Ghosts Of The Apostle Islands

Originally published in
Lake Superior magazine
July, 2004

Received bronze award, "Best Feature" category
Minnesota Magazine & Publications Association

“Are there any ghosts out on the islands?”

That’s the question I hear most often in my job as Park Historian at the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Sooner or later, whether I’m telling visitors about the park’s superb collection of lighthouses, or sharing stories of the islands’ farmers, loggers, and fishermen, The Question will come up.

“Are there any places that are… haunted?”

It’s hard to answer, because I believe there are many haunted places in the Apostle Islands… but maybe not in the way that the questioners mean.

In years of  research, I’ve still to come up with a single traditional story featuring eerie apparitions or things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. Yet there are plenty of spots on the islands that give me a chill every time I visit them: places suffused with the spirits of the men and women who lived, and sometimes lost, their lives on the Apostle Islands. These sites are not hard to find; you just have to know what to look for.

Quarry walls, Basswood Island.

There’s the abandoned quarry on Basswood Island, for instance. It’s hard for me to stand beneath its looming, moss-covered  walls without thinking of Mrs. McCrea, a quarryman’s wife who lost her life in a Christmas Eve blizzard more than a century ago.

We don't know too much about this young mother - even her first name has long been forgotten- but we know what happened on the day she died.

On the morning of December 24, 1893, Mrs. McCrea joined two of her neighbors from the little quarry village to walk across the ice to Bayfield. The goal of their trip: Christmas shopping. With her husband Dan at home to mind their two small children, the excursion must have been a welcome break in the island wife's winter routine.

At three that afternoon, their presents bought, the trio started back toward Basswood. The three-mile trip should have gone quickly enough, but the weather changed suddenly. A blinding blizzard enveloped the party, and they lost all trace of their route. Pummeled by the storm, they wandered for hours on the frozen lake.

As darkness fell,  Dan McCrea grew worried. Leaving the children, he took a lantern and compass, then set out onto the lake. He walked all the way to Bayfield, hoping to find her waiting out the storm. Receiving the unwelcome news that she'd left hours ago, he turned again toward the island.

It was on the way back that McCrea found them. Cold and exhausted, the party was barely a mile from safety. His wife was in the worst condition of the three, too weak to walk. McCrea picked her up and began carrying her homeward. Before they reached Basswood's shore, she died in his arms.

The quarry closed for good a few years after that sad Christmas, but its stone walls bear witness to the work of quarrymen like Dan McCrea. Nearby, keen observers will also find faint traces of the cottages where their wives and children lived.

McCloud-Brigham Farm site.

About two miles up the trail from the quarry is another place where I often look for Basswood Island’s ghosts. Here, the forest opens into a grassy field, edged with crumbling stone walls that extend from nowhere to nowhere. At one end of the field is an ancient apple orchard; at the other, the jumbled remains of several wooden buildings.

This deserted farmstead had several residents over the years; among them was the eccentric recluse, Joseph McCloud. “Judge McCloud,” people called him, because he had been a prominent jurist in Wisconsin’s early statehood days: district attorney, then county judge.

Perhaps his experiences in the legal system soured him on mankind, because around 1870, Judge McCloud retired from public life and built a cabin on the island. His passion, however, was not in farming, but in music. He brought a small pump organ to the island, and when rare visitors stopped by, he would insist on playing his latest compositions for their bemused appreciation.

Judge McCloud died in 1900, and the farm was totally abandoned by 1923. Nonetheless, the site is easy to recognize, and tasty apples still grow on the untended trees. I haven’t heard organ music yet, but I keep listening.

My favorite place to hunt for ghosts is Sand Island, at the western end of the archipelago. Sand is one of only two Apostle Islands- the other is Madeline- that was home to a fully developed community. Settled first in the 1870s, the island had a population of nearly one hundred at the time of the First World War. There were two stores, and even a post office.  Then, the community faded as its young people left for the economic opportunity and modern conveniences of the mainland. The last year-round family moved away in the autumn of 1944, and since then, the forest has reclaimed the farmers’ fields, and the fishing docks have rotted away.

