THE GHOSTS OF BOWER’S HARBOR INN

Bower’s Harbor Inn rests on Old Mission Peninsula in northern Michigan by Traverse City. The building consists of two restaurants: the Bower’s Harbor Inn and the Bowery, located behind the home in what used to be an old barn, the first building on the property. Along with good food and its own winery, Bower’s Harbor Inn is also home to a ghostly legend.

THE LEGEND OF GENEVIEVE’S GHOST

Paranormal activity in Bower’s Harbor Inn has been reported for years and years. The usual sounds of raps on walls, doors opening and closing, lights going on and off by themselves and objects moving on their own are all commonplace in the Bower’s Harbor Inn. For as long as anyone who has known about the ghosts of the home can remember, the common legend told goes something like this:

One of the home’s first owners, J.W. Stickney, a lumber baron, and his wife, Genevieve, still haunt their former home. Some have reported coming face to face with the ghostly body of J.W. Stickney in the home’s elevator. Others have reported seeing Genevieve in a mirror that belonged to her. The legend says that Genevieve was a larger woman, and the mirror was specially designed to make her appear slimmer when she looked at her reflection. The Bower’s Harbor website states:

In 1964, a patron rushed downstairs shaken, her face ashen. She had been standing before Genevieve’s gilt-edged mirror. “I was alone in the hallway and noticed another woman looking in the mirror behind me.” Her hair was pulled back in a bun, just as Genevieve had worn hers.

Genevieve continued to gain weight, and eventually her husband had to install an elevator for her to get to each floor of the house. According to the Bower’s Inn website, Genevieve hanged herself in the elevator shaft. Her husband had been having an affair with Genevieve’s nurse, and when he died, he left his money to the nurse and only the house to Genevieve. This sank her into a severe depression and resulted in her suicide, thus the reason that her ghost still resides at the home.

Everyone from the staff to the diners have experienced paranormal moments at the main restaurant and also in the second restaurant at the back of the house, the Bowery, which is the oldest part of the property. Eerie encounters include everything from faucets turning on and off on their own, mysterious lights appearing out of nowhere and even sightings of Genevieve herself. One of the most paranormally active places in the building is Genevieve’s sitting room. For the most part, many of the strange things that have happened there throughout the years to guests and workers can be blamed on imagination and an old house with drafts and creaks and all sorts of “house arthritis.”

Every legend has an origin, and how the Bower’s Harbor Inn story got started is just as much of a mystery as the ghosts who live there. In reality, the current legend doesn’t match up with the true history behind the people’s spirits that are said to haunt the home. Genevieve was born in 1863 and was described as being a small person, hardly like the image the legend portrays. She married Charles Stickney, and after discovering an old farmhouse and land for sale on Old Mission Peninsula about 1909, they fixed up the old farmhouse and called it home in the summer months. The two loved the beautiful surroundings and were devastated when a fire broke out in the house sometime in the 1920s. But out of that fire came the beautiful home that still stands today. With extensive attention to detail and expensive embellishments throughout, the Stickneys had their very own palace to call home.

Charles and Genevieve had quite the life together and seemed ideal soul mates. Genevieve developed heart disease and passed away on March 15, 1947. She actually died in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at the Pantlind Hotel, which is now the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in downtown Grand Rapids, also rumored to be haunted. The Stickneys lived there during the winter months.

It is wonderful when someone finally comes along and questions these old stories. What is the truth behind them? Is there any at all? Authors Kathleen Tedsen and Beverlee Rydel, for their book Haunted Travels of Michigan, discovered the truth about Bower’s Harbor Inn while researching the legend. They discovered that Mr. Stickney did in fact leave his entire estate to Genevieve’s nurse, Kathryn. It was also discovered, after speaking to Kathryn’s daughter, that Genevieve and Charles both had failing health, and the nurse caught Genevieve one day “tampering” with Charles’s medication. Was she trying to end his life first? The truth will probably never come out. Was a relationship or bond forming between the nurse and Charles? It would seem so.

When Genevieve passed on, her body had swelled to large proportions, possibly lending to the stories of her being a “big lady.” After her death, Charles didn’t like the idea of being alone and moved in with the widowed nurse and her children. It is easy to make assumptions about what was going through Genevieve’s mind during the last days of her life. Was she angry that the nurse was going to inherit everything that she and her husband had owned? Was her illness causing dementia to set in?

An interview with author Kathleen Tedsen about Bower’s Harbor Inn gives a little more insight into the spirits of the home. Kathleen said:

This is a story particularly close to our hearts. We put so much time into the research (months and months) and with the help of this amazing historian, eventually we were able to discover the truth. Initially we were disappointed to discover the Legend of Genevieve was false. It is, after all, such a great ghost story. In the end, however, we were very happy and very excited to get the true story out. We found that the truth is more fascinating, more intriguing, than the legend and brings with it an even more mysterious edge: who actually haunts Bower’s Harbor Inn?

While conducting an investigation at Bower’s Inn for their book, Kathleen remembered her experience in the elevator that is always said to be haunted. As Kathleen got into the elevator, an indescribable feeling washed over her:

I was surprised and overwhelmed at the same time, and I am certainly not a sensitive. Truth is, I don’t have a sensitive bone in my body! So, when I walked into the elevator and closed the door, what happened was completely unexpected. It was an intense feeling of sadness, hopelessness and loss. It was the first time something like this had happened to me. Time, literally, slipped away. I became lost in these intense feelings. If my coauthor Bev hadn’t come to tell me it was time to leave, I truly don’t know how long I would have stayed in there.

Several months after that elevator moment, Kathleen would speak about the events and the same feelings of sadness would return:

Beverly and I do believe there is some type of paranormal activity going on at Bower’s Harbor Inn. This is based on the EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) we collected (which are thought to be the voices of the dead), the light in an upstairs room turning on and off when Bev and I left the restaurant that we got on video and a compelling video recorded in the back restaurant. We still believe additional investigations are needed and evidence collected before it can officially be called “haunted.”

Regardless of the history of the old house, there have been far too many paranormal occurrences to claim that nothing is there. Whether it’s the Stickneys, just Genevieve or the original builders of the old farmhouse from whom the Stickneys bought the property, there are spirits staying around that don’t have any plans of moving on. Anyone visiting Old Mission Peninsula will have to make a dinner stop at Bower’s and see if they are paid a visit by the resident ghosts.