Michigan

The Soul of Stephen Strand

Battle Creek

Near Battle Creek, a decade before the American Civil War, a story unfolded so strange, so unbelievable, it reads like fiction. Even though the event originally appeared in an 1851 issue of the sensational New York Mercury, it was later cited by psychical research publications for its extraordinary circumstances. Did the events roll out as suggested, or was it a piece of fiction wrapped in the garb of authenticity? We may never know for certain, but what is alleged to have taken place was nothing less than an instance of long-term possession, the “transference” of a soul from someone dead to someone who lived on for many years.

In other words, a wandering spirit drove away the soul of a living person.

As incredible and unbelievable as it sounds, that is what is alleged to have happened.

Harper Allyn, a bachelor, worked as a wool carder at the mills of one Captain William Wallace in the years 1850 and 1851. He was a quiet man, given to long evenings alone by the fire, or to pursuing solitary sport such as hunting and fishing the shores of Goguac Lake, at that time a few miles outside Battle Creek. Little is known of him. His age was never reported, nor his personal history. The only characteristic of note is the crux of this story, Allyn’s curiosity about a solitary “hermit” who lived on an island in Goguac Lake.

It was on a hunting trip that Allyn first noticed the tidy small cabin nestled among the pine trees. The man who lived there was Stephen Strand, a private character who shunned human interaction and lived alone except for an old dog and a black cat. As far as anyone knew, he never ventured into town and appeared to provide for himself through trapping, hunting, and fishing for bass, bluegill, and walleye in the abundant waters of the lake.

Allyn, the quiet bachelor, and Strand, the mysterious hermit, were thrown together in a most unusual way when a rattlesnake trapped Strand’s black cat against a rock ledge. Allyn, who was hunting nearby at the time, happened along and killed the serpent. Strand showered Allyn with gratitude.

After that, the men frequently hunted and fished together. And although they spoke of many things, Allyn learned little about Strand’s life and even less about the circumstances that brought him to such an isolated existence.

Their friendship might have continued uneventfully had it not been for a thunderstorm. Allyn and Strand had been fishing on the lake and had just made it back to Strand’s cabin as the first wave of lightning-belching dark clouds erupted. Allyn could not make it back to the mainland and was forced to spend the night in Strand’s cabin.

He had always sensed that something lay hidden within Strand, a dark secret that would provide the key to understanding the man.

On this wild night Allyn finally heard the astonishing tale. It all began with the first clap of thunder.

Never had Harper Allyn seen a grown man react with such abject terror to a thunderstorm. While it raged, Strand paced the cabin. From time to time he nervously glanced out the shuttered windows, as if waiting for someone. He noticed Allyn’s curiosity but said nothing. At last the storm abated. Strand visibly relaxed and beckoned Allyn to join him nearer the fire.

“I apologize for what must seem to you peculiar behavior on my part,” Strand began. “But you see, I have good reason to fear the storm. I, that is the person you hear speaking, am Stephen Strand. But the body you see is that of another.”

Harper Allyn rose and made for the door. He was not going to spend the night with a madman.

“Please!” Strand reached out to grasp Allyn’s arm. “Please, I am not mad, despite that rather odd statement. If you will allow me, I shall explain. But I warn you, it is a story you will find difficult to believe.”

Allyn hesitated. Was he close to finding that hidden secret he knew was there? Or were Strand’s words the ravings of a lunatic?

“Very well,” Allyn said at last, resuming his seat and leaning forward. “Continue. Tell me how it is possible that you speak as one man and be another.”

Strand took a deep breath and began his tale.

“That, sir, is why I fear the storm. I shall start at the beginning. I was born nearly six decades ago in the village of Becket Corner, Massachusetts. As Stephen Strand. At the age of sixteen years, I signed on with a whaler out of New Bedford. I rose steadily in rank until, at the age of twenty, I felt assured enough in my status to return home and marry.”

His eyes clouded. He gazed into the deep, red embers of the blazing fire.

“Her name was Molly . . . Molly Lawton. We had known each other since childhood. After we married, I worked ashore for five years, first as a storekeeper and then at a livery. We had a good life together . . . but for me that wasn’t enough. I knew I belonged at sea. Molly accepted that as a good wife does.”

He shipped out on a merchantman bound for France. The trip was uneventful. He stayed with the ship, even though it was to be delayed several months before its return to America.

“At last we left France, bound for Ireland, where we were to take on cargo. Late one night, as we neared Cornwall, a violent storm descended upon us. We couldn’t hold the course in the channel and smashed against the English cliffs.

“I was below decks when we hit. I was thrown across the sleeping compartment and must have struck my head for I remember nothing until . . . until I . . . woke up . . .”

He was struggling with the recollection. Allyn sensed it was the first time in a long while that he had talked about himself.

“Go on,” Allyn gently urged. “You struck your head, but obviously you lived.”

“Ah, but that’s just it,” Strand continued. “I did not live! I awoke, yes, but as I did I had the sensation of floating above the cabin deck, looking down upon the scene. I could not find my body. My soul or spirit, for that is what I presume I had become, had traveled some distance. I was in a different part of the ship.”

Strand paused a moment, struggling to go on.

“I did not want to stay in that . . . limbo! I wanted to see my family again, to rejoin the world of the living. All around me, my shipmates lay dead. Suddenly, I noticed that one of the Frenchmen who had joined us as passengers was stirring.

“It was then I realized that perhaps his body could become mine! I tried to enter him, but his own soul prevented me. We fought. I remember little, except that after what seemed like hours I succeeded. His soul fled. But not far. It still . . . lingers. Close by. Always has.”

Strand was breathing heavily, the sweat visible on his forehead, as if reliving the nauseous fear that must have gripped him on the English coast so many years ago.

“Whenever there is a storm, as tonight, the soul of that man tries to repossess what once was his—the body you see before you. I am the soul and mind of Stephen Strand, but this body, this casing belongs to the Frenchman I conquered that night so very long ago.”

Allyn leaned back in his chair, not quite knowing what to say, or even whether to believe such a preposterous story.

“Did that Frenchman, er, did you find any possessions on that body you took?” Allyn asked at last.

“A few,” Strand replied. “Some letters that I destroyed and a knife and a small bag I lost years ago.” He reached into his pocket. “But this match safe I have kept since that night. You may have it. For saving my cat. Take it. Please. And for it, perhaps you would be kind enough to give me that daguerreotype of yourself you told me about. A fair trade? I want to remember you . . . and your many kindnesses.”

Allyn took the exquisitely designed gold box. The workmanship was of the finest quality. Engraved upon the outside was the name Jacques Beaumont.

“I shall certainly give you that picture. I fear this is far more valuable, however. But are you . . . is that which I see the body of Beaumont?” Allyn asked.

“Yes,” Strand said quietly, “although I know little of him. He is a vessel within which lives the soul of Stephen Strand. To me it is a stranger’s name.”

Even more questions crowded Allyn’s mind.

“What then? How did you reach this country? And end up out here far from your, er, Stephen Strand’s home?”

