It was great sailing on the lake, a good breeze from the northeast and
we were making a fast nine knots. I even had the big jenny up! It was only
my wife and me on this trip. We looked forward to this late season trip
for a long time, a week on the big lake with no phones or kids. Grandma
took care of the last part and the office would just have to suffer without
us.
We never stayed at Rock Island, but when we studied the charts over the
winter planning this trip, it looked like a wonderfully out-of-the way
place to tuck in for a day or so. It had a good deep water channel leading
into a little cove right behind the island. Once inside, it looked to be
proof against all winds.
As we approached it in late afternoon, the old lighthouse stood out plainly
against the rock of the island. Our pilot book said it was no longer in
use and I remember reading somewhere that it was abandoned back before
World War II when the shipping lanes changed. Today it didn’t even have
one of those silly little plastic lens on the tower.
We dropped the sails, fired up the kicker and started for the island. When
we got closer, my wife slipped up to the pulpit and, using hand signals,
helped me work through the channel and into the little cove behind the
island. She released the hook and we found it had pretty good bottom, probably
sand from the feel of it. I decided a single moor would do with the calm
forecast and as sheltered as we were from the winds. Sitting in the cockpit,
we could just see the upper part of the lighthouse over the trees.
The island looked so damn in-triguing that we grabbed a couple of beers
from the reefer and went ashore in the rubber dingy. The crib dock was
still partially intact, probably be-cause of its sheltered location, so
we were able to get ashore dry. The nearby boathouse had not fared as well.
Snow had collapsed the roof and it was mostly just a pile of rubble. I
found a small path up through the woods toward the lighthouse and, after
20 minutes or so, we came out on the edge of a little clearing. The lighthouse
stood on the northern edge of it, right where the rocks shelved down toward
the water. From this angle the lighthouse was especially impressive. The
brick building was a story and a half with a tower 70-feet or so in height
attached to the west side. Once the whole structure was covered in whitewash,
but today the red brick was completely exposed. All the windows were boarded
up. A small brick oil house was off to the east. We walked over to the
lighthouse and I tried the door but it refused to open. Half a dozen nails
protruded from the frame showing the reason.
 The sun
was starting to set, so we returned to the boat. I had heard there was
an old graveyard on the east end of the island. Tomorrow I would go look
for it. Supposedly, it held the bodies of half a dozen sailors lost in
a turn of the century shipwreck. The island, lighthouse and graveyard would
make a nice story. I do a little writing and hate to pass up a good tale.
We had a late dinner and after-wards enjoyed a magnificent display of the
northern lights. Sitting in the cockpit with a glass of wine and my arm
around my wife, life just couldn’t get much better. There weren’t even
any bugs! I glanced from the stars to the northern lights to the beacon
rotating slowly, its beam cutting through the night.
What the hell! That isn’t right. The lighthouse is abandoned. What is going
on? I asked my wife if she saw what I did. She said yes, the light was
on! Could it be a strange reflection of the sun, based maybe on the height
of the tower and the angle of the sun past the apparent horizon? However
wild that theory, it would not explain the crisp ro-tation. From what we
could see the light was in full operation.
For at least two hours we alter-nated between watching the northern lights
and the old lighthouse. Around midnight, it blinked off. Tired of coming
up with useless theories, we rolled into our bunks. We couldn’t solve the
mystery that night anyway.
The next day we went back to the island and on up to the lighthouse. The
building was sealed solid, every window and both front and back doors too!
No one had gotten into it. The lamp room windows were also covered with
black plywood sheets. Even if light were inside, it wasn’t getting outside.
Feeling that there was nothing more to see at the lighthouse, we went looking
for the graveyard. After a couple of hours crashing around in the underbrush,
we found a small clearing bordered with the remnant of a wooden picket
fence. There were no headstones, only half a dozen shallow depressions
in the ground. Either the wooden coffins had collapsed or the bodies had
been disinterred and returned to families. It was another mystery.
We spent the afternoon fishing and got a couple of nice lake trout. After
an exhilarating swim in the cool water of the cove, I fired up the rail
grill and my wife uncorked a bottle of Chablis. Nothing tasted better than
grilled trout and a fine dry Chablis. The northern lights didn’t show that
night, but the lighthouse beam did. Shortly after dark, it again cut through
the starry sky.
I resolved to try to solve the mystery. We took the dingy to the island
and, flashlights in hand, made our way up the trail. At night every-thing
looks different, even a little spooky. When we reached the clearing we
saw something neither of us will ever forget.
