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Haunted Apostles? A Halloween letter from our Executive Director
Hermit tales, shipwrecks, lost sailors, the Apostles are a witch’s cauldron for the brewing of the kind of ghost stories that chill a Halloween night. But does the weaving of the dark threads of those tales say more about the landscape of the human mind than the islands themselves?
Sure, there are stories of drownings and heavy lighthouse doors slamming shut on windless nights. There are islands with names like Devils and Manitou.
Most of the stories told have explanations enough if you peel back the black curtains. Still, some insist there must be ghosts in the lighthouses, witches in the waves. And such thoughts are understandable.
Do you see the face in the spray? – Jeff Rennicke photo
When faced with the undeniable and unfathomable power of a place like the Apostle Islands and Lake Superior, the human mind grapples to find a handhold. It is easier to call the unknown sounds and half-seen visions “ghosts” than to admit the unthinkable power of nature, a power so beyond our control that we make up stories to pretend we can wrest even the slightest influence. Ghost stories make the unknown at least a little more knowable, tying the supernatural to our thin grasp of reality with wisps of stories where the haunted walk.
It may be comforting, to some. Who doesn’t love a good ghost story? But I also think such stories rob us of something – the willingness to simply admit that there are things bigger than us, beyond the horizons of our comprehension, and the humbling effect that such an admission would have on us as humans.
Maybe there are “ghosts” in the Islands. Maybe the lake does wail and moan with the voices of the lost. Or maybe it is all just a power beyond comprehension that should fill us all with awe, not fear. Call that power what you will – God or ghosts, the supernatural or simply nature – there is something in these waves and rugged shorelines, something that we cannot, nor ever will be able to, control. We can spin it into ghost stories or acknowledge the power of nature to humble us and thereby make us more human.
Lightning bolt in the Apostle Islands – Jeff Rennicke photo
Either way, to me, that power is not something to fear but something to celebrate and perhaps to ponder as we pass out candy and tell ghost stories on the shores of the big lake this Halloween night.
Happy Halloween
Jeff Rennicke
Executive Director
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