“I . . . or Beaumont rather was the only survivor. The ship broke apart, but I was able to ride a large piece of wood like a raft to shore. I made my way to Liverpool and thence to Boston. I must say, it was a peculiar experience. This body . . . I was not used to it! Silly things happened.” Strand laughed. Allyn had never seen him laugh before.

“I began to crave French cooking! Of course I was in England so out of luck on that score.”

Again he grew serious.

“It was as if I had suddenly been transported as a blind man into a new house, one in which I was expected to live and work, and yet I knew nothing of its rooms or furnishings. Each time I glanced into a looking glass, I expected to see Stephen Strand. Instead, this stranger stared back at me. I can tell you I was frightened more than once by the ordeal. And yet . . . I was alive!

“Well, once in Boston, I prepared to reacquaint myself with my wife. I made my way to Becket Center and . . .”

Strand covered his eyes and began to weep.

“Go on,” Allyn urged.

“I’m . . . I’m sorry,” Strand stammered between sobs. “It’s so very painful for me. You see I hadn’t reckoned with the shock my new . . . self . . . would have on those whom I loved. I poured out my story to Molly, my wife. She shrank from me. She said her husband had been drowned off the English coast. I tried to convince her it was I, her Stephen, but it was of no use. She took me for a madman. My friends shunned me. I was forced to flee for my life. I was afraid they would lock me up. I wandered for several years and finally settled here on this island where you found me.”

His peculiar narrative at an end, Strand stared intently at his friend.

Allyn met his gaze but said nothing. The first light of dawn was knifing through the cabin, casting the cozy room’s furnishings in an eerie, amber-colored glow.

Allyn replied at last. “I have to think about what you have told me. It is so . . . so unbelievable. But it has the texture of truth about it. I don’t fully understand why . . . but I think I believe you.”

Allyn saw little of Stephen Strand over the next few months, occasionally stopping by the cabin to check on his welfare, but never staying for more than a few minutes at a time. He tried to find proof to support Strand’s assertions. He wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper near Becket Corner, asking for information regarding Stephen Strand. Was there ever such a man in Becket Corner? Did he go off to sea? Marry? And, most importantly, was he still living?

In reply, the editor said that a man named Stephen Strand had lived in that village. But Strand had been lost at sea. However, many years ago a stranger had arrived in the village claiming to be Strand, but nobody believed him. The impersonator was driven from town.

Molly Strand and her children had left Becket Corner long ago to live with her wealthy brother in the West and had not been heard from since, the editor finished.

The letter did seem to confirm many of the details of Strand’s baffling story.

About a year later, Harper Allyn found that Stephen Strand had vanished. A severe thunderstorm struck the Goguac Lake area, and when Allyn visited the cabin a few days later, the only living being was Strand’s starving dog cowering in a corner. The black cat was also missing.

Had Jacques Beaumont’s soul finally regained possession of its body? Allyn found the normally tidy cabin in great disarray—smashed crockery and chairs, an overturned table, windows smashed—as if there had been a tremendous struggle there. Allyn reported the missing Strand to the authorities and a search was made, even the lake was dragged, but nothing was ever found of the mortal remains of Stephen Strand, born Jacques Beaumont.

Harper Allyn did not stay in Battle Creek. He inherited some money, enough to allow him to spend his remaining life traveling and living in modest luxury.

A childhood friend of Allyn’s, Charley Bushnell, had taken up residence in France, studying at an art school in Paris. Allyn decided to visit him. The saga of Stephen Strand had remained with him, and the thought of visiting Jacques Beaumont’s native country intrigued him.

Bushnell was intimate with Parisian society and soon had Allyn attending numerous social functions. At one such gathering of artists and literary figures, Allyn was introduced to a particularly attractive woman. When she saw him and heard his name, she nearly collapsed. Allyn was at her side when she regained her composure.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “It’s just that your face and name are familiar to me.”

Allyn was dumbfounded.

“How can that possibly be?” he said. “I have only recently arrived in Paris, and, to the best of my knowledge, I have never seen you before.”

“But I have seen you. In a picture only last week,” she replied.

“Please explain all this to me,” Allyn requested. “I am quite confused.”

“My name is Lily Beaumont,” the woman said. Allyn paled. Beaumont. That name again. Could it be . . . ?

“Ah, my name means something to you?” she said. “Last week a very old man came to my mother in the village where she has lived since my father died. He was a sailor, lost at sea near the English coast. Anyway, this man, whoever he was, claimed to be my father. My mother didn’t recognize him, nor did I. How could we? It’s been over forty years. He told this preposterous story about being possessed by another man and said he was only recently able to regain his own identity. The prefect of police came and took him away. To an asylum. I . . . we . . . thought he was quite insane. But now I see that the picture he had in his pocket was a picture of you! And your name was written on the back.”

“My God!” Allyn said. His voice was hoarse.

He quickly told Lily Beaumont the story of Stephen Strand and Jacques Beaumont and of Goguac Lake. She was speechless and nearly despondent.

Allyn left immediately for the asylum she had mentioned.

He found Jacques Beaumont in a tiny cell. He was very old, quite thin and sickly, but yes this was the same man he knew as Stephen Strand.

Strand/Beaumont did not recognize him, nor did he seem to understand English. Since he was in such ill health, Allyn stayed only a short time. Later, he showed Madame Beaumont, Lily’s mother, the match safe Strand had given him. She collapsed at the sight of it. It was the same one she had given her husband before he vanished at sea.

The incredible story quickly circulated through the small village. Was the old man indeed the long-lost Jacques Beaumont? Some people claimed he looked like the man they had known decades earlier. Others were convinced he was an imposter preying upon the kindness of a respected family. Meanwhile, the old man had grown sicker and was taken to the hospital. Doctors could do little for him except to make his final hours as comfortable as possible.

Harper Allyn was notified, as was a Catholic priest who administered the last rites of the church.

Allyn sat at the old man’s bedside. He knew not what to say or even where to begin. But he had to know. He asked the priest to translate his words.

“Will you now tell the truth? Are you Stephen Strand or Jacques Beaumont?” Allyn asked the dying man.

The priest translated: “In the presence of the Almighty and by the sign of the Cross, I swear . . .” but that was all. Strand/Beaumont sank back against his pillows and was dead.

The tale that Harper Allyn heard on that island in Goguac Lake remained forever in dispute.

Was this man Harper Allyn knew on Goguac Lake simply an imposter, claiming one of the most fanciful cases of possession in history? Or had he, for most of his life, lived as two men, inhabiting the body of one, the soul and mind of another?

If there was an answer, it went with him to the grave.

The Schooner Erie Board of Trade

Saginaw

It should not be surprising that the legends and lore surrounding lost ships and shipwrecks of the Great Lakes are legion. There is something about a modern lake freighter or nineteenth-century cargo schooner simply disappearing beneath the waves with all hands on board that excites and terrifies us at the same time. The first ship lost on the Great Lakes is an example. The French explorer Robert de la La Salle’s barque, the Griffon, disappeared (in a storm, Father Hennepin wrote) during its return to Fort Niagara on Lake Huron after leaving Washington Island, off Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula, on September 18, 1679. The rough-hewn ship was loaded with six hundred tons of furs. La Salle himself watched the ship leave port after deciding to set out with some of his men to explore lands to the south. There is no conclusive evidence that the ship’s wreckage has been found.

