GHOSTS UP CLOSE Walking Tour Draws Good Crowds to Downtown Crime Scenes

Museum Volunteer Fred Welsh Comes Up With Winning Plan for Local Attraction

July 8, 2007
By: Dave Rogers

Fred Welsh is a retired volunteer for the Bay County Historical Society who knows a good Bay City story when he hears it.

Welsh came up with the idea, and the script, for a new attraction for downtown -- a walking tour featuring ghosts, Native Americans, lumberjacks, crimes and the whole panorama of local stories.

Fred calls the tour "GHOSTS UP CLOSE."

Tours are part of the "destination attraction" scheme that has been a staple of planning by Shirley Roberts, executive director, Bay County Convention and Visitors Bureau, in cooperation with Bay County Historical Society officials for about a decade.

The historic characters who haunt the city are all there:

Fabian Joe Fournier, reputed model for Paul Bunyan;

Floyd Ackerman, beloved manager of the State Theatre, and his slayer

Johnny Woos, freed from jail after 25 years because of judicial error;

Princess Spectra, the Native American woman who came back to haunt those who stole her bones from an ancient grave in the Fletcher Site;

Slain lumberjack "floaters" and other ghosts of the Catacombs and Hell's Half Mile (Water Street from Third to Sixth);

Canada Em, the pretty waiter girl who died in the jail cell in Old City Hall, now a bar/restaurant.

And the ghostly places:

Skull Island, far up river but close enough to intrigue listeners;

Dr. Waterhouse's Bay City Infirmary, once a lumberjack era hospital, now housing the Real Darn Good Food Company on Third Street;

The Gothic Federal Building with its imposing Federal Court, where the last person executed in Michigan, Tony Chebatoris, was sentenced in 1938;

The Catacombs, once known as the old European Hotel, timber days hell-hole, now a booming candy and peanut emporium, St. Laurent Bros.; and, of course,

Old Mercy Hospital, now the Bradley House senior living center, where Floyd Ackerman and many crime victims spent their last hours and pop singing legend Madonna spent her first hours.

Fred even describes what tour goers can't see, like the tunnels under the streets of Hell's Half Mile, doorways of which are still visible in the basements of old buildings.

Last Saturday was a great day for tours downtown. The weather was perfect and the folks who showed up were enthusiastic about Bay City history, even though about half were from out of town. Besides the 35 people who walked with Welsh another couple dozen took the Historic Mansions bus tour that departed at 2 p.m.

After perhaps a dozen years and much development work by the tour committee the attraction strategy is starting to pay off big time. Walking tours are $5 while bus tours are $8 and all tours start from the Bay City Antiques Center of Bill and Elaine Fournier.

A major test is just to break even after paying the costs of advertising, bus rentals, etc. "If this walking tour works out maybe we can get in the black," said Welsh, of Vassar, a veteran member of the tour committee.

Besides the Historic Mansions, other bus tours include South End, Cemeteries, Ghosts and Legends, and West Side.

Welsh says the GHOSTS UP CLOSE walking tour will be scheduled at 4 p.m. the first Saturday in each of the warm months, more often if demand warrants. Contact the Bay County Historical Museum at 893-5733 for more information.###