(clock ticks) (suspenseful music) (water ripples) What a great day for a ghost tour.

You've been doing this now, for at least seven years.

Tours Around Michigan, you have a host of tours, from Heritage Hill to various architecture, arts, so many different things.

And one of the more popular ones, which is what we're doing, is the Ghost Tour.

Let us start with a baseline question, do you believe in ghosts?

- I do, I've always been open to it.

I've never really had a ton of experiences, that has changed greatly, (laughs) since I've been doing these tours.

- So with the Ghost Tour, as we start this, there are stories that are here, right along the Grand River?

- Yeah, really this area has had activity for hundreds of years.

We have the rapids right here, and they were about a mile long, they were really loud.

Back when this was all forest people could hear the rapids up to a mile away.

So this was a place that tribes from other areas would come to, once a year because they trade here.

And that's largely because of the rapids, because people knew how to find the rapids.

But even back then, like there were some ghost stories floating around.

So tribes would refer to this area as the Haunted Valley of the Grand.

- Really, right in this area here, right by the Blue Bridge?

- Right here, yep, Haunted Valley of the Grand, yeah.

I think there are a couple of reasons why Grand Rapids seems to have more energy than other places, and one is water.

If a spirit wants to do something, they need the energy.

So if you have all this water pushing it, you know, it makes it easier to snag it and do something with it.

Another reason is limestone.

So limestone is also connected with higher spirit activity.

- And we have that here?

- Yes.

And in fact, all under Kent County, it's one of the largest veins of limestone in the lower peninsula.

And so maybe those two things, you know, have upped our energy here.

- We're going on a ghost tour.

- We are.

We are, absolutely.

- Absolutely.

So we are here, near the corner of Pearl and Monroe, lots of history, lots of ghost stories taking place here.

We're really at, in front of McKay Tower.

So tell us about what's happening here, or what has happened here.

- Yeah, well first of all, just the spot we're standing in.

So historic, almost 200 years ago, 1826, Louis Campau had his fur trading post, right here.

And there were a couple reasons, one was it was on the river, and also it was where a lot of Native American trails converged.

So Monroe Center, which is right next to us, that was originally a Native American trail, and then it became the first street in the city.

So definitely a history here, and this spot has gone through a lot of different things.

It's been the center of the city for almost 200 years.

In 1942, a man named Frank McKay, bought the building, named it after himself.

So Frank McKay was basically a mob boss, disguised as a political leader, not somebody you'd wanna run into in life, right?

(laughs) People still run into him after he's died, here in the building.

So people have walked past him in the hallways here, there's a woman who was on the elevator, that said she was riding the elevator up.

It stopped at a floor she didn't choose.

The doors opened, a ghostly Frank McKay, in a black top hat, stepped onto the elevator with her.

The doors closed, went up a few floors, opened again, and he stepped off and went on his way.

- Okay, so Candice, we have moved inside, we are at Monroe Center and Division.

- Yeah.

- So tell us about this building and where we're at.

- This is one of the great historic buildings in the city.

This was built in 1875, and the first renters in the building were the Pecks.

And the Pecks were a family of pharmacists and they opened up here, and there was a pharmacy here for 80 years.

So now, the building's known as the Peck building.

Unfortunately, the Pecks are known for some big tragedy that happened in their family.

So in the early 1900s, the Peck's daughter, Clara, got married to a local guy.

He was more of a medium class family, the Pecks were extremely wealthy, so that made them a bit of a target.

So his plan was to kill his wife's entire family so she would inherit the money.

And then he was gonna kill her so he would get the money.

So they got married at Fountain Street Church.

The Pecks bought their daughter and son-in-Law a fancy apartment in New York City so they went and lived there.

Clara's mom, Hannah Peck, went up to visit and she died when she was out there.

And her remains came back here, she was cremated.

A couple months later, Clara's dad, John Peck, who was the pharmacist, he went up to visit, and he died when he was out there.

Hannah's was ruled as like, an organ failure.

So as John's body is coming back by train the family here, got a mysterious telegram that said, "do an autopsy."

So they did and found out that John had been poisoned.

Eventually the son-in-law was arrested, put on trial.

He was convicted, got the electric chair because he did the murders in New York.

And so the person that haunts this building is actually Hannah Peck, who is the mother.

- The mother.

- And she died in New York, but her remains came back here.

So the experiences people have had here, they've seen her walking the hallways, they have seen a woman looking out the windows.

I've actually had tours where people have seen a woman in the window.

So I think that she is here to warn her husband, which unfortunately, did not happen because he was murdered also.

So I think, that it's the guilt that holds her here, even though it shouldn't, and she shouldn't feel guilty.

I'd love to help her move on.

- We are now, outside the Shinola building, and again, this building has incredible history.

It's The Peck Building, however, it was initially built by Amos Rathbone?

- So Amos is a settler that came to the area from New York, in the 1830s.

I first learned about Amos, maybe about four years ago.

It was after one of my tours, and somebody who was on my tour who was from outside the area, she said, "You were talking about this one ghost, and then this guy appeared to me, he looked mid 1800s, had a big bushy mustache, thick, curly hair, and he was upset that you were talking about that ghost and not him."

So I started doing research on him and he really is connected with a lot of different places in the city.

He owned land, he helped build St. Mark's Episcopal Church, which is the oldest public building in the city, and built out of the stones from the rapids.

He built this building, he had this built in 1875, and this actually was called the Rathbone Building, initially it was called the Rathbone Block.

Now, his name is kind of erased from current history.

- From the current history.

- Yeah, so that's probably why he came to me and he was like, "Hey, what about me?"

(Jennifer laughs) So it didn't take long after that that people started telling me, they're like, "Do you know you have a ghost that walks with your tours?"

We have his voice saying the name, saying his name, Amos, on a recording that we got right here, last year.

I feel like I'm helping carry on his legacy a bit because he was a bit of a forgotten settler who had a fairly big influence on the city.

And so with that, sort of my good deed, (laughs) there are certain spirits, like Hannah Peck, who's in this building, that I'd like to, I think she's bound by trauma and guilt, and I think I'd love to help her move on.

So there are also certain spirits that I would like to help leave if they're stuck here.

It's been an odd experience for me to develop connections with them because I never expected that.

- That's not what you set out to do.

- Hm mm, no, not at all, not at all.

- [Jennifer] But it's kind of your happy place, that it has, right?

I mean, it's part of what you do now.

- [Candice] Yep, my goal is to just get people excited about exploring and looking at the city in a new way if they're from here, and wanting to learn more about it and wanting to explore it more.

Like I think, that's a win for all of us.

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This is "Living West Michigan."

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