Mysteries of The Great Lakes // DARK SUMMER VOL. 2

Aug 29

Mysterious disappearances, lost shipwrecks, the Lake Michigan “Stonehenge”, strange lights above Lake Erie and more.

There’s something strange happening in the great lakes. These lakes in North America are much bigger than you would ever imagine, they hold about a fifth of the entire world’s freshwater. But they also hold some of the greatest unsolved mysteries. They are quite literally full of secrets.

Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to ad-free listening and bonus content. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after-show called Footnotes.

Apple subscriptions are now live! Get access to ad-free episodes and bonus episodes when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts.

Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror.

SOURCES

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2024/09/22/griffon-shipwreck-great-lakes-lake-michigan-steve-kathie-libert/74956091007/

https://www.wisconsinology.com/the-forgotten-long-ago/deaths-door

https://www.thebrighterside.news/global-good/9000-year-old-stonehenge-like-structure-found-hidden-in-lake-michigan/

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lake-michigan-crucifix

https://berrienhistory.wordpress.com/2023/01/20/the-house-of-davids-mysterious-shipwreck-the-rosa-belle/

https://onmilwaukee.com/articles/rosa-belle-wmhs

https://husheduphistory.com/post/180274748418/the-michigan-triangle-four-from-inside-the-tragic

Lost on the Lakes: Shipwrecks of Berrien County, Michigan by Robert C Myers https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Lakes-Shipwrecks-Berrien-Michigan/dp/188392538X *book mentioned in sidenote, one article uses this as reference so included here

Newspapers.com links:

Research based on books:

Our Inland Seas: Their Shipping & Commerce for Three Centuries) By J.C Mills

Haunted Door County by Gayle Soucek

Our Inland Seas: Their Shipping & Commerce for Three Centuries) By J.C Mills

TRANSCRIPT

Today, I want to tell you about some of those mysteries. From crews that completely vanished from their boats, to the mysterious underwater ship graveyard that sits at the bottom of one of the lakes, we’re going to dive into a few of them today.

If you’re a fan of unsolved mysteries, famous hauntings, true urban legends and other horrors, hauntings, and mysteries, make sure to subscribe to this channel, because you are just like me. We upload once a week.

The Great Lakes are a chain of five enormous lakes straddling the U.S. and Canadian border, creating the largest freshwater system on Earth by surface area. Together, they hold about 21% of the world's fresh water.

The lakes include

Lake Superior, the largest and deepest, with a maximum depth of about 1,332 feet.
Lake Michigan, which sits entirely within the United States
Lake Huron, which reaches a maximum depth of around 750 feet and is dotted with numerous islands.
Lake Erie, the shallowest, with an average depth of only 62 feet
And Lake Ontario, the smallest by surface area, but significantly deeper than Erie, with depths reaching just over 800 feet.

During the summer, these lakes are picturesque. Waves lap on the shores, boats full of family and friends bob on the surface.

But what you may not know, and what I’m here to freak you out about today, is that as you float slowly across the lake on a beautiful summer day, there is mystery and horror that is settled at the bottom of the lake, hundreds of feet below you.

For instance, deep beneath the waves of lake huron, along the northwest coast, lies what’s known as shipwreck ally, a graveyard of vessels spanning hundreds of years that never finished their voyages.

Down there nearly a hundred shipwrecks lie eerily preserved, entombed beneath the icy water. And it’s not just shipwrecks, either. Bodies down there go through a process called saponification, where the fat in their body turns into essentially soap, preserving the body and giving it a terrifyingly waxy look.

Here, when the summer season ends, storms rise from nothing, fog blinds even the most experienced navigators, and hidden reefs tear through steel and wood alike.

Many boats have been rediscovered over the years, for instance, the Ironton, which sank in 1894, was discovered in shipwreck ally in 2023. According to the two crew members that survived the wreck, the Ironton’s captain and six sailors tried to get into a lifeboat, but they were dragged to the bottom of the lake before it could be detached from the ship.

