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When my husband, founding Lighthouse Digest editor Tim Harrison, and I went to the First Day of Issue celebration of the new Great Lakes lighthouse postage stamps in Cheboygan, Michigan in June 1995, we took the time to visit as many Michigan lights as we could in the short time our schedule allowed us.
But there was one lighthouse we were especially anxious to see and one person we were especially anxious to visit. Tim had spoken to Dan McGee numerous times in previous years, but only over the telephone. As a matter of fact, it was Tim’s mother that first put Dan in contact with us back when we used to wholesale lighthouse gift items to retail stores. Dan McGee was also one of the first people to take a more than passive interest in Lighthouse Digest when we first began publishing it in 1992.
As we drove up the road toward the lighthouse, we thought about stopping at the Old Presque Isle Light, but decided that visiting a long-time telephone friend first was more important.
Although we had seen hundreds of pictures of the new Presque Isle Light, we had never been there in person. As we drove into the grounds of the station, we could easily tell why everyone who comes here falls in love with the site. As a matter of fact, this is the only spot in lower Michigan where you can see both a sunrise and a sunset over the water from the same spot. This is due to the shape of the Presque Isle Peninsula.
Presque Isle Light was built in 1870, young compared to some of the old lighthouses on the East Coast. The tower is 113 feet high and 123 feet above water level.
Dan had started the Presque Isle Lighthouse Historical Society, and one of their greatest accomplishments was getting the tower repaired. Dan said the bricks were falling off the tower so fast that they had to rope off large areas around the lighthouse to prevent someone from getting killed.
One day, he found out that a Coast Guard admiral was giving a speech in a nearby town. The Historical Society sent a delegation of women to confront the admiral. Dan said that one of the ladies was “quite a talker.” Apparently, their plan worked, for it wasn’t too long after that the Coast Guard authorized $100,000 to rebrick the tower.
As we sat there talking, Dan noticed me looking up at the tower. “Would you like to climb the 144 steps to the top?” he asked. I replied, “I thought you’d never ask. Let’s go.” As we walked back to the tower, Dan amusingly recalled the time he accidently locked a tourist in the tower. I said something like you can lock me in the tower, I’d love to stay here. Well, that led to another one of Dan’s stories.
Legend has it that there was an old tunnel leading from the tower to what used to be a barn which sat some distance from the lighthouse. Perhaps it was dug so keepers could get to the barn during a harsh Michigan winter storm. Whatever the reason the story goes on to talk about the keeper whose wife drove him nuts and he wound up putting her in the tunnel and bricked up a wall to seal the tunnel. During renovations, what do you think they found? You guessed it – a tunnel under the lighthouse or certainly what appeared to be the beginning of a tunnel with a bricked-up wall at the end of it.
Dan opened the small opening in the floor of the tower entryway building so we could view the tunnel. It was pitch-black down there except the shaft of light coming in from the opening. Tim decided that if he leaned over at the right angle, he would be able to get a picture of the bricked-up wall in the tunnel using his flash. In doing so, his not-so-expensive twelve-year-old sunglasses dropped from his pocket onto the floor of the tunnel. Now what do we do?
We looked at Dan, and he said something to the effect that he was much too big to get through the opening and Tim knew he couldn’t fit either, or perhaps he was just afraid of the ghost lying in wait to grab him. They both looked at me. They knew I could fit through the opening.
My first thought was what’s down there in that blackest of holes that I would encounter? Could this be where the ghost lives that haunts the lighthouse? I lowered myself gingerly into the hole looking around into the dark void nervously as I went. I quickly reached for Tim’s sunglasses, grabbed them and handed them back up to him through the hole. Before I had the courage to look for the ghost or even at the bricked-up wall in the tunnel, I heard a rustling noise like somebody getting out of their coffin! It sounded like the ghost was about to grab me and I was never more scared in my life!
Needless to say, I was back out of that hole in a flash. We quickly covered the opening to the tunnel back up and left the lighthouse. I felt totally relieved that I was back in the land of the living once again. I’ve thought about it many times over the past 30 years and decided it was all probably just my overactive imagination.
Oh, by the way, the view from the top of the tower is quite spectacular.
As we left Presque Isle Lighthouse, we stopped for one more look and of course another picture. A few minutes down the road we pulled over and took pictures of the Old Presque Isle Light also, and the two nearby range lights, but nothing was quite like our experience at the New Presque Isle Light.
I would highly recommend a visit to the New Presque Isle Light if you get a chance; and if you do go there, please be sure to say hello to the ghost from Lighthouse Digest and tell it I said “Boo!”
This story appeared in the
Sep/Oct 2024 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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