Pere Cheney is a ghost town in the heart of Michigan. At its peak, 1,500 lived here, but after a series of epidemics wiped out a majority of the population, the town was empty. Local legend says that the cause of this misfortune was the doing of a witch banished, and hung in the forest. She is said to haunt the cemetery as well as leave hand-prints on the cars of visitors.
(Submitted by Chris Berglund)
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Geographic Information
- Address:
- Pere Cheney, MI
United States
Get Directions » - GPS:
- 44.5775, -84.63778000000002
- County:
- Crawford County, Michigan
- Nearest Towns:
- Roscommon, MI (5.9 mi.)
Grayling, MI (6.9 mi.)
Saint Helen, MI (18.6 mi.)
Houghton Lake, MI (19.2 mi.)
Prudenville, MI (19.3 mi.)
Mio, MI (25.5 mi.)
Lewiston, MI (26.7 mi.)
Rose City, MI (27.9 mi.)
Kalkaska, MI (28.6 mi.)
West Branch, MI (28.6 mi.)
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Disclaimer: The stories posted here are user-submitted and are, in the nature of "ghost stories," largely unverifiable. HauntedPlaces.org makes no claims that any of the statements posted here are factually accurate. The vast majority of information provided on this web site is anecdotal, and as such, should be viewed in the same light as local folklore and urban legends.
I went once with 5 of my friends, Pere Cheney wasn’t far from where we lived. There has been so many different stories of what happened there. I was told some could hear a train (that wasn’t there), that if you drive over the railroad tracks (which means you went to far) your vehicle will stall out. There’s only a few tombstones left, due to people being disrespectful. One tombstone has a mans name on it, some say he protects you if you stand near his tombstone.
We arrived there sometime between 10pm-12am, parked my car outside of the fence. Nothing happened for the first half n’ hour, we just looked at the tombstones. There’s a tree just before them, we walked past it. Two of my friends freaked out and started to cry. The one saw red eyes coming at her from the tree and the other one saw the noose the witch was hung with in it as well (wasn’t there physically). We continued to wander the area, starting at the “witches stump”, they say if you sit on it you’ll get covered in blood (none of us tried it). When we got to the tree line we turned to go along the edge of it. Two of my friends were on the other side of the area looking for trails/roads. So at this point there was the four of us together. There was one tree just outside of the line of trees, on this tree I saw a figure. It was some kind of creature, it was grey and didn’t seem to have any fur. This creature was climbing up the tree, It was half the size of the tree. I started crying because I have never seen anything like that. So, after that the four of us headed to the car. But first we called out to our other two friends because we hadn’t heard or saw them in a little bit. We heard a mans voice but didn’t understand what it said. We figured they heard us, so we headed back to the car. My friend had the flashlight on her phone lit up so we could see, within 30 seconds after we heard the guys voice her phone fell out of her hands, the light went out and we heard footsteps coming toward us (very heavy, fast). Ran to the car, called out to our friends again and nothing. So we waited for them in the car, when they got back we left. Those friends said they could hear the train and one said she saw the creature too. We got on the expressway and thought we were in the clear. We thought wrong. My friend was driving, she brought her right arm back to me and said “My arm is burning, can you check it out?”. When I brought her sleeve back there was what looked like a small child’s hand print burned into her arm (wasn’t burned but looked that way). We stopped and so I drove. I drove for maybe 4 minutes, I felt someone grab a hold of my forearm. I looked over and no one was touching me, it felt like my muscle was getting ripped out of my arm. We got back to our destination to find that small hand print on the inside bottom of my windshield and a big hand print on the hood of my car. I looked at my arm and there was a big hand print bruised into my forearm. One of my friends had scratches and bruises all over her chest. Needless to say, Pere Cheney is definitely haunted.
Did you take pictures of any of the bruises/marks? Or the creature?