When the ship was found, that lifeboat was still attached to it, ready to be deployed, now we know that it was mere seconds away from saving the lives of those seven men.

And while many of these shipwreck mysteries are being solved by divers who go down to shipwreck ally, one ship is noticeably absent from the area.

See, There’s one boat that vanished off the face of the earth, slipped out of existence while crossing the Great Lakes. And while some people believe that with all of the technology we have today, and how much we know about where these shipwreck graveyards are that it should be easy to find this one. And yet, it’s evaded divers and researchers for decades.

So Today, in this edition of Dark Summer here at heart starts Pounding, I want to tell you about some of the eeriest mysteries coming out of the great lakes. Starting with the mystery of Le Griffon

But before we dive in, just a reminder that we now have merch available in our store, thats shop.heartstartspounding.com . There you can find t shirts, sweatshirts, rogue detecting society notebooks, and we even have a special edition Dark Summer t. And as always Patrons and apple podcast subscribers get a special discount.

And this week I want to shout out a listener with a VERY darkly curious job, Jordan, who is a ocular recovery technician aka she scoops eyeballs from corpses for donations, and works directly with families of the donors. What an honorable and morbid job, I love it. Keep sending me your darkly curious jobs, hobbies, you name it. Jinx and I LOVE hearing about them, right Jinx (JINX NOISE)

Alright, let’s get back to it. This is the mystery of Le Griffon.

Le Griffon is a supposedly cursed ship that vanished without a trace On September 18, 1679.

The ship was constructed by a Frenchman named René-Robert Cavelier (kah-vuh-LYAY), who was referred to by his title, La (lah) Salle. In January of 1679, he arrived in upstate New York to build Le Griffon out of resources he could scour from the land, much to the local Iroquois tribes dismay. The story goes that Iroquois tribesmen watched from the forest as La Salle and his men cut down tree after tree to make logs for the ship.

Eventually, the frenchmen moved construction further south out of the area of the Iroquois, because they started to fear what the tribe might do to them, but some crewmen believed it was too late. They thought that the ship already had a curse placed on it by an Iroquois elder.

Because as construction continued, the winter became harsher and harsher making it nearly impossible to build. Tools broke, wood warped, and relentless storms pummeled the construction site. La Salle would walk back to the ship after a short break only to find that entire sections had been destroyed by the cold. It was like there was a force, out of their control, that wanted construction to cease.

Still, against all odds, Le Griffon was completed. It boasted a striking carved griffin at its bow—part lion, part eagle—it was supposed to act as a guardian against misfortune.

Finally, on August 7th, 1679, Le Griffon launched onto Lake Erie, pushing boldly into the unknown towards the far end of the Great Lakes, to what is Green Bay, Wisconsin today.

The journey would look like this: the ship would start in the most northeast corner of lake Eerie, almost in Lake ontario, then it would go north into Lake Huron (hyur-ON), and west into lake michigan until it got to Green Bay, in the northwest part of the lake

At first, the journey seemed promising. La Salle and his crew navigated the rough waters with relative ease. But as the voyage continued, a sense of unease began to settle among the crew. The deeper they traveled, the clearer it became that these lakes were much more dangerous than they'd ever imagined—violent storms capable of swallowing entire ships, hidden reefs lurking just beneath the waves just waiting for you to crash into them.

But still, By September 18th, Le Griffon finally reached Green Bay, Wisconsin. Here, La Salle made a fateful decision. He wanted to bring his valuable cargo of furs back before the winter ice trapped them, so he ordered the ship, now heavily loaded, to sail back towards the french fort they came from. La Salle himself chose to remain behind on the shores of Lake Michigan. And so He watched as Le Griffon set sail into calm waters, and faded slowly into the misty horizon.

It was the last time anyone saw Le Griffon or its crew alive.