Still, clues abound for diligent ghost hunters; it’s all a matter of paying attention. Most visitors to the island arrive at the National Park Service’s East Bay dock, and the majority of these stroll right past the remains of one of the island’s strangest stories. Tucked in the woods, mere yards from the dock, there’s a tumbled-down shack made from the hull of a boat.

Herring King Cottage, circa 1977.

On Thanksgiving Day, 1917, the Herring King was making its last run of the season. The gas-powered tug was a jack-of-all-trades; its main job was collecting fish from the island camps, but now and then it would carry a cargo of lumber or other goods. The Sand Islanders relied on it to bring groceries and mail from the mainland.

At 2:30 that afternoon, the two-man crew had just cast off from Louis Moe’s dock near East Bay when a fish keg fell against a fuel line. Gasoline sprayed onto the hot engine, and in seconds the boat was aflame.

Crewman Clarence Russell jumped into the lifeboat and pushed off. In his haste, he forgot to grab oars, but the southwest wind quickly carried him away from the burning tug. Stranded, Captain John Gordon retreated to the bow, as far as he could get from the flames. By chance, the Duluth-based steamer Goldish was passing by, close enough to help.  Her captain, S.L. Goldish, was one of the most skilled mariners on Lake Superior, already renowned for daring rescues. He maneuvered close to the Herring King, then a crewman threw Gordon a life ring. Gordon leaped into the icy water, swam a few strokes toward safety, then sank from sight. He was never seen again.

That evening, fishermen towed the charred hulk of the Herring King to shore. One island family soon realized they could put the remains to use. Turning the hull upside down, they built walls beneath it and turned the wreck into a cabin. The structure stood for many years, long after its owners departed the island. Today, though the walls have collapsed, a sharp-eyed ghost hunter will recognize a boat’s hull in the roofline.

Not every ghost story is sad; Sand Island has its share of laughter and happy memories, as well. To hear faint echoes of long-ago children’s voices, make your way just a little bit south of the Herring King cottage. Walk a few yards west into the woods, and you’ll see a low, masonry foundation: the remains of the Sand Island school.

From 1910 until the late 1920s, the children of the island’s farmers and fishermen learned their ABCs in this one-room schoolhouse. When county authorities decided it was no longer economical to support a teacher on the island, the school was closed and the settlement’s children forced to board with families in Bayfield during the school year. The frugal islanders dismantled the building and salvaged the lumber, leaving the foundation that you’ll still see today… if you take the time to look.

Sand Island Schoolhouse: above, circa 1915; below, the remains today.

While Sand and Basswood Islands have some of the most readily accessible ghost-hunting spots, there are haunted places on virtually every Apostle Island. Old boats and net reels molder along the shores, left behind when the commercial fishery collapsed with the onslaught of the lamprey. The main trail on Outer Island  follows the path of a 1920s logging railroad; near the island’s northern tip stands a cluster of ramshackle cabins, left over from a 1950s logging camp.

The narrow sandbar known as Long Island hides a crumbled lighthouse among its scrubby pines. Here, on a bitter cold morning in 1886, the shocked keeper of the Old LaPointe light looked out from his tower to see the wreckage of a schooner lying in the surf. He saw figures clinging to the masts, but when he hastened to the beach, he realized they were frozen beyond his help. “I found three bodies,” he wrote in his log, “one in the main and two in the mizzen rigging.”

Today, sport divers often visit the sunken remains of the schooner Lucerne,  but few people ever seek out the brick walls that mark the ruins of the old lighthouse barely a half-mile away. At Stockton Island, many visitors enjoy the campgrounds and beaches, but only a few hike to Trout Point to trace the outlines of  an old logging camp on the forest floor. Hunting Apostle Island ghosts demands a bit of effort, and a smidgen of imagination, but once you get into the habit, you’ll find plenty of clues as you walk along the park’s beaches and trails.

Old LaPointe Lighthouse, Long Island

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