One evening in the late 1800s, a lighthouse keeper named John Herman was drinking, as he usually did, when he decided to play a prank on his assistant. Herman locked the assistant in the lantern room and left him there.
When the assistant managed to get out of the room, he found himself all alone in the lighthouse. Herman was never seen again.
As the years went on, future keepers of the Waugoshance Lighthouse, where Herman was last seen, reported strange happenings there. Keepers had their chairs kicked out from under them and coal was shoveled into the boiler, seemingly all by itself.
Or so they say.
“When someone first enters the circle of the Great Lakes lighthouse people, one of the first stories that you hear is that of the ghost which haunts the Waugoshance Lighthouse,” wrote maritime historian Wes Oleszewski in his book Lighthouse Adventures: Heroes, Haunts and Havoc on the Great Lakes.
As one of the oldest lighthouses in the Great Lakes region, much of the Waugoshance Lighthouse’s history has been lost. What remains are unsubstantiated ghost stories, a piece of World War Ⅱ history and a lighthouse left to crumble into Lake Michigan.
“With its lamproom reduced to nothing more than a skeleton, its foundation crumbling and its iron sheathing having fallen off into the lake, this lighthouse is one of the saddest places on the lakes,” Oleszewski wrote. “It is no wonder that it has been said to be haunted.”
The first Great Lakes lighthouse to be surrounded completely by water, Waugoshance was first lit in 1851, marking the western entrance to the Straits of Mackinac. By 1912, it had been decommissioned and was eventually used for tactical bombing practice in World War Ⅱ.
In 2000, the Waugoshance Lighthouse Preservation Society was formed as a non-profit with the goal of completely restoring the structure. However, this year, the non-profit was dissolved.
“Over the past two years we have been watching the record high water levels erode the base of the lighthouse at an alarming rate,” former president of the society Chris West said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it is reaching the point of crumbling into Lake Michigan sooner than later.”
In the statement, West said the decision came after receiving a quote for $300,000 for a repair that would only last them a couple of years. He also expressed his frustration with government agencies’ refusal to approve the society’s plan to recover historically significant items and donate them to a museum.
“Sadly it seems the final nail in the coffin comes down to the state and federal agencies preventing us from saving and donating pieces of Waugoshance to keep her story alive,” West wrote.
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