Often the stories go beyond the ordinary and claims are made that particular ships, like the lost Griffon or the yawl Western Reserve in the story “Man on the Beach,” have become ghost ships.

There is even a Lake Michigan Triangle (Ludington Michigan to Benton Harbor, then across the Lake to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and back to Ludington) in which ships and planes are alleged to have vanished without a trace, much like its namesake in Bermuda, even though there is scant evidence to support the claims.

But sometimes the stories are not about an entire ship and crew condemned to sail as a Flying Dutchman for all eternity but rather a supernatural event on board that gives it notoriety.

Such is the case with a nineteenth-century three-masted barque that’s named The Erie Board of Trade, though study has cast doubt that a ship with that specific name ever sailed the Great Lakes.

The ghost story connected to the Board of Trade has murky origins at best. A lengthy account was published in the August 20, 1883, edition of the New York Sun and then reprinted in newspapers all around the Great Lakes in the months that followed.

Whatever the case, the story is reputed to have been first told on a moonlit night in Saginaw, Michigan, in much the same way as it was later reported first in the New York Sun and then in the Saginaw Courier, from which this version is derived.

What makes it intriguing—irrespective of how much of it is true or not—is that the storyteller clearly had sailed on Great Lake schooners and knew what he was talking about. Perhaps he changed the name of the ship in the telling, but it is not hard to imagine that he went through exactly what he says he did.

A crew of Great Lakes sailors was sitting around a ship chandler’s shop along the lower part of Saginaw’s South Street, not far from the Saginaw River. They had been exchanging ghost stories all evening and one man had just finished telling his own.

“Hah,” snorted the chandler whose nautical supply shop it was.

“You’re a sorry dog. You were drunk, and the spirits you’d taken made you see other spirits!”

Everyone laughed except for one man, the oldest sailor in the bunch. He had been listening in silence. Presently he tamped out his pipe and threw one leg over the anchor stock he was sitting on.

“Well, I saw a ghost once,” he began, refilling his pipe bowl. “I saw it as plain as ever. The captain of the schooner I was on and the man in the waist both saw it too. And there wasn’t a drop of liquor on board.”

His audience quieted; they knew this old man always spoke the truth.

“It was a little over ten years ago. I was before the mast then. It was the opening of the season, and I was in Chicago. I heard at the boardinghouse that some men were wanted on a three-masted schooner called the Erie Board of Trade. The boys gave her a pretty hard name, but they said the grub was good and that the old man paid top wages every time, so I went down and asked him if he’d got all the hands aboard. He looked at me a minute, and asked me where my dunnage was. When I told him, he said I should get it on board right away.

“The Board of Trade was as handsome a craft as ever floated on the lakes. As I came down the dock with my bag under my arm, I had to stop and have a look at her. The old captain saw me. He was proud of her, and I thought afterward that he rather took a fancy to me because I couldn’t help showing I liked her looks.

“I was in her two round trips. The last trip up was the last on the lakes. Not but what times were pretty good up there. We were getting two fifty a day for the first trip out and another two bucks the last. We messed with the old man, and, with fresh meat and vegetables and coffee and milk, it was first-cabin passage all around. But the old man made it hot for most of us. There wasn’t any watch below in the day and we were kept painting her on the down trip and scrubbing the paint off again on the passage up.

“The first trip around to Chicago, every man but me got his dunnage onto the dock as soon as he was paid off. When I got my money I asked the old man if he’d want anyone to help with the lines when the schooner was towed from the coal yard to the elevator. He said he reckoned he could keep me if I wanted to stay, so I signed articles for the next trip there.

“When we were getting the wheat into her at the elevator, we got the crew aboard. One of them was a red-haired Scotsman. The captain took a dislike to him from the first. I don’t know why. It was a tough time for Scotty all the way down. We were in Buffalo just twelve hours, and then we cleared for Cleveland to take on soft coal for Milwaukee. The tug gave us a short pull outside the breakwater, and we had no more than got the canvas up before the wind died out completely. We dropped anchor for the current, settling to the Niagara River, was carrying us down to Black Rock at three knots.

“When we’d got things shipshape about docks, the old man called Scotty and two others aft and told them to scrape down the topmasts. Then he handed the bosun’s chair to them. Scotty gave the chair a look and then turned around, and touching his forehead respectfully, said, ‘If you please, sir, the rope’s been chafed off, and I’ll bend on a bit of ratlin’ stuff.’ The captain was mighty touchy because the jug had left him so, and he just jumped up and down and swore. He told Scotty that, by God, he’d better get up there damn fast or he’d see to it that he never worked on the lakes again.

“Scotty climbed the main rigging pretty quick. He got the halyards bent on the chair and sung out to hoist away. I and a youngster, the captain’s nephew, were standing by. We handled that rope carefully, for I’d seen how tender the chair was. When we’d got him up, the young fellow took a turn around the pin, and I looked aloft to see what Scotty was doing. As I did so he reached for his knife with one hand and put out the other for the backstay.

“Just then the chair gave way. He fell all bunched up till he struck the crosstrees, and then he spread out and fell flat on the deck, just forward of the cabin, on the starboard side. I was kneeling beside him in a minute, and so was the old man.

“I was feeling pretty well choked up to see a shipmate killed for he wasn’t breathin’. I said to the captain this is pretty bad business, sir; this man’s been murdered. Just then, why, Scotty opened his eyes and looked at us. In a whisper, he cursed the captain and his wife and children, and the ship and her owners. While he was still talking, the blood bubbled over his lips, and his head lurched over to one side. He was dead then a’ course.”

The old sailor brushed at his eyes.

“It was three days before the schooner got to Cleveland. Some of the boys were for leaving her there, but most of us stayed because wages were down again. Going through the rivers, there were four other schooners in the tow. We were next to the tug. Just at the big end below Port Huron a squall struck us. It was too much for the tug, and some lubber cast off the towline without singing out first.

“We dropped our bower as quick as we could, but it was not before we drifted astern, carrying away the headgear of the schooner next to us and smashing our own dinghy. We were a shaky lot going up Lake Huron and no lifeboat under the stern.

“There was a fair easterly wind on the lake, and as we got out of the river in the morning we were standing across Saginaw Bay during the first watch that night. I had the second trick at the wheel. The stars were shining bright and clear and not a cloud was in sight. Ever’ stitch of canvas was set and drawing, though the booms sagged and creaked as the vessel rolled lazily in the varying breeze.

“I had just sung out to the mate to strike eight bells when the captain climbed up the companionway and out on deck. He stepped over to the starboard rail and had a look around, then the lookout began striking the bell. The last stroke of the bell seemed to die away with a swish.

“A bit of spray or something struck me in the face. I wiped it away, and then I saw something rise up slowly across the mainsail from the starboard side of the deck forward of the cabin. It was white and all bunched up.

