GREAT GHOSTS OF THE GREAT LAKES
By; Mike Marino
The storm tossed perils of the Great Lakes are well documented and have a watery wealth of paranormal history. Talltales of tallships, fathoms and phantoms, nautical ghosts and ghastly gales. combine to create a hidden treasure of haunted folklore, lying in the spectral depths of Davy Jones' locker!
Sightings of ghostships plying the lakes crewed by the spirits of Har Matey Mariners have been more plentiful than sightings of Elvis or the Loch Ness Monster combined!
The tales began to rise to the surface as early as 1679, when Robert La Salle's wooden ship, the Griffin, pullled a Jimmy Hoffa and vanished without a trace on the stormy waters of Lake Michigan. Today, many shipwrecks later, visitors to the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point on the shores of Michigans Lake Superior, say they can feel the 29 spiritis of the deckhands that went down to the bottom of that lake, along with the twisted wreckage of the giant ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald during an unforgiving November storm in 1975.
Lighthouses, beautiful beckoning beacons, grace the many miles of Michigan's shoreline as though a delicate string of pearls on a nautical necklace. Lights of life, that guide and illuminate the way to harbors of safety to sailors and all the ships at sea. Along with the ships and the sailors, the lights and their keepers have also become lore and legend shrouded in a fogmist cloak of maritime myth and mystery. Amazing apparitions do appear, and there are those that claim that some of those old lights are haunted by the restless spirits of their former caretakers and custodians.
The Great Lakes are a paradox. One moment, they can be calm, tranquil and placid, and within minutes can turn themselves into a terrifying tempest with horrific gale force winds and skyscraper waves, tall, and fierce, a rabid pitbull looking for a helpless vessel and crew to attack and devour. When the lakes are calm, and the waves lap gently on the shores, the water washes over the sand and stones, reaching out gently. The ghost fingers of so many mariners lost. Are they reaching out to shore merely to clamour to dry land from the imprisonment of their watery graves? Perhaps they are trying to warn others of the unpredictable nature and power of the lakes? Or, are they searching for other victims to join them?
You be the judge, as we hoist the mainsail and set off on a haunted voyage of Michigans Great Lakes. We'll drop anchor at the Whitefish Point Shipwreck Museum where it's been said the salty dog spirits of the Edmund Fitzgerald live inside the ships bell. Then we'll set a ghost buster course southward, for the phantasm friendly harbor of Presque Isle and her high spirited, and highly haunted lighthouse just north of Alpena, where many say the beacon is not just haunted, but the spirit is a paranormal prankster just having a little paranautical earthbound fun!
The adventurous French were the first Europeans to navigate the waters, explore the lands and exploit the rich harvest and bounty of the beaver pelt in the Great Lakes region. They ventured deep into unchartered wilderness in a quest to assure the affluent heads of European society that they would be well supplied in the fur fashion style of the day. In addition to conquest of the dam building rodent, the also kept copious notes of their travels and travails and became expert maritime mapmakers in the process. The hidden harbors and protruding peninsula's they found along their birchbark bateau journeys were given jaunty placenames that remain on maps today.
North of Alpena, on Michigans sunrise side is the vacation community of Presque Isle. Named by the French, it means, "almost an island". Today it's much more than a mere island. It's a highly developed, some say overly developed summer community with cottages and summer homes that fan out in all directions like exploding shrapnel. It's a paradise for fishing on Grand Lake and Lake Esau, and hiking along what remains of a dwindling system of hidden trails and paths. Outdoor opportunities abound, but it's main distinction is that it is in geographic possession of one the most magnificent harbors on all five of the Great Lakes.
It's also where I spent my childhood summers fishing, daydreaming, walking through the woods, and sneaking into the graveyard at night, armed only with my imagination and a flashlight to see all the invisible pirates that we were certain were guarding hidden treasure in that field of tombstones and terror! It was a simple time of plaid shirts and knotty pine rusticity. One of the places where I was fortunate to spend a lot of my time was the Old Presque Isle Lighthouse. Little did I realize then that those days of wonder, wander and water, would give way in the future to the appearance of a para-nautical ghost with a whimsical sense of humor!
Construction of the 30 foot tall Old Presque Isle Light, began in 1838 by workcrews from Detroit, in response to an increasing number of steam powered boats and ships that were stopping in the area for wood to refuel their hungry boilers. When completed, she was the Royal Lady of the Lakes and wore her bejewelled beacon proud and high as her royal crown . The whitewashed rubble structure lit up like Broadway and officially began her light powered custodial coast guardian service in 1840.
