People love a good mystery especially one that involves vanishing ships, spooky fog, and compasses losing their moral and magnetic direction. The Bermuda Triangle usually hogs the spotlight, but little do most know there’s a Midwestern cousin lurking quietly up north: the Lake Michigan Triangle. Or as I like to call it, the Bermuda Triangle for people who like freshwater and cheese curds.

I’ve never made it to Bermuda, but I have been to Michigan and the Upper Peninsula. And let me tell you there’s something both magical and eerie about that place. It’s like the air hums with stories. The forests seem to whisper “turn back,” while the water glimmers in a way that makes you wonder if it’s reflecting sunlight or another dimension.

This triangle stretches between Manitowoc, Wisconsin; Ludington, Michigan; and Benton Harbor, Michigan. And, it’s about 3,800 square miles of cold, deep mystery. It’s where ships, planes, and sometimes people have vanished as if swallowed whole by the lake’s moody depths. The first disappearance? The French ship Le Griffon in 1679 went poof and gone. Historians say storm, mutiny, or attack. I say: probably all three, followed by a plot twist.

Then there’s The Thomas Hume and The Rosabelle, whose names alone sound like ghostly lovers in a doomed maritime romance on Amazon Prime. The Hume eventually turned up, still intact and thus proof that storms can humble even the proudest hull. The Rosabelle, though, has a flair for drama was found capsized twice, with the crew missing both times. If that’s not a red flag for bad boat karma, I don’t know what is.

And, of course, Northwest Orient Flight 2501 with 58 souls and no main wreckage ever found. Add a captain who vanished from his locked cabin in 1937, and you’ve got yourself a Great Lakes episode of Unsolved Mysteries: Maritime Edition.

Science, ever the party pooper, insists there are explanations. Lake Michigan has violent mood swings: rogue waves, sudden storms, magnetic variations of a few degrees (nothing supernatural, just enough to make your compass side-eye you). The Great Lakes have claimed over 8,000 shipwrecks. Which sounds less like a conspiracy and more like a logistical issue.

Still, I can’t help but love the mix of fact, folklore, and human fascination. Divers swear they’ve seen strange lights and fog that seems to breathe. In 2007, someone even found an underwater rock formation dubbed the “North American Stonehenge.” Was it aliens? Ancient sailors? Or just Michigan showing off again?

Maybe the real magic isn’t in the vanishings. It’s in the way our minds crave mystery. We want the fog to mean something. We want the compass to spin because reality is tilting. In a world where we GPS our coffee runs, we still secretly hope there are places that can’t be fully explained. Places where reason takes a coffee break.

So no, I haven’t lost a ship in the Lake Michigan Triangle. But I’ve lost a few thoughts there. Daydreams, worries, maybe a bit of my signal. And honestly, that feels just about right.