“I glanced at the captain and saw he was staring at it too.

“It hovered straight up and then struck the crosstrees. There it spread out and rolled over toward us.

“It was Scotty, nah, his ghost that is.

“His lips were working just as they were when he cursed the captain. As he straightened out, he seemed to stretch himself until he grasped the maintop mast with one hand and the mizzen with the other. Both were carried away like pipe stems.

“The next I knew the square sail yard was hanging in two pieces, the top hamper was swinging, and the booms were jibing over.

“The old man fell in a dead faint on the quarterdeck, and the man in the waist dived down from the forecastle so fast that he knocked over the last man of the other watch. If it had not been for the watch coming on deck just then, she’d have rolled altogether. They got the head sails over and I put the wheel up without knowing what I was doing. In a minute it seemed we were laying our course again.”

The old sailor stopped, took a deep breath, and looked around.

“Well, I see some of you don’t believe me. Can’t say I blame you but you can verify it all for yourself. On the next voyage the schooner was sunk. The insurance companies didn’t want to pay on the ground the captain scuttled her. During the trial the whole story was told under oath . . . Scotty’s deaths, the loss of her top masts under a clear sky . . . all of it.”

And with that the old man relit his pipe.

Although this story or a close variant is sometimes included whenever Great Lakes ghost stories are discussed, the fundamental question remains: Is it true?

Could be. Or at least parts of it.

Those familiar with this story and with sailing ships point to the technical knowledge of barque (three masted) schooners displayed by the old man as evidence he had served aboard a ship like that or knew his way around one.

Now what makes the story plausible is that while Great Lakes historians have no proof of a ship named the Erie Board of Trade on the Great Lakes, there was a schooner with a rather similar name—the Chicago Board of Trade—during the years in which the story is set. Further, events in the ghost story and what befell the Chicago Board of Trade are similar in some details.

This Chicago Board of Trade was launched at Manitowoc, Wisconsin, in 1863, making it about ten years old at the time of the old sailor’s events. She carried grain and other cargo on Lakes Huron and Erie, same as the Erie. Her home port was Bay City, Michigan.

In July 1874 the schooner then under the command of Captain Thomas Fountain was bound for Buffalo, New York, with 28,500 bushels of shelled corn when it struck bottom and scraped over rocks on the lower reaches of the Detroit River, near Malden. The ship continued on for some time with all crew manning the pumps. The crew discovered three feet of water below and could not pump it out fast enough. All hands took to the lifeboats. The ship sank bow first in ten fathoms (sixty feet) of water some twenty-five miles distant from Cleveland.

All the crew and Captain Fountain made it to Fairport, Ohio, a Lake Erie harbor settlement. The schooner itself was a “total loss—$19,000 for the hull and $42,000 for the cargo of wheat.”

But suspicions arose that the schooner had been scuttled. Within a month, a Buffalo, New York, business newspaper was reporting the ship “went down under rather peculiar circumstances.” The ship’s insurers contracted with a salvage company to raise the hull and tow it to Buffalo to launch an investigation. The raising apparently had to wait until the following spring. By March 16, 1875, the Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper was reporting that the Board of Trade had been “scuttled and sunk intentionally” to obtain the insurance.

It was not until August 1875 that divers and two tugs raised the schooner’s hull and took it to dry dock. Attention turned immediately to “holes in the water closet pipe” as an initial cause of its sinking. Accident or deliberate damage? The question remained open until it was reporred that Captain Fountain “had run away.” At that point it seemed, as one newspaper reported, “the statement that the vessel was sunk by foul play has some confirmation.”

A trial was apparently held, as was done in the ghost story, but unfortunately a transcript of the proceedings has not surfaced to show if the death of a crewman occurred prior to the ship’s sinking.

But unlike the ghost story, the Chicago Board of Trade had a second life. The hull was bought for $700 by Henry A. Hawgood, a shipowner in Cleveland, who “took her up the lake and rebuilt her.” The ship was listed as a Great Lakes merchant vessel as late as 1884.

The trail of a Great Lakes ship with the name of Board of Trade seems to end there, at least for for the time being. We are left to wonder if the old sailor perhaps changed the ship’s name in his telling and added a few fictional details to make it a more chilling yarn. Is there a red-haired Scotsman who figures prominently in the trial testimony? The answer to that might depend on whether you believe in ghosts or not . . .

Man on the Beach

Deer Park

Captain Truedell was a dreamer. Throughout his decadeslong career in the old Great Lakes Life-Saving Service, including twenty years commanding the station at Grand Marais, Michigan, the captain always dreamed of the important things in his life before they happened. His mother had the gift of prescience and passed it on to him.

The most chilling example of the captain’s strange ability to see into the future occurred during his second year in the Life-Saving Service, while he was stationed at Deer Park, Michigan. Once a busy lumber port, Deer Park was little more than a ghost town by 1892.

Truedell usually slept from eight in the evening until shortly before he was called for his watch at midnight. On the night of April 30, 1892, however, Truedell had a particularly fitful sleep. In fact, a dream was playing and replaying and so lifelike that when he eventually awoke he was soaked with perspiration.

In the dream, Truedell was standing on the beach near the station as a storm rose across the lake. Out of the mist walked a man, well dressed and obviously cultivated. As the stranger passed Truedell, he reached out, as if to shake the captain’s hand.

Truedell grasped his hand, cold and wet to the touch. The stranger then turned to look directly into Truedell’s face and walked into the surf, vanishing under the turbulent waters.

His watch that night was quiet and uneventful. Although a gale continued to blow in from the northwest, the men at the Life-Saving Station had received no distress signals.

At breakfast the next morning, the men joked about Truedell’s dream, claiming that his quiet duty was evidence that this time his precognition was wrong.

But early in the afternoon, a soaking-wet, dazed sailor straggled into the station. His ship had gone down in the gale, and only he survived as far as he knew. His name was Harry Stewart, the wheelman.

His ship, the Western Reserve, belonged to a millionaire, Peter Minch. At that time it was the biggest ship on the lakes, a sturdy three hundred feet long. Minch was so confident of the Western Reserve that he took his family aboard for a pleasure trip from the Soo Locks to Two Harbors, Minnesota, where the ship was to take on a load of iron ore.

When the storm had hit, however, Minch ordered Stewart to continue sailing around Whitefish Point and Point Iroquois against the captain’s advice. The pounding gale buckled the decks; the ship snapped in two, sending the crew, Minch, and his family into a steel lifeboat and smaller, wooden yawl. The lifeboat sank, but its occupants were able to scramble aboard the yawl.

Early on the morning of May 1, the yawl capsized in the surf, fifteen miles west of Deer Point. Only wheelman Harry Stewart lived.

True to Captain Truedell’s dream, the Western Reserve had sunk at about nine o’clock the previous evening, just at the time the captain was beginning to “see” the disaster in his sleep.