Commerical shipping times, they were a changin' as Bob Dylan would say, and the old harbor light began to loose it's illuminating luster and soon fell into a state of weathered disrepair. She was soon replaced with the completion of the New Presque Isle Light just a mile down the road at the tip of the peninsula. Taller, more modern and elegant in a Katherine Hepburnesque sort of way, the new beacon was activated in 1871. At the same time the Old Presque Isle Light took it's final bow from the nautical stage, was solemly extinguished and then simply went silent and dark into the night.
The Old Light stood vacant, boarded up. A forlorn mariners memory, caressed only by the winds and waters of Lake Huron, until 1897 when it was sold at auction to a local resident from Alpena. Even then it remained a rotting reminder of days gone by until purchased by Francis Stebbins in 1930, who wanted to rebuild it as a summer home for his family. Francis bought it from his brother Bliss, who ended up with it early in the century to use as a picnic area by guests at his thriving Grand Lake Hotel just down the road.
In the post war years, tourism began to grow like a field of wild morel mushrooms in Northern Michigan, and they were flocking to the area like Canada geese on steroids. The astute Francis Stebbins decided to meet the increased auto tourist demand headon, and so began an extensive retro project on the old light. He eventually opened a museum on the grounds replete with an arsenal of maritime artifacts, including a huge ships bell and old hand cranked foghorn.
In 1965 permission was given to install a light that would be regulated by the Coast Guard so it wouldn't confuse existing maritime traffic. Then in 1969, Francis Stebbins died and his son Jim took over stewardship of the grand old dame of the great old lakes. It was also during this period that the future ghost of Presque Isle Harbor would make his first appearance...as a very much alive, flesh and blood, living and breathing caretaker and tourguide before taking a bow and departing to the other side! George and Lorraine Parris were hired in 1977 by Jim Stebbins to live onsite and to also operate the lighthouse as a museum and center of learning for young and old alike. George, by all accounts had a playful nature and enjoyed blasting the foghorn when you weren't looking just to see you jump out of your skin! He delighted in the telling of grisly ghost stories to the delight of everyone. All these wink of the eye attributes and his pleasing demeanor had them coming back for more every tourist season.
The final curtain came down for George when he dropped dead of a heart attack in 1992. His death, combined with the Darth Vader realities of the hungry needs of the Department of Revenue confirmed that only two things in life are certain...death and taxes. By 1995, due to those insatiable government costs and taxes, Jim Stebbins sold the property to the State of Michigan, and donated the buildings to Presque Isle Township. The light was disconnected, the gears that turned the light were removed by the Coast Guard and normally that would be the end of the story. Except for one thing, George Parris decided to make a return appearance, this time as an affable apparition from the other side!
A young girl visiting the lighthouse walked up into the lantern room, and when she came back down she described seeing a smiling old gentleman up there with Santa Claus white hair and beard and wearing glasses. The caretakers at the time were puzzled as no one else was on the grounds except the little girl and her parents. They decided to show the girl some old photographs in the lighthouse album, and to everyones amazement she pointed out an old photo of George as the man she had met in the lantern room! Other sightings of the protoplasmic prankster were reported but the strangest occurances began in mid-1990's when visitors, this writer included, reported seeing the Presque Isle light activated and moving at night. It had a yellowish cast that moved about and the local media arrived and reported seeing the same thing. The Coast Guard investigated the lighthouse. Their was no power supply to the tower, the gears disconnected and nothing to indicate a logical reason to cause it's relighting, let alone a yellowish cast. Since those original sightings more have been reported, even by the Coast Guard during flyovers of the light in an attempt to solve this maritime mystery. To this day, the Coast Guard simply and classifies it as "an unidentified light". In effect, a beacon equivalent of a UFO!
Is it just as the Coast Guard says, an unitdentified light, or is it really George the Ghost just having a little fun as the Presque Isle Prankster Poltergeist? Only George knows for sure, by George!
The Legend Lives On!
So goes the song "The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot as it hauntingly describes the tempestuous nature of "the big lake they call Gitchigumee". Gitchigumee, aka Lake Superior, was made famous in the story, The Song of Hiawatha. Today, it's nautical notoriety lies in the story of the sinking of the Great Lakes ore carrier, Edmund Fitzgerald. Built in River Rouge, Miichigan, just downriver from the port of Detroit, she was hailed as the largest lake freighter of her time when launched in 1958. Proud and strong, iron and steel, she was the pride of the fleet.
