Ghosts of Kalamazoo Historic Tour Brings the City's Haunted Past to Life

There are many kinds of ghosts. There are those that haunt, those whose only purpose is to scare, those that come to warn of something or to say goodbye. Then there are the ghosts of our past - not the spirits of the dead, but the memories of the living.

The ghosts that haunt the Ghosts of Kalamazoo Historic Tour probably are the latter.

This is the second year of the tour, which was hosted by the Kalamazoo Jaycees over the course of three October Friday and Saturday nights. Each night, groups of a dozen or so up to 20 or more would follow guides around locations such as Riverside Cemetery, Mountain Home Cemetery and downtown Kalamazoo, learning about local history as well as hearing bits about ghosts and odd facts.

"It's kind of a fine line that we try to strike, because I think a lot of the people that go on this tour would never go on a historical society tour because that's not their thing," Eric Schmidt, chairperson for this year's tour, said. "So what we have done is kind of try to wrap fun around history and not try to go so in depth with a lot of bios and a lot of dates and all that stuff."

Schmidt, 34, is a self-employed freelance designer who has been a Jaycee for three and one-half years. He said he considers this year's tour to be a big success.

"We did really great attendance and got a lot of really nice notes from people that went on all three tours," he said. "And that's what makes you feel good, is when you get the people that had really nice things to say, because you work hard on this thing and it's nice to get the compliments."

Last year's tour was different than this year, Schmidt said. Instead of hosting walking tours, the Jaycees set up shop around town, having participants drive themselves to the different locations. This led to people rushing through the tours, which made the group decide the tours would be better if focused more on individual areas, he said.

"So that's kind of what we did, is we took the initial research that we did last year, found all the stories that we could, and plotted them out on a map and said 'okay, we've clearly got a downtown section, and then let's take them off to the two cemeteries because there's so much history out there.'"

It was learning new things about the history of Kalamazoo that was one of Schmidt's favorite parts of the event, he said. The story of John Fetzer, who among other things founded the radio station WKZO in Kalamazoo in the 1930s, was of particular interest.

"I'm a tremendous Detroit Tigers fan," Schmidt said. "I had no idea he (Fetzer) owned the team. This was in 1968, when they won the World Series."

Research for the tours was conducted by Schmidt and other members of the Kalamazoo Jaycees online and at the Kalamazoo Public Library, often in the library's Local History Room. A resource considered particularly valuable to the group's research for the cemetery tours was the work of a local man who has catalogued all the area cemeteries.

"He's got a file of all 84,000 burials out at Riverside. It's a 1,260-page document. And so if there's anybody you're looking for, you can look it up in there," Schmidt said.

Michael Cross, 29, is an information technician for the city of Kalamazoo and was a tour coordinator and spokesperson for the Jaycees. Cross led tours both nights at Riverside Cemetery. He said the cemeteries are one of his favorite aspects of the tours.

"I'm a big fan of the cemeteries," he said. "Riverside Cemetery is pretty cool, there's a lot of very neat things out there. You got the Civil War Memorial, some different markers out there that you don't see anywhere else."

Cross said the Jaycees chose Warm Kids, a nonprofit organization that provides kids in need in Kalamazoo County with new winter clothing, to receive the proceeds from this year's tour because they felt their work would have an immediate impact on the community.

"We looked at a bunch of different charities, and Warm Kids kind of rose to the top as somebody that we could partner with," Cross said. "We could help them out significantly, they could help us out. They've been a generous help with volunteers. It's worked out really well."

While this year's tours may have had less frills and chills than many of the other Halloween-oriented events in the area, the Ghosts of Kalamazoo Historic Tour offered a fresh perspective on a holiday that's become centered around little more than eating sugar and scaring each other.

At a time of year when it seems everyone's looking for answers as to what might be out there, the Ghosts of Kalamazoo tours provided a glimpse of what's actually been there, and how what's here now got that way.

With all the positive feedback the Jaycees have received from the tours, Schmidt said he doesn't see any reason why they wouldn't bring them back next year for a third run.

"It's just a matter of do we decide to come up with some new tours, do we try to milk these ones for a couple of years, or do we try to find some different locations, tackle another cemetery next year or something like that," he said. "We want things to be really fun for people."