After listening to Stewart’s story, Captain Truedell was assigned to patrol the beach in a westerly direction, searching for any other possible survivors. He soon found the body of a well-dressed man lying face down in the sand. Truedell hesitated a moment before he rolled the body over. The man’s hand—wet and cold—brushed against his own.

Could it be?

He looked at the dead man’s face to be certain.

It was.

Redemption

Detroit

An old woman named Marie Louise Kennette lived alone in a little house on the river road to Springwells. She was rude, unkempt, and loved only her money and a violin, a family heirloom. A shoemaker by trade, she was so miserly that she spent her evenings wandering the streets so she would not have to spend money on heating or lighting her home and often begged food from neighbors so as not to fritter away her hoarded sums on groceries.

But early in what would turn out to be her own last year on earth, 1868, those who knew her noticed a change of behavior—she began to take better care of her personal appearance, often stayed home at night reading by the kerosene lamp, and spoke pleasantly to those whom she met on the roadway.

The reason for Marie’s “redemption” constitutes one of the oldest ghost stories in Detroit.

A number of years earlier, Marie had decided to make a little extra money by taking in a boarder. Clarissa Jordan was an elderly lady who regularly attended mass and prayed several times a day. Marie laughed at her piousness, as her own church brethren had ostracized her for her many eccentricities.

Clarissa tried to reform Marie. She attempted to persuade her to attend church more regularly and, after that failed, sought to scare Marie with ghost stories showing the presence of supernatural forces in human lives.

There was, for example, her story of old Grand-mère Duchêne, who sat at her spinning wheel for weeks after she died. The droning of the wheel nearly drove her son insane until he bought fifty masses for the repose of her soul.

Clarissa spoke also of the feu follet, or the will-o’-the-wisp, sent to the door of a girl at Grosse Isle while her lover was trapped in a swamp. The mysterious light led her to him, and he was rescued.

And remember French hunter Sebastian’s ghost boat, Clarissa solemnly added, which ascends the Straits of Mackinac once every seven years to keep the Frenchman’s promise to his betrothed that he would always return to her—dead or alive.

“Bah!” Marie hooted at Clarissa’s tall tales. “I don’t believe in your silly stories, or your purgatory or your hell . . . which you can go to at once for all I care! But I will make a bargain with you—if you die first, come back to me right here. Should I die before you then I will return. We will then know if there is any other world but our own!”

Sometime after this conversation, the women had an argument in which Marie swore never to speak to the lodger again. But, she added, their agreement to return from the dead was still to be upheld.

For the rest of their time together in the house, the two women avoided each other. Instructions or messages were written on scraps of paper and left for the other to find. They ate in different rooms. If by chance one saw the other coming down the hallway, she would duck through the nearest door. To the outsider, it appeared as if each woman existed in a different dimension, unable to see, hear, or communicate with the other.

Clarissa Jordan died early one winter. One evening not long after, Marie was out visiting, so as to spare the expense of heat and light in the early darkness. A young neighbor boy spotted her and asked why she had left the lights on in her house. He knew of her miserliness and was surprised. Marie returned home at once, but when she got there the lights were off.

Marie’s kerosene lamps were reported shining over several subsequent evenings, but she never quite returned in time to catch the “culprit.” The stout cane she held in her hand was always poised, ready to strike down the intruder.

Determined to put an end to the problem, Marie left the house at her usual time one day but then sneaked back in minutes later, quietly climbed the stairs, and hid under the covers of her own bed. Moments later, a light blinked on downstairs in the sitting room. But, instead of remaining where it was, the glowing orb ascended the staircase. It was phosphorescent and seemed to shimmer as it moved down the hall, through the door, and into Marie’s bedroom. The glow gradually took the form of her old, pious lodger, Clarissa Jordan.

“I know you!” Marie cried out. “Come no nearer! I believe! I believe!”

Until her death a year or so later Marie Louise Kennett grew softer, kinder, and more neighborly. She even stopped her miserly walks at night. However, she also aged very rapidly.

The sight of the ghost of her old lodger, it is said, had a most profound effect on her.

The Lynching

Menominee

One of the most gruesome legends in all of American history was spawned in the Upper Peninsula lumber town of Menominee, on the shores of Green Bay, a few miles north of the Wisconsin border.

On September 26, 1881, a pair of thugs known as the McDonald boys stabbed to death Billy Kittson. The next day, a crazed mob broke into the jail holding the killers and subjected them to “timber justice” so grotesque that it almost strains credulity, were it not so well documented.

The sadistic carnage also gave rise to the grimly accurate foretelling that each vigilante would die “with his boots on.”

The McDonald boys were actually two cousins, although they were closer than most brothers. Their surnames were different, but everyone called them the McDonalds. The tall, slim one was Big Mac, born a McDougall. His shorter cousin was known, naturally enough, as Little Mac.

They had reputations as mean, deadly knife fighters, especially when they had been drinking, which was most of the time. It was the wise citizen who gave this ornery pair a wide berth.

By most accounts, the trouble began after the 1881 spring lumber drive. The McDonalds got into a fight in Pine River and ended up stabbing Sheriff Ruprecht as he tried to break it up. The sheriff recovered and deputized two-hundred-pound muscleman George Kittson, Billy’s half brother, to track down and arrest the pair. He did, and the McDonalds spent the next several months in jail.

They were released on September 24 and drifted down to Menominee, swearing vengeance on George Kittson. They both found work at the Bay Shore Lumber Company.

The Kittson family was fairly prominent, if not highly respectable, in the pioneer lumber town. There were three boys—George, Norman, and Billy—all sons of an Englishman who had fled the catastrophic Wisconsin Peshtigo fire in 1871. He moved to Menominee shortly thereafter to become its second permanent settler. Billy, the youngest boy, was a rough character known to like whiskey and women, and not always in that order. Norman was cut from the same cloth.

On the afternoon of September 26, the McDonalds left work at the Bay Shore Company and headed for the Montreal House, a seedy saloon in the west side neighborhood known as Frenchtown, where Norman Kittson bartended.

The more the McDonalds drank, the more belligerent they became. They warned Norman that his brother George was a dead man. To back up the threat, they drew knives. Eventually they staggered out of the bar and headed for the Frenchtown whorehouse ensconced behind the jack pine near Bellevue Street. Inside, Billy Kittson was drinking whiskey out of a jug with the girls of the house. When the McDonalds barged in, a fight ensued. Billy hit one of the McDonalds over the head with an empty bottle, then headed for the relative safety of the Montreal House. The McDonalds caught up with him in the street outside. Norman Kittson saw the pair closing in on Billy and shouted a warning.

“I’m not afraid of those sonsabitches!” Billy yelled back. Big Mac smashed Billy across the head with a heavy club and then plunged a knife deep into his rib cage as he lay sprawled on the ground. Norman ran to Billy’s aid, but Little Mac knocked him away. Billy struggled to his feet, only to be stabbed by Big Mac in the side of the head.

Norman managed to draw a revolver from his coat pocket. He fired twice. Little Mac clutched his leg as he and his cousin fled.

