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Haunting Tales Creep From Ghostly Lights Writer casts fact and fiction together in bone-chilling collection about Great Lakes Lighthouses
Ghostly dogs, vanquished marauders, spirits of drowned sailors, lecherous haunts-all things that could go bump in the night at haunted lighthouses are here in Annick Hivert-Carthew's book, "Ghostly Lights: Great Lakes Lighthouse Tales of Terror."
These spooky tales, amalgams of fact and fiction from the fertile imagination of Hivert-Carthew, are all the better for being set in familiar places-lighthouses, most still in existence, along the shores of the Great Lakes from Indiana to New York, Ohio, to Georgian Bay. Following the spooky tales is a short history of each lighthouse, in some cases coupled with the historical tidbit that engendered the story.
The tale of a possible 1852 raid by James Strang, self-appointed king of Beaver Island, and his men is set at the Grand Traverse Lighthouse north of Northport. At the (then) new light on Cathead Point, the bandits meet up with a gun-toting barmaid named Ida Hawkins, who helps save the day and secure the earthly goods of a keeper named Ross McLeod.
At the Waugonshance Light in the Straits of Mackinac the year is 1871. A ghostly dogs walks in a poignant story of man's best friend carrying on his duty after death. Outshining this ghostly tale is the true story of James Davenport, Waugonshance light keeper in 1871, who stays at his post night and day when ash from the great Chicago fire blinds boat captains, leaving them at the mercy of the rocky shoals of the Straits.
Not to be outdone, Lake Superior has its share of troubled lighthouses. The Bete Grise light marks the entrance to the Mendota Channel liking Lac La Belle to Lake Superior. Before a lighthouse was built, a fisherman's wife named Henrietta Bergh shone a light from an upstairs window of her house to let mariners know they'd reached the Bete Grise Bay, safe harbor for ships caught in a Lake Superior storm. The story tells how a woman's lone light saves her lost husband and the ship and captain who plucked him from the lake's fury.
At Lonely Island near Manitoulin Island, Canada, a man vows to make it through the winter at the lighthouse, with ghastly results. At the Manitou Island Light in Lake Superior a woman gives birth with the help of the lake itself.
Hivert-Carthew, who has a cottage near Gaylord and spends summers there, delivers 21 eerie tales that, though fiction, have the ring of old myth to them. Told in the fervered, Gothic prose of horror novels, there is just enough truth-from anecdotes unearthed in her extensive research, from oral histories, real people, old lighthouse keepers, names records-to make the stories bone chilling.
These are the kinds of tales told around a campfire as the dark settles at your back and a fire blazes before you. They're tales in which things creep out of the blackness, where horrifying creatures walk, where the unlikely becomes real-treats for a long autumn's night."
The Oakland Press, Pontiac, Michigan 10/28/98
"Annick Hivert-Carthew is a cheerful, outgoing person. Not too scary, you might say. But you have to wonder when you read her latest book, Ghostly Lights, a collection of 21 short stories, all of which are set in lighthouses-and many of which have some hair-raising twists and turns. "My editor told me, 'You have a really sick mind-and I love it," Hivert-Carthew laughed during a recent interview at The Oakland Press.
Hivert-Carthew took care to vary the style of the stories, as well as the eras they're set in. Some are completely modern in tone, while others take on a gothic cast. The setting-lighthouses-is the only constant between the tales.
"Lighthouses represent an era gone by," Hivert-Carthew said. "They're the perfect setting, since they're so isolated. This is a place where people can confront their own demons."
"It's a great, fun book, "she said. "I had fun writing it and people have fun reading it. You can pick it up and read a couple of stories, or read it all at once like some people I've hears of."
Either way, Ghostly Lights is a book that beckons."
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