sure, here’s a few Great Lakes Ghost Ship facts! *wiggly fingers*
there are between 6,000 and 10,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes from the past 400ish years, but it’s probably on the higher end. 10ish new wrecks are discovered every year. of these, about 1,000 wrecks are currently identified.
of these, 274 alone are in Door County WI (named for the Death’s Door Strait), which possesses the highest number of shipwrecks of any county in the US. (including the ones on the actual ocean!)
the oldest ghost ship on the Great Lakes is the Griffon, a three-masted French fur-trading and exploration vessel that sailed out of Green Bay straight into the teeth of an oncoming gale in 1679. the Griffon has been spotted many times since, traveling silently in a fog bank with no running lights. people say you can even hear the Griffon’s masts creak as it drifts past. people still see it today and mistake it for a reenactment vessel.
the Chicora was a 207-foot-long wooden steamer that sailed out of Milwaukee headed for St. Joseph in 1895 and steamed straight into a monster ice storm. contact with the Chicora was lost shortly after, though three days later her upturned hull with several survivors clinging on and waving for help was spotted just north of Chicago, of all places. help was immediately dispatched, but when rescuers reached the spot where they had seen the wreck, there was no sign that the Chicora had ever been there at all. months later, they found her wreckage on a desolate beach north of St. Joseph. sPoOoOkY! but the Chicora still steams along as a ghost ship, and is regularly spotted by the big car ferries on their way out of Milwaukee.
and finally, the Edmund Fitzgerald. the most famous Great Lakes wreck of all has been spotted as a ghost ship several times, and likes to sneak up in fog banks. the ghost Edmund Fitzgerald has no running lights and usually appears out of nowhere as a looming wall of metal hull. some people say they’ve heard voices raised in panic from the ghost ship as it sailed away into the fog, and the ghost Edmund Fitzgerald is always a harbinger of a terrible storm on its way. the physical wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald doesn’t really help dispell any of this, as divers report seeing lights inside the sunken vessel and hearing voices from inside the hull. of a ship that’s sat under 530 feet of black ice water for more than forty years.
there’s a lot of spooky bullshit going on up here, is what I’m getting at.
See, my home is by the Pacific Coast of Southern California. Now, that Ocean is a mighty lady of changeable mood. She will throw you on her wavetops while you laugh, like a mother playing with her babies, or some days just beat the heck out of the cliffs without a thought for human life, or swallow a ship before the Coast Guard can do more than watch, because that’s what she is. She can be indifferent, raging, wild, enormous and vast, or gentle and welcoming if you keep yourself alert. She can even be dark and full of mystery and danger.
But she has never filled me with such a sense of waiting darkness as the Great Lakes, especially Lake Superior. I haven’t even been there but I’ve heard how people talk about it. I’ve heard the songs and the stories. You couldn’t pay me enough to swim out of my depth in that water.
trufax there’s not really any lake monster stories out there about Lake Superior, and we joke that that’s because the lake itself IS the monster! but there’s an undertone of truth there that no one will acknowledge. Superior is not a name you can treat lightly, and in complete seriousness there’s a feeling there that’s difficult to describe. like being on the edge of something huge and terrible.
but also in all seriousness you can’t really swim out of your depth anyway because it’s too fucking cold.
Is there any chance of you posting some of the information on great lakes ghost ships? I live on the Detroit River and love to hear the folklore of the great lakes area. I’d be willing to trade information on Canadian prohibition and how integral the great lakes were to supplying the us with booze through the 20s and 30s.
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