129. Unsolved Mysteries of The Great Lakes: Ghost Ships, Lost Crews & Ancient Curses // DARK SUMMER VOL. 2

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 onPatreon https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to bonus content as well as other perks. And members of our High Council on Patreon have access to our after-show called Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. Apple subscriptions are now live! Get access to ad-free episodes and bonus episodes when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow onTik Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@heartstartspounding?lang=en andInstagram https://www.instagram.com/heartstartspounding/ for a daily dose of horror. Show Notes: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/episodes/greatlakesmystery

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kaelyn Moore?

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• 0:43Kaelyn Moore?

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• 2:02Kaelyn Moore?

  The Great Lakes are a chain of five enormous lakes straddling the US and Canadian border, creating the largest freshwater system on Earth by surface area. Together, they hold about 21% of the world's freshwater. The lakes include Lake Superior, which is the largest and deepest, with a maximum depth of about 1,300 feet. Then there's Lake Michigan, which sits entirely within the United States. There's also Lake Huron, which reaches a maximum depth of around 750 feet and is dotted with numerous islands. There's Lake Erie, the shallowest, with an average depth of only 62 feet. And finally, there's Lake Ontario, the smallest by surface area, but significantly deeper than Lake Erie,

• 2:44Kaelyn Moore?

  with depths reaching just over 800 feet. And 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 about to freak you all out about today, is that as you float slowly across the lakes on a beautiful summer's day, there is mystery and horror that is settled at the lake's bottom, just hundreds of feet below you. For instance, deep beneath the waves of Lake Huron, along the Northwest Coast, lies what's known as Shipwreck Alley, a graveyard of vessels spanning hundreds of years that never finished their voyages. Down there, nearly 100 shipwrecks

• 3:28Kaelyn Moore?

  lie eerily preserved, entombed beneath the icy water. And it's also not just shipwrecks, either. Bodies are down there, and they actually go through a process called saponification, where the fat in the body turns essentially into soap, and it preserves them and gives it this terrifyingly waxy look. Here, when the summer season ends, storms rise out of nowhere, fog blinds even the most experienced navigators, and hidden reefs tear through steel and wood alike. And many of these boats have actually been rediscovered over the years. For instance, there's the Iron Ten, which sank in 1894, and it was discovered in Shipwreck Alley in 2023.

• 4:12Kaelyn Moore?

  According to the two crew members that survived the wreck all the way back in the day, the Iron Ten's captain and six sailors tried to get into a lifeboat, but they were dragged to the bottom of the lake before it could detach from the ship. And when the ship was eventually found, that lifeboat was still attached to it, ready to be deployed. And 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 alley, one ship is noticeably absent from the area. See, there is one boat that vanished off the face of the earth. It's like it slipped out of existence while crossing the Great Lakes.

• 4:57Kaelyn Moore?

  And while some people believe that with all the technology we have today and how much we know about where the shipwreck graveyards are, it should be easy to find this one. And yet, this ship has evaded divers and researchers for centuries. 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 Graffon. But before we dive in, just a reminder that we now have merch available in our store. That's shop.harts starts pounding.com. There you can find t-shirts, sweatshirts, rogue detecting society notebooks. We even have a special edition Dark Summer t-shirt.

• 5:42Kaelyn Moore?

  And as always, patrons and Apple Podcast subscribers get a very special discount. And this week, I actually want to shout out a listener with a very darkly curious job, Jordan, who is an ocular recovery technician, AKA she scoops out eyeballs from corpses for donations, and she works directly with the families of the donors. It's a very honorable and very morbid job. So of course, I love it. Keep sending me your darkly curious jobs, hobbies, you name it. Jinx and I love hearing about all of them. Right, Jinx?

• 6:18Kaelyn Moore?

  Okay, let's get back to it. This is the mystery of Le Graffon.

• 6:25Kaelyn Moore?

