Seul Choix Point Lighthouse

The name Seul Choix, French for “only choice”, is usually explained as the sheltered harbour that sailors on northern Lake Michigan had no better option than to use in a storm; locals pronounce it “Sis-shwa”. The Lighthouse Board put a temporary fourth-order light in service there on 15 April 1892, while the permanent tower was finished. The tower was raised to its full height of about 79 feet in 1895 and fitted with a third-order Fresnel lens that began shining on 15 August. The keeper’s dwelling and fog signal building stood beside it, and the station was automated in 1972.

The haunting is attached to Joseph Willie Townsend, called Captain Willie, who kept the light until his death in 1910. Lighthouse records list him as head keeper from 1901, though other accounts give 1902, and spell his surname Townshend. He died in the keeper’s dwelling in winter, when the weather made quick burial or the arrival of relatives difficult; his body is said to have been laid in state in the parlour, with some versions of the story holding that it was embalmed and kept for about three weeks in the cellar. His cause of death is not recorded in the sources, though visitors often guess at lung disease because he smoked heavily. Local tradition says his wife would not let him smoke indoors.

The reported phenomena are domestic and specific. The scent of cigar smoke drifts through the house when no one is smoking; place settings in the kitchen are found rearranged, often with forks upside down; there are cold draughts on the stairs; and a face has been seen in a round mirror on an upstairs dresser. Marilyn Fischer, a founder of the Gulliver Historical Society, which has run the station since the 1980s, told visitors that she had seen the keeper in the mirror on three occasions and that her dogs would not go through the door. A visitor’s account from 2005 repeats a salesman’s story of seeing a man at an upstairs window and fleeing before giving a quote.

In 2023 the paranormal author Kat Tedsen, a self-described skeptic who has investigated hundreds of Michigan sites, said Seul Choix was the only lighthouse where she recorded something she could not explain. She did not experience the Captain Willie phenomena, but a recording made in the first-floor bathroom seemed to answer with the name Mary and the words “died in snow”. Tedsen linked this to Mary Pebble, mother-in-law of the later keeper William Blanchard, who died in February 1919 when ice made burial impossible. These are interpretations of audio, not established facts, and the family history is taken from Tedsen’s own research.

Visitors and volunteers report cigar smoke in the dwelling, tableware and place settings moved or turned, cold downdrafts on the stairs, a face in a second-floor mirror and a figure at an upstairs window. The society’s volunteer leaders and a visiting paranormal author have been the principal named sources.

The keeper’s dwelling: the kitchen and dining room, the staircase, the upstairs bedroom with its round mirror, and the first-floor bathroom; the tower and fog signal museum are not usually part of the stories.

The lighthouse figures in Michigan haunted-lighthouse round-ups, in Kat Tedsen’s Haunted Travels of Michigan series, and in the Gulliver Historical Society’s Halloween fundraiser tours. Pure Michigan, the state tourism agency, has said the station has had reports of strange activity for decades.