Will Dixboro Ghost Make Her Rounds Tonight?

Will the "Dixboro Ghost" appear tonight? You never heard of it? Well, you just haven't been reading your history. The "Dixboro Ghost" is a Halloween apparition which first floated into view 126 years ago. The ghost is that of a "Mrs. M. Mullholland" who in the fall of 1846 appeared to Isaac Van Woert to tell of her death at the hands of a doctor. Van Woert, the day before seeing the ghost for the first time, had moved into a vacant house which Mrs. Mulholland had occupied in Dixboro before she died, a history of the event says. Van Woert said he saw "a middle-sized woman, holding a light in her left hand, her head bound in a white cloth, with a loose gown around her." The figure floated into a room, the door closed, a drawer was heard opening and closing and nothing was found inside the room, Van Woert later testified in a sworn statement. A short time later just before Halloween the figure reappeared to Van Woert inside the house. This time it stood less than five feet from him. The ghost warned Van Woert not to touch her and then said: "He has got it. He robbed me little by little until they kilt me. They kilt me. Now he has got it all." Later in the same week Van Woert said the ghost appeared in his bedroom in the middle of the night. Although he saw no candle the room was ablaze with light, he said. She told Van Woert of her murder by a doctor who was aided by some of her relatives. She also said another person was killed by the same group and the ghost said one body had been dropped into a well "at the corner of Main and Mill Streets" and the other was dumped in nearby Frains Lake. The ghost of Mrs. Mulholland appeared four times to Van Woert, the final occasion at 11 p.m. as he sat with his feet on the stove hearth. At that time Mrs. Mulholland appeared with a man who was supporting her in his arms. "She was stretched back and looked as i if she were in the agonies of death," Van Woert later told authorities. "She did not speak but the apparition of the man said: "She is dying! She will die!". Then both ghostly figures disappeared. After the appearances law authorities searched both the well and Frains Lake but did not find bodies. But so authentic-sounding was Van Woert's account of the appearances that the doctor named by the ghost and all Mrs. Mulholland's relatives moved from Dixboro a short time later. So if the trick-or-treaters are out in Dixboro tonight and they spot a "middle-sized woman holding a light with a white cloth around her head" they shouldn't panic. It will only be Mrs. Mulholland making her Halloween rounds.