The Ghost of the Lilac Room: Marquette, Michigan

Michigan has more than its fair share of unique spooky stories, happenings, and history. In Marquette, there’s a hotel that has one particular room that has unnerved guest after guest.

The Landmark Inn opened in 1930 as the Northland Inn and was the area’s most popular, social place to stay, especially for visiting celebrities.

Like who? Abbott & Costello, Amelia Earhart, Bill Cosby, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Stewart and most of the cast of “Anatomy of a Murder”, Louis Armstrong, Maya Angelou, and the Rolling Stones. Well, the Stones didn’t stay the night, but they all met up in the hotel bar to honor their late road manager.

Under the name ‘Northland Inn’, it fell into disrepair and closed down in 1982. It re-opened in the mid-1990’s as the ‘Landmark Inn’ and regained its former glory as the town’s shining star.

But something dark seems to occupy a corner room on the sixth floor. They call it the “Lilac Room” where several guests have witnessed paranormal occurrences and a spectral figure.

The tale that accompanies the room is that of a young woman whose lover was a sailor who set out on Lake Superior and was never seen again. Did he jilt her or did his ship go down? These questions about his disappearance plagued her to a point where she couldn’t take the grief anymore. She was found in her room after hanging herself out of despair.

Evidently not accepting her lover’s fate – or even her own – she remains in the room, as if waiting for her sailor to return. Guests who stay in that corner room have seen her ghost standing at the window, lying on the bed, standing at the foot of the bed, and gliding through the room. All witnesses report the same thing: they have all said this female spirit wears a floral gown – therefore, she has been named the “Lilac Lady”.

There are other hauntings at the Landmark that you can read about HERE.

In the photos below, you'll go inside the Lilac Room.

Go ahead – book a room at the Landmark. Or better yet, ask for the Lilac Room and possibly have some experiences of your own. It’s located at 230 N. Front Street, downtown Marquette.

Wanna read more ‘Haunted Michigan’ locations? Click here for more of John Robinson’s Haunted Michigan!