This is the story of the missing "ghost ships" of the Great Lakes, the big freighter and ore carriers of yesterday and today that disappeared, never to be seen again.

In Cheboygan, Michigan, Emilee, Brian, and Gavin are invited to tour the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw. It will be a tour they will never forget. Soon they realize that an old legend about a ghostly sea captain who invites people onto his ship and never lets them go is more than just a legend.

The shore-bound Great Lakes observer may be lucky enough to see the silhouette of one of the giant modern oreboats snailing upon the distant horizon. The courses and routes that these contemporary monsters follow have been well traveled by countless mariners for more than a century and a half. In the mid 1800s, it was often difficult to look toward the lakes from any single spot and see less than a half dozen distant boats at any time. Each of these vessels had a crew and each crewperson had a job to do and sometimes while just doing their jobs, these ordinary people found themselves cast into adventures that deserve telling. This book will attempt to do just that.

The Great Lakes have a colorful past that spans hundreds of years, stretches over thousands of miles... and sometimes crosses into the spirit world. Ghosts of the Great Lakes takes readers from the far eastern shores of Lake Ontario to western Lake Superior, revealing haunting and strange tales. These whispers from the other side, however, are based in history and fact. One lighthouse site hides the bones of a murdered keeper. Rapping sounds in a family home mark the beginning of the Spiritualist movement in North America. A bride has a premonition that her honeymoon ride will end in death... and soon after, the steamer she was on vanishes. Repeated sightings of ghost ships. Can these strange phenomena be attributed to the imagination? How can multiple sightings be explained away as mere tricks of light and fog? Read these historical accounts of the Great Lakes' most fascinating ghost stories and judge for yourself--are they more than mere legend? Where does fact end... and folklore begin?

In this highly accessible history of ships and shipping on the Great Lakes, upper elementary readers are taken on a rip-roaring journey through the waterways of the upper Midwest. Great Ships on the Great Lakes explores the history of the region’s rivers, lakes, and inland seas—and the people and ships who navigated them. Read along as the first peoples paddle tributaries in birch bark canoes. Follow as European voyageurs pilot rivers and lakes to get beaver pelts back to the eastern market. Watch as settlers build towns and eventually cities on the shores of the Great Lakes. Listen to the stories of sailors, lighthouse keepers, and shipping agents whose livelihoods depended on the dangerous waters of Lake Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario. Give an ear to their stories of unexpected tragedy and miraculous rescue, and heed their tales of risk and reward on the low seas. Great Ships also tells the story of sea battles and gunships, of the first vessels to travel beyond the Niagara, and of the treacherous storms and cold weather that caused thousands of ships to sink in the Great Lakes. Watch as underwater archaeologists solve the mysteries of Great Lakes shipwrecks today. And learn how the shift from sail to steam forever changed the history of shipping, as schooners made way for steamships and bulk freighters, and sailing became a recreation, not a hazardous way of life. Designed for the upper elementary classroom with emphasis on Michigan and Wisconsin, Great Ships on the Great Lakes includes a timeline of events, on-page vocabulary, and a list of resources and places to visit. Over 20 maps highlight the region’s maritime history. The accompanying Teacher’s Guide includes 18 classroom activities, arranged by chapter, including lessons on exploring shipwrecks and learning how glaciers moved across the landscape.

The hauntings have reached Lake Michigan! The latest in the Haunted Lake series, Haunted Lake Michigan features the reserach of maritime historian (and accidental ghost chaser) Frederick Stonehouse. In this volume, Stonehouse relates the tales of lost maritime spirits and cursed ships, sea monsters, UFOs, ghostly echoes of Prohibition-era murders and a deliciously horrible host of other hauntings on, in and around Lake Michigan. This book blends traditional stories with previously unpublished accounts of spookiness and strange occurances.