Tipton, Mich. - Every year, thousands of Catholics travel to Italy to worship at the Vatican. Muslims are urged to journey to Mecca at least once in their lifetime. Now, the faithful are flocking to an MSU garden located on Pentecost Highway to experience divine intervention.
Visitors of MSU's Hidden Lake Gardens can view a 15-foot Weeping Norway Spruce, complete with bushy "wings" and a "halo" made of needles. Some believe the spruce resembles an angel.
"We saw it and we were like, 'Oh my God'," said Dennis Groh, referring to a day he said he was visited by a holy presence. "This is just wonderful if you believe people have the ability to send you a message from beyond the grave."
On that recent sunny June day, Groh and some friends traveled to Hidden Lake Gardens - a 756-acre garden in Tipton that is owned by MSU and located about 70 miles south of the main campus.
The tree sits solitary atop a hill in the gardens. Its hill elevates the spruce higher than all its neighboring vegetation, as sun hits its tiny needles. Next to the tree sits a small bench for onlookers to sit and look at the garden's conifer collection, which rests in the valley.
Groh's friend, Justin Harper, of Moline, Ill., donated a collection of about 500 conifer trees to the garden in 1981. His wife, Anna, died from cancer in April.
"A neighbor suggested we spread her remains in front of Anna's favorite tree," Harper said. "We did it and then just sat down and cried."
As Groh began to take a few pictures of the tree where the remains were spread, he said he felt a tap on his shoulder.
"I looked to my left, the shoulder I felt the tap on, because I was so busy taking shots I thought I was in someone's way," Groh said. "When I turned, no one was there, but I just saw this image."
The image Groh saw was the spruce, standing 15 feet tall, with four-foot "wings" hanging at its side. The top of the tree sprouted a few branches that had grown to form a circle, or "halo." Groh said it looked like an angel and he believes it was a sign from Anna Harper.
"It could have really been his wife tapping me on the shoulder," Groh said. "I'm not a crackpot, but this experience makes me susceptible to thinking she was there."
The spruce, which Harper believes now guards Hidden Lake Gardens, is one of 24 variations of the tree grown throughout the world. Jack Wikle, the garden's bonsai master, said he has not trimmed the tree into an angel shape, but the type of tree is known to grow in patterns.
"There is variability in the patterns, but people have been known to see shapes and animals in these trees," Wikle said.
For instance, Harper said his wife's favorite tree, another form of weeping spruce, looks like an elephant - complete with ears and a trunk.
"She could see things in these trees," said Harper, an internationally recognized conifer expert. "With that group of trees you do have some strange and bizarre forms."
Wikle, who graduated from MSU in 1955 and has worked at Hidden Lake Gardens since 1968, said the "angel" tree's lineage has been traced to Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University.
The "halo," a shoot of one branch off the tree's top, has about 14 sprouts hanging off it, which are circular.
The tree is one of thousands that grow in the garden, which is visited by about 45,000 people annually, said Gerry Donaldson, a 1976 MSU graduate and the garden's foreman.
