Downstate couple 'haunted' by color tour

The Bay City Times covers this story of strange sightings of lights at the Tawas Point Lighthouse:

A weekend color tour up north led to a frightening new avocation for Julie and Harry Joseph after a photo they took at the Tawas Point Lighthouse turned up something unearthly. The Sterling Heights couple, who visited the lighthouse with three others on their tour, captured an image that shows a light in the sky moving toward the structure. What's unusual, they say, is that none of the five people in the group remembers seeing the light with their naked eyes.

So they got on the Internet and started doing some research and found at least a plausible explanation: The lighthouse is haunted. At least that's been the story for more than 100 years, since a little girl - believed to be the daughter of one of he lighthouse keepers - died of pneumonia in the late 1800s, according to a book "Haunted Lakes II," by Frederick Stonehouse.

The Josephs knew nothing about the lighthouse's ghoulish reputation until they got their film developed and did an Internet search. They found several sites that documented reports of ghosts at the Tawas Point Lighthouse.

"We didn't actually see anything unusual," she said. "The light was on at the top, the beacon, but nothing else. Then we saw the picture, the light moving toward the lighthouse. I'm totally a believer," she said. "I've always been kind of intrigued by stories like that. This was quite a neat experience, and it sparked our interest in doing a little more research."

For more information visit the Tawas Point Lighthouse information page.