After over twenty-six years, eighty-one year old Ellen Cutler of Michigan still sticks to the same story, (word for word as she told it the first time) that she saw a vision "like a big TV screen in the newspaper" between "7-8pm...of a terrible storm," she said to her husband "there is a terrible storm up north, I don't know if it is Lake Michigan or where, but it is north."  "What are you reading," says her husband, "there is nothing on the television about it."

     She said there was a huge boat in the storm..."it is a huge boat, an oiler or something," she said to her husband, as they were sitting in the TV room together.  Ellen then saw what she said to be a huge crack along the deck, and the ship sank.  "You're nuts," says her husband.  "Then let's wait and see the news tomorrow," says Ellen.

     Unfortunately, the next day, the news confirmed her worst fear.  What she "saw" (she uses quotation marks in her letter to me) had been true.  One of the Great Lake's grandest ships ever had sank in Lake Superior with NO survivors.  Ellen said there was structural damage in one of the Fitz's sisters, which would face the same fate if not corrected.  Sure enough, it was eventually found.

     During her vision, the name Robert came to Ellen, and after researching a little, she found out that there was ONE Robert on the ship, Robert C. Rafferty.  She attempted contacting family members because she saw a man in her vision, and she was sure he was the one.  After trying long and hard to contact his family, she sent a letter to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum and asked them to forward it to Pam Johnson, his daughter.  They did, and ever since, Pam and Ellen have kept in close contact, which is how Ellen contacted me.  Whether a gift from God, a dream, or whatever it may have been, Ellen saw something that night...and we may never know why...NOR how, but we do know that the legend of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is very mysterious and haunting, even to this day.