  Les Griffon is a supposedly cursed ship that vanished without a trace on September 18, 1679. The ship was constructed by a Frenchman named Rene Robert Cavallé, who was referred to by his title, La Salle. In January of 1679, he arrived in upstate New York to build Les Griffon out of resources he could scour from the land, much to the local Iroquois tribe's dismay. The story goes that Iroquois tribesmen watched from the forest as La Salle and his men cut down tree after tree after tree to make logs for this ship. Eventually, the Frenchman actually did move the construction site further south out of the area of the Iroquois because they started to fear what

• 7:09Kaelyn Moore?

  some of the tribe's members might do to them. And even then, 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 just a short break, only to find 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, Les Griffon was

• 7:52Kaelyn Moore?

  completed. It boasted a striking carved griffin at its bow, part lion, part eagle. It was supposed to act as a guardian against misfortune. And finally, on August 7, 1679, Les Griffon launched onto Lake Erie, pushing boldly into the unknown, towards the far end of the Great Lakes to what is today Green Bay, Wisconsin. The journey was supposed to look like this. The ship would start in the most northeast corner of Lake Erie, almost in Lake Ontario, and then it would go north towards Lake Huron, and then west to Lake Michigan until it got to Green Bay in the northwest part of the lake. At first, the journey seemed really promising and pretty easy.

• 8:35Kaelyn Moore?

  LaSalle and his crew were navigating through the rough waters with relative ease. But as the voyage continued, this sense of unease began to settle amongst the crew. The deeper they traveled, the clearer it became that these lakes were much more dangerous than they ever imagined. There were violent storms that were capable of swallowing entire ships. Hidden reefs were lurking just beyond the waves, waiting for someone to crash into them. But still, by September 18th, Legrafon finally reached Green Bay, Wisconsin. And here, LaSalle made a really fateful decision. See, Legrafon was full of all these firs that they had collected along the route,

• 9:17Kaelyn Moore?

  and he actually wanted to bring all of this valuable cargo back to their fort before the winter ice trapped them. So he ordered the ship, which was now heavily loaded with firs, to sail back towards the French fort that they came from. And LaSalle himself decided to stay behind on the shores of Lake Michigan. And so, he watched as Legrafon set sail into the relatively calm waters and faded slowly into the misty horizon. And that was the last time anyone saw Legrafon or its crew alive. Since then, not even so much as a splinter of the ship has been seen. After he learned that his crew hadn't made it back home,

• 10:01Kaelyn Moore?

  LaSalle had entire parties of men walk the shores and scour the waters for a piece of wood, a lifeboat, really anything that indicated the ship had been lost. But nothing was ever found. It had vanished entirely, as though the lake had swallowed it 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 has been no sign of Legrafon. 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?

• 10:45Kaelyn Moore?

  Some believed that Legrafon fell victim to Lake Michigan's notorious sudden and vicious storms, storms powerful enough to shred sails and crack holes. But the lack of wreckage made others suspicious of this. Could the crew have actually conspired against LaSalle to steal his valuable cargo of fur and maybe started their new lives as rich men somewhere? Local indigenous tribes like the Iroquois actually had their own chilling explanations on what happened. A prophecy from this Iroquois prophet, Matiamec, declared that the giant ship was an insult to the Great Spirit. He said that he had placed a solemn curse upon it,

• 11:29Kaelyn Moore?

  whispering that the vessel would never reach its destination, that it would sail endlessly through "a crack in the ice," he called it, which he described as being trapped beneath this world and the next. So maybe the crew was right. Maybe one of the Iroquois tribesmen had placed this horrible curse on the ship. And this one is particularly scary because people have claimed to see the ghost of Legrafon to this day. They say that there's a ghostly three-masted ship that glides silently through particularly misty nights, and it disappears as suddenly as it appears. And in modern times, the search for Legrafon has taken on almost

• 12:10Kaelyn Moore?

  this obsessive quality because it is believed that if the ship did sink, the freezing fresh water of Lake Michigan would preserve it perfectly for centuries, and maybe some of the bodies of the crew as well. Over the years, there's been at least 20 separate claims that have emerged, all saying that they solved this mystery and found the ship. Yet every single one of those supposed discoveries is still unsubstantiated. And most recently, in 2022, after searching for 40 years, this explorer named Steve Leibert claimed that he and his wife had actually found Legrafon finally. They apparently had spent years trying to get permits to be able to resurface artifacts

