Michigan is filled with ghost stories, but apparently this is the scariest of them all.
Thrillist posted their list of the most haunted places in every state. In Michigan, here's what they picked:
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South Manitou Island - Leland
If there’s one island that comes packed with its very own creepy legends and haunting history, it’s South Manitou Island, 16 miles offshore from the Leelanau Peninsula. Featuring 300-foot sand dunes, deserted shoreline, and empty campgrounds, it’s about as terrestrially creepy as you can get in Michigan.
One legend suggests that a ship of cholera-stricken passengers stopped at the island, and sailors buried them in a mass grave while some were still alive. If that alone doesn’t stir you to set sail to the island, there are two cemeteries, a cedar forest where unbodied voices are often heard, and off the coast is the shipwreck of the SS Francisco Morazan, where a young boy is rumored to have died after an attempt at exploring it on his own. Fair warning to all who seek refuge.
Well, that sounds spooky. South Manitou Island is part of an island chain in Lake Michigan that extends north to the Straits of Mackinac. The island consists of a ridge of tilted layers of limestone, buried under a blanket of glacial debris.
It features unique sand dune formations, 10 miles of pebble beaches and a grove of old growth white cedars that date back over 500 years. The campgrounds lie on sandy soils among younger forests.
The Manitou Passage State Underwater Preserve was established in 1988 to conserve the historic and archeological value of over fifty known shipwreck sites, dating from 1835 to 1960.