Since then, not even so much as a splinter of this ship has been seen. After he learned that his crew hadn’t made it back home, La Salle had entire parties of men walk the shores and scour the waters for a piece of wood, a life boat, anything that indicated the ship had been lost. But nothing was ever found. It had vanished entirely, as though swallowed whole.

And eventually over time, equipment for finding shipwrecks got better and hundreds of wrecks were identified beneath the waves of the great lakes. But still, there’s been no sign of Le Griffon. So As years turned into decades, turned into centuries, the mystery has only deepened. How could an entire ship vanish without leaving behind so much as a splinter?

Some believed that Le Griffon fell victim to Lake Michigan’s notoriously sudden and vicious storms—storms powerful enough to shred sails and crack hulls. But the lack of wreckage made others suspicious. Could the crew have conspired against La Salle to steal the valuable cargo of fur, and started new lives as rich men?

Local indigenous tribes like the Iroquois actually had their own chilling explanations. A prophecy from an Iroquois prophet, Metiomek, declared that the giant ship was an insult to the Great Spirit. He said he had placed a solemn curse upon it, whispering that the vessel would never reach its destination—that it would sail endlessly through a "crack in the ice," trapped between this world and the next. Some legends claim sailors still witness a ghostly three-masted ship gliding silently through misty nights, disappearing as suddenly as it appears.

In modern times, the search for Le Griffon has taken on an almost obsessive quality because it’s believed if it did sink, the freezing, fresh water of Lake Michigan could preserve it perfectly for centuries.

Over the years, there’s been at least twenty separate claims that have emerged, all saying they’ve solved the mystery and found the ship. Yet, every one of these supposed discoveries is still unsubstantiated.

Most recently, in 2022, after a 40-year search, explorer Steve Libert (Lie-Bert) claimed he and his wife had found Le Griffon. They had spent years trying to get permits to be able to resurface artifacts from the part of Lake Michigan where they believed Le Griffon sank, and finally they were granted one of those permits. That’s when They were able to bring up what they believed was Le Griffon’s front mounted spar, also known as a bowsprit (cow-Sprit). But when it was sent to the state Archaeologist to authenticate it, he said no, this is actually just an old stake used to secure a fishing net.

But Steve refuses to believe that’s all this piece of wood is. He believes that Le Griffon is 200 yards off of Big Summer Island, in the northwest corner of lake Michigan, which is very close to where it would have left Green Bay to go back home. He also says it’s just 50 feet beneath the waves.

But this area that Steve is talking about, is almost as mysterious as the vanishing ship itself. The area is known as “Death’s Door”, which brings us to our next mystery.

BREAK 1

Death’s door is a treacherous passageway between the Bay of Greenbay and Lake Michigan. It’s what Le Griffon would have passed through as it started its journey back to it’s homebase.

Like Shipwreck Alley, death’s door is known for its converging tides, hidden shoals, and unpredictable winds, all things that could tear a wooden ship into pieces unexpectedly. It’s said over 275 shipwrecks have been found in this area.

And sailors tried everything to mitigate risks, like in 1848 and 1850 two massive lighthouses were built in the area as a navigational aid, and still, over 64 ships were lost over the next 90 years. It was like the Lake fed on Ships.

But, aside from the area’s apparent bloodthirst, there’s a few mysteries about Death’s door that make it a bit more terrifying than shipwreck alley.

For one, no one knows where the name Death’s Door comes from. One legend claims that hundreds of years ago, two large wooden canoes full of Menominee (muh-NAH-muh-nee) warriors crashed into a rocky shoal during a storm, killing every man in the Menominee tribe in one sweep.

This decimated the tribe's power in the area and left them vulnerable to attacks, so they forever named the passage Death’s Door. That story is from a 1905 newspaper I found, and as far as I can tell, no member of the Menominee has confirmed it. For all we know, the area had that name before they had even arrived. After all, people have been living in the area at least since the Ice Age thousands of years ago.

