The Haunting Tale of the Starving Charlie Mott on Isle Royale

Isle Royale in the Great Lakes in Michigan was once a wilderness frontier. A man named Charlie Mott once tried to tame the winter wild and died for it. Today, he is said to haunt the island, locking for food as he died from starvation one winter night.

In the icy embrace of Lake Superior’s northwestern expanse, Isle Royale in the Great Lakes in Michigan stands as a testament to both the rugged beauty of nature and the haunting whispers of its storied past, being the fourth biggest lake island in the world close to the Canadian border.

Designated as an island National Park in 1940, this remote outpost off the shores of Michigan has been a home to humanity for millennia, harboring tales as ancient as the land itself.The Isle Royale National Park consists of the island itself among 400 small adjacent islands in Lake Superior.

Isle Royale in the Great Lakes in Michigan was once a wilderness frontier. A man named Charlie Mott once tried to tame the winter wild and died for it. Today, he is said to haunt the island, locking for food as he died from starvation one winter night. — Isle Royale: Photo taken in August 2001 on Isle Royale. It shows the beach at the camping area at Huginnin Cove on the North-West edge of the Island. It is said to be haunted by Charlie Mott, a man who starved to death on the island.

The island is renowned for its diverse ecosystems, including dense forests, sparkling inland lakes, and rocky shorelines. It’s also famous for its thriving populations of moose and wolves, which have been the subjects of long-term ecological studies. With over 165 miles of hiking trails, visitors can explore scenic ridges, ancient copper mining sites, and serene campsites.

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Among the legends that echo through the island’s dense forests and rocky shores, the spectral presence of Charlie Mott emerges as a chilling reminder of the island’s harsh winters and the unforgiving forces of nature. In the annals of Isle Royale’s ghost stories, the saga of Charlie Mott unfolds like a spectral tapestry, weaving tragedy, survival, and the lingering shadows of a bygone era.

Charlie Mott and Angelique on Isle Royale

The year was 1845 when Charlie Mott, a determined copper prospector, set foot on Isle Royale with his 17 year old wife, Angelique, an Ojibwe woman native to the Great Lake regions. He was hired to get a grip on the island’s copper deposits that they wanted to put a mine on. Lake Superior was an unsettled frontier at that time, and only the Fort Wilkins and Sault Sainte Marie in the Keweenaw Peninsula were settled at that time. Even the natives didn’t set up permanent camp there, and it was mainly used for summer hunting grounds for thousands of years.

Their aspirations echoed the dreams of many who sought fortune in the untamed wilderness. The couple’s fate, however, took a grim turn as they became reliant on the intermittent visits of supply ships for their sustenance. Winter’s icy grip on the waters between Isle Royale and the Canadian province of Ontario left the prospectors stranded without vital supplies as the ship never returned.

In the start they had their canoe to fish from, but a summer storm destroyed it and their fishing net fell apart from overuse.

As the harsh winter months unfurled, the specter of starvation cast its long shadow over Charlie and Angelique Mott with only a half barrel of flour, six pounds of butter and some beans.

Deprived of the lifeblood of supply ships, their dreams of prosperity turned into a desperate struggle for survival. Angelique told that in a fit of fever, Charlie Mott had pointed a knife at her, calling her a sheep and said he would kill and eat her. He didn’t though, and eventually died of hunger.

Angelique survived the winter, and being raised in the Anishinaabe culture, had learned a few things to survive in the wild. When Charlie died, Angelique was forced to leave the body in the cabin and created a brush shelter for herself to live in. She lived of bark, berries and trapping rabbits in a snare fashioned with her own hair.

In May, the ship returned. The people claimed that they had sent the ship, but didn’t know what happened. Other people told her that the ship was never sent.

In any case, she lived to tell the tale, and she lived for another 30 years. Her husband might have the ghost story, but she had the story of survival.The story was made into a movie in 2018 called Angelique’s Isle

Isle Royale: Together with her husband, Charlie Mott, Angelique survived an entire winter on the barren Isle Royale by herself. She survived and got off the island, her husband is said to still linger and haunt it.

The Haunted Isle Royale Today

To this day, the island is still preserving some of its wilderness, having no roads on the island, accessed only by private boat, seaplane or commercial ferries.

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Visitors to Isle Royale report sightings of a ghastly figure of Charlie Mott prowling the wilderness alone—a spectral prospector forever condemned to wander the rugged terrain. The apparition of Charlie Mott serves as a haunting reminder of the island’s untamed wilderness, where the boundary between life and the afterlife blurs amidst the ancient pines and rocky cliffs.

People claim that his ghost is wandering the woods of the island, looking for food, eternally starving as he died, only leaving his wife to live and tell the tale.