A small rural cemetery near South Haven where a stone marked only 'Flora' anchors a local legend that Al Capone's mistress is buried here, accompanied by reports of a white-gowned apparition and a roadside ghost light.
71st Street at 107th Avenue (Casco Township), South Haven, MI 49090
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free rural public cemetery maintained by Casco Township.
Access
Limited Access
Rural cemetery with dirt driveways near the Lake Michigan shoreline
Equipment
Photos OK
McDowell Cemetery — popularly called Hawks Head Cemetery — sits at the corner of 71st Street and 107th Avenue in Casco Township, across from the Casco Township Hall, north of the resort town of South Haven and less than a mile inland from Lake Michigan. Township records list it among Casco's three maintained cemeteries, alongside the Stephenson and Stuller grounds.
Like most small rural cemeteries in this part of southwest Michigan, McDowell served scattered farming and lakeshore families and accumulated little notable recorded history of its own. Its present-day fame is disproportionate to its size and stems from one weathered stone near the middle driveway, inscribed simply 'Flora' — no surname, no dates, nothing else.
That anonymous marker became the seed of a durable local legend, recounted by regional outlets such as 99.1 WFMK and by Michigan paranormal programs, that the grave belongs to a mistress of the Prohibition-era Chicago crime boss Al Capone. Capone is documented to have had connections to Michigan, but no verified record ties him or a mistress named Flora to this cemetery; the identification is folklore rather than established fact, and is treated as such here.
The cemetery remains an active, township-maintained burial ground in a quiet rural setting, of interest to visitors chiefly for the Flora legend and the ghost-light reports associated with it.
Sources
The legend of Hawks Head Cemetery centers on a single anonymous headstone — bearing only the name 'Flora' — and the claim, repeated by regional outlets including 99.1 WFMK and Michigan paranormal programs, that it marks the grave of a mistress of the Prohibition-era crime boss Al Capone. The lack of a surname or dates on the stone has fueled rather than dampened the story, lending it an air of secrecy that fits the bootlegging mythology of the era.
Visitors describe several recurring phenomena. The apparition of a woman in a white, gauzy dress is said to appear near the first two driveways, with chimes reportedly sounding from the back of the cemetery just before she is seen. A dim red light — locally called a 'ghost light' — is described appearing alongside the middle dirt driveway. Some accounts add a tennis-ball-sized red light settling on the Flora stone and unexplained fingerprints found on parked-car windows afterward.
The Al Capone connection should be read as folklore: while Capone did have documented ties to Michigan, no verified evidence links him or a mistress named Flora to this cemetery, and the identification rests entirely on local storytelling around an unmarked grave. The phenomena are presented as reported experiences and regional ghost tradition rather than as established supernatural fact.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Visit the small rural McDowell / Hawks Head Cemetery at 71st Street and 107th Avenue in Casco Township, north of South Haven and less than a mile from Lake Michigan. Seek out the 'Flora' stone tied to the local Al Capone legend, and the reported roadside ghost light.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Decatur, MI
Anderson Cemetery is a small rural burial ground on 36th Street near Swift Lake, in Decatur Township, Van Buren County, roughly halfway between Marcellus and Decatur. Its enduring local notoriety comes from the burial of the Morris family, who were murdered in nearby Charleston in 1879. Charles and Esther Morris and their children were shot and killed by an intruder who then fled on a stolen family horse.
Los Angeles, CA
Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a 62-acre cemetery at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, California, founded in 1899 as Hollywood Cemetery on a 100-acre tract of former farmland. Paramount Pictures' studios occupy 40 acres of the original cemetery property. The cemetery was renamed Hollywood Memorial Park in 1939 and Hollywood Forever in 1998 after a 1990s bankruptcy and revival. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Freeland, MI
The cemetery on Dice Road in Richfield Township, Saginaw County occupies a rural stretch of mid-Michigan between Saginaw and Midland. Anna Rhodes Millerton, whose story is tied to the site, came to America from Italy after surviving an arson attack that killed her family when she was five years old. She settled in Saginaw with her aunt and later married Jonathan Millerton, a lumber worker who sailed the Great Lakes.