Great Lakes sailors are a hearty breed who take their work seriously, and accept the dangers inherent in sailing on any of the five Great Lakes, especially, Superior, the largest and most dangerous of them all. Gale force hurricane conditions can occur at anytime, making them as frightening as any storm that hits the Atlantic Ocean. The crew of the Fitzgerald took pride in their massive ship, but all the time aware of the perils of the "witch" as storms are called. November of 1975. The Fitzgerald cleared the port of Superior, Wisconsin on this, her last scheduled voyage of the shortening shipping season, before the wicked weather, snow, gales and ice of winter took possesion of the lake. She was loaded with taconite pellets heading across Superior, her final destination was to be in Detroit, just south of Lake Huron. Detroit, the city that thrives on the fuel of industry, and the Edmund Fitzgerald was sailing there to provide her with her industrial strength needs. That night as Mother Nature began to whip up her wicked brew...the legend of the Edmund Fitzgerald began.
The winds began a fierce howl that ripped a pathway to the soul, and the sea's began to rise like a beast from the very gates of Hell. The captain and crew had weathered many storms before, and had been triumphant in battle, but this time the tide had turned, and the odds were not in their favor. The captain ordered all to remain below deck, and frantically made radio Mayday contact.
Communications were kept open and everyone who could hear the back and forth, over and out, was feeling a growning, ominous force of doom penetrate deep into the flesh of their spirits. The static interference grew, just as the gales were screaming their rage. The waves smashed headlong into the hull of the ship. The groans of straining metal soon joined the cacophony of fear. Contact was getting sparse, then impossible as they made a dash for safe harbor at Whitefish Point on the extended tip of Michigans Upper Peninsula. The lake waves rose higher in mounting anger, but the radio waves were now silent and contact with the Fitz was lost...forever.
The mightiest vessel of the Great Lakes had vanished, eaten alive by an insatiable Lake Superior. One by one, lifeboats were spotted like drifting pieces of deadwood, floating, some to shore, with no survivors. Silent empty testimony to the fierce savagery of the storm and to the bravery of the crews last moments of life at sea.
Searches refused to shed any light on her plight early on, but soon the story began to unravel. The power of the waves and weather had snapped her completely in half before she sank hard and fast, with all hands on board. She lies today, as a maritime memorial 530 feet deep on the bottom of Lake Superior. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, along with others, mounted three underwater expeditions, in 1985, 1994 and again in 1995. It was during the 1995 exploration that the 200 pound bronze bell was retreived, and today, along with other interpretive displays stands as mute testimony to the lives lost that in that fateful November storm. The 29 lost at sea, also remain at the bottom of the lake, in a watery graveyard in the environment they had embraced with so much love and so much spirit.
The Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point is the only shipwreck museum on the Great Lakes, and inside are scale models of the Edmund Fitzgerald as well as other models of other ships that have given up their lives and the lives of their crews. As you enter the eerie quiet, and soft lights of the display room, your greeted by the bronze bell of the Fitz. Many who stand silently in front of it, ponder the power of the lakes, and say they can feel the spirits, and hear the cries and the voices of the captain and the crew. So chilling of an experience, you can almost feel the turmoil and the fear that they felt during the storm. To truly feel the passion of spirit of all Great Lakers you should also visit the Mariners Church on Jefferson Avenue in downtown Detroit. The pulpit is in the shape of ships bow and when ever sailors are lost, the church bell rings. In the case of the men of the Edmund Fitzgerald...the church bell rang, it rang 29 times, for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The Great Lakes are bountiful in beauty, and at times, that beauty can instantly turn into a beast of tragedy. The Griffin was the first vessel reported to vanish, and the Edmund Fitzgerald was the most famous. Men and ships ripped from life and consigned to graves in the deep depths of the lakes they loved so well, but always aware of the dangers that could one day sink their ships, and exact it's toll by taking their lives. The lightkeepers, too, who kept the beacons burning to offer safety and security, sometimes died tragically and sadly. The legendary lights themselves reaching out to sea like the loving arms of a mother to cradle her children have fallen into disrepair, some to be reborn with the help of historical societies to live again, not as lifesavers, but as museums of a nautical past that is fading into memory, sailing away, like driftwood floating away from shore.
The Great Lakes are afloat with ghost ships and ghost stories. Haunted lights, haunted graveyards and haunted sightings of ships long since gone. Some ghosts, like the 29 hands on the Edmund Fitzgerald, will live in tragic legend until the end of time. Others, like George the Presque Isle Ghost, will appear on occasion to have a little fun, and to remind us how precious life can be.
Mike Marino is a freelance writer of Pop Culture, Travel and History. He's also the author of the nostalgia filled boomer classic, The Roadhead Chronicles Book
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