• 12:54Kaelyn Moore?

  from the part of Lake Michigan where they believed Le Grifon sank. And finally, after 40 years, they were granted one of those permits. And that's when they were able to bring up what they believed was Le Grifon's front-mounted spar, also known as a bowsprit. But funnily enough, when it was sent to the state archaeologist to authenticate this piece of wood, he actually said, "No, that's not the bowsprit at all of Le Grifon. That's actually a piece of wood that was used for fishing maybe hundreds of years ago, but it's not part of a ship." But Steve refuses to believe that that's all the piece of wood is. He said he believes that Le Grifon is just 200 yards off of Big Summer Island in the

• 13:36Kaelyn Moore?

  northwest corner of Lake Michigan, which is very close to where the ship would have left Green Bay to go back home. And Steve said that it's also just 50 feet below the surface. But this area that Steve is talking about is almost as mysterious as the vanishing of the ship itself, because this area is known as Death's Door, which actually brings us to our next mystery.

• 14:07Kaelyn Moore?

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• 14:50Kaelyn Moore?

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• 15:08Kaelyn Moore?

  Death Store is a treacherous passageway between the Bay of Green Bay and the rest of Lake Michigan. It's what Legrafan would have passed through as it started its journey back to its home base. And just like Shipwreck Alley, Death Store is known for its converging tides, its hidden shoals, and these unpredictable winds. These are all things that could tear a wooden ship into pieces unexpectedly. And it's said that over 275 shipwrecks have been found in this area alone. And sailors had tried everything over the years to mitigate the risks in the area. Like in 1848 and in 1850, two massive lighthouses were built in the area as a navigational aid.

• 15:51Kaelyn Moore?

  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 are a few mysteries about Death Store that make it a bit more terrifying than Shipwreck Alley. For one, no one really knows where the name "Death Store" comes from. One legend claims that hundreds of years ago, two large wooden canoes full of Menominee warriors crashed into a rocky shoal during a storm, killing every man in the Menominee tribe in one sweep. And this decimated the tribe's power in the area, and it left them vulnerable to attacks, so they forever named the passage "Death Store."

• 16:36Kaelyn Moore?

  And that story is from a 1905 newspaper I found, and as far as I can tell, no member of the Menominee tribe has confirmed it. So for all we know, the area could have had that name before they 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 passageway of Death Store. When Steve Liebert dove to find Legrafan, he noticed that there were remnants of entire villages 50 feet under the lake amongst the wreckage of the ships. Could these be from years of rising sea levels that eventually overtook the area?

• 17:20Kaelyn Moore?

  Or could there have been a devastating storm hundreds of years ago that swallowed an entire village whole and made entire communities disappear without a trace overnight?

• 17:31Kaelyn Moore?

  And more importantly, who did these villages belong to? Like I said, there have been people in that area for thousands of years. Are these villages from people from the 1800s? Or from 5,000 B.C.? 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 actually want to do for this next part is I want to continue along the path that Le Grifon would have taken back to its home base. Because what if it didn't sink in Death's Door? So let's travel to the other side of Lake Michigan, where Le Grifon would have sailed

• 18:12Kaelyn Moore?

  right past, in Little Traverse Bay, where the Lake Michigan Stonehenge is. In 2007, an archaeologist named Mark Holly was scanning the bottom of Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay for shipwrecks, maybe seeing if he could solve the mystery of Le Grifon. When he saw something that he just couldn't make sense of. There was a row of large stones, and some of them appeared to be in a somewhat geometric pattern. In total, these stones spanned over a mile. Now, some of these stones were small, about the size of a bowling ball. But others were massive, coming in close to the size of an SUV.

• 18:54Kaelyn Moore?

