Big Bay Point Light

The story

Big Bay Point Light stands on a high bluff above a rocky point on the south shore of Lake Superior, near the village of Big Bay, about 24 miles northwest of Marquette according to Wikipedia (Lighthouse Friends says roughly thirty miles north) in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It was built because this stretch of coast was dark and dangerous. In 1892 the Lighthouse Board recommended a station, noting that the point lay roughly halfway between the lights on Granite Island and the Huron Islands, 15 to 18 miles from each, that neither light could be seen from the other, and that a good many ships had already been wrecked on the point. A light and fog signal, the recommendation argued, would protect steamers running between them.

The station was completed in 1896 as an integral lighthouse, its tower built into the keepers' dwelling. Its first head keeper, from 1896, was H. William Prior (some sources call him Harry W. Prior or William H. Prior), remembered as red-haired and short-tempered. His son George E. Prior served under him as acting assistant keeper.

The station's logbook, studied by lighthouse historian Terry Pepper, tells what happened next. George was injured in a fall on the steps of the landing crib, and the wound would not heal. On April 18, 1901, his father took him to the hospital in Marquette, where he died on June 13. William's last entry in the log is dated June 27. The next day he walked into the woods armed with a gun and a supply of strychnine, and searchers never found him. On November 14, 1902, almost a year and a half later, a timber cruiser named Fred Babcock came upon a skeleton hanging from a tree about a mile and a half south of the station; the clothing identified it as Prior, as Marquette's Mining Journal reported on November 27. Suicide is the obvious explanation. Wikipedia raises murder as a possibility, but only as speculation.

The light was electrified in 1940, and by 1941 the keepers were gone. In 1951-52 the U.S. Army used the site for anti-aircraft training, a period linked to the 1952 killing in Big Bay that inspired the novel and film Anatomy of a Murder. The lighthouse then passed through a series of private owners from 1961 onward, and in 1986 it opened as a bed and breakfast. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The legend

Unsurprisingly, the unhappy first keeper is the ghost of Big Bay Point. Innkeepers have blamed his famous temper for kitchen cupboard doors that slam shut. Other reports include doors banging in the middle of the night, knocking in the water pipes, and taps found running. Wikipedia adds a red-haired figure glimpsed in mirrors, a detail not found in any other source consulted.

Prior is not the only candidate. Some suggest his son George, who died after his long injury. Soon after the bed and breakfast opened, guests described a man in the uniform of the U.S. Life-Saving Service out on the grounds; the Associated Press carried their accounts in a wire story on October 30, 1989. Sailors drowned in wrecks off the point have also been proposed. Paranormal teams that have visited claim as many as five spirits, without naming them, according to the state tourism site Pure Michigan, which lists Big Bay among Michigan's haunted lighthouses.

The lighthouse's owner since 2018 told the weekly Northern Express in 2021 of one night when he heard a noise in the basement, then someone climbing the stairs into the kitchen, then the sensation of something walking up behind him and leaving by the front door. He added that nothing similar had happened in the three years since.

The timing of the stories deserves notice. No ghost reports from the keepers' era have surfaced; the first accounts appear only after 1986, the year Norman "Buck" Gotschall turned the station into an inn. The Northern Express article notes that skeptics see the haunting as a 1980s marketing idea combined with the ordinary creaks and bangs of an old building on an exposed shore. Gotschall denied making it up. No television investigation was found.

What remains today

The lighthouse is still an active aid to navigation and one of only a few working lighthouses in the country that also operate as bed and breakfasts. The keepers' dwelling, with its attached tower, now holds five guest rooms, and the clifftop setting above Lake Superior is the main draw. The woods where William Prior's remains were found lie to the south of the station.

Visiting

Big Bay Point Light is privately owned and run as a bed and breakfast, so the simplest way to experience it is to book a room. According to Lighthouse Friends, the grounds have been open to day visitors from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with guided tours available by appointment arranged by phone; check the inn's official website for current arrangements, since policies at private lighthouses change. No dedicated ghost tour exists.

Respect the privacy of overnight guests, stay back from the bluff edge, and remember that Upper Peninsula winters are long and harsh, so summer and early fall are the easiest seasons to visit.

Sources

1. National Register of Historic Places file (NRHP #88001837) — U.S. National Park Service · Public domain (U.S. government)
2. Wikimedia Commons category : Big Bay Point Lighthouse — Wikimedia Commons
3. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Marquette, MI 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
4. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Big Bay, MI 1954 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1954 · Public domain (USGS)
5. "About us" — Big Bay Point Lighthouse B&B (official) — Big Bay Point Lighthouse B&B (official
6. "Big Bay Point, MI" — Lighthouse Friends — Lighthouse Friends
7. "Meet the keepers who remain within Michigan's haunted lighthouses" — Pure Michigan (official state tourism) — Pure Michigan (official state tourism
8. "The Haunting of Big Bay Point" (Brighid Driscoll, 23 Oct 2021) — Northern Express — Northern Express
9. "The Prior story" (from the Big Bay keepers' logbook) — Seeing the Light (Terry Pepper) — Seeing the Light (Terry Pepper
10. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.