For those who appreciate a spirited lighthouse tale, Mark Leslie’s Ghost Stories of the Great Lakes is the beacon cutting through the fog.
He’s been in full travel mode for the book, with events in his hometown at the Kitchener Public Library on October 21 and in Burlington on October 25.
He also travelled for research along the shores of each of the five Great Lakes, as well as some of the tributaries that connect them.
“It was fascinating,” Leslie said during an early November Zoom conversation. “And obviously a lot of Indigenous truths.”
One in particular is that of the Thunder Beings of Haudenosaunee spiritual traditions in Niagara Falls. But it’s not all just about ghosts, as there are some tales of folklore, strange geography and even a few cryptids for good measure.
But Wolsak and Wynn publisher Noelle Allen was very specific with the ghost stories as well. The fan favourite, the Olde Angel Inn, was given the heave-ho from the dossier as it was too far away from the shores of Lake Ontario.
“[She] had contacted me stating that she was interested in publishing a book like this,” Leslie recalled. “I went into her office to talk about the logistics and there are quite a number of books about Great Lakes ghost stories.”
So the unique angle taken was that of stories right on the shores of Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior (also known as HOMES). That posed no challenge for Leslie, as he dove into hotspots like the Burlington Canal, home to Jem Horner, as well as the Marysburgh Vortex (Lake Ontario’s triangle) and the infamous Mackinac Island in Michigan. The vortex, which ranges from Wolfe Island to Mexico Bay, New York and Point Petre in Prince Edward County. There are 270 confirmed shipwrecks within that area, with as many as 500, according to Global News. An additional 40 plane crashes are also reported in that area.
“I stick to the water and it was such a fascinating way of doing the book,” Leslie said.
He doesn’t forget about Lake St. Clair or tributaries like the Welland Canal and the Niagara River, either.
“I include the waterways that connect because when you think about it, it all kind of flows from Michigan and Superior down,” he said. “All the way to Lake Ontario and out through to the ocean.”
With so many stories to draw from, Leslie was worried it would overflow his book.
“I think by the time I wrote the first draft of Lake Ontario, I realized, ‘Oh God, this book is going to be three times as long,’” he admitted. “So then I had to go back and start cutting things.”
Not everything was cut. Some was condensed and put into smaller sections. And what’s a book about waterways without saluting some of the Great Lakes’ most (in)famous lighthouses? As Leslie cut some stories from the book, he found enough from Lake Huron to lend itself to a sidebar.
“This was so much fun to do,” Leslie said. “It was fun to return because it had been almost 10 years since I’d done a book like this.”
Fair point, as Macabre Montreal: Ghostly Tales, Ghastly Events and Gruesome True Stories was published in 2018. Ghost Stories of the Great Lakes came out October 20. It’s available for purchase through Wolsak and Wynn or wherever you buy your books.
Photo courtesy of Mark Leslie Lefebvre