I have always loved a good ghost story. Something about sitting by a campfire, or fire, or anywhere quiet and either listening to someone tell a chilling tale or reading it for yourself has always been one of my favorite pastimes, even if I get a little (or a lot) scared in the process. I guess that’s part of the allure. So, in the spirit of Halloween I am going to post a ghostly tale for you that was adapted from a book called Haunted Great Lakes II written by Frederick Stonehouse in 2000.
These tales are a collection of ancient lore and superstitions as recounted by sailors who have charted the waters of the Midwest and who have seen and witnessed many things that they could not explain. Here is the first story I will be sharing:
The Family That Wasn’t There
A sailor and his wife decided to take a trip up to Lake Superior as a vacation to themselves. When they reached their destination, they anchored their boat near the shore and stopped to rest later that day. A curious thing happened that night, however. While they were getting ready to turn in, they noticed the lighthouse on the shore suddenly turn on and start rotating its light as it would have done in times gone by.
The strange part to this story, though is that the lighthouse had been completely abandoned and had not been in use for decades. In fact, when the couple went to the shore to investigate, they found the lighthouse boarded up and shut down! So, where was this mysterious light coming from?
The next night, the husband went onto the island to further investigate. What he saw he could not explain. As he approached, and stood about 100 feet in front of it, he saw a family inside the lighthouse in the kitchen area. The gas stove was powered on, and all of the lights were illuminated. At one point, the man crept closer, and one of the children saw him. The child said something to his parents, and suddenly, the entire family disappeared and the lights from the lighthouse were suddenly turned off!
The next day the husband returned with some tools to see if he could somehow get into the lighthouse and further investigate what was going on. When he came to the front of the building, he saw that it was again all boarded up. He pried the doors open and when he went inside, he saw that everything was in disrepair and looked like it had not been used in over 100 years.
There was dust and mildew everywhere. It certainly did not look like the cozy abode he had seen the family living in the night before! As if all this story could be explained as a trick of the imagination, when the man leaned his hand onto the stove to rest on it, he felt it warm to the touch, as if it had just been in use, even though that was impossible given the state of disrepair of the lighthouse, and the fact that there was absolutely no trace of anyone having lived there in decades.
What did this old sailor see?
Was there the ghost of a family living there after all these years?
Or was it somehow an elaborate prank played on him and his wife by some nearby locals?
What do you think?
A Winter's Dream 