Light streamed out of every window in the lighthouse! A steady beam came
out of the lamp room too! It was like the clock was turned back a century.
We could see figures inside the house. There was one man with a full beard
that walked past the kitchen window several times. There was also a woman
and at least two children. We were perhaps 50 yards away, so we had a pretty
fair view. The aroma of wood smoke also hung heavy in the night air. The
kitchen stove must have been fired up. At one point the woman came out
the back door and yelled something. Pretty soon a big black dog came bounding
out of the darkness and past her into the house. Illuminated by the light
coming out the open door, we could see that the woman’s hair was in a tight
bun and she wore a long dress reaching down to her ankles. All of the figures
looked absolutely solid, nothing vaporous or misty.
 Despite
what we were watching, there was no sense of fear. More than anything,
it was a sense of curiosity. We watched for maybe an hour when I got too
bold. I told my wife to stay in the trees and I crept up to the lighthouse
to get a closer look. As I slowly worked my way through the clearing and
up to the building, the furnishings inside came into better view. There
was a big wood stove in the kitchen, pictures on the walls and lace on
the windows. I almost reached the kitchen window when a small boy looked
out and saw me. He pointed right at me, then said something. The bearded
man appeared next to him, then everything went black. Bang, every light
went off. By now I was close enough that my flashlight beam could reach
the house and it showed that all the windows were boarded up tight, just
as they had been during the day! When I turned around, my wife was right
behind me. She said she didn’t want me to have all the fun. I think she
didn’t want to wait in the bushes alone. We went back to the boat and,
considering all we had seen, slept like babies.
The next morning we went back to the lighthouse, determined to give it
a better examination. Everything was boarded up, heavy wood over the windows
and doors nailed shut. I keep a large tool kit on the boat, complete with
a small pry bar, which I now used to pull the nails out of the door. It
creaked loudly as I slowly pushed it open. Inside was chaos, a combination
of deterioration from the ravages of time and the work of an earlier generation
of vandals, apparently done before the building was sealed up.
Our flashlights provided the only light, other than what came in through
the open door and slits in the window boards. Inside, it was cold, almost
freezing, in sharp contrast with the warmth outside. Peeling yellowed wallpaper
hung down in great strips. In some places the plaster had fallen from the
walls and ceiling, leaving lath visible like the bones of a prehistoric
monster. Paper and other garbage littered the floor. Shattered glass from
wine and whiskey bottles crunched underfoot.
In the dining room, chairs were overturned and the remnants of a table
lay collapsed in the middle of the floor. Upstairs, two of the rooms still
had beds and chests of drawers. The remains of a smashed child’s china
doll was in the corner of the smaller room. All the floors were coated
in a thick layer of undisturbed gray dust.
It was evident that no one had been in here for a long time. Nothing we
had found could in any stretch of the imagination explain what we had seen
the previous night.
Our last stop was the kitchen. As we stood in the room talking, I leaned
back, placing a hand on top of the wood stove. It was hot! Not hot enough
to burn me, but hot enough to be uncomfortable. Touching it gingerly, my
wife felt the same heat. When I opened the scuttle door, the coals were
stone cold, as expected, after half a century since last being used. We
fled the building!
I quickly nailed the door shut as best I could with my pry bar and we retreated
to the boat. We hauled anchor and carefully threaded our way out the narrow
channel and into the open lake to continue our trip. Looking back, we could
see the old lighthouse looking down on us. I swear I saw someone standing
on the galley deck, but my wife said she saw nothing.
Neither of us can explain in the slightest what we saw and we both decided
not to say where exactly it happened. We just call it Rock Island. Regardless
of what happened, it’s still a beautiful spot. Our days there were wonderful
ones and we feel another family is still enjoying their time there. There
is no reason for anyone to ever disturb them.
A few years later we were at one of those cruising rendezvous and got to
talking with the couple in the boat moored alongside. After drinks, the
man asked if we had ever cruised around Rock Island. I admitted we had.
Then he asked if we had ever moored in the little cove behind the island.
I confirmed we had done that too. Finally, looking a little sheepish, he
asked if we had seen anything “strange” while we were there? I looked at
my wife and said, “No, not a thing at all.”
Frederick Stonehouse is a noted Great Lakes historian and shipwreck author
whose best selling book Haunted Lakes, published through Lake Superior
Port Cities Inc., is in its third printing. This story is from a collection
that he’s working on as a sequel to Haunted Lakes.
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