At the Water’s Edge: The Witches Drowing Pool
Mackinac Island, nestled in the straits between Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas, is the kind of place that clings to its past with an almost desperate fervor. The horse-drawn carriages, the Victorian architecture, the ban on motor vehicles—it's all part of an elaborate theater, a dedication to preserving a time that, for most of us, never existed. But like any good theater, the island has its backstage, its darker corners where the shadows play tricks and history gets a little hazy. And in those shadows, there's a story that has been whispered for centuries—a story about a place known as the Witches' Drowning Pool.
You won't find the Witches' Drowning Pool on any official map of Mackinac Island. It's not a place you visit on the usual tourist itinerary, sandwiched between the fudge shops and the fort. But ask the right locals, the ones whose families have lived on the island for generations, and they'll tell you about it. It's a small, unremarkable pond, hidden away at the edge of the island, far from the bustling main street and the tourists snapping selfies. But this pond, so the stories go, is where the island's witches were taken to meet their fate.
The history of Mackinac Island is as turbulent as the waters that surround it. Before it was a summer playground for the wealthy and the curious, it was a sacred place for the Anishinaabe people, a place where they believed the spirits of their ancestors resided. The French arrived in the 17th century, bringing with them the fur trade and the Catholic Church, and with them came the inevitable clash of cultures. The British followed, and then the Americans, each leaving their mark on the island in the form of forts, missions, and treaties. But alongside these more official histories, there are the stories that didn't make it into the textbooks—the stories of witchcraft, of curses, of spirits that refuse to rest.
The Witches' Drowning Pool is said to date back to the early 18th century when the island was a hotbed of fur trading, missionary work, and the occasional skirmish between rival European powers. It was a time when superstition and fear often outweighed reason, and when a woman could be accused of witchcraft for little more than being different. Maybe she was a healer who knew the old ways, the herbs and rituals passed down from the Anishinaabe. Maybe she was a widow who lived alone at the edge of the village. Maybe she was just too outspoken, too defiant for a society that demanded women be silent and subservient. Whatever the reason, once the accusation was made, there was little they could do to defend themselves .
The trials, if you could call them that, were nothing more than a farce. A group, always afraid, would drag the accused to the edge of the pond. There, they would tie her hands and feet and toss her into the water. If she floated, she was a witch, and she would be executed. If she sank, she was innocent, but by then it hardly mattered. More often than not, she would drown in the murky water, her body pulled down by the weight of the stones tied to her limbs.
The pond, so the story goes, is cursed. The spirits of the drowned witches linger there, trapped between worlds, their anger and sorrow seeping into the water, the earth, the very air around it. Some claim to have seen faces in the water, pale and ghostly, staring up at them with eyes full of accusation. Others speak of strange lights hovering over the pond, or of feeling an inexplicable chill when they walk too close.
As we stood on the edge of that pond, the air thick with the smell of stagnant water, I couldn't help but wonder about the women who might have died here. What were their lives like before they were branded as witches? Were they mothers, daughters, wives? Did they laugh, love, dream of a future that was cruelly taken from them? And what did it say about the people who killed them, who let their fear and ignorance drive them to commit such atrocities?
I remember the first time Kelly and I visited this spot. Half a decade, but it might as well be a lifetime ago. I could tell she felt the same thing too, then.
I had never seen her unkept before. I could see her frustration at the injustice, not just feeling it, but experiencing it second hand in a way. I, on occasion, wonder what it would be like to experience things the way she does. This time, I’m not so envious.
I remember her describing her almost hypnotic pull to the water. She described, with a certain amount of detail, the victims and the accusers. She was so furious at one man in particular that she began openly taunting and provoking him.
It was uncomfortable. She sat at the water's edge not only working through her own feelings, but the feelings of pain, confusion, and sorrow that sat here for eons as placid as the surface of the water in front of us.
I remember pulling her from the edge of the pool. I remember walking her back to our hotel room. Not much more that day mattered to me.
In the end, the Witches' Drowning Pool is a reflection of a darker side of humanity, a side that we like to pretend doesn't exist but is always lurking just beneath the surface. It's a reminder of the dangers of letting fear rule us, of what happens when we turn our backs on reason and compassion in favor of superstition and scapegoating. And it's a reminder that history is not just a collection of dates and names, but a living thing, shaped by the choices we make and the stories we tell.
Standing there, I thought about all the places like this in the world, places where the earth has been stained with the blood of the innocent, where the echoes of past atrocities still linger in the air. And I thought about the people who live in those places now, who walk the same ground, breathe the same air, and carry with them the weight of that history, whether they realize it or not.
Mackinac Island is a beautiful place, no doubt about it. The views from the fort is breathtaking, the sunsets over the water are the stuff of postcards. But beneath the surface, there's a darkness, a reminder that even the most idyllic places have their shadows. The Witches' Drowning Pool is one of those shadows, a piece of the island's history that doesn't fit neatly into the narrative of quaint cottages and leisurely bike rides. It's a reminder that beauty and horror often go hand in hand, that the past is never as far away as we might like to think.
As we left the pond and made our way back to the main part of the island, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was leaving something behind, something unresolved. The stories of the witches, of their tragic and unjust deaths, weighed heavily on me. It made me think about the ways in which we choose to remember history, and the ways in which we choose to forget.
It's easy to dismiss the Witches' Drowning Pool as just another ghost story, a bit of local color to scare the tourists. But doing so would be a mistake. Because whether or not the witches were real, the fear that led to their deaths was real. The ignorance that fueled the accusations was real. And the pain and suffering that followed was all too real.
In the end, the Witches' Drowning Pool is a reflection of the darkest parts of our humanity, a reminder of what we are capable of when we let fear and hatred guide us. But it's also a reminder that we have the power to change, to learn from our mistakes, to choose a different path. The pond may be cursed, but we are not. The past may be unchangeable, but the future is still, very much, up to us.