By all rights, Billy Kittson should have fallen right away. But he had drunk so much whiskey that he was oblivious to his mortal wounds. He limped inside the Montreal House, ordered drinks for everyone, and then promptly fell over dead.

Norman’s wounds were serious but not fatal. The McDonalds were captured a few hours later at the train depot trying to get out of town and were promptly locked up. Word spread like a fire through virgin pine that young Billy Kittson had been killed and the notorious McDonald boys were responsible. At every tavern and hotel, on each street corner in Menominee, lumbermen talked of little else. Their voices were loud and angry, especially the next day, when it became clear that a hearing on the murder would be postponed. The prosecutor had trouble, for even though the McDonalds were in custody, many witnesses thought fulfilling their civic duty to testify against them might shorten their own lives considerably.

As the liquor flowed, the talk turned to inflicting rough justice on the pair. They had knifed a sheriff, killed the son of a well-known family, and generally created a reign of terror in the city.

Six men were ringleaders. Frank Saucier, a drayman, offered the use of a stout section of timber to batter down the jailhouse door. Bob Stephenson, the superintendent of the Ludington, Wells, and Van Schaick Lumber Company, supplied the rope. Max Forvilly, owner of the Forvilly House on Ludington Street, the gathering place for the mob, constantly replenished the whiskey.

Stephenson headed the mob with Louis Porter and Tom Parent, both timber bosses, and Robert Barclay, an ex-sheriff who ran a livery stable.

Late that afternoon, the half-dozen men, followed by a group of hangers-on, grabbed the ramming timber and marched on the courthouse. Only two deputy sheriffs guarded the McDonalds. One of them, Jack Fryer, challenged the mob, but Louis Porter immediately disarmed him and shoved him aside.

The mob ransacked the jail and found the two McDonalds cowering in a cell. Big Mac pleaded to be allowed to argue against his imminent fate. They ignored his whimpers and threw a rope around his neck.

Louis Porter grabbed Little Mac, but the outlaw pulled a small knife from his boot and stabbed him in the hand. Enraged, Porter grabbed an axe from a man named Laramie and whacked Little Mac, splitting open his skull. He was done for.

Nevertheless, the mob drew ropes tightly around both men’s necks and dragged them from the jail. Big Mac was still conscious even as he was pulled by the rope over an iron fence. Witnesses say his neck stretched several inches when his head got caught in the fence.

Down Main Street, the jubilant mob hauled the McDonalds, one already dead and the other on his way. The mob took turns jumping on the bodies, stomping out bloody chunks of flesh with their heavy boots. A few even “rode” them for a distance. The macabre procession took on the appearance of a parade as men, women, and even children joined in. Church bells peeled and whistles blew. Everyone cheered the spectacle of the McDonald boys getting “just what they deserved.”

Near a railroad crossing, the mob strung up the McDonald boys from a tall pole. Big Mac twitched, moaned once or twice, and then died.

Not everyone appreciated the sight of the boys swaying in the breeze at such a prominent location. Some thought the bodies might scare the horses and frighten the women and children. After some arguing, the mob came up with a solution. Why not take the boys back to where the trouble had begun—the Frenchtown whorehouse?

And that is just what they did. They let fall the corpses and dragged them up Bellevue Street. At the church, Father Menard tried to stop them, but they brushed him aside.

The priest glared after them and declared that for these sins each man present would “die with his boots on.”

Undeterred, the men dragged their prizes through the front door of the whorehouse and into one of the bedrooms, dumping the bloodied, mangled remains on a bed. They rounded up the girls and, one by one, forced the dozen ladies to climb into bed with the corpses.

When the mob tired of their entertainment, they ran the girls out of the house and burned it to the ground. They left the McDonald boys’ remains tied to two small pine trees outside the burning building.

Had the leaders of that mob known what strange fates awaited them, they might have thought more seriously about their own actions and especially Father Menard’s curse, almost lost in the hubbub.

First struck was Bob Stephenson, who supplied the rope. A few months after the lynching, Stephenson’s lumberyard caught fire. His men refused to run between two piles of lumber and tip them over to save them. Cursing them, Stephenson himself ran between the piles, trying to douse the flames with water buckets. The fire caught him but when he cried out, fumes from his whiskey-sodden breath ignited. His body exploded in flames, from the inside out. He lingered in excruciating pain for three days before he died.

Frank Saucier, who had supplied the battering ram to break down the jail door, died without apparent cause on a train trip from Iron River to Menominee.

Louis Porter, who recovered from the knife wound Little Mac had inflicted on him, came to his end when he went with his men on a log drive. Porter sent them on ahead, saying he was tired and wanted to rest. When the crew returned at the end of the day, they found his body propped against a tree, his arms folded across his chest. No one knows why he died. Some say a poisonous snake bit him.

The list goes on: A man named Dunn was accidentally sliced in half by a head saw in a Green Bay sawmill. Albert Lemieux, a timber cruiser, slashed his own throat midway through a poker game he was losing in a lumber camp late one night. Alfred Beach drowned when his boat capsized.

Some of the men learned of the peculiar deaths of their comrades and vowed they would not die in a similar manner. They would avoid the curse by leaving the region forever.

But the curse was too strong. On his way to a family reunion, ex-sheriff Robert Barclay pulled up at the gathering, jumped out of the wagon, waved, and dropped dead.

And Max Forvilly lost his hotel, his money, and his family. He died on a small farm at Peshtigo Sugar Bush, crazy and penniless.

The Lake Odessa Mystery

Lake Odessa

The old house at the corner of Tupper Lake Street and Sixth Avenue in the small town of Lake Odessa was haunted, of that there was little doubt. But just what or who flitted through its darkened rooms and tromped across the front porch remained a mystery.

Lake Odessa was a quiet village at the turn of the century, slumbering midway between Lansing and Grand Rapids. Dan and Cora Shopbell moved into town after being disillusioned with life on their farm a few miles away. They decided to build a new house on a vacant lot across the street from Cora’s parents, George and Delilah Kepner. Uncle Dan, as everyone called him, built the house himself, right down to the cabinetry in the kitchen. As the foundation he used the old cellar that remained from a previous house that had burned many years before.

Uncle Dan took great pride in the dwelling, pouring several inches of concrete into the walls so rodents could not enter, and installed one of the first indoor bathrooms in Lake Odessa. He also crafted most of the furniture by hand.

Soon after Daniel and Cora moved in, they realized something was very wrong. They rarely talked about it with her parents, or her sister and brother-in-law, the Gardiners, who lived with the Kepners across Sixth Avenue. The Shopbells were practical, hardworking people not given to flights of fancy. They found it uncomfortable to discuss any troubles they could not understand. Their niece, Leona Gardiner, learned as a teenager about their experiences in the house, and it is her recollections and investigations that preserved the story of the mystery house.

It was shortly after the Shopbells settled into the house when they began hearing odd noises. If the couple was in the sitting room, a banging came from the back of the house. Daniel ruled out rodents since the concrete prevented their getting into the walls, and there were no tall trees near the house to scrape against it. At other times, the couple was brought out of their chairs by what sounded like a big ball or oversized pumpkin rolling across the porch and then slamming into the front door. But when they opened the door, they found nothing. No ball. No pumpkin.

