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CHAPTER 3

Camp Ticonderoga

TROY

I FIRST DISCOVERED CAMP TICONDEROGA a decade or so ago. At the time, I was waiting tables at a little Coney Island restaurant in Royal Oak, and, like most waitresses, I kept tabs on my regular customers—their names, their usual order, where they worked, etc. That’s how I met S. (I haven’t seen him in years, so I couldn’t ask him if it was all right to use his name.) It was pretty obvious what S. did for a living the first time he came in wearing a chef’s coat and checked pants, so I asked him where he worked.

“Camp Ticonderoga,” he told me.

“I have friends who eat there all the time. They told me it’s haunted.”

I hadn’t actually taken my friends seriously, but S. looked me dead in the eye and said, “Yeah, that’s Hannah. Everybody at Camp Ti knows her.”

I didn’t believe S. any more than I believed my friends. “Come on, you really expect me to believe your workplace is haunted?” Surely, S. and his coworkers were mistaking the sounds of an old building settling for the sounds of ghosts. But S. assured me that he didn’t believe in ghosts either before he started working there.

It didn’t take long before he changed his mind, however. “Lights flicker on and off all the time, and I swear the elevator has a mind of its own,” he told me. “The elevator door opens and shuts when no one is even near it, let alone in it. Sometimes other doors slam shut, and dishes fall off the shelves in the kitchen,” he added.

Needless to say, I was intrigued, so I decided to check it out—besides, the food was supposed to be pretty good, so at worst, I’d be disappointed in the ghost but get a good meal.

On my next day off, I drove up Rochester Road and arrived at the sprawling old farmhouse-turned-restaurant a little before the dinner rush. As soon as I was settled at a table, I asked my waitress if the place was really haunted. “Oh, yes, absolutely.” She told me the same things my friend the chef had, adding that Hannah had lived in the house around the turn of the century. The story was that she hanged herself from the rafters in one of the bedrooms—that area is now a part of the upstairs dining room. I was glad I was on the main floor.

“Why did she kill herself?” I asked.

“I don’t think anyone knows.”

I didn’t think much about Camp Ti or Hannah again until I started writing about Michigan’s haunted places and decided that it was past time to revisit the restaurant.

The building was originally a farmhouse that belonged to Elizabeth and Henry Blount and was built in the early 1820s, just after the city of Troy was settled. Elizabeth and Henry raised seven children in the large two-story home and eventually passed the property down to their grandsons, Harry and Frank. The Blount family continued to live in the home until May 13, 1924, when the farm was sold and ultimately developed into the Sylvan Glen Golf Course. The developers turned the old farmhouse into a restaurant. It has had many different names over the decades, including the Double Eagle, the Wooden Horse, and the Shark Creek Inn. In 1996, it became Camp Ticonderoga—or Camp Ti, for short.

According to their website, the restaurant is “an upscale, yet rustic, bar and grill … Camp Ti boasts a comfortable, inviting Adirondack atmosphere….” That description doesn’t really do justice to the rugged log-cabin interior with its three huge stone fireplaces, antler chandeliers, and mounted hunting trophies on the walls. My favorite part of the décor is right inside the door, where you’ll find Camp Ti’s “dog wall.” The owners are self-avowed “dog people” and love to have their customers bring in pictures of their canine companions. Once a month a “mutt of the month” is chosen and the lucky dog gets a doggy bag filled with goodies from the kitchen.

For its human clientele, Camp Ti serves up a variety of menu options, ranging from salads and homemade soups to Black Angus steak and specials such as traditional shepherd’s pie, “buffaloaf” (buffalo meatloaf), and venison stew. Throughout the year, Camp Ti hosts a number of themed parties, including its annual “beach bash” in March. Guests are encouraged to wear their favorite Hawaiian shirt and play on an artificial beach. Anyone who lives in Michigan knows that by March, we’re ready for a little “sun and sand,” even if we have to create it ourselves.

