Urban Development In Detroit May Be Built On Forgotten Graves

Detroit has a lot of interesting history to it, but one forgotten bit of information is that one of its most popular sites was built on top of a cemetery where there are rumored to still be bodies buried beneath the streets.

It’s hard to imagine Detroit as anything other than the concrete jungle that it is today, but at one point, going back to the early 1800s, the city must have looked completely different.

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There were lots of early graves and graveyards that needed to be moved to make way for new foundations, as the Facebook page Footsteps to Your Past recalled:

Your favorite place in Detroit just may have bones buried under it from the early days. Heidi Christein of the Archdiocese of Detroit say, “There are people” under Congress, possibly under Jefferson Avenue. The truth is, bodies were scattered around Fort Pontchartrain at Woodward and Griswold, also Woodward and Larned.

They go on to talk about why the graveyard had to be moved, and where there are apparently bodies still buried underneath in one of Detroit's most popular places:

1834, the city purchased another piece of land at Russell and Gratiot, the Russell Street Cemetery, it closed in 1859. The city alleged 45 hundred graves were moved to Elmwood and Mt. Elliott Cemetery to make room for Eastern Market. Yes, it is built on the site of one of Detroit's original graveyards.

Have you ever been to the Eastern Market and gotten strange feelings or experienced something otherworldly? This may just explain why.

Do you think there are bodies buried beneath the streets of Detroit that we don't know about?