Hauntings of the Underground Railroad by Jane Simon Ammeson

Author:Jane Simon Ammeson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2017-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Though from a distance the bridges and stunted trees in McCourtie Park look like wood, they are really sculpted out of concrete in an almost forgotten folk style known as el trabejo rustico, which translates to “rustic work.” Photo courtesy of Jane Simon Ammeson.

Though the park, once part of the estate of W. H. L. McCourtie, wasn’t here when the runaway slaves followed the Sauk Trail toward Detroit, the area, sparsely populated with a creek for fresh water and wooded glens for resting undiscovered, would have made a good stopping point. Besides, this area of Michigan, settled by those from Europe who had come to America to escape religious persecution, had Northern sensibilities toward slavery.

Most agree that McCourtie Park is haunted, and there are more ghosts than just Native Americans and runaway slaves still present here. Al Capone supposedly visited, his gangsters making the run from Chicago to Detroit.

McCourtie, the millionaire owner of the Trinity Portland Cement Company, had a fondness for both concrete and whimsy, and his estate, known as Aiden Lair, was the perfect place to create a fantastical garden. Today, his home is gone but the park remains—a fairy-tale place where nature has been carved out of cement.

Here cement chimneys created to look like tree trunks rise out of a rathskeller built into the side of a hill where McCourtie (known as Herb to his friends) played poker with such Detroit bigwigs as auto baron Henry Ford. Local lore says that tunnels used to run underground here, perfect for bootleggers to smuggle in liquor for those all-night poker games. Seventeen folk-art-style bridges cross the meandering stream on the forty-two-acre property.

These unique sculptures, called el trabejo rustico, Spanish for “rustic work,” were created by Mexican artisans Dionicio Rodriquez and Ralph Corona of Texas (McCourtie had made it big as a Texas oil man before returning home to Somerset). Also known by the French term, faux bois, or “fake wood,” the artwork involves a complex process of shaping, molding, staining, and adding texture to the concrete so that it looks amazingly real. McCourtie admired this early to mid-twentieth-century folk art, now very seldom used. Each bridge is uniquely fashioned as the cross the waterways and lead into wooded glades. One bridge, surely designed for gnomes, has the look of a thatched cottage, albeit a cement one; another resembles an old-fashioned swinging bridge, the cement scored in a way to look like ropes and wood; planked seats, also fashioned out of cement, invite visitors to stop halfway across and rest.

Weeping willows crowd the sides of the stream, dripping long, feathery branches on the waters. Benches and elaborate birdhouses, including several tall purple martin homes capable of sheltering more than two hundred birds, are half hidden in the woods.

It’s the perfect place for a ghost and indeed, it’s here that the Lady in Blue, a svelte woman dressed in a blue gown, moves quietly across one of the bridges.

“I’ve never seen the Lady in Blue,” says John Koch, who grew up in the area and as a kid joined his friends in the park.

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