This is how I was taught to think of Jesus as I went through Catechism and Sunday School at the St. Paul Lutheran Church in my home town. In my early teen years a brand new statue of Jesus was erected at the main entrance to the Greenwood Cemetery when they updated the entrance on East Barker Ave. The statue looked like the Biblical Jesus, but this was where the comparison ended…as my friends and I soon discovered!
Living a few blocks away from the cemetery and having played there a lot through my childhood, I already knew the cemetery layout very well. Since we did live so close to it and East Barker Ave. was a main drag, we drove past there all the time when going places.
One night as my mother drove us home after we picked up some fast food for dinner we saw it for the first time. They had spot lights on it at night time and the statue was up high on a stone platform. The lights at night made Jesus look inviting and heavenly indeed. We continued on home to eat.
Here’s a picture of the haunted Jesus statue on East Barker Ave.
Laying in bed that night I thought about the time we snuck into the old care takers house as children. The care taker lived in a scary looking house on the premises and us kids were sure that the old man was an evil body snatcher of some kind. He had chased us a few times when he found us running around the cemetery at night and it had petrified us. If we got caught we were sure he would take our bodies and no one would ever hear from us again.
One day we decided to go into his haunted looking house to see for ourselves. (These were the days when people didn’t bother to lock their homes.) It was still light outside and we thought he would be out working on the grounds. Before we got too far inside his creepy home he surprised us by being there. All of a sudden we ran into him and he said; “You shouldn’t be in here!” That’s all we heard as we ran for our lives! He chased us until we got over the fence but we were scared out of our wits and positive he would get us somehow.
As I fell asleep thinking of this and the new Jesus statue I had a nightmare. The old man had been around for a long, long time and wanted things his way. He didn’t want Jesus there. He fought with Jesus and wanted him gone. He couldn’t drive him out or snatch his body (Jesus was too powerful) but he did manage to put an evil spell on him. He turned Jesus into the statue and broke it into little pieces. I woke up with my heart beating fast and felt very scared. I couldn’t sleep well the rest of the night.
The next morning life went on as usual. My brother and I got up and went to school where at lunch I told some girlfriends about my dream. They just laughed at me of course. None of them had ever spent much time in the cemetery and I didn’t hang with these girls when I was younger. I thought to myself, what do they know? I was glad when school was over and I walked home trying to forget all about my dream and the sting of my girlfriend’s making fun of me.
Less then a week after my dream there was an article in the News Dispatch. It said the Jesus statue had been vandalized and that the statue had been chipped on and the nose on the statue had been broke off. They figured that kids had done this but as of yet no one had been caught. I was shocked and felt sick to my stomach. Had my dream somehow come true?
I walked over there to see for myself. The statue wasn’t really in pieces but it was chipped up and the nose was completely gone. I thought it must have been kids myself, although nothing else had been vandalized. Feeling somewhat better I walked back home.
In the mean time the cemetery fixed it and in no time it was back to normal. They never did find out who did it and that was the end of it. I chalked my dream up to just being my vivid imagination acting up and life went on.
Not even a month later they found Jesus chipped up again without his nose. The chips were in the exact same places which was really strange so some of my childhood friends that used to play with me in the cemetery and I got together to talk about it. I told them about my dream and we went to look at the statue. I told them I had walked here to see it the first time and it looked the very same way that time. We all felt a chill go through us like in the old days. We still didn’t know what to think, but were starting to feel that maybe the Jesus statue was haunted.
The statue was fixed again and all was well. This time it stayed fixed until I saw it happened again in the paper. There was a reward for anyone who had information on who was doing it but nobody ever showed up to claim it. I, for one was starting to feel very unsettled about it all.
The cops were keeping an eye on it but it would happen again when they weren’t around. Being a small town we didn’t have enough cops to put someone on watch 24/7 and even the paper pointed out that it seemed to be chipped the same way each time with the nose missing. None of the chipped off pieces were left behind either. Of course the cops thought it was kids, but what kids vandalize the same way every time? I would think they’d get bored and go destroy something else.
I always loved hanging out in this particular cemetery. Of course I have family members resting there but the history of it is so cool! There are parts of it that are so old that the stones are all but worn away. Another part where all the babies (including my brother) who died were buried there. There’s an area they buried unidentified people in and beautiful mausoleum/crypt buildings spread all over the grounds. The statues and gravestones are gorgeous and the landscape is so lush. Still, there is some kind of evil lurking there and my friends and I have felt it.
Every time the statue of Jesus was fixed they found it in the same condition only to have to fix it again. In a small town talk gets around quickly and many people (adults included) felt that the statue was haunted although no one could explain how or why. If it was kids why would they do it again and again? You’d think they’d get tired of it or grow out of it, but no.
The haunted Jesus statue was fixed each time and always ended up the same way. No one could explain why this kept happening and no one was ever caught to blame it on. The statue is still like this to this day and remains a mystery. And what about the evil left to it’s own devices all those years ago?
One thing about Michigan City is that we have always had hauntings in our town, some of which I experienced myself so I know hauntings are for real. If you do a search about hauntings in Michigan City you will find some of these stories in our history about hauntings in certain parts of the city.
My father got murdered in 1990 in his home while he was in the living room on the couch. (The authorities called it a suicide but I know better.) Afterwards I saw him in his house 4 different times. His house is still haunted. But that my friends is another story.
