Hunting for hauntings

By: Charles Slat story updated October 26. 2006 11:07AM

Out along E. Dunbar Rd., out past the county jail, out over the freeway where the road starts to deteriorate and it seems too many trees are dead or dying, there lives a creepy legend.

The sign says "Dog Lady Island - For Sale or Rent." But the story doesn't start there. It starts years ago, when the patch of land in Plum Creek was more of a lovers' lane, a place where forbidden fruit was tasted and, occasionally, a blood-curdling scream might be heard.

Dr. Daniel Compora, an English professor and folklorist at the University of Toledo, was 12 when he first heard the story of Dog Lady Island. He was stranded at a friend's house in Monroe during the Blizzard of '78.

This was the tale he was told …

An old woman lived on the island years ago and, after her husband died, she surrounded herself with many Doberman pinschers. The dogs were there to protect her, but one day they turned on her, ripping out her tongue, leaving her incapable of speech and partially blind. She came to be known as "the Dog Lady."

Understandably, she became reclusive and liked it that way. So she developed the habit of jumping onto the cars of anyone who dared park near the island. Dog Lady later was murdered by members of a motorcycle gang, so the story goes. Gang members became the new occupants of the island, and they allegedly kept Dog Lady's body in a coffin on the island.

The stories continue today of Dog Lady haunting the island. Some say because she only can grunt, she sounds like a dog and even eats off the ground with them.

But when Dr. Compora was a teen, he remembered a telephone number being circulated that was supposedly Dog Lady's. Teens would call it just to hear an old woman who couldn't articulate the word "hello."

"I don't remember the number, but I do remember calling it," says Dr. Compora. "I cringe when I wonder who we were terrorizing."

The story of Dog Lady Island lives on as part of Monroe County's folklore and most recently was mentioned in "Weird Michigan," a guide to the state's local legends and best-kept secrets by Linda S. Godfrey. Dr. Compora also detailed the legend in the newsletter for the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research, giving it a global audience (users.aber.ac.uk/mikstaff/ftn61.htm).

But it's not the only weird story about Monroe County that Dr. Compora has heard. And he wants to hear more, possibly for a book he hopes to compile.

Stories like:

n "The Monroe Monster," a Bigfoot-like creature, that was reported to be roaming areas of Frenchtown Township in the 1960s. It turned out to be a hoax, but drew substantial regional interest.

n "The Oath of the Hundred Heads," a tale of a son's pledge to kill 100 Indians to avenge a tribe's killing of his father at their Lake Erie coastal cabin. The son lined the walls of his cabin with the head of each Indian he killed.

n "The Goat Ladies of Dundee," two old maids who lived in a ramshackle house that they shared with goats. Passersby would see goats on the porch, in the upstairs and downstairs windows - all over the place.

Dr. Compora got the idea for compiling a book after giving a talk about Dog Lady Island, also called Kausler's Island, at a meeting of the Monroe Thrift Shop Association. After the meeting, several people came up and told him other scary local tales they had heard.

"I'd say that's when the idea kind of hit me," Dr. Compora says. "I didn't know there were so many in Monroe. Someone mentioned one about the Norman Towers, which is where I went to school. And others mentioned stories about some of the old factories in town."

"I've heard the house by St. Michael's Church has been haunted for years but it's not written anywhere," Dr. Compora said. "I went to St. Mike's in first grade and I think I heard it back that far. People just said it was haunted, don't go near the house.

"My mom told me it came from the fact that the house was sold twice in the same year, so there were rumors that it was haunted."

Another legend Dr. Compora heard from students was the story of "The Waterheads of Whiteford."

"It sounds really really politically incorrect, but numerous students have told me about the group of waterheads that live in Whiteford," he says.

The family has hydrocephalus, a rare condition that causes an enlarged skull from water on the brain. "It's about as derogatory a term as you can get, but they say that somewhere in Whiteford there's a family of three waterheads, but no one has ever seen them."

Dr. Compora says such legends spring from popular culture. "I truly believe the Dog Lady and that one are all just bogeymen. I definitely think most urban legends kind of are born out of cultural fear."

"Right now on snopes.com, (an urban legends reference Web site) the urban legends circulating are all based on terrorism," he says. "If you look at the cultural fears of the time that's where these things come from. That's where Dog Lady came from - from small town cultural fear."

Dr. Compora has set up an e-mail address for people to send their stories and he says he kind of prefers second-hand stories rather than first-hand accounts.