Michigan's Oldest Documented Ongoing Haunting
11335 Dice Rd, Freeland, MI 48623
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public rural cemetery.
Access
Limited Access
Gravel and grass; uneven cemetery ground, rural road access
Equipment
Photos OK
Dice Road cuts through a rural section of Saginaw County's Richfield Township, running between the communities of Saginaw and Midland. The cemetery sits along this road, between N. Hemlock and Fehn roads, roughly 30 miles west of Saginaw.
Anna Rhodes arrived in America carrying the kind of biographical weight that tends to compress into folklore over time. As a child in Italy, her father attempted to burn down their home. She was the only family member to survive. She came to the United States with her aunt and eventually settled in Saginaw, where she befriended an indigenous boy named Dark Hawk. As she grew older, she fell in love with and married Jonathan Millerton, a man employed in the regional lumber trade who traveled the Great Lakes for his work.
Millerton's absences left Anna isolated. During one of his extended trips, Dark Hawk — who had harbored feelings for Anna throughout their friendship — assaulted her repeatedly. The combination of those assaults, the recurring nightmares from her childhood fire, and the violence she witnessed against Native American women at the hands of lumbermen overwhelmed her. She died by suicide at a young age and was buried in the Dice Road Cemetery.
The Michigan Historical Research Foundation for Paranormal Activity, using Anna's personal journal as a primary source, identified her as the oldest documented ghost still active in Michigan — a characterization that has since become part of the location's public identity.
Sources
The figure seen at the Dice Road Cemetery is described consistently across accounts spanning nearly two centuries. Those who report seeing her describe a translucent form with a light blue or pinkish cast, occasionally described as white. She moves through the cemetery and the surrounding woods without apparent awareness of those observing her. She does not interact with visitors, does not appear startled, and does not vanish dramatically. She simply moves through a landscape she seems to recognize as her own.
The Michigan Historical Research Foundation for Paranormal Activity investigated the account and used Anna's personal journal to reconstruct her history, ultimately naming her Michigan's oldest known active apparition. The designation is based on the continuity of sightings dating to 1830 — not a single dramatic appearance, but an account that has persisted across generations of local witnesses.
The folkloric reading of Anna's behavior is that she is waiting for Millerton to return from the Great Lakes. Whether that reading reflects something literal or represents the community's way of processing a young woman's isolation and death is left to the visitor. The cemetery itself is a small rural ground in a flat agricultural landscape, unremarkable except for its age and this particular account. Dice Road is often cited as Michigan's most haunted rural corridor, with additional reported phenomena at other points along its length.
Notable Entities
Walk the rural Richfield Township cemetery located between N. Hemlock and Fehn roads, approximately 30 minutes west of Saginaw. The apparition of Anna Rhodes Millerton has been reported wandering the grounds and adjacent woods since 1830 — the longest-documented ongoing apparition account in Michigan according to state paranormal investigators.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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