HARTFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — Voices upstairs when no one’s there. Lights turning on without a switch. A mannequin that moves and once froze in midair. At the Van Buren County Historical Society Museum, it’s not only the history that lingers.
“You’ll hear people talking on the second floor, and you go up there … and there’s nobody,” said Tad Moody, a board member and longtime volunteer. “They always call me the ghost guy.”
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The museum is outside Hartford on the Van Buren County Fairgrounds and occupies a building that once served as the county poorhouse. It was a home for people who were mentally ill, elderly or sick, or those who had nowhere else to go. It operated for more than 100 years, through the Civil War, Spanish flu and Great Depression.
Many people lived there. Many also died.
“Nobody knows why we don’t move on, but sometimes we don’t,” Moody said…