilly side, when Allison pedaled her bicycle down the sidewalks and into the park to meet her beau. Martin had arrived before her, and had staked out a picnic table for them. “we sat and talked till well after midnight,” says Allison.
We had a lot in common and really enjoys one another’s company. We just made small talk like people in love do and were sort of absorbed with one another. I remember the night was clear and the moon was almost full. We had been talking for awhile when all of a sudden I saw this man out in the cemetery, just standing there. He was kind of tall, and he was wearing a long, dark coat that was billowing out in the wind. I sort of pick up on strange stuff, so I knew right away this guy wasn’t real, that he was a spirit of some sort. I asked Martin if he could see the guy, and he said he couldn’t see anything. That didn’t matter to me, I just felt compelled to jog on over and see what was up. The man was standing on a small hill, right next to a tall monument and some big pine trees. I just had to see if he was real or what. I stopped at the fence and sort of said with my mind, “who are you?” Immediately, the name “Edgar Lininger” just shot into my head. I stood there looking at him for several minutes, and he appeared to be from sometime around the 1920’s or 30’s by the way he was dressed. He looked like he was in his late 20’s, but old enough to be someone of wealth and stature. When I asked him what he wanted, he said he was “looking for Anne,” and his voice had an accent to it, I think it was German. Then he just started to fade away. He sort of dissolved into dots then he was gone. I’ll never forget what he looked like-he was impeccable dressed, a really good-looking guy.
Although Martin claimed he hadn’t seen anything other than Allison standing at the fence, she was struck enough by the encounter to feel compelled to check the matter out. She perused the cemetery records, looking for someone with the name Edgar Lininger, but to no avail. She made her way on over to the county seat to search the death certificates, but again ended up empty handed. She decided to check out the cemetery headstones for herself.
“I thought I’d start with the cemetery where I’d seen Edgar,” Says Allison.
I thought maybe the death records had been lost or misplaced, and that maybe I’d just find his tombstone on my own. Again, though, I didn’t have any luck at all. Then, sort of as a last resort, I went to the historical society for help. I didn’t know if I should tell them why I wanted to find Edgar, so I kept the events of the night I met him to myself. I couldn’t believe it, but they actually has a record of him. It seems he was from Germany originally and had made a bit of a name for himself as a local businessman. He had never married, so there was really no family to track. That’s when I figured out that maybe Anne had been the love of his life, and for some reason he had lost her. And if he was looking for her in a cemetery, well, maybe she had died before he did.
Allison went to the cemetery in question and actually found Edgar’s tombstone. It indicated that he had passed in 1927, not yet thirty years of age. While paying homage there, she realized that she felt an emotional connection to Edgar and decided to plant a few flowers around his grave. “Actually,” Says Allison,
I felt really sorry for him, I mean, he was looking for his lost love. Maybe that’s why he showed himself to me, because I had just ended a relationship of my own and had just recently found a new love. Maybe the strength of that new love drew me to him.
Allison drove over to a local greenhouse and picked up some small plants she thought would be appropriate for Edgar’s grave site. She planted them around the headstone and watered them from a gallon jug she had brought along with her. “I didn’t have enough water,” she says,
And I started looking around for a place to fill the jug up, but I couldn’t see any spigots anywhere. Then this lovely old woman came up from behind me and offered to let me use what was left in her watering can. I finished watering the plants and thanked her. Then look to see if everything around the grave was suitable. I had just looked away from the woman for a second or two, but when I turned around to thank her again, she was gone.
From Allison’s position she could scan the length of the cemetery, but she couldn’t find a trace of that lovely old woman. “there was no way in the world she could have gotten out of sight that fast,” she says.
She was just gone in an instant, watering can and all. I must have wandered around the rest of the cemetery for an hour looking for signs of her, but she wasn’t there. Then a really spooky thought occurred to me-what is that old woman was Anne, and she was grateful for my decorating the grave of her loved one, Edgar? What if he had dies before her and she lived ot a ripe old age, always missing him. Maybe now they were separated in death by being in different cemeteries. After all, Edgar’s plot is by itself, and no one named Anne is anywhere nearby.   |
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