The odd happenings in their house went far beyond the occasional unexplained sound. An old-fashioned, woodburning stove stood in the sitting room. As Cora and Daniel watched, the stove door sometimes gently swung open and then slammed shut, just as if someone was checking the fire.

They made their decision to move the evening when Daniel, who was sitting in his favorite chair, was picked up—chair and all—held aloft for a few seconds, and then set back down. There was absolutely nothing to explain it.

Although they had only lived in it for a year, the Shopbells sold the house for a negligible sum to Gottlieb and Anna Kussmaul and moved back to their old farm, which they found much less hectic.

Gottlieb was a first-generation American who still spoke with a heavy accent. Stocky in build and strong, with a colorful vocabulary, he was a generous man as well, always ready to come to the assistance of his neighbors. He worked at a local grain elevator, hoisting hundred-pound bags of grain for hours at a time.

Anna, in contrast, was small and refined, a woman who had been educated through the twelfth grade, which was unusual in that era, and later studied music. She taught piano lessons for many years in Lake Odessa. At one time, she and her brother, Byron, a violinist, formed a dance orchestra, which played at local events and practiced in the Kussmauls’ sitting room.

The couple had one daughter, Hattie, a pale, thin child who was the delight of her parents. She married young but died in her midtwenties in a severe flu epidemic following World War I.

The family also had a big gray tomcat, Tiger, who was Hattie’s special playmate and who seemed to have a mysterious way of walking through solid walls.

During the day, the family let the cat into the house, but at night, Tiger slept in the barn on a pile of straw. Nevertheless, the Gottliebs were often awakened in the early morning hours when the cat walked across the foot of their bed. But before any one of the family could put him outside he would vanish. The next morning there he would be as usual, outside the back door, crying to come in. They never could figure out how he got out.

Little Hattie was the unwilling witness to another strange episode in the old house. Her mother sometimes gave music lessons to a few students in nearby towns. She took the morning Pere Marquette Railroad to her pupils’ homes and returned late in the afternoon. Hattie stayed with the Mosey family after school, across Tupper Lake Street, until her mother returned.

One day after school, Hattie decided instead to go on home. She was soon back at the Mosey house, crying that a man was in their bathroom with his foot up on the tub shining his boots.

Mrs. Mosey sent her two sons to investigate and waited on the porch, holding Hattie by the hand. The boys failed in their search. Mrs. Mosey tried to persuade Hattie that it must have been her imagination, but the little girl refused to go back home until her mother came for her.

A later episode seemed to vindicate Hattie. One summer night in 1911, a frantic pounding on the front door awakened the nearby Kepner household. Crying out that her husband was ill, Anna Kussmaul had come to fetch Mrs. Gardiner, a nurse who often stayed with families. Mrs. Gardiner remembered what happened:

 

I threw on my clothes and ran over with the kerosene lamp in my hand, for the street lights in those days went out at midnight. As soon as I looked at Gottlieb and heard his breathing, I knew what was wrong and called Dr. McLaughlin. . . . We worked over him the rest of the night before the doctor felt it was safe to leave him. He left strict orders not to let Gottleib sleep more than twenty minutes at a time, for fear he might slip into a coma. He was to be roused enough each time to answer a question rationally.

I worked there ten days or maybe two weeks, and I will never forget those nights. It seemed that as soon as Hattie and Anna were asleep, the noises would begin. At first I was scared; then I got mad and would try to find what caused them.

The only way I can describe them is that they sounded like men fighting, or anyway how I imagine it would sound if men were fighting. There were dull, heavy sounds like people wrestling on the floor; dull thumps like blows and grunting sounds. I can’t describe it any different. It always came from the back of the house, from the dining room or kitchen, and the minute I would get out of my chair to go and see what it was, it would stop short . . . I never heard a sound while I was up and moving around, taking care of Gottlieb. I always said I wouldn’t spend a night alone in that house for a million dollars!

 

It was not until much later—when Anna Kussmaul described the harrowing night in an interview—that Mrs. Gardiner found out everything that happened the night Gottlieb became sick.

As Mrs. Kussmaul told a newspaper reporter:

 

It was a stifling hot day in August. Gottlieb came home from work drenched with sweat and exhausted. He said he was too tired to eat supper, but I coaxed him to eat a bowl of bread and milk, then to bathe and go to bed. It had been a terribly muggy day, and it didn’t cool off after sunset, as it sometimes does. However, he had fallen asleep almost at once and I could hear him snoring while I washed the supper dishes.

Hattie and I sat on the porch a little while, but it was no cooler out there, so I cleaned Hattie up and put her to bed soon after eight. I was so miserably hot I took off my corset—what horrid, heavy things those old corsets were!—and decided to go to bed myself although it was not yet nine o’clock . . .

Gottlieb was still snoring and I got into bed facing him and lay that way for a few minutes, but soon turned with my face toward the window in hopes I’d get at least a breath of air.

As I turned, I was paralyzed with fear for I clearly saw a man silhouetted in the doorway. He was advancing toward the bed. I was too frightened to make a sound or move until he was right beside the bed, when I jerked the sheet over my head and called, “Gottlieb!”

I got no answer and tried to kick him, but he just kept snoring. I don’t know how long it was before I got up the nerve to uncover my head and reach out and pull the string that led from the light bulb down to the head of the bed, where one end of it was tied. When the light came on there was no sign of anyone there, nothing was disturbed, and there was no sound except for my husband’s snoring.

I fell asleep at last, but not for long. I awakened to realize that something was wrong. The snoring that I had heard so long did not sound right; it was more than just snoring. I tried to awaken him, but it was impossible to rouse him. I knew then that something was terribly wrong, and that was when I went running for [Mrs. Gardiner].

 

Gottlieb Kussmaul had suffered a seizure. Although he later recovered, Anna believed that the “man” she saw had been there as a warning not to fall asleep, that her husband was ill.

The Kussmauls stayed in the house until 1946. During all those years they were plagued with odd noises, thumps, groans, and footsteps, but nothing serious enough to warrant them moving away.

What, then, might have caused the disturbances? Was the house haunted?

Could the mysterious events be connected with the previous home that had burned in the late nineteenth century, leaving only the excavated cellar upon which Daniel Shopbell built his home?

There are two versions told of what transpired in that first house, either of which might have produced a ghost or two. The original owner had been a cattle buyer or real estate agent, depending on which version of the events one believes. In both accounts, a stranger appears one day with a good deal of money. In one story he wants to buy cattle, and in the other he is a land speculator from out of state who wants to settle in Lake Odessa. The house owner murders him for the wad of money and shortly thereafter the house burns to the foundation.

The scenario makes sense. Mrs. Gardiner claims she heard the sound of men fighting and a body falling to the floor. Perhaps that man in Anna Kussmaul’s bedroom and the mysterious intruder Hattie saw were both the same person—the victim of that killing whose name has been long forgotten to history.

