In late autumn, when the last crimson maple leaf plummets to the ground and the frosty mornings make the river cry out with a magic mist, the pot perks!

Green moss grows. The cedar swamp is cold and quiet except for the hoot of an owl.

Still, the coffee pot comes to a boil.

How did this poltergeist of a pot take up residence on the riverbank?

Karen Rose Wils

What fantastic stories could this haunted coffee pot tell?

The answers are in the wisps of steam.

A puff of smoke from an ancient fire appears. Chief Charles Kawbawgam sits cross-legged on balsam branches. He has come south by canoe to visit a relative’s lodge that sits at the headwaters of Hunter’s Brook.

Some lumberjacks laugh and offer chief Charlie a hot mug of coffee. His weathered old face smiles. The warm beverage is good, but he adds some native herbs to make it better.

Kawbawgam would come to be know as the “last chief of the Ojibwa people” He lived to be 103 years old and is buried in Marquette’s Presque Isle Park.

Again, the haunted coffee pot hisses with steam.

It is 1880, and the bearded, lanky Isacc Stephenson is by the Escanaba River with a cup in his hands. Virgin timber and a river and the lumber baron smiles, money and good coffee. Logging camps would soon dot the banks of the Escanaba.

Stephenson would soon be one of the wealthiest lumbermen in the Midwest. He also was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the state of Wisconsin.

Fog covers the forest and when the pot brews again a copperhead still bubbles at the end of rut road. It’s Prohibition time and drunken laughter fills the night. Names like Al Capone and Johnny Torrio are mentioned and money is exchanged.

Before a man called “Lefty” gets into the getaway car, he drinks a cup of coffee from an old pot to sober up a bit.

And the haunted pot simmers on.

In the 1930s the whitetail deer is king of northern Delta County. A man called Shiras is in the north woods to capture deer. Not with a gun but with his camera. Shiras has grand ideas of taking pictures of deer at night with a flash of light!

But right now, the aroma of freshly perked coffee lures him over to an old stump. A huge enameled grey steel pot of coffee is still hot and unattended. Shiras helps himself to a cup.

George Shiras would become known as the father of wildlife photography and inventor of the trail camera.

And now the mighty Escanaba is harnessed by power dams, but the awesome speckled trout still linger in the cool, clear water.

John Voelker is no stranger to the northern branches of the Escanaba River. With a fishing pole and an array of flies he wades into the cold water.

Soon he has a brookie and a rainbow in his creel, so he stops for a break. There it is, big, bold and brewing. It’s the haunted coffee pot.

John can’t resist, he pours himself a cup and adds a shot of whiskey and smiles.

John Voelker will write many books. One of them, “Anatomy of a Murder,” will be made into a movie. He will be appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court.

Some really great ghosts wander the Upper Michigan woodlands. History is one good cup of coffee!

Happy Halloween!