Excerpted from Fred Stonehouse’s Haunted Lakes.
During the heyday of Great Lakes commercial navigation, the number of vessels wrecked annually was astounding. Between 1870 and 1871, an estimated 1,167 vessels wrecked with the loss of 214 lives! To help rescue the passengers and crews, between 1876 and 1914, 62 U.S. Life-Saving Service Stations were established at especially dangerous points along the coasts of the Great Lakes. Normally manned by a crew of eight and operated during the April to November navigation season, the lifesavers spent countless hours patrolling the lonely, desolate lakeshore looking for both shipwrecks and their victims. To improve efficiency, in 1915 the lifesavers merged with the Revenue-Cutter Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard. The lifesavers’ mission, however, and the lonely beach patrols continued.
Of all the Great Lakes stations, the four along Lake Superior’s Michigan Shipwreck Coast stretching west of Whitefish Point for 40 miles were the most desolate. For the crews and families that lived there, they were at the end of the earth. The string of four stations, all built in 1876 and operational the year following, were at Vermilion Point, Crisp’s Point, Two-Hearted River and Deer Park. Each was approximately nine miles from each other. The dead space between the stations was faithfully patrolled by the lifesavers. The night patrols were the worst, especially those during dark and stormy weather. When the north wind whipped the lake into white froth, it was easy for the imagination to run wild, not to mention when the wolves in the ever present forest howled at the moon or followed quietly behind the walking lifesaver, their footfalls barely audible to a sharply tuned ear.
Veteran surfmen always made it a point to teach the new men the gory details of the ghost of Three-Fingered Reilly. They wanted them to know that when they walked the lonely night patrols, they were not alone!
The story of the ghost starts with the loss of the steamer John Owen on November 13, 1919. The 281-foot, 2,127-ton composite steamer was downbound from Duluth with wheat when she sank in a terrific gale, taking her entire crew of 21 men and one woman down with her. The location of the sinking was never determined, but was thought to have been somewhere northwest of Whitefish Point.
The following March, a Coast Guardsman running the mail with a dog sled team discovered a body frozen in the shore ice to the west of Crisp’s Point. After great effort, the remains of the man, later identified as the Owen’s assistant engineer William J. Reilly, was chopped out of the ice. Loaded on a sled, the body was returned to the station and stored frozen until instructions regarding its disposition came from the Lake Carriers’ Association. The body was in excellent condition, except for two missing fingers supposedly accidentally chopped off when the body was being freed from the ice. Due to the inability to get the body out to a proper undertaker and a spell of warm weather preventing further “storage,” the body was eventually buried in the station cemetery.
If the old lifesaver’s stories are to be believed, however, Reilly’s spirit was not so easily disposed of. Hoary old surfmen always warned new men about the ghost of “Three-Fingered Reilly.” His restless shade is said to wander the lonely shore still searching for his missing fingers. More than one patrolman is said to have come back to the station white and shaking from either hearing Reilly’s footsteps just behind him or seeing his ghostly form outlined against the surf. His body may be forever buried in a long forgotten grave, but his ghost marches on.
Some believe Reilly’s restless spirit has company. Several dozen vessels wrecked along this dangerous section of coast, many with terrible loss of life. The lost souls of their passengers and crews were also claimed to wander the beach, as did the restless shade of at least one old lifesaver.