Pottawatomie Lighthouse

Volunteer docents living in the Pottawatomie Lighthouse hear doors opening and thumping on the second floor, attributed to first keeper David Corbin, a War of 1812 veteran who served fifteen years and is buried in a small cemetery just south of the light. Reaching the lighthouse on Rock Island requires two ferry rides and a 1.2-mile hike.

"I am glad to get away from here for I am as tired of this business as I can be." Keeper William Betts wrote that in his logbook on May 11, 1886, after sixteen years at the Pottawatomie Lighthouse on Rock Island. His predecessor, David Corbin, lasted fifteen years and died on the island. Corbin is buried in a small cemetery just south of the lighthouse, his grave marked with a headstone placed by the Friends of Rock Island in 2003. The headstone features an image of the original 1837 tower he tended.

Getting to Rock Island requires two ferry rides: one from the tip of the Door County peninsula to Washington Island, and another from Washington Island across the narrow strait to Rock Island State Park. There are no cars on the island, no stores, no electricity in the campground. The lighthouse sits at the end of a 1.2-mile hike through dense forest. When Congress appropriated $5,000 for the light in 1834, thirty Detroit merchants had petitioned that "there is no point on the Northern Lakes where a light house is more imperiously required than this." Contractor Michael Dousman built a 30-foot conical stone tower with an eight-sided lantern, and Corbin, a War of 1812 veteran and former fur trapper, was appointed the first keeper on December 19, 1837.

An 1845 inspection described Corbin as a bachelor whose "only companions being his faithful dog and Jock, his horse." He eventually married after 1850 but died in December 1852 after fifteen years of service. They buried him on the island rather than transport the body through winter waters.

The current building dates to 1858, when the deteriorated original was replaced with a two-story dwelling and square wooden tower. The lighthouse was restored in the 1990s to resemble its 1910 appearance, and volunteer docents now live in the building during summer months, giving free tours from Memorial Day through Columbus Day.

Those docents are the ones who hear things. Doors open and close without explanation. Something thumps on the second floor when nobody is upstairs. The working theory, passed along by Travel Wisconsin and a handful of ghost-tourism guides, is that Corbin is doing his rounds. Fifteen years alone on an island with a dog and a horse will build habits that apparently survive death.

Betts, the keeper who couldn't wait to leave, had a harder time. In January 1876, two men rowing from Washington Island vanished in a storm. Months later, Betts recorded in his logbook that their frozen bodies were spotted "adrift among ice" in their boat. Recovery was unlikely.

The Pottawatomie Lighthouse has the distinction of being both Wisconsin's oldest light station and one of the most remote. The isolation that made Corbin a lonely bachelor and drove Betts to quit is the same isolation that makes the ghost story work. There's no one else on that end of the island to blame the noises on.