  And even though they were positioned in a really strange shape, they weren't necessarily stacked on top of each other like Stonehenge was. So at first, it wasn't really believed that these were placed there intentionally, like by people. They seemed to be some very bizarre natural phenomena. But then, upon closer inspection, a diver actually noticed that one of the rocks had something carved into it. It looked like a creature, specifically a mastodon, which was 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 after all.

• 19:37Kaelyn Moore?

  Maybe they were part of one of these ancient civilizations that once lived in the area. A quick history lesson of the Great Lakes. So around 20,000 years ago, the massive Laurentide 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 Travers Bay were actually dry and plenty of creatures lived there. And this allowed early Native American ancestors like OG hunter-gatherers to move into the area and use the landscape for hunting mastodons and caribou. Eventually, water levels rose and the site became submerged. So one thought is that this ancient community of hunter-gatherers

• 20:21Kaelyn Moore?

  used these rocks for something. Perhaps maybe it was something ceremonial in nature. Maybe it was for hunting purposes and actually helped move the caribou in a pattern that made them easier to hunt. But what's interesting about that is that if that's true, if this rock formation is man-made, then it's 4,000 years older than Stonehenge is. And we can sort of guess that this is 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 can't be 100% sure. There's a small island in Lake Michigan called Beaver Island

• 21:06Kaelyn Moore?

  that has some glacial boulders laid out in a circular formation, and some of them have holes carved into them. And it's believed that they may have been used as a calendar or some sort of celestial marker. But again, we just aren't 100% positive. We'll never hear directly from the communities that used these rock formations, and they didn't keep any written records, at least ones that survived. But we do have one group of people that have been in the Great Lakes region for about 1,500 years. And they have tried to offer what information they have that could help solve this mystery. It's the Anishinaabe people, and to them, stones are more than just geological artifacts.

• 21:49Kaelyn Moore?

  As one Anishinaabe man named Hank explained, "We refer to stones as animate objects because they come from Mother Earth, who is alive." So, stones do have a spiritual meaning to the indigenous people of that area, and perhaps these stones were used in religious ceremonies after all. But I will add, these were entirely different groups of people who lived in the area thousands of years apart. So, we just really don't know. They might not have had anything in common with each other. And maybe the only thing more mysterious than what the stones were used for is where exactly in the lakes they are, because scientists won't tell anyone.

• 22:31Kaelyn Moore?

  I guess it's because they don't want laypeople like you and me going and scuffing up ancient ceremonial stones, which is fair. So, for now, these just remain one of the lake's greatest mysteries. Now, swallowed villages and rock formations aren't the strangest things sitting at the bottom of Little Travers Bay. There's actually a few other oddities down there that people who don't live in the area don't necessarily know about. For instance, one thing I found that is down there is a life-sized marble statue of a crucified Jesus. The story of how it got there is almost as strange as the site of it is. So, a local family had the statue commissioned after the death of their 15-year-old son. But when it arrived, it looked really bad.

• 23:16Kaelyn Moore?

  It was all banged up from the journey from Italy. Its arm was busted, and the family was basically like, "We don't really want this anymore." So, they sold it to a local diver who went and dropped it in the bay. And today, it's about 800 feet offshore and just 20 feet down, so it can be seen from the surface. So, they'll do these winter viewings of it where they cut a hole in the ice, and people can stand over it and observe, or pray, or just gawk. And it's not really a mystery per se, but I can't imagine being the first person to see it down there after the diver left it at the bottom. Okay, let's continue on the voyage of Le Griffon, out of Lake Michigan and back into Lake Erie.

• 23:59Kaelyn Moore?

  Because Lake Erie is home to some of the strangest mysteries, maybe of all of the lakes. And some people suggest that one of these mysteries might have had something to do with the ship's disappearance. Let me explain. Now, the mysteries of Lake Erie go back thousands of years, but recently, there was something quite odd that happened there. In 2011, residents along the Detroit River, which flows into Lake Erie, woke to a strange sound. It was this low-level hum that could be heard coming from every direction, like a swarm of invisible bees was all around them.

• 24:45Kaelyn Moore?

