The Claim
There have been countless disappearances in lake Michigan over the last 150 years, and no one knows why.
Lake Michigan is a massive lake situated between Michigan and Wisconsin, spanning a surface area of 58,000 km². Normally when people and ships go missing in a lake of this size its nothing to worry about, as the shear size of the lake would certainly cause many ships overs the years to have accidents, but the strange thing about this lake is that the disappearances happen as a disproportionately high rate to any other lake, and for no obvious reason.
The lake is situated well over 600 miles from the nearest ocean, but is connected to it through a huge series of lakes and rivers. It has been used over the years to move supplies and personnel inland and was supposedly a popular place to do some piracy, due to the many choke points where ships are forced to pass through narrow river inlets.
As for the reason this lake has been named the Michigan triangle, it’s due to the type of disappearances that occur here, similar to those of the Bermuda triangle were it gets its name. When a ship sinks for whatever reason, there’s normally a large amount of things that float, such as pieces of cargo and barrels. But here when a ship goes missing, it does it properly and leaves no trace that it was ever there to begin with.
The story of ships going missing here comes from as early as 1891, when a single mast sail boat called the “Thomas Hume” travelled across the lake to pick up some timber from the other side. Some time during the night the ship vanished, along with its 8 crew members and any trace of floating cargo.
Over the next few years there were several dozen small ships that went missing in the lake, the most notable of which was the Rosa Belle in 1921. There were 11 people on the ship who all went missing, but the ship itself was actually found this time. A search boat found the ship upside down in the water with hull damage that appeared as if it were rammed by another ship.
The odd thing was that the other ship must have been badly damaged but no such accident was reported. Also the Rosa Belle was actually the 2nd version of the ship, with the original being wrecked a few years earlier by taking damage in the exact same place as she was rammed.
The accuracy of such tales can never be confirmed, and there are many wild explanations as to how this accident could have happened. UFOs are of course on the list, followed closely by ghost ships and some kind of paranormal event, but because the peak of the disappearances happened during a time when records weren’t exactly reliable, evidence is hard to come by.
The amount of ships that have gone missing is thought to be over 100, but records on small ships going missing on the lake are not kept in the same place or even recorded at all, making an exact number hard to come by. There is no doubt that many of the claims have been bolstered by rumours, but at least some of the stories seem to be true, and due to the size of the body of water there’s no question that some ships should be going missing, just not at the rate that people claim they are.
Another interesting thing about the lake is that its also home to the rumoured Stonehendge of Lake Michigan, a circle of stones with carvings of ancient animals on, long extinct from the modern world.
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