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Bizarre Belvidere: Blood’s Point demystified
COURTESY PHOTO Belvidere Republican
Blood’s Point Cemetery main entrance.
For years, Blood’s Point Road and Cemetery have been the subjects of sinister folk tales. Everything from vanishing vehicles, to ghost children, to witch hexes, to murder have been claimed about the unfortunately named locale.
Despite the protests of longtime residents, people can’t help but speculate about potential hauntings and grisly accidents. The myths of Blood’s Point have spread so far that the road has made its way onto multiple online lists of haunted roads, and is frequently visited by paranormal investigators.
As a result, crowds gather to the cemetery or drive up and down the road testing out their favorite fables. At one point, perhaps this was all in good fun, but a few bad apples have certainly spoiled the bunch. For years now, Blood’s Point Road and Cemetery have been patrolled by police every Halloween just to try to curb vandalism.
The cemetery in particular has suffered due to littering and even grave defacement. It’s truly a shame for such a historic cemetery to be treated such a way, especially because of some old ghost stories.
As far as anyone can tell, the myths of Blood’s Point seem to start with its provocative name. As far back as 1946, there was enough confusion about the name to warrant an article in the Daily Republican addressing it. Some Boone County citizens, at the time, seemed to think that it was the sight of some sort of battle, perhaps because of the multiple military graves at the cemetery.
However, there has never been a military conflict of any kind in Boone County. Even during the Blackhawk War, which took place before the county or Belvidere were founded, the army merely passed through the still unsettled area. This event is the namesake for Scott’s Army Trail.
Blood’s Point’s real origin is much more mundane. In 1836, Arthur Blood was the first non-indigenous settler in what would become Flora Township. He owned forested land that came to a point on a larger area of flatland, hence Blood’s Point.
The road was named after his land simply because his was the first home in the area. When the cemetery was established in 1846, the name, Blood’s Point, had already long been adopted as a term for the local community as a whole.
The Blood Family is also the subject of its own myth. There are many versions of the story, but the gist is this. According to rumor, Arthur Blood’s children found a witch conjuring fire under the bridge on Blood’s Point Road. When Arthur found out, he forbade his children from seeing her ever again.
The witch tried to visit the children and, depending on the version of the story, either she was hanged from Blood’s Point Bridge or she hanged Arthur and his children from the bridge. After she died, the land was supposedly cursed with long winters and mysterious fires.
Her curse is sometimes blamed for a “mysterious” fire at the old Shannon schoolhouse, but reports from the Daily Republican show that officials were confident it was an electrical fire. It has also been claimed that a classroom full of children died, trapped in the building. This is simply untrue. No one was even injured in the fire according to newspaper reports.
The Blood’s Point School is sometimes incorrectly recalled as the site of the fire, most likely because that was where Shannon students attended classes after the incident. However, students from Blood’s Point were already attending Belvidere schools by the time of the fire.
As far as the fate of Arthur and the witch goes, there is no record of any hanging ever taking place on Blood’s Point Road, and Arthur Blood didn’t even die in Boone County. Arthur was a true Midwestern pioneer. He settled land, developed it into farmland, and sold it. Rinse and repeat.
Census records show that while he was here in 1840, he was in Lafayette County, WI, by 1850, Green County, WI, by 1860, and Floyd County, IA, by 1870 before finally settling down in Pawnee County, KS, by 1890.
Some of his children may have died young, but not all at once and not even in Boone County. There is no record at all of who the witch of Blood’s Point may have been, let alone her being hanged. Some accounts refer to her as the Beulah. Not only is there no record of a Beulah that would match the time and location of the supposed hanging, there is a separate witch Beulah myth from Rockford. What a coincidence that both Rockford and Blood’s Point had a witch with the exact same name.
The epicenter of the witches curse, Blood’s Point Bridge, of course has its own strange ghost story of course. Supposedly, a bus full of schoolchildren fell off the side of the bridge, killing everyone inside and leaving it haunted by their spirits. There have been many investigations over the years into the validity of this incident.
From Ida staff combing the Daily Republican, to Rockford Library staff searching the Register Star, to an internal investigation of their own archives by the Register Star, no report of any such accident has ever been found. It is virtually impossible that an entire bus full of children falling to their doom wouldn’t be reported in any local newspaper.
Other Blood’s Point myths amount to disappearing cars and ghost dogs, not exactly anything historically verifiable or falsifiable. They’re imaginations running wild on a long, dark road.
What is of historic relevance is Blood’s Point Cemetery itself. Founded in 1846, the cemetery is nearly 180 years old. It entombs the daughter of an American Revolutionary, a veteran of the War of 1812, at least 12 Civil War veterans, a disgraced English noblewoman, a woman who met the Marquis de Lafayette, and the sister-in-law of one of Cornell University’s founders.
Planted at the cemetery was a seedling said to be from the same elm tree that George Washington stood under as he addressed the Continental Army. Blood’s Point Cemetery is a wonderful piece of history, preserved by a dedicated, local community.
There’s one more thing that is just a little bit bizarre about the Blood’s Point myths. Folk tales usually start within a local community, and later outsiders come in to prove or disprove them. At Blood’s Point, the local community repeatedly disproves a rumor spread almost exclusively by outsiders.
Ghost stories can be fun, but there is a limit. When a community has to resort to police surveillance of an old country road, the limit has been reached. Go ahead and take a visit to the cemetery, but go in the daytime. Not because of any ghosts; it’s just easier to see. You will have much more fun visiting the local haunted houses and trails this Halloween!