  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 all of their organs around like it was coming from within. Others thought that maybe it was their refrigerator until they went to the store and could still hear this hum. 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 this mysterious sound. And then weeks, and then years. One day, a switch was pressed and the hum turned on. And now, there was no indication that it would ever stop.

• 25:30Kaelyn Moore?

  Obviously, the residents were furious about this sound. One woman said that she would have her friend drive her around town while she had her head out of the sunroof and was looking for any clue as to where this was coming from. Was it louder in certain areas? Did it fade away at some point? But she never found any clue. And eventually, this sound got its own name. It was called the Windsor Hum. Finally, in 2013, a professor named Colin Novak was able to conduct a study to try and find the source of this 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.

• 26:11Kaelyn Moore?

  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. And immediately, people started flocking to some conspiracy theories about this island. "There was something happening there that they just don't want us to see," they said. "Was it like the Montauk experiments in Stranger Things where demogorgons were making these sounds? Was it from secret tunnels that were being built below the steel factory for some unknown reason?" And the theories covered this really wide range, too. Some people thought it was a sound coming from Planet X, which is a theoretical planet that exists beyond Neptune, whose existence has not been proven.

• 26:54Kaelyn Moore?

  But a lot of people in the area thought that this sound had something to do with aliens. And they pointed to another mystery about Lake Erie that they said proved this theory. So on March 4, 1988, Sheila and Henry Baker were driving home from a restaurant with their three children at around 8:45 PM, when all of a sudden, they noticed a strange light hovering above Lake Erie out in the distance. The sight was so shocking to the couple that they actually pulled their car over and got out to look at it. And what they saw, or at least what they claimed to see, was a big gray football-shaped object that was silently hovering over the lake, kind of rocking back and forth.

• 27:38Kaelyn Moore?

  The couple was terrified by the sight, so they drove home, but they could still see it from their upstairs window. But now, it looked like it had blue and red lights emanating from it. So they decided that they were going to call the Coast Guard, who reportedly did also see these lights when they went out to investigate. But eventually, the craft flew away, and they were never really able to figure out what it was. However, these lights have been seen a few times since that first sighting. In the early days of YouTube, there was this guy named Michael Lee Hill, and he collected a few videos on the lights and uploaded them to YouTube. His videos showed these really bright orbs of light hovering over Lake Erie, often in a formation and moving silently. And then in 2010, there was a sighting in Euclid, Ohio,

• 28:23Kaelyn Moore?

  where a paramedic named Eugene filmed multiple nights of these brilliant orbs hovering, shifting colors, and then disappearing suddenly. The event actually ended up getting 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 alike. And there's never really been a definitive answer as to what these lights are. And a theory that is pretty popular, at least among UFO researchers, is this thing called the underwater submersible theory,

• 29:04Kaelyn Moore?

  which suggests that there's a hidden alien base or a docking point beneath Lake Erie, especially since a lot of witnesses have reported seeing these lights enter or emerge from the water without any sounds, even a splash. They say that these aren't UFOs, but actually USOs, which are unidentified submerged objects, and that these craft could explain the lake's recurring activity and that they suggest a long-term, possibly non-human presence operating covertly in the region. And some people say it's the real reason Lagrafon went missing. Others say it's the source of that dang hum no one can figure out.

• 29:46Kaelyn Moore?

  Well, while the source of the lights remains a big Great Lake mystery, the source of the sound may have actually been discovered. In April of 2020, the sound just stopped one day, totally went away. Residents had their first day of peace in almost 10 years. And it didn't take very long until they realized that the steel plant on Zug Island had shut down due to COVID. Now, it's still kind of a mystery exactly where the sound was coming from within the plant. Was it some sort of machinery that was in there? Colin Novak thinks that it was actually generated by the facility's blast furnaces running at a higher-than-normal capacity. But, you know, it always could be the aliens tunneling underneath the plant. More after a short break.

• 30:34Kaelyn Moore?

