Post by Joanna on Mar 15, 2017 15:58:20 GMT -5
Is That a Ghost Ship Sailing Lake Superior?
Is the legendary Flying Dutchman plying the Great Lakes and, if so, did this video of a hazy blur on Michigan’s Lake Superior capture the spectral ship?
A local videographer was filming a rainbow when he spotted the shimmering “ghost ship” off the rocky shore of Presque Isle Park in Marquette. Jason Asselin was in the area to shoot a music video for alternative rock artist Kevin B. Klein when the crew called it a day to enjoy the sunset. Asselin told CNN he watched what looked like a massive “ghost ship” bob on the choppy waters for almost 30 minutes before it vanished.
The legends. Spectral ship sightings aren’t unheard of in the region. According to Bruce Lynn, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, there have been more than n 6,000 known shipwrecks on the Great Lakes and more than 200 in the 80-mile stretch of Lake Superior off Whitefish Point, not far from where Asselin was filming. “If there was a ghost ship sighting, this would be the place for it,” Lynn said.
Ghost ship sightings are a part of the culture and tradition of the Great Lakes, added local maritime historian Frederick Stonehouse (author of Haunted Lakes, Haunted Lakes II, Haunted Lake Michigan and several other books). There were many claims of spectral sailors spotted off the coast of Whitefish Point following the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975, he asserted.
The reality. In this case, however, science offers a more plausible explanation. The shimmering image is very likely the Granite Island lighthouse, about eight miles off the coast of Presque Isle. The same way the moon appears to be massive when it rises on the horizon, the video may have captured a much smaller object that’s playing tricks on the viewers’ eyes, said Mark Becker, an associate professor of psychology at Michigan State University. “Is it a ghost ship? No, I’m pretty sure,” Becker told CNN, “and it might not be that big.” Becker explained that without depth cues, our eyes have no way of identifying the distance of an object. The human brain “tends to try to make sense out of what our eyes send to our brain,” he explained.
But whether the image is nothing more than the shadow of the lighthouse or a genuine supernatural manifestation makes little difference. “Whatever you believe in your mind, that’s what it was,” Asselin reasoned. “That’s what life is about – dreaming.”
Watch video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eNJm554Reg
Source: Lauren del Valle, CNN, October 12, 2016.