I could have used some sun and sand myself, on the cold, snowy winter day I chose to return to Camp Ticonderoga, on my hunt for more stories about Hannah. I went in for lunch and got a quiet table overlooking the golf course. And it was just my luck—I got the one waitress who was even more skeptical than I am about the paranormal. I told her about the book I was writing and asked her about Hannah. Her response was an almost apologetic confession: “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

I asked her if she would mind explaining why she felt that way. “I’m not out to prove or disprove anything,” I promised. “I’m just gathering peoples’ stories. It might make a good balance to hear from someone who doesn’t believe this place is haunted.”

“It’s an old building,” my waitress reminded me. “So if the lights flicker I figure it’s just the wiring. The elevators are old too, so if the doors open and shut unexpectedly, it’s just a mechanical thing. I’ve never felt creeped out anywhere in the restaurant. People are always making something out of nothing, you know?”

Fair enough, but I still hoped to talk to someone about Hannah—after all, I had already met several people who were convinced she still haunted Camp Ti. My server was happy to help out by introducing me to the manager on duty. The restaurant was starting to get a little busy by then, so I exchanged business cards with the manager and arranged to come back another time. I was put in touch with assistant manager, Christy Hardy, who, I was told, had been at Camp Ti for about ten years and was something of an expert when it came to Hannah. She had also had a few personal experiences with Hannah—and apparently some other ghosts as well.

Christy met me the following Sunday afternoon—she was very sweet and quite happy to give me a few minutes of her time. After getting us each a glass of soda, she settled us at a quiet table near the second bar, toward the back of the restaurant so we could talk. I explained my book and asked her what she could tell me about Camp Ticonderoga’s ghosts.

“When I first started here, I remember walking up the stairs to the second floor and seeing a man sitting at a table, near the staircase. I thought it was a little odd, as no one was supposed to be up there; that part of the dining room was closed. He was dressed kind of funny too, in a vintage suit, like something you’d have seen a hundred years ago, and he was wearing a top hat. And then suddenly, he was gone.” She explained that she was a little freaked out, but then another manager said she had seen the same man sitting there on a different occasion. “We had another manager quit, after just a couple of days,” she added. “I don’t know why, but …” she shrugged, leaving it open-ended.

The man in the top hat wasn’t the only ghost the staff has reported seeing—or experiencing in other ways.

Christy told me about a server who had napkin-wrapped silverware roll right off the table upstairs. “She didn’t think too much of it at first, she just picked it up and put a clean roll in its place. That rolled off the table too. It happened twice more, really freaking her out. There are several people who won’t go upstairs by themselves.”

Christy went on, “Some people claim to have been touched, but when they turn to see who’s there, there isn’t anyone nearby. And a lot of people have experienced cold spots upstairs. It’s like you’ll be walking along and suddenly get freezing cold for no reason.” She also said that several people, both guests and staff, have reported hearing footsteps on the staircase leading up to the second floor. “But when they turn around, there’s no one there. People hear children’s voices too. And we have a ghost cat,” she added, telling me how numerous people have reported hearing it meowing, especially when there aren’t many customers around and the restaurant is quiet.

“One day I heard it and I was so sure it was a real cat that had gotten stuck up in the attic, I asked one of the cooks to go check it out. When he came down, he said that there was no cat. There wasn’t any evidence that any kind of animal had gotten in recently, either.”

I had to admit, it seemed like there was an awful lot of seemingly supernatural activity at Camp Ticonderoga. It was little wonder the place had been investigated by so many paranormal investigators.

Christy explained to me that she’s not really afraid of the ghosts, but sometimes locking up alone at night is a little nerve-wracking. She said she preferred to turn the lights off in the back first and then make her way toward the front door, so that the last lights to go off are the ones nearest the doors. She also repeated the story I’d heard before about how sometimes doors around the restaurant seem to open and shut by themselves. “One night it happened to me after closing, and I kept calling ‘who’s there?’ but no one answered. No one was here.”

There was another night, Christy told me, when she locked up and headed toward her car in the parking lot. She chanced to turn around and glance back at the building and swore that she saw a pair of blue glowing eyes watching her in the window. “Those windows there, behind the bar,” she told me, pointing to the windows behind the main bar area. She didn’t go back in to investigate. I wasn’t sure I blamed her; I doubt I would have gone back in, either.