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• 31:19Kaelyn Moore?

  who's been wanting to clean up their routine. Use code HSP to get 15% off your Primally Pure purchase. That's www.p r i m a l l y p u r e dot com and use code HSP at checkout for 15% off your order. This episode is brought to you by Toyota. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all wheel drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla sedan packed with the latest features, advanced tech, and head turning style. Take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family friendly Grand Highlander and adventure ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup,

• 32:04Kaelyn Moore?

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• 32:48Kaelyn Moore?

  It's been around forever and people absolutely love it. I realized I had no idea what it actually tasted like. Obviously, I had to investigate and now I'm obsessed. Constant Comment is this incredible black tea with real orange rind, cold-pressed orange oil and sweet spices. The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas in a cup, except you get to drink it all year long. Then I learned the story behind it, which made me love it even more. Constant Comment was created by Ruth Campbell Bigelow and her New York City Kitchen in 1945. She shared it with her friends and everyone kept talking about it. And all of those constant comments actually gave it its name. The recipe is still a Bigelow family secret over 80 years later. So this one is a mystery worth investigating for yourself.

• 33:32Kaelyn Moore?

  Bigelow Constant Comment, curiously different and possible to forget.

• 33:37Kaelyn Moore?

  The last mystery I want to tell you about is one that has really stuck with me since I first read about it. It's one that takes us back to Lake Michigan in October of 1921. The summer season had just ended and the lake was cold and gray, blurred totally by mist. A ferry captain from the Grand Trunk Milwaukee Ferry Company was floating along the lake, scanning ahead for any hazards. And 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 sight was way worse than he anticipated. The boat was totally destroyed.

• 34:22Kaelyn Moore?

  It looked honestly 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 was destroyed and it was all floating around aimlessly near the boat. The captain of the ferry called out, hoping and praying for any survivors, but it was dead silent. A rescue ship finally arrived and carefully boarded the wreck after identifying the schooner as the Rosebel. And that's when they found the strangest thing of all. There was no sign of life on the schooner at all. They thought that they would at least find bodies wrapped up in the mangled mess somewhere.

• 35:05Kaelyn Moore?

  But they didn't find a single one. The Rosebel's captain and crew had vanished without a trace. Now, the Rosebel was a 100-foot-long schooner designed to transport grain and lumber across the Great Lakes. She was initially launched on April 12th, 1863, and though she would go on to have a 59-year career, there were times when people swore this boat should have sunk. In 1875, the Rosebel capsized, which gave the captain a severe head injury that he would never recover from, and he's considered the ship's first victim. Then, in 1919, the Rosebel was bought by the House of David, which was a mysterious

• 35:46Kaelyn Moore?

  religious colony that lived on a commune in Benton Harbor, Michigan. The group ran a lumber mill on the isolated High Island, and the Rosebel helped them haul potatoes and lumber back to the mainland. But the House of David harbored a very dark secret. The group was founded by husband and wife Benjamin and Mary Purnell, and they claimed to be the religious successors of a prophet named Joanna Southcott. Joanna lived in England 100 years before the Purnells started House of David, and she made all sorts of ridiculous religious claims about herself. She said she was pregnant with the Messiah. She wasn't. She also said that she was the woman of the apocalypse from the Book of Revelation in the Bible.

• 36:31Kaelyn Moore?

  She was not. House of David quickly grew to hundreds of members, peaking at around 1,000, on a 1,000-acre farm that they owned on the shores of Lake Michigan. They built a zoo, they had an amusement park, but they also had a lot of very strict rules, some of them sort of strange, that they had to follow. For one, they couldn't eat any meat. They also couldn't own any personal property. But married couples also weren't allowed to consummate their marriages. This was a very peculiar rule, and it wasn't long before whispers started spreading about Benjamin, the group's leader, that he was actually abusing young female members in the group. He had been telling all of his members that sexuality was a sin and everyone,

• 37:16Kaelyn Moore?

  including married couples, had to look at each other as brother and sister. Yet, starting around 1920, young girls were approaching their parents and telling them that Benjamin had offered them salvation through intimacy. And this started creating cracks in the foundation of the commune. Parents panicked, but they didn't really know what to do because after all Benjamin was saying that he was the Messiah. And then, on October 30th, 1921, nine men from the House of David loaded onto the Roosevelt, drifted out into Lake Michigan, and were never seen again.