And that kind of brings me to our next mystery. There are sunken indigenous villages that seem to be sprinkled all throughout the passage way. When Steve Libert dove to find Le Griffon, he noticed that there were remnants of entire villages 50 feet under the lake amongst the wreckage. Could these be from years of rising sea levels that eventually overtook the area, or, could there have been devastating storms hundreds of years ago that swallowed villages whole, and made entire communities disappear without a trace overnight?

And more importantly, WHO did these villages belong to? Like I said, There have been people in the area for thousands of years. Are these the villages of people from the 1800’s, or from 5,000BCE. We just don’t know yet because there hasn’t been a ton of effort into excavating these areas and studying who lived there.

And death’s door isn’t the only area of the great lakes that has these villages. So, what I want to do is continue along the path that Le Griffon would have taken back to it’s homebase. Because what if it didn’t sink in Death’s door?

So let’s travel to the other side of Lake Michigan, to Little Traverse bay, where the Lake Michigan Stonehenge is

So, In 2007, an archaeologist named Mark Holley was scanning the bottom of Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse (like Travis) Bay for shipwrecks, maybe seeing if HE could solve the mystery of Le Griffon, when he saw something he couldn’t make sense of: there was a row of large stones, and some of them appeared to be in a geometric pattern. In total, the stone spanned a mile.

Now some of the stones were small, about the size of a bowling ball, but others were massive, coming in close to the size of an SUV. And even though they were positioned in a strange shape, they weren’t stacked on top of each other, like stonehenge. So at first it wasn’t really believed that they were placed there intentionally, they seemed to be some very bizarre natural phenomena.

But then, upon closer inspection, a diver noticed that one of the rocks had something carved into it. It looked like a creature, specifically, a mastodon, an elephant like mammal that lived in the area….but went extinct 11,000 years ago. So maybe these stones weren’t actually a weird phenomenon, maybe they were part of an ancient civilization that once lived in the area….

A quick history lesson of the great lakes, Around 20,000 years ago, the massive Laurentide (Lauren Tide) Ice Sheet carved out the Great Lakes basin. During the post-glacial period—think like 10,000 to 8,000 years ago—lake levels were much lower, and areas like Grand Traverse Bay were actually dry, and plenty of creatures lived there.

This allowed early Native American ancestors, like OG hunter-gatherers, to move into the area and use the landscape for hunting mastodons or caribou. Eventually, water levels rose and the site became submerged.

So one thought is, this ancient community of hunter gatherers used these rocks for something. Perhaps something ceremonial in nature. Maybe it was for hunting purposes, perhaps to move caribou in a pattern that made them easier to hunt.

But what’s interesting is if that’s true, if this rock formation is man made, then it’s 4,000 years older than Stone Henge.

And we can guess that this might be man made, because there are other really bizarre rock formations throughout the great Lakes that also appear to be from Ancient civilizations. For instance, there’s a 9,000 year old rock formation under lake huron that’s believed to have been for hunting purposes, though we really don’t know. There’s a small island in Lake Michigan, Beaver Island, that has some glacial boulders laid out in a circular formation, and some of them have holes carved into them. It’s believed they may have been used as a calendar or some sort of celestial marker, but again, we just don’t know.

We’ll never hear directly from the communities that used these rock formations, and they didn’t keep written records. BUT, we do have one group of people that have been in the great lakes region for about 1,500 years, and they have offered what information they have that could help solve this mystery.

To them, stones are more than geological artifacts. As one Anishinaabe (uh-ni-shah-NOB-ay) man named Hank, explained: “We refer to stones as animate objects because they come from the mother, the Earth, who is alive.” So stones do have a spiritual meaning to the indigenous people of the area, and perhaps these stones WERE for religious ceremonies after all. But again, these were entirely different groups of people who lived in the area thousands of years apart, so we just don’t know.

