The geographic anchor of West Michigan's Ada Witch folklore
6340 Grand River Dr SE, Ada, MI 49301
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Public cemetery. No fees.
Access
Limited Access
Grass, dirt paths, gentle slopes
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1840 · Ada Township Cemetery · West Michigan Folklore
Ada Township in Kent County, Michigan, maintains two public cemeteries: the Ada Cemetery at 6340 Grand River Drive SE, and Findlay Cemetery at the intersection of 2 Mile Road NE and Cramton Avenue NE northeast of the village. Both are documented in Find a Grave records and on township maps; the Ada Cemetery contains the older village burials, while Findlay sits on a rural dirt-road intersection surrounded by farmland and small woodlots.
The Ada Witch legend, on which the modern fame of either cemetery rests, is geographically tied to Findlay Cemetery and the surrounding fields along Honey Creek Avenue. Shadowlands and other ghost-folklore collections often refer loosely to the Ada Cemetery, the name of the township, or simply the cemetery on 2 Mile, which has produced enduring confusion in published accounts. Researchers and reporters who have followed the legend at the level of land records and burial registers have generally placed it at Findlay.
In 2013, researcher Nicole Bray, working on her book Ghosts of Grand Rapids, identified the grave most often associated with the Ada Witch legend as that of Sarah McMillan, who died of typhoid fever in 1870 at the age of twenty-nine. The grave had been damaged by years of legend-tripping. The historical record contains no evidence that McMillan was murdered, that she was involved in an extramarital affair, or that any double-killing of the kind described in the folklore took place in the area.
Sources
Local tradition holds that the Ada Witch walks the rural cemeteries and fields northeast of Grand Rapids on full-moon nights, dressed in a long pale gown consistent with late-nineteenth-century mourning clothing. The story published by Gary Eberle in 1982 describes a woman killed by her husband in a field after he followed her to a meeting with another man; the husband and the other man are said to have died in the struggle. Witnesses report a bluish mist or a woman walking through the fields between Findlay Cemetery, Seidman Park, and the small woodlot along Honey Creek Avenue.
Reported phenomena collected across decades of local retelling include a soft greenish-blue mist and orbs, footsteps in dry leaves where no one is walking, the sound of a woman weeping, the sound of two men arguing and a brief crying out, and reports of being touched on the shoulder or the arm with no one present. Visitors most often report these phenomena at Findlay Cemetery on 2 Mile Road, but accounts also surface at the Ada Cemetery proper and in the woods of Seidman Park, two miles south.
The story gained a second life during the late-1990s ghost-tourism revival that followed the release of The Blair Witch Project. Local journalists and a generation of teenagers turned the cemetery into a regular legend-tripping destination, to the point that the headstone associated with the legend has been repeatedly damaged. In 2013, Nicole Bray identified that headstone as belonging to Sarah McMillan, who died of typhoid fever in 1870, not of foul play. Bray's reporting has not displaced the legend among local visitors, but it has clarified the documentary record.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
A small township cemetery in rural Ada, Michigan. Visitors come primarily to walk the grounds in connection with the regional Ada Witch folklore, which is in fact centered on the nearby Findlay Cemetery on 2 Mile Road. Combine with a stop at Seidman Park.
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