Midwest Vertical Journal

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Midwest Vertical Journal

Stories and photo collections celebrating the people, places, and adventures of the Midwest outdoors.

10/31/2026

Happy Halloween! For the Haunted Midwest finale, I have to include my hometown legend, the Ada Witch. She's West Michigan's best-known ghost story. A married woman meets her lover in the woods near what’s now Seidman Park; her husband follows, and she never comes home. For decades, people have reported a woman in white along Honey Creek Road, near Findlay Cemetery, and in the middle of Bailey Drive.

As a teenager, I went out to Seidman looking for her with my friends and didn’t find a woman in white, but we did see something in the trees that we still can’t explain.

Read the full story on Substack https://midwestverticaljournal.substack.com/ or at the link in bio.

Thanks for taking a trip into the spooky forest this October. Have a safe and happy Halloween!

10/29/2026

Most visit to see the famous haunted cemetery, but the strangest stories come from the surrounding woods.

Rubio Woods is a forest preserve in Chicago’s southwest suburbs, offering picnic areas, birdwatching, and a 9.4-mile loop along Tinley Creek. It’s also home to Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, often called America's most haunted cemetery.

Long before the ghost stories, this was a pioneer settlement. Then the railroad bypassed it, the road moved, and the forest reclaimed it. People who walk the old road to the cemetery say they hear footsteps in the woods beside them. Some have seen lights moving through the trees. People have described a white farmhouse that shrinks and vanishes as they walk toward it. And what's a Chicago story without a little mob activity?

Read the full story at https://midwestverticaljournal.substack.com or the link in bio.

10/17/2026

Next up in the Haunted Midwest series, which I'm having entirely too much fun researching and writing, are the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior.

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is known for its sandstone sea caves, which you can view by kayak or boat cruise, sandy beaches, hiking, camping in one of 18 island campgrounds, and more lighthouses than anywhere else in the National Park System.

But if you're looking for a ghost story, you’ll come up short. No one has ever documented one. Instead, the islands hold stories of indigenous people, loggers, quarry workers, lighthouse keepers, and sailors who came and went, and of the hard life and death in such a harsh, isolated place. There are places that give even the most skeptical a chill. Maybe energy survives in a place, and some of us can still feel it.

On Basswood Island, a quarryman’s wife died on the ice one Christmas Eve. On Hermit Island, a recluse was found dead in his cabin and his fortune was never found. Off Long Island, three sailors froze in a schooner’s rigging within sight of shore, and on Devils Island, which the Ojibwe named Bad Spirit Island, the sea caves groan when the surf rolls in.

Read the full story, including where to look for yourself > https://midwestverticaljournal.substack.com

Have a story from the Lake Superior shore? Share it in the comments or send it my way at www.midwestvertical.co. Haunted Midwest No. 3 is coming next week.

10/10/2026

This October, I’m combining two things I love: my curiosity about places and my soft spot for lore and the paranormal. I’m featuring one of the Midwest’s haunted lands. First up is the Manistee National Forest and the Dogman.

The Manistee Huron National Forest is half a million acres of pine, river, and dunes. Logging stripped this land by the late 1800s. After the forest was given national protection in 1938, Civilian Conservation Corps crews replanted it by hand.

People come for the 20-mile Manistee River Loop, the Big M trail, the Nordhouse Dunes, and paddling and fishing on its Wild and Scenic rivers.

But when the sun goes down, beware. If you hear a howl out there, it may not be a coyote. And if you see something black, up on its hind legs, it may not be a bear.

People have reported the Dogman across Michigan's western Lower Peninsula for decades, and the lore says it returns every ten years, in years ending in 7. Next year is 2027.

The most recent account comes from a trucker who says one ran alongside his truck on a forest road, and that he shot it. Months later, he says, federal agents called it “one of our assets.” Rumors link the dogman/government-asset story to an abandoned airfield near Reed City, Michigan.

The real twist is that the legend as we know it began with an April Fools’ song on a Traverse City radio station in 1987. Then the phones started ringing, with listeners sharing their own encounters with the infamous Dogman.

Full story at https://midwestverticaljournal.substack.com/p/haunted-midwest-no-1-manistee-national

Have a strange story from the Michigan woods? Drop it in the comments or send a message at midwestvertical.co. Haunted Midwest No. 2 is coming next week.

09/27/2026

I finished the 10k at the top of the ski hill at sunset, then watched the headlamps flicker on as the 100 and 50 milers continued to climb through the night under a full moon. The Midwest Everest 100-mile distance requires 152 loops of the ski hill for an over 29,029ft elevation gain. There is also a 50 mile (76 loops), 20k, 10k, and, new this year, Summer Everest option.

The community and camaraderie matches the determination of the athletes. There are people who come back year after year, those making their first attempts, and others who travel for the experience. On the 10k course I met people from Illinois and Kentucky.

Whether you're participating or cheering, the energy is hard to explain. To say it's inspiring feels cliche. It captures the Midwest spirit better than any event I've been a part of. The determination and grit to get it done, to see the potential of our outdoor resources, gratitude for weather that cooperates, knowing full well that it wouldn't change a thing.

Elizabeth Roersma captured the heart of this event in her article
https://midwestvertical.co/midwest-everest/

Congrats to all the athletes, and a big thank you to the team and volunteers at West Michigan Wh***ey Rollers. See you next September!

Midwest Everest/Wicked Worm
Cannonsburg

07/31/2026

Turns out, Lake Michigan has been playing hide-and-seek with its rocks for 10,000 years. 🌊

Read the full article on Substack: https://midwestverticaljournal.substack.com/

06/24/2026

1976-1977

05/05/2026

A lunch break done right. 🌲🌳

There are over 30 natural surface hiking trails in the Grand Rapids area and more than two dozen natural areas within a 10-minute drive from downtown.

04/15/2026

Daytime highs over 60, nighttime temps hovering right around 40, and add in some spring rain. Time to take a hike and keep an eye out for morels. There is a lot of lore surrounding the search for the prized mushrooms (fun fact - they're technically a fungus). 🍄 Good luck getting anyone to share their morel secrets.

I went on the hunt last spring. Here's what I learned about a slow walk through the forest and the search for the elusive morel > https://midwestvertical.co/the-elusive-morel/

04/06/2026

Had to take one more trip north for a final few spins on the orange chair. 🧡

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Grand Rapids, MI
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