Plenty of people dream of escaping to a deserted island. Few ever actually get to experience that kind of solitude.
But in September, a man from Kalamazoo did — at a Lake Michigan lighthouse that some say may be home to a ghost.
Earlier this year, Joe Krumske’s name had been randomly selected in a drawing for White Shoal Light Historical Preservation Society’s first-ever “Isolation Challenge,” winning him a week’s stay, completely alone, at the historic White Shoal Light: a formerly abandoned off-shore lighthouse perched on a cement crib eight miles from the nearest boat launch. The lighthouse is the most remote in Lake Michigan.
For eight straight days, Krumske lived in total isolation at the lighthouse, tending to chores, watching incredible sunsets and sunrises, grilling out on the crib deck, stargazing — and trying not to get creeped out by all the strange sounds he heard.
But Krumske — a lifelong lighthouse nut who’d been looking forward to his White Shoal solo stay for months — had gone into his isolation challenge with a game plan.
“I knew there was going to be a lot of noises out there, so one thing I told myself to do was, when you hear a noise, track it down right away so it doesn’t really get to you,” Krumske said. “And there was a lot of noises. The first couple nights I probably had 15 to 20 different noises that I had to track down because if I wouldn’t have, they would have probably really got to me.”
Upon inspection, some of the eerie sounds proved to have simple explanations.
One of the sounds, a sort of “banging around” that came from one of the 11-story lighthouse’s upper floors, turned out to be an exhausted bird that had flown into the lantern room. (Krumske was able to capture the small bird and set it free.)
But Krumske was unable to track down the source of one sound in particular.
“There was one night where I woke up to what I guess I would call some static noise,” Krumske said. “I tried tracking that down; I heard it coming from up above Deck Two, and I tried following it, but when I got up above Deck Five I heard it coming from down below. When I started going back down I heard it one more time. I never figured out what that noise was.”
The static noise at White Shoal has also been heard by Brent Tompkins, who bought the lighthouse at auction with a friend in 2016, and subsequently founded the preservation society to offer tours and raise funds for restoration work. At the time, the lighthouse had been abandoned and deteriorating for 40 years. This year was the first year in the lighthouse’s entire history that it was open to the public for tours and overnight stays.
Tompkins said a former coastguard member who’d serviced the light in the ’50s and ’60s said the lighthouse is home to a ghost who is active after dark.
“The first time I stayed [at White Shoal Light] for a week by myself, on the second night I was awakened to a static-y sound, like radio static. Then I heard what sounded like two voices having a conversation on the floor above me," Tompkins said. “I found out six months later that was once a radio room. That made the hair on my neck stand up.
“It always happens when someone’s out there alone.”
Tompkins said there’s been other strange activity at the lighthouse: extension chords getting unplugged or wrapped up, and other sounds like footsteps.
There’s been interest from several paranormal societies who want to “come out and wire the place up," to see if they can get anything recorded, Tompkins said.
But Krumske, who said he doesn’t really believe in the paranormal, hasn’t been negatively affected by the experience — in fact, he said he’s hoping he has a shot at winning one of next year’s three White Shoal Isolation Challenges (now being offered to couples and pairs of friends; Krumske said if he won he’d like to bring his wife).
Krumske said he’d love to return because, ghosts or not, there’s just something about this lighthouse he can’t help but love.
“It’s the tallest, it’s the farthest offshore, it’s the most spectacular. It’s an icon. It’s the Michael Jordan of lighthouses,” he said. “For me, it was the trip of a lifetime.”
White Shoal Light’s first Isolation Challenge participant Joe Kruske all smiles about his week-long stay by himself at the historic Lake Michigan crib light.