Haunted La Porte County, Indiana: What's Real and What's Legend (Documentary)

A lighthouse keeper who, people say, never left. A former congressman who sat in the dark and heard a drum that, he said, no one was playing. A marker for 499 unknown persons. A country chapel that burned, twice. And in 1905, a newspaper story about a man with no head, flagging down a train. These are the ghost stories of La Porte County, Indiana, and the true history behind them: what the records show, what's legend, and what no one can prove. A La Porte Weather Now documentary. Narrated by a computer voice. The photos, postcards, maps, book pages and newspaper pages are real ones, most of them more than a century old. Maps and title cards were drawn for the film. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:01 1. The Door (La Porte County · 1832) 2:51 2. The Keeper (Michigan City · 1861 – 1904) 6:21 3. Mourning (The Barker Mansion · 1886 – 1910) 7:46 4. The Spirit Rooms (La Porte · the 1850s) 10:35 5. Unknown Persons (Pine Lake and Patton Cemeteries) 12:18 6. The Chapel (Posey Chapel · Galena Township) 14:41 7. The Flagman (Flaherty's Siding · 1905) 17:05 8. Victory City (Kingsbury · 1940 – 1960) 18:59 The Light on the Pier (Today) IF YOU GO Old Lighthouse Museum, 100 Heisman Harbor Rd., Michigan City: Wed.-Sun., 1-4 p.m. Central, through Oct. 31 (adults $10): https://www.mchistorical.org/visit Barker Mansion, 631 Washington St., Michigan City: October candlelight tours on Victorian superstitions (6 p.m., $25; dates on its events page). In the museum's words, "This is not a haunted house, paranormal investigation, or ghost tour." https://barkermansion.org/ La Porte County Historical Society Museum, 2405 Indiana Ave., La Porte: https://laportecountyhistory.org/ Kingsbury Fish & Wildlife Area, 5344 S. Hupp Rd.: free and open daily; wear orange in hunting season. The cemeteries are active and belong to the families: go by day and be respectful. Patton Cemetery was damaged in the Aug. 11, 2026 derecho, so check before you go. Stay off railroad tracks and private land. SOURCES Harriet Colfax: the National Park Service; Hoosier State Chronicles; The Keeper's Log (1987); the Michigan City Historical Society The Barker family: the Barker Mansion and Trinity Episcopal Church markers; newspapers of December 1910 Cathcart's Spirit Room: Charles Cathcart's own account, in Emma Hardinge's Modern American Spiritualism (1870); The Spiritualist Register for 1859; the Indiana Historical Bureau Posey Chapel: Jasper Packard's History of La Porte County (1876); the 1862 map of LaPorte County (Library of Congress); DePauw University's archives of Indiana Methodism The headless ghost: The Virginia Enterprise (Minnesota, July 7, 1905); the Muncie Evening Press (July 31, 1905, via the Indiana Historical Bureau); the Richmond Planet, the New Haven Morning Journal and Courier and the Barbour County Index (August 1905). The old newspapers are from the Library of Congress Kingsbury: "Arsenals of Democracy" (about 1941); WKVI; the Towne Post; Places That Were; Indiana DNR Also: the La Porte Herald-Dispatch (2011, 2020); Lakeland Boating (2026); Find a Grave; the La Porte County Historical Society; the National Weather Service; the Michigan City Public Library Every source and picture, with links: https://github.com/ScoopAndDude/lapor... Where sources disagree, the film says so. The 1905 papers call the place Flaherity's Siding, Flaherty's Siding and Flaherty station, on the Lake Erie railway near La Porte. If you know where it was, tell us in the comments. Correction: the film captions three 1909 séance photos (Bain News Service, Library of Congress) "A seance in New York." They're from a séance at Baron von Erhardt's, which a 1909 newspaper report placed in Rome. PICTURES Steve Shook, CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/): 11 photos and postcards Kevin Dooley, CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/): LaPorte, Indiana 2011 Rusted door; LaPorte, Indiana 2011 Town Hall Jjegers at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/): OldMichiganCityLight Russell Sekeet, CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/): Michigan City lighthouse Bohao Zhao, CC BY 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/): Barker Civic Center Michigan City - panoramio Newspaper pages: public domain, from the Library of Congress (Chronicling America) David Wilson, CC BY 2.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/): 19681229 28 South Shore Line, Michigan City, Indiana Public domain and CC0: 36 photos, drawings, maps and book pages from Wikimedia Commons, the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress Full list with titles and links: https://github.com/ScoopAndDude/lapor... Music and sound were written for this video. #LaPorte #MichiganCity #Indiana #Haunted #GhostStories #History #Documentary