This is pure legend at its finest because there’s nothing haunted about some shoes in a tree. But try telling that to someone who claims their car wouldn’t start when near a shoe tree and other bizarre tales told about the shoe trees. Regardless, this legend is excellent and does have that wonderful creepiness we all love in a good story.
I was driving up north with a co-worker for a dreaded week long library workshop in Petoskey when I spotted my first shoe tree. I was genuinely started by it as we zipped past the monstrosity to the left of us on US 131. I whipped my head backwards to watch the tree shrink away as we drove on. I distinctly remember saying, “What the hell was that?” to my co-worker. She just shrugged and said she’d seen it before driving up north and it was just a tree covered in shoes.
The boring lectures on library cataloging and other workshops didn’t leave me entirely brain dead. I still remembered the strange tree I had seen and looked it up right away as soon as I got home and discovered the legend of the shoe trees.
There’s a few variations floating around, but my favorite and the one most heard about says back in the day, maybe the early 1900’s, a sick and cruel man began murdering kids. After he disposed of the bodies, he would throw their tiny shoes up into a tree. Eventually, the man was caught and people found the tree, ornamented with the dangling shoes of their dead children. Supposedly, this legend sprang forth from a pair of children’s antique shoes found in a tree.
Finding Shoe Trees in Michigan
Here’s a list of some of the known Shoe Trees around the state. If you know of one that isn’t listed here, send us an email and better yet, if you can get a picture, sendthat too!
Photo sent to us by Clyde. This is the Shoe Tree by St. Helen.
- Kalkaska which is east of Traverse City along M 131
- M-33 Near Comins in Oscoda County
- Sheldon which is east of Ann Arbor
- St. Helen
- Coopersville – This is a homegrown shoe tree in a front yard. I drive home this way a lot and happened to notice it one day.
- Novi/Walled Lake - We're not sure if this shoe tree is total legend or if there was actually a shoe tree here at some point. If you know for sure, send us an email. Read below for the details on this legend.
- Salem - A post found on Roadsideamerica.com noted that there is a shoe tree on Six Mile Rd. Apparently, the tree brances with shoes had been cut down, but as of 12/6/2008, pictures showed the shoe tree was back. (NEW Location!)
The Walled Lake Shoe Tree and the Legend of the Walled Lake Child Killer
This seems to be the gist of the urban legend. This was an anonymous posting from the website www.shadowlands.net.
Walled Lake - Shoe Tree - The shoe tree was on Thirteen Mile Rd. in Novi a quarter mile from Walled Lake and on the site of the old Walled Lake amusement park. A child killer (the infamous Walled Lake Child Killer) kidnapped the children from the park and buried their bodies in the nearby field around the tree. He threw their shoes into the tree. When the many dangling shoes were investigated, the bodies were found (but the killer never was). If you went to the field at night, you could see and hear the clumps of tall grass moving around you, and you could hear the children cry for their mothers! Witnesses report very distinct, audible cries. The cries were not distant but from just a few feet away. As you walked to where the cries came from, they seemed to move around. Not moving farther away, just around. Sometimes back to where you were just standing. Just walking by the field would make your hair stand on end. The land was developed within the past couple of years. A subdivision now stands on this land. But the field was on the south side of Thirteen Mile Rd., between Meadowbrook Rd. and Decker. The amusement park was later closed down. Not because of the murders but because it rested on an old Indian burial ground (many in the area). It was where Novi Rd., 13 Mile Rd., and Southlake Dr. all meet, right on the lake.
The Walled Lake Public Library made this statement on their website after getting numerous enquiries about this eerie tree and the murders associated with it.
A Local Urban Legend : The Walled Lake Child Killer & the Shoe Tree
Stories about "shoe trees" abound throughout the land, and thanks to the Internet, one particular shoe-tree yarn has taken root in Walled Lake.
Several people have come to the library seeking more information about the "Walled Lake child killer," but thankfully, this "shoe tree" story is simply not true. It perhaps was inspired by the still-unsolved murders of four children that took place in Oakland County over a 13-month period in 1976-77. In those cases, none of the children were from Walled Lake, and the bodies were found in Livonia, Franklin Village, Troy, and Southfield.
3/19/2005 Posted by the Library staff
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Written by Amberrose Hammond
- Sources
- www.walledlakelibrary.org
- www.shadowlands.net