The Spurned Suitor

Gross Isle

The capture of Detroit after the surrender of American General William Hull and his two thousand troops in August 1812 was one of the most humiliating defeats suffered by the American forces in the War of 1812.

What is not so commonly known is that in the days before Hull’s final surrender, a series of smaller clashes were taking their toll on both sides. In planning one of those skirmishes, British General Isaac Brock made the decision that troops under the command of Lieutenant Adam Muir would lead an assault on American soldiers at Mongaugon—now Gross Isle—on August 9, 1812. Even with their tough Wyandot Indian allies led by Tecumseh and Walk-in-the-Water, the British knew it would be a dangerous mission from which the young lieutenant and a number of his men might not return.

The night before he led the expedition, Muir was rejected by the woman he loved, and he was killed in battle the next day. The lieutenant’s ghost is condemned to wander the quiet woods of Gross Ile.

Stunning Marie McIntosh was the daughter of Angus McIntosh, a Scottish businessman living in British Ontario. She and her family lived in a grand home near present-day Windsor. Lieutenant Adam Muir had been courting her for quite some time. Their courtship was rather chaste by today’s standards, as was often the case in that era. Their moments together typically came at formal gatherings or in the presence of their families. To make matters even more difficult, the lieutenant was exceedingly shy where women were concerned; he spoke to only a few close confidants of his desire to marry young Marie.

Marie knew in her heart that the handsome soldier was the man she wanted to marry, but she grew ever more impatient with his bashfulness and began to find it quite irritating. She could not tell him of her own feelings, for that would have been quite unseemly without a formal engagement. Nevertheless, it did not occur to Marie—not yet twenty years of age herself—that, despite words of marriage never having been exchanged, Lieutenant Muir would ever doubt her love for him or that she would agree to a marriage proposal.

If he would only ask.

On the eve of the British raid on Mongaugon, Marie’s shy beau faced a most harrowing assignment, one from which he might not return.

Lieutenant Muir decided he had to tell Marie of his feelings and propose marriage. He imagined that the warmth of her love would shield him from harm when the time came.

On the night before battle, August 8, the lieutenant obtained a short leave from his company and stole away to the McIntoshs’ home. Marie was alone save for her housemaid. He met her in the parlor and spoke forcefully of his love. Then dropping to bended knee, he asked for her hand in marriage. He told her of the coming battle, that tomorrow he would face a perilous assault on the American forces, but that with her assent to an engagement he could face the enemy with confidence.

What then would have possessed Marie to do what she did?

Was it her immaturity in dealing with matters of the heart?

Or was she truly irritated at Lieutenant Muir’s timidity in not making his intentions clearer before this night? We will never know.

Whatever her motivation, Marie McIntosh turned away from the lieutenant. She immediately rejected his earnest proposal.

The lieutenant was entirely unprepared for such a stinging rebuke. He quickly rose to his feet and dashed from the room.

Now it was Marie’s turn to be distressed. She was just playing a game to scold him for his timidity. She thought he would linger a few moments in the hallway before returning to press her to marry him. When he did not return, she hurried out to find the front door open and Lieutenant Adam Muir mounting his horse.

She cried out his name, scrambling down the wide porch steps, but he did not hear her as he rode away.

The young housemaid ran to her side.

“He must certainly know that I love him,” sobbed Marie. “Men are so stupid, so matter-of-fact. They take months to make up their minds to woo a girl, and if she does not immediately say ‘yes’ they feel themselves aggrieved and wounded.”

The maid nodded sadly and held her mistress close.

Marie had no choice but to await Muir’s return from the dangerous mission. She had no knowledge of how long that would be, of course, whether a single day or several.

Nightfall came and there was no sign of the young officer. At her maid’s insistence, Marie at last went to bed. The maid drew tight the window shutters and pulled the curtains around the bedstead.

Sleep eluded Marie for many hours. She went over and over the circumstances of that brief encounter with the one man with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life but had rejected in a fit of pique. How could she have been so foolish! She was filled with so much regret at her thoughtless behavior.

As the morning sun began its ascent above the horizon, Marie fell into a disturbed slumber. She soon woke abruptly to the sound of the door to her chamber being thrown open. Rapid boot steps crossed the floor. Marie drew aside the bed curtain and gasped. She shrank against the pillows. Young Lieutenant Muir stood a few feet away, his face as pale as moonlight. A brutal gash angled across his forehead. Blood that had oozed down his pale cheeks left long, dark stains on his muddy uniform.

“Fear not, my dearest Marie,” came a hollow, unfamiliar voice that bore some similarity to the lieutenant’s own. “Though the Americans were victorious, they will not long rejoice. England will soon triumph. I was shot through the head, yet I fell in honor. My body lies hidden in a dense thicket. I beg you for one final act of kindness. Rescue it from the wild beasts of the forest so that I may be remembered with an honorable burial. Farewell, my love.”

With that he reached out and with a calm borne of death laid his fingers on her right hand. The coldness of that touch, the iciness of the grave itself, sliced through her skin. She fainted against the soft pillow.

The sun was high when Marie finally awoke.

Her first thoughts were of that dream—for is that not what it must have been?

She glanced down. Across the back of her right hand were two deep, dark impressions—scars as if two fingers of a man’s hand had burned into her flesh.

She leaped from bed. Calling to her maid, she hastily dressed and ordered that a horse be saddled. Her servants pleaded with her to let one of them accompany her. She ignored them and raced off to General Brock’s encampment at Malden.

She was able to find Walk-in-the-Water—the Wyandot British ally who was also an old friend of the McIntoshes—and haltingly told him of her dilemma. She pleaded with him to be taken to the battle site. He reluctantly agreed and together they went by canoe across the Detroit River. Once they reached shore, Marie moved as if in a trance toward a bramble thicket.

“This is where we shall find him,” she whispered.

It did not take long. The blood-spattered remains of Lieutenant Muir lay as he had fallen. In the cold light of a new dawn, the fatal bullet wound on his forehead was even more terrible than it had appeared on his ghost the night before. But she had found him. That was all that mattered.

Walk-in-the-Water and several of his men removed the soldier’s body to Sandwich, Ontario, where he was buried with military honors.

At the funeral, Marie wore a black glove on her right hand.

Marie McIntosh did marry. Her husband was a decent man who had heard the bittersweet story of Lieutenant Muir and Marie’s courtship. They remained childless.

The dark impressions left by Lieutenant Muir’s touch stayed with her for the rest of her life—a reminder perhaps that impetuous behavior and careless words can have consequences far greater than we might ever imagine. She wore the black glove to remind her of his love.

On August 9, 1813, and for decades thereafter on that date, Marie dressed in a pair of wood sandals and wrapped herself in plain, black sackcloth. She went door to door from Windsor to old Sandwich as a mendicant pleading for money or goods for the ill and for the poor. No church or churchman required such atonement for her transgression. She placed the burden of self-sacrifice on herself.

The shaded woods once plentiful in Grosse Isle—what was once Mongaugon—remained the soldier’s ghostly home forever after, his bloody form slipping quietly among the ancient oaks toward the soothing river.