• 37:56Kaelyn Moore?

  When the wreckage was finally brought ashore, investigators carefully examined it. Rumors started spreading pretty rapidly. Some people believed that maybe the crew had drowned below deck and they were trapped as cargo shifted and blocked their exit. But again, not a single trace of a person was ever found in the wreck. And the House of David struggled to identify exactly who was on board. It turned out that their own records were very secretive and hard to get a hold of. But finally, all nine of the men were identified. And in the years that followed, there were more theories that arose about what happened to the boat. Perhaps it sprang a sudden leak and it capsized within minutes. And that wouldn't have given the crew any time to come up with an escape plan.

• 38:41Kaelyn Moore?

  But that also doesn't really explain how the ship was so torn up when it was found. Well, maybe an explosion from gasoline stored onboard had instantly doomed everyone. That also didn't sit right with a lot of people. So the most accepted explanation at the time was actually that a violent collision had taken place. I mean, that's what looked like had happened. But that was questioned later by experts who said that there were no signs of another vessel striking the Roosevelt. So maybe the ship's wounds actually happened after it capsized. Maybe it hit some rocks or got caught up in a storm, they suggested. I will say, though, I do find it interesting that some people have always suspected it was sabotage.

• 39:25Kaelyn Moore?

  Maybe an explosion did happen onboard, but it was caused intentionally by someone.

• 39:31Kaelyn Moore?

  Was all of this 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 that he was abusing? After all, House of David was very secretive about their records when authorities were trying to identify some of the people on board. Could it have been that someone else was also on board? Maybe it was Benjamin himself, and that person 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

• 40:13Kaelyn Moore?

  of tuberculosis before he could even be sentenced. And some people truly believe, and I tend to agree with them, that the mystery of the Roosevelt, one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the Great Lakes, died with him. The Great Lakes are more than just a massive body of fresh water. They're a time capsule. They're a guardian of many, many secrets, and they also are a giant graveyard of ships and civilizations and bodies. And one thing I can tell you with certainty after doing all of the research for this episode is that these lakes love to keep their secrets close. So if you do find yourself floating on the Great Lakes this summer, now at least you know a little bit more about the absolute

• 40:58Kaelyn Moore?

  horrors that lie underneath you. But what do you guys think? Is Le Grifon somewhere at the bottom of the lake? Or did the aliens that are tunneling under Zug Island take it? Is the Stonehenge that's down there just a coincidence? Or is it maybe 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 I will be back on Wednesday, where it'll just be me again, to tell you about a very scary mystery of two girls who went missing on vacation in Panama. Meet me here in the Rogue Detecting Society next

• 41:41Kaelyn Moore?

  week. I will have Gordy, my haunted monkey doll, with me, and we will see you there. Until then, stay curious.

• 41:53Kaelyn Moore?

  Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kaelyn Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Sound design and mix by Pete Tree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out our website at heartstarts pounding.com.

• 42:14Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by our partner, Vistaprint. If you run a small business, you know that there's a moment where you go from just doing the thing you love to realizing you need stuff, like physical stuff. Custom merch for an event, branded apparel for your team, business cards that actually look professional? That was definitely me with Heart Starts Pounding. What started as a podcast I made in my closet turned into something that had merch, had mugs, had stickers, had all of this stuff that I needed to get made. And Vistaprint made it so much less overwhelming. They are a true print expert. Premium quality products, fast turnaround, and design tools that actually make sense. I actually got custom mugs made from Vistaprint and they are gorgeous and very, very good quality. The quality feels expensive without having an expensive price tag.

• 42:59Kaelyn Moore?

  There's a reason over 17 million businesses trust Vistaprint with their print needs. Vistaprint, print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at Vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at Vistaprint.com using code NEW20. Do you want more Darkly Curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content, our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter, and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com backslash Heart Starts Pounding. Well, whatever you do, stay curious.