Maybe the only thing more mysterious than what the stones were used for is where exactly they are. Scientists wont tell people. They don’t want lay people like you and me going and scuffing up ancient ceremonial stones (FAIR!!), so for now, they remain one of the lake's greatest mysteries.

Now, swallowed villages and rock formations aren’t the strangest thing sitting at the bottom of Little Traverse BayThere’s a few oddities down there that most people who don’t live in the area don’t know about….

For instance, down there is a life-sized marble statue of a crucified Jesus.

The story is almost as strange as the sight of it. a local family had the statue commissioned after the death of their 15 year old son. But when it arrived, it looked horrible. It was all banged up from the journey from italy. Its arm was all busted, and the family was basically like, we don’t really want this anymore, so they sold it to a local diver who dropped it in the bay.

Today, it’s about 800 feet offshore and 20 feet down, and can be seen from the surface, so they do winter viewings of it where they’ll cut a hole in the ice and people can stand over it and observe, or pray, or gawk

It’s not really a mystery, per say, but I can’t imagine being the first person to see it down there after the diver left at the bottom.

Ok, let’s continue on the voyage of Le Griffon, out of lake michigan and back to Lake Erie. Because Lake Erie is home to some of the strangest mysteries maybe of all the lakes, and some people suggest that one of them may have had something to do with the ship’s disappearance.

Now, the mysteries of lake Erie go back thousands of years, but recently, there was something quite odd that happened.

In 2011, residents along the Detroit river which flows into Lake Erie, woke to a strange sound. It was a low level hum that could be heard coming from every direction, like a swarm of invisible bees was all around them.

No one could locate the source of this sound, and as the day went on, it made some of the residents feel sick. They got headaches from the constant noise. Some swore they could feel it resonating inside of their chest, vibrating their organs around like it was coming from within. Others thought it was their refrigerator, until they went to the store and could still hear it.

But stranger still, the hum didn’t end that day. Or the next, or the day after that. Days went by with no break from the mysterious hum, then weeks, soon years. One day a switch was pressed and the hum turned on, and now there was no indication that it would ever stop.

Obviously, the residents were furious about the sound. One woman said she would have her friend drive her around town while she had her head out of the sunroof, she was looking for any clues she could about where it was coming from. Was it louder in certain areas, did it fade away at some point? But she never found any clue. It eventually got its own name, the Windsor Hum.

Finally, in 2013, a professor named Colin Novak was able to conduct a study to try and find the source of the hum. But get this. There was an island in the Detroit river in between Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair to the north, called Zug Island, and Colin was not able to get a permit to search that island for the sound. Specifically, they couldn’t get a permit from a steel factory that was operating on the island.

Immediately, people flocked to this like conspiracy theorists. There’s something happening on Zug Island they don’t want us to see! Was it like the Montauk experiments in stranger things, were there demigorgens making the sounds? Was it from secret tunnels that were being built below the Steel Factory for some unknown reason?

The theories covered a really wide range, too. Some thought it was a sound coming from Planet X, a theoretical planet that exists beyond neptune whose existence hasn’t been proven.

But a lot of people thought that it had something to do with aliens. And they pointed to another mystery of Lake Erie that they said proved this theory.

On March 4th, 1988, Sheila and Henry Baker were driving home from a restaurant with their three children at around 8:45pm, when they noticed a strange light hovering above Lake Erie out in the distance.

The sight was so shocking to the couple they actually pulled the car over and got out. And what they saw, or at least claimed to see, was a big gray football shaped object that was silently hovering over the lake, kind of rocking back and forth.

The couple was terrified so they drove home, but they could still see it from their upstairs window, but now it had blue and red lights emanating from it. So they decided to call the coast guard, who reportedly did also see these lights when they went to investigate. But eventually the craft flew away, and they were never able to figure out what it was.

However, these lights have been seen a few times over the years. In the early days of youtube, a man named Michael Lee Hill collected a few videos of the lights and uploaded them. His videos showed these really bright orbs of light hovering over Lake Erie—often in formation, moving silently.

