Michigan legends

Tales from the Sacrificial Campfire

Okay, so maybe nothing more than a few marshmallows that won't stay on the stick are usually sacrificed to the flames of the average communal campfire in Michigan. But it's hard to hold your marshmallow stick steady when your'e listening to a particularly eerie campfire tale. So, are all the old legends of road specters and bridge demons true? Well, we don't know. That's what makes them legends. Otherwise they'd be labeled "history," stuck in some moldy textbook, and praised as gospel by the history preachers. But with legend status, they exist in a delicious netherworld of maybe-ness... maybe the hitchhiker did turn into a bat-winged crone and drain the driver's neck, maybe it could happen again. Maybe this time the driver could be....you? Enjoy this assemblage of fire starters and send us your own. I'll start with two you won't see in the Weird Michigan book:

The Constipation Curse and How to be a Hoodoo

In his book, Negro Folktales in Michigan, Richard Dorson tells the tale of the African-American ³hoodoo² man who was asked by a Muskegon family to help catch the thief who had raided their woodpile the previous night, and then had the nerve to relieve his bowels copiously on the same spot. The hoodoo man, or person with supernatural gifts, stuck a long nail into the pile left by the thief, then drove the fouled nail into a nearby tree. He told the family that the man¹s intestines would remain inactive as long as the nail stayed put. Sure enough, after several days had passed, word came that there was a man at the local hospital who was severely ³backed up.² The family, relenting, resolved to pull out the nail. But during that time, the tree had been felled by the local conservation department due to diseased bark. With no way to remove the nail, the bowel-bedeviled wood-napper was doomed to a painful death. It seems that sometimes things just don¹t come out in the end. The book also details the legendary method of becoming a hoodoo. The instructions were to ³throw nine grains of corn in the creek before sunrise; then go back the ninth morning and wish your soul was as far in hell as the water was that hit the grains of corn.² This wish, the man was assured, would bring the devil to welcome his newest apprentice and commence the hoodoo lessons, including ³how to make poison, and how to make people crazy.²

The Treasure of Poverty Island

There¹s gold in them thar watersŠat least that¹s what no fewer than five different legends would have people believe about the point of a small, Lake Michigan island ironically named ³Poverty.² Author Fred Stonehouse tried to sort the stories out in his book, Great Lakes Lighthouse Tales, and they involve everything from a shipment of gold sent by Napoleon to the Southern Confederacy and attacked by pirates, to a military payroll sunk during the War of 1812. In every case, the booty is the proverbial king¹s ransom of gold. Men have killed bosom buddies for far less, and rumors of the lost fortune have drawn treasure hunters to the treacherous shores of Poverty Island throughout the past century. But Wisconsinite Richard Bennett, a professional diver and former diving equipment store owner, has been obsessed with finding the treasure for the greater part of his life.

Now in his 60s, Bennett was featured on NBC¹s Unsolved Mysteries in 1995 along with the two-man submarine he kept in his Wauwatosa garage, and has self-published a semi-fictionalized version of his odyssey called Deep Quest. When Weird Michigan interviewed him, he shared what he feels is the real story of the Poverty Island treasure. His research goes back to the early 1930s, he says, when a Chicago businessman put together funding for a consortium designed to find the lost gold. They had somehow discovered that there had been a last-ditch effort by the French to fund the Confederacy during the final days of the Civil War.

³In a nutshell,² he said, ³gold went overland to Escanaba and was then put on board some kind of vessel which was chased around Poverty Island by French Œbraggarts¹ or Œbad guys,¹ and the four or five chests of gold were pushed overboard.² Bennett is still searching for documentation of the exact number of chests. At any rate, the Chicago group sent an old, refurbished vessel named the Captain Lawrence, equipped with a diving bell, to Poverty Island where its crew toiled there for three years. A young boy named Carl Jensen, son of the Poverty Island Lighthouse keeper, would often sit near the shore, watching the boat lower the bell and drag it back up. He was around eleven years old when the process began, said Bennett.

One day, as a storm began to brew over Lake Michigan, he watched the crew haul the heavy bell on board the ship as usual, but then sat amazed as several large objects were removed from the bell and all hell broke loose on board. The crew began to hoot and holler, jumping and dancing, clinking beer bottles together in triumphant toasts, and otherwise looking very much like men who had just won the lottery. At about that point, the storm began to gather in earnest and Carl was dragged back to the safety of his house by his watchful parents. Reluctantly, he left the crew to their rejoicing.

