ADA, Mich — We have a lot of ghost stories here in West Michigan, and in the case of the Ada Witch how much of it is based in historical fact?
It’s a well-known story.
“So the legend of the Ada witch really has dozens of varieties, like more than 100,” said Tours Around Michigan Founder Candice Smith.
But nobody really knows.
“Some people say 1700s you know, mostly it's, it's 1800s," added Smith.
No matter which version you've heard, they all have the same theme: A woman is killed by her jealous husband after he catches her with another man. The slain woman’s restless spirit is then doomed to haunt the grounds where her young life was taken.
And some say the lost soul is one Sarah McMillian, laid to rest here in the Findlay Cemetery.
Smith says this is not true, though. Historical records from the area show nothing to match this ghostly origin story.
Sarah died from typhoid fever—and not a love triangle.
"The history varies, because it's not actually history, it's legend," laughed Smith.
But legends, like ghosts, never die. It might not be Sarah haunting the dirt road here in Ada but something has breathed life into the legend of the Ada Witch.
To find that something, we had to call in a specialist.
"A Seer is a person that can connect with people's energy, people's past loved ones, and people's past lives, is basically what I do," said Rick Waid. I see through their eye.”
Rick told us the Findlay Cemetery, here at the heart of the Ada Witch stories, is much more lively than it looks on the surface.
“The first thing, when I first got out of the car, I started walking. Usually, energy would come through me. It actually almost like walked through me," said Waid. "So something came through me. As soon as I started coming over here, something came through and it takes my breath away. It's like it uses my energy, it takes my breath away. So that was the first thing to happen."
Armed with that and some other hi-tech spirit-detecting equipment, we attempted to communicate with Sarah, the Witch, or whoever was hanging around, hoping to get to the bottom of the stories.
"You'd have hunters or kids parking, you know, teenagers parking, you know, that would say they would see something, or they would feel, you know, a tap on their shoulder," said Candice. "Or they would hear things they would, you know, hear different things.”
We didn’t have any luck this time.
But that won’t stop the spine-tingling stories from making the rounds here in West Michigan. And it won’t keep the legend of the Ada Witch from passing into the next life.
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