And then, in 2010 there was a sighting in Euclid, Ohio, where paramedic Eugene Erlikh filmed multiple nights of brilliant orbs hovering, shifting colors, and then disappearing suddenly. The event actually got coverage from Fox 8 and MSNBC. And then a similar sighting occurred in 2011 with glowing spheres near the Cleveland waterfront.

Over the years, dozens of similar incidents have been reported by residents, news crews, and UFO researchers. And there’s never been a definitive answer to what these lights are.

A theory that’s pretty popular, at least among UFO researchers is the underwater submersible theory, which suggests there’s a hidden alien base or docking point beneath Lake Erie—especially since a lot of witnesses have reported lights entering or emerging from the water without sound or splash.

They say these are USOs (Unidentified Submerged Objects), and that these craft could explain the lake’s recurring activity and suggest a long-term, possibly non-human, presence operating covertly in the region.

Some say it’s the real reason Le Griffon went missing, others say it’s the source of that dang hum no one could figure out.

Well, while the source of the lights remains a big Great Lake Mystery, the source of the sound may have been discovered. In April of 2020, the sound just stopped one day. Totally went away. Residents had the first day of peace in almost 10 years. And it didn’t take long until they realized that the Steel plant on Zug Island had shut down due to covid.

Now, it’s still a mystery WHERE exactly the sound was coming from within the plant. Was it some sort of machinery they had in the plant? Colin Novak thinks that it was generated by the facility's blast furnaces running at a higher-than-normal capacity, but you know, it always could be aliens tunnelling underneath the plant.

More, after the break.

BREAK 2

The last mystery I want to tell you about is one that has really stuck with me since I first read about it. This one takes us back to Lake Michigan, in October of 1921. The summer season had ended and the lake was cold and gray, blurred by mist.

A ferry captain from the Grand Trunk Milwaukee Ferry Company was floating along on the lake, scanning for any hazards. That’s when something caught his eye.

There was a schooner drifting silently ahead, unnaturally still, and it was bobbing completely upside-down on the icy waves. The captain obviously had a horrible feeling about this, so he guided his ferry over to the schooner, and the site was way worse than he anticipated.

The boat was destroyed. It looked like a Kraken had come out of the sea and crushed it between its tentacles. The stern was shredded like something massive had rammed into it. The ship’s cabin had also been torn clean away, the rigging destroyed, floating aimlessly around it.

The captain of the ferry called out, hoping—praying—for survivors. But it was dead silent.

A rescue ship finally arrived and carefully boarded the wreck, after identifying the schooner as The Rosabelle, and that’s when they found the strangest thing of all:

There were no signs of life on the schooner at all. There actually was no sign that anyone had been on the ship at all. They thought they’d at least find bodies wrapped up in the mangled mess. But they didn’t find a single one.

The Rosabelle’s captain and crew had vanished without a trace.

The Rosabelle was a 100 foot long schooner designed to transport grain and lumber across the great lakes. She was initially launched on April 12, 1863, and though she’d go on to have a 59 year career, there were times where people swore this schooner should have sunk.

In 1875, The Rosabelle hit its first bout of bad luck after it capsized, which gave the captain a severe head injury he’d never recover from. He is considered the ship's first victim.

Then, In 1919, the Rosabelle was bought by the House of David, a mysterious religious colony that lived on a commune in Benton Harbor, Michigan. The group ran a lumber mill on isolated High Island, and the Rosabelle helped them haul potatoes and lumber back to the mainland.

