Starved to Death: The Ghost of Isle Royale

Being the biggest island in Lake Superior, you’d figure there would be plenty of room for a ghost tale, right? Well, you’d figure correctly.

The name of this particular ghost is Charlie Mott.

In 1845, with Michigan’s copper boom having started just two years earlier, prospector Charlie Mott and his 17-year-old Ojibwe wife Angelique made the trip across Lake Superior to Isle Royale. Sent by a mining company, his job was to find out if he believed there was enough copper, in order to put forth the effort of constructing a mine.

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The couples’ only source of supplies were the occasional ships that brought them their necessities. When winter hit, the waters between Ontario and the island became too tough for the ships to make it through, leaving Charlie and Angelique stranded without food. The canoe they formerly used for fishing was ruined by a storm and their fishing net became ripped to shreds from overuse.

As winter relentlessly forged ahead, the only food supplies they had left were a half barrel of flour, six pounds of butter and a small amount of beans. Their original quest for making a living by mining became overtaken by their desire to live. At one point, due to extreme hunger Charlie became hallucinatory and mentally unstable; he approached Angelique telling her she was a sheep and was going to eat her.

That threat didn’t happen and not long afterward, Charlie died from starvation. To survive on her own, Angelique made a snare from her own long hair, trapped rabbits and ate them, along with wild berries and bark. Refusing to live in their cabin with Charlie’s body inside, she made her own shelter from the underbrush.

After the harsh winter was over, a supply ship finally arrived in May. Angelique survived for another 30 years, and there was even a movie made in 2018 about the incident, titled Angelique’s Isle.

As for the ghost of Charlie Mott, it remains on Isle Royale. Visitors who claim to spot the apparition of Charlie say it’s “ghastly” as he appears to still be searching for food, wandering through the woods starving throughout eternity.