The crew¹s elation didn¹t last long. In a twist of fate only Mother Nature could have arranged, the storm proved so fierce that the Captain Lawrence was sunk along with whatever the heavy objects might have been. The captain and crew all survived (several of the crew were ashore at the time purchasing supplies, which led to untrue rumors that some of them had drowned) but their expedition was ended. Years later, diving expert Bennett became interested in the various ships sunken and preserved in the Great Lakes, and came across the Poverty Island legend. People accused him of making it up. To prove that he wasn¹t, he and a friend traveled Michigan, pawing through old newspaper offices and libraries, quizzing everyone they could find, hunting for some written confirmation of the story. Finally, in the library of a tiny town Bennett does not wish to disclose, a librarian brought them a tattered folder that contained a 1941 newspaper article which detailed exactly what Bennett was looking for.

By the time Bennett appeared on Unsolved Mysteries, he had spent over thirty years and a small fortune of his own seeking the treasure. Bennett also had received quite a bit of publicity in the mid-90s after a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporter wrote several stories about him. The articles prompted an elderly woman living in Wauwatosa to contact Bennett She was the former girlfriend of Carl Jensen, and wanted to tell him that she remembered when the diving bell washed ashore, and that she and all the island children played in it for years until one day another storm rolled it back into the sea.

Bennett had also interviewed the daughter of one of the Captain Lawrence crew members in 1990, and she told him that her father had always said that he wanted to go back to Poverty Island, ³because he knew Œit¹ was there.² In fact, the Captain Lawrence had already been rediscovered by a group called Fairport International Explorations. Fairport was forced to admit the find after they applied for an exclusive search area and the State of Michigan turned them down, so again Bennett felt vindicated.

Bit by bit, the pieces were coming together for him, and that only entrenched his desire to haul up the bullion. So far, though, despite his diving expertise, Bennett hasn¹t come up with so much as a sou. Bennett, ever the optimist, says he is still determined to keep trying and may mount another expedition of his own in the near future. After all, the value of four to five chests of gold bullion has been estimated to be around $150 million in today¹s prices (a number that fluctuates wildly with the gold market), but Bennett says that is not what motivates him anymore. ³The matter of just finding the gold, that alone would satisfy me,² he said. And if the lake ever does give up its Civil War hoard, the battle over who finally gets to claim it will probably start a whole new round of legends.

Luke the Spook: The romantically named Romeo Plank Drive in Clinton Township, not far from Detroit, is lit on dark nights by a wavering light reminiscent of a guide carrying an old fashioned lantern. Seems there was a Dr. Lucas in the late 1800s who was returning from a late night call one evening when his horse buggy missed the bridge and he was killed. Some have sworn they've seen an old-fashioned buggy wending its way through the trees. Others say that a railroad worker killed in the same era still walks the old plank road with his lantern, helping people find their way in the dark, and that is the source of the mysterious light.

Grosse Pointe's Devil's Mill: A classic tale of brother and sister rivalry; two siblings built a grist mill in the late 1700s on Lake St. Clair at Windmill Pointe. The sister became ill, but suspected her brother of poisoning her to get her half of the mill. After declaring she would will her part of the business "to the devil," she died. As if to seal her pact, the mill was cloven in two by a giant bolt of lightning, then it burnt to the ground . The distraught brother, surveying the remains of his property, saw the horned Satan himself hoofing a French quadrille amid the flames. When the evil one finished dancing and returned to his fiery abode, he spirited away one of the giant millstones; the other can still be seen in the Grosse Pointe War Memorial-Gardens.

The Paulding Lights of Dog Meadow: When a Yooper urges someone to "walk toward the light," he's probably not trying to assist someone having a near-death experience. He's most likely describing how to see the famous, glowing light bubble that's been witnessed by thousands from a hill near Watersmeet west of US Hwy. 45, in a section of wilderness called Dog Meadow. There are several theories about the bright light that sashays from the northwest to the northeast horizon at two-to-fifteen minute intervals on clear nights. The most popular tale claims a murdered railroad engineer still walks the meadow with his lantern. Another tells the tale of an old time postal carrier who once traveled the area by dogsled, but was killed on his route in the 1870s. The more scientifically-minded ascribe the lights to swamp gas from nearby marshes, but most skeptics agree the lights are probably caused by automobile headlights shining from a highway hill up the road, possibly distorted by rising gases. True believers point out that the lights are still there in winter when it's too cold for vapors. The only sure thing is that the lights continue to appear, and so do the onlookers. It's the best free show in Michigan.

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