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The haunted Big Bay Point Light sits
overlooking Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, being
built in 1896. The Big Bay Point Light is made of red
brick with a square lighthouse tower that is attached to
the keeper's house. It was fully automated in
1941, later decommissioned by the US Coast Guard from
1961-1990, and is now operating again as an active aid to
navigation. After it was shut down in 1961, the property
was purchased by Dr. Pick (via sealed bid) who lovingly
restored it over the next seventeen years.
Eventually, he sold the property to the partners who still own
it today (as of this writing).
When it became a bed and
breakfast, apparently the resident ghost felt it necessary to
help innkeeper Linda Gamble with things, but after she was
woken up in the middle of the night by slamming cupboard doors
in her kitchen, she angrily told him to stop!
Reportedly, today the ghostly activity has settled, and she
believes there to be five resident ghosts, though we are not
sure just who all of them are. There was a
soldier stationed there in 1952 who committed murder at the
nearby Lumberjack Tavern, but why would he have stayed to
haunt the Big Bay Point Light?
Well, there is another story
that may answer at least who one of the ghosts at the
haunted Big Bay Point Light might be.
Linda believes the ghost banging the cupboard doors was the first lighthouse keeper
named William Prior. Mr. Prior began his lightkeeping duties in
1896, and stayed only five short years. He was looking
for an assistant and found the perfect helper
in 1899; his son George. Unfortunately, in 1901, George had
an accident and was injured by falling down some steps, and
eventually died in a hospital. A month later, William Prior
walked away from his lighthouse duty and unto the nearby woods with his
gun and some strychnine, being presumably grief-stricken for his
son. His body was eventually found by a hunter seventeen months later
in 1902, a skeleton hanging from a
tree in the woods, not too away far from the haunted
Big Bay Point Light. His tragic suicide and grief could be why
his ghost still remains at the lighthouse to this
day.
If you wish to pay a visit to the Big Bay Point
Light which now operates as a charming bed and breakfast, you
may visit their site here.
Below is an old US Coast
Guard photograph of the haunted Big Bay Point
Light:
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Lighthouse website content &
Haunted Big Bay Point Light
Copyright 2004-8 Photograph courtesy of the USCG.
Angels & Ghosts, LLC AngelsGhosts.Com
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