Pioneer Cemetery at Peninsula State Park

Campers at Peninsula State Park hear a child laughing in the woods near Pioneer Cemetery, where six-year-old Huey Melvin was buried after dying of tetanus in 1905. A park ranger reported seeing the boy near Eagle Bluff Lighthouse, and a family of regular campers left toys at his grave throughout the 1990s.

Huey Melvin's white headstone features a carved lamb, and it sits in a lonely corner of Pioneer Cemetery, away from the Thorp and Claflin family plots that dominate the grounds. Born December 1898, dead of tetanus by summer 1905. He was six years old.

Pioneer Cemetery is tucked into the woods near Peninsula State Park's main road in Door County, accessible by a bike path that visitors describe as notoriously hard to find. The cemetery predates the park, holding the remains of early settlers who worked the land before tourists discovered the bluffs and shoreline of Fish Creek.

Huey's story would be an ordinary tragedy except for the laughter. Campers staying near the cemetery have heard children playing in the woods after dark. The sound is described as playful, not frightening: a child's voice, giggling, moving between the trees. At least one park ranger has reported seeing a small boy near the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse, about a mile from the cemetery. In life, the lighthouse trail was apparently one of Huey's favorite walks.

In 2019, paranormal investigators Tobias and Emily Wayland brought a spirit box to the grave. The device cycled through radio frequencies and picked up what sounded like responses. When asked about his favorite game, the answer came back: "Hide and seek." When asked how he felt, a different, deeper voice said "Pain" and "Stop it," which the Waylands interpreted as a second presence near the grave.

Take the spirit box evidence with a grain of salt. Radio frequency scanning picks up fragments of actual broadcasts, and human brains are excellent at hearing words in noise. But the Waylands' account matches the older, unrelated reports from campers and the ranger sighting. Something about this spot produces the same story across different decades and different visitors.

Door County has a full roster of ghost tourism, from the Sherwood Point Lighthouse to the old Kilgore House near Egg Harbor. Most of those stories involve adults and grief and violence. Huey Melvin's is different. A child who liked to hike, who died of an infection that antibiotics would have cured a few decades later, whose grave collects small gifts from strangers. The laughter in the woods is probably wind through the canopy. But people keep hearing it as a child who wants to play.