Haunted Leelanau

Local historians lean into the spooky stories from the County

Haunted lighthouses. Ghost towns. Strange phenomena. Leelanau County has more than its fair share of spooky lore and eerie legends. Is all the supernatural activity just rumors and conjecture, or is there any historical weight to the myths? We pulled up a (metaphorical) seat around the campfire with some local experts to find out.

South Manitou Lighthouse

Michigan has the most lighthouses of any U.S. state at over 120, according to the United States Lighthouse Society. Because the historic beacons are often located near shipwrecks and other Great Lakes tragedies, they tend to have some of the most persistent haunting rumors.

That’s true in Leelanau County, where two lighthouses—the South Manitou Island Lighthouse and the Grand Traverse Lighthouse in Northport’s Leelanau State Park—have long been enshrouded in ghostly mystery. Promote Michigan President Dianna Higgs Stampfler is the author of Michigan’s Haunted Lighthouses, a 2019 book from The History Press that investigates more than a dozen historic lighthouses rumored to have supernatural occupants.

Stampfler’s research on the South Manitou Island Lighthouse took her on a wide-ranging quest, from newspaper archives to family interviews to overnight stays on the island itself. She says that in the mid-1800s, the island was “home to some 200 residents who lived and worked farming, logging, and serving the shipping industry.” South Manitou was a key refueling stop between Chicago and the Straits of Mackinac.

Some of the island’s earliest spooky legends owed to that fact, as ships were rumored to stop at the island and bury cholera victims when outbreaks occurred on board—including passengers not yet fully dead. The cries of those buried alive can still be heard on some nights, according to local lore.

But the lighthouse remains the main focal point due to the tragic tale of keeper Aaron Sheridan and his wife, Julia, who took up their posts in 1866 and served during the time when a new, taller lighthouse tower was built in the early 1870s. Stampfler writes that in March 1878, the couple and an infant son were returning from a boat trip to the mainland when a squall overturned their vessel just as they were approaching South Manitou. The bodies of the family were never found, and five orphaned children were left behind.

In the ensuing years, both rangers and visitors “have reported hearing the echo of voices, the sounds of footsteps, and other unexplained noises coming from the causeway which connects the boarded-up keeper’s residence to the light tower, as well as accounts reported in other nearby structures,” Stampfler writes.

Stampfler did not experience any ghostly visitations herself, and others with long-time island experience have denied any paranormal activity. Still, South Manitou remains “shrouded in intriguing and spirited theories that would make even the most seasoned ghost hunter’s hair stand on end,” she writes.

Grand Traverse Lighthouse

Another lighthouse keeper rumored to still be maintaining his post after death is Captain Peter Nelson, who served at the Grand Traverse Lighthouse from 1874 to 1890.

Many are convinced Nelson still roams the site, with visitors and volunteers reporting unexplained voices, shadowy figures glimpsed down hallways, sudden chills, and the unmistakable feeling of a physical presence. The footprints of children on recently mopped floors—when no children are present—have also been witnessed. The Grand Traverse Lighthouse Museum offers haunted lighthouse tours on various weekend dates in October highlighting the “strange and unusual” happenings at the site.

Stampfler has a theory on why the local lighthouses may be haunted.

“Lighthouse keepers were a different type of person,” she says. “Leelanau County is pretty remote today, but think about the 1800s. M-22 didn’t exist. It was rural, remote, and lonesome. Being a keeper was a calling to serve, where people didn’t see it as just work but as their life’s mission. After they passed, they loved it so much they couldn’t leave. They’re still on the job.”

Ghost Towns

In 2020, Emma Keaton was promoted from summer intern to the newly hired archivist at the Leelanau Historical Society Museum (LHSM). One of her first projects was highlighting Leelanau County’s ghost towns in a series of Facebook posts.

“Although a ghost town is defined as an abandoned town that still has standing buildings, we will be including towns whose structures have long since disappeared but who still have important stories to share,” LHSM posted.

Keaton gave us a personal peek into her behind-the-scenes research for the series. Her work details the fascinating past of Glen Haven—once called Sleeping Bearville and one of the more “active ghost towns” in Leelanau County today with old shops and museums where visitors can still experience its history, Keaton says—as well as lost communities like Port Oneida, Crescent City, Gills Pier, Fouch, and Good Harbor.

In contrast to Glen Haven, Good Harbor has few standing remains today to alert visitors they’re in a spot where a busy commerce town once thrived.

“Nothing can last forever, and when the mill burnt down in 1906, villagers began to gradually move out, leaving their homes behind. Standing abandoned, the homes remained until the winter of 1924-25, when they were disassembled for their lumber,” Keaton writes for LHSM. The name Good Harbor today is mostly associated with the local bay and popular Sleeping Bear Dunes beach.

Those wanting a truly haunting vibe to their ghost towns should look into Isadore in Centerville Township. Initially called Four Corners, the Polish community’s activities centered around its Holy Rosary Church and parochial school. However, Isadore was also home to “one of the county’s most famous murders,” according to Keaton, that of the nun Sister Mary Janina.

Her disappearance and the subsequent discovery of her body buried in the church basement is the focus of the book Isadore’s Secret: Sin, Murder, and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town by Traverse City author and journalist Mardi Link. The book makes for spookily ideal Halloween reading.

Strange Phenomena

Keaton has also researched a variety of other strange phenomena and unusual sightings in Leelanau County. Her work highlights an incident in September 1967 when multiple witnesses reported seeing a UFO, including above Lake Leelanau and near Sugar Loaf. The craft was described variously as having “blueish white lights” and a “bright orange color,” hovering noiselessly a few hundred feet in the air and then departing at “a great rate of speed.”

In LHSM’s oral histories—available on the organization’s website at LeelanauHistory.org—former Leelanau County Sheriff Bob White describes his experience in the early 1900s in Leland with foxfire, a bioluminescent light generated by some fungal species in forests or swamps. It’s an eerie sight at night, especially if you don’t know its cause. White described the foxfire as being so bright it lit up a swampy area “just like a city street.”

Another natural event that caused some consternation decades later in the 1980s was “carnivore deer.” A once-small population of white-tailed deer, normally herbivores, on North Manitou Island grew overcrowded and became so desperate for food they began consuming large amounts of dead alewives along the island’s beaches. The animals were even seen wading and dunking their heads in the waves trying to get at the fish. Today, the National Park Service manages a special annual hunt on North Manitou—this year’s event is Oct. 31-Nov. 7—to help keep the deer population in check.

A Local Cryptid

Finally, did you know Lake Leelanau reportedly has its own version of the Loch Ness Monster?

“It is a monster said to disguise itself as a drifting log or tree until you’re close enough to see its eyes,” Keaton writes in her research. Among other verbal accounts, the most detailed testimony came from a teenage William Gauthier in 1910. Gauthier attempted to tie his boat to a tree in Lake Leelanau while fishing and suddenly found two eyes popping open and looking at him when he touched the stump.

The boy watched, frozen in fear, as the large animal dove under his rowboat. Cryptid Wiki, which documents various creature encounters, notes that “Gauthier claimed that animal’s length was so impressive that he could see the submerged head of the beast appear on the far side of the boat while its tail still remained aloft.”

According to the entry, Gauthier’s great-grandson attested Gauthier was left “thoroughly terrified” by the encounter, adding “the event had shaken him so badly that he avoided fishing on Lake Leelanau for many, many years.”

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