Along the edge of Lake Superior, with the wind picking up the water and waves crashing along the shore, stands the Marquette Maritime Museum. Last week, volunteers dressed up as ghosts roamed the grounds between the museum and lighthouse. The lighthouse was noticeable even from a distance with its bright light.
The Ghosts of Lighthouse Point is less of a haunted-house experience and more of a history walk where every so often someone dressed as a ghostly sailor tries to scare you. This event is put on by the Maritime Museum around Halloween, this year from the 12th through the 14th, with Friday the 13th falling perfectly within this seasonally appropriate timeframe.
During this walk, guests are led from the Maritime Museum by a ghost with a lantern to the lighthouse, through it and back down to the museum, all the while stopping to let other ghosts tell you about some of the haunted history of the area.
One of the first, and longest, stops on the tour is by the house of Captain Cleary where the ghost of said sailor talked about his own history with the Marquette Life Saving Station. One of the standout details from this interaction was that of Lobo, a huge hound that would drag people out of the water by their shoulders if they dared to dunk their heads under the water.
Lobo was present in the last tale that the ghost of Captain Cleary told, that of two people who went out fishing. Lobo dragged one of them to shore and went back for the other. Neither Lobo nor the other fisher, the lighthouse keeper at the time, were ever seen again.
“I thought it was cool that the dog, Lobo, saved people even when they didn’t want to be saved,” said Riley Buckmaster, a first-year biology major. “It’s kind of cute.”
Three-Fingered Riley was encountered on the way up to the lighthouse. The ghostly guide told the story of how someone found a body frozen in a block of ice and attempting to break the corpse out of the ice made it lose two of its fingers. It was then explained that if you walked along the shoreline of Lake Superior and felt a three-fingered hand on your shoulder, then it was definitely Riley. After this a ghost jumped out of the bushes holding a bloody hand and begging for help to get it reattached.
“I like Three-Fingered Riley,” said Trinity Valentin, a second-year Earth science major. “It was really memorable, and they worded it really well.”
The ghostly guides then led the guests up and through the lighthouse, where they met the ghost of the lighthouse keeper’s wife. She told her tale about how her husband had dragged her to the lighthouse and left to fight in the Civil War. He left her to attend to the duties of the lighthouse, along with the duties of parenting three children while she was pregnant. The ghost specifically mentioned how hard the winters were.
“Being in the lighthouse was really cool,” said Kelly Ryan, a second-year business management major. “They had the lighthouse keeper’s wife, and she was trying to give me her kids. That was really fun.”
From this point, the guests were led down the stairs of the lighthouse and back to the Maritime Museum, while the ghosts they had already encountered called out to them as they passed by. In the museum ghosts yelled at the guests to leave, and there was a memorable moment where one told them how the museum was more haunted than anywhere else they had ever been while a video of seagulls played just to the right of them.
The Ghosts of Lighthouse Point has ended for this year, but those are not all the scares the Maritime Museum has to offer. They also offer Paranormal Lighthouse Tours and Paranormal Lighthouse Investigations.