But the house of David harbored a dark secret. The group was founded by husband and wife Benjamin and Mary Purnell. They claimed to be the religious successors of a prophet named Joanna Southcott. Joanna lived in england one hundred years before the Purnells started the House of David, and she made all sorts of ridiculous religious claims about herself, like that she was pregnant with the messiah (she wasnt) or that she was the Woman of The Apocalypse referenced in the Book of Revelation in the bible (she also was not)

House of David quickly grew to hundreds of members, peaking at around a thousand, on their thousand acre farm on the shores of lake Michigan. They built a zoo, and amusement park, but they also had to follow strange and very strict rules. No Meat, no personal property, married couples weren’t allowed to consummate their marriages. but it wasn’t long before whispers started spreading about Benjamin. That he was abusing young female members of his group. He had been telling all of his members that sexuality was a sin, everyone, including married couples, were to look at each other as brother and sister.

Yet starting around 1920, young girls were approaching their parents to tell them that Benjamin had offered them salvation through intimacy. And this started creating cracks in the foundation of the commune. Parents panicked but didn’t know what to do. Benjamin was the messiah.

And then, on October 30th, 1921, 9 men from the House of David loaded into the Rosabelle, drifted out into Lake Michigan, and were never seen again.

When the wreckage was finally towed ashore, investigators carefully examined the wreck. Rumors spread rapidly. Some believed the crew had drowned below deck, trapped as cargo shifted and blocked their exit. But not a single trace of a person was ever found in the wreckage.

The House of David struggled to identify exactly who was aboard. It turned out their own records were very secretive. But finally the 9 men were identified.

In the years that followed, theories multiplied:

Perhaps the ship sprang a sudden leak, capsizing in minutes. It wouldn't have given the crew enough time to come up with an escape plan, but it also doesn’t explain how the ship was so torn up when it was found

Maybe an explosion from gasoline stored onboard had instantly doomed everyone

the most accepted explanation at the time was that a violent collision had taken place, I mean, that’s really what looked like had happened, but that was questioned by experts who later declared that no signs of another vessel striking the Rosabelle existed. So maybe the ship’s wounds were from rocks or storms after capsizing, they suggested.

But I do find it interesting that some people have always suspected sabotage. Maybe an explosion did happen on board, but it was caused intentionally by someone.

Was this all planned by Benjamin, as a way to take out some of the fathers and other strong men in his community that could have helped the young girls he was abusing? After all, House of David was VERY secretive about their records when authorities were trying to identify the people on board. Could someone else have been onboard, maybe Benjamin himself, who escaped unscathed after sabotaging the crew?

Well, we will never know. Benjamin was eventually taken to trial for his crimes against the girls, but he was never formally charged with anything but fraud, and he died from Tuberculosis before he could be sentenced.

And some truly believe that the mystery of the Roseabelle, one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the great lakes, died with him.

The Great Lakes are more than just a massive body of freshwater, they’re a time capsule, they’re guardians of many, many secrets, and they’re also a giant graveyard of ships and civilizations. And one thing I can tell you, is these lakes keep their secrets close.

So If you find yourself floating on the great lakes this summer, now you know a little bit more about the absolute horrors lying under you.

But, what do you guys think? Is Le Griffon somewhere at the bottom of the lake or did the aliens that are tunneling under Zug Island take it? Is the Stonehenge at the bottom of the lake just a coincidence, or is it a calendar from an ancient civilization. Let me know wherever you listen.

And I will be back on Monday with a very special episode of real life creepy tales of close encounters that my dear friend Investigator Slater will be joining me for, and then next wednesday it’ll be just me again, telling you a very scary mystery about two girls who went on vacation in Panama, and then vanished.

Meet me here in the rogue detecting society next week. I’ll have Gordy my haunted monkey with me (GORDY SOUND), and we’ll see you there. Until then, stay curious. OooOOO

Kaelyn Moore

Mysteries of The Great Lakes // DARK SUMMER VOL. 2

SOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

BREAK 1

BREAK 2

The Mysterious Disappearance of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon // DARK SUMMER VOL. 2

Rebecca Coriam: The Cruise Employee Who Vanished // DARK SUMMER VOL. 2

Heart Starts Pounding