The Lighthouse at Lighthouse Pointe

 Hello All:

How about a fun urban legend about a decorative lighthouse in the SSW suburbs of Chicago?

The Lighthouse at Lighthouse Pointe

The evening of December 25th, 1936: It was a stormy, cold and foggy night as Captain Chadwick O'Roque of a cargo transport steamboat simply named, the April, maneuvered his way through the turbulent waters of Lake Michigan. He was en route to Chicago and traveling solo which proved to be a night of irksome technical glitches and mishaps. Inside the control room, important gauges acted up throughout much of the voyage. The boat even lost electric power from the steam turbine for some time. At one point Captain O'Roque felt that it was all a sign that he shouldn't have been working that holiday.

"I suppose I should really be home with family." he exclaimed. "Still, this cargo is very important. I just need a miracle to survive this night and actually make it to Chicago in one piece."

The waters were icy, choppy and wavy; very difficult to maneuver on a cold and foggy night. It was impossible to see even twenty feet ahead. The nearly helpless Captain O'Roque could only rely on the troublesome onboard gauges and directionals to guide his way.

"What in the world is taking so long?" he asked upon realizing that reaching the destination was taking longer than anticipated. According to his calculations that were based on the flakey instrumentation panel, he should have reached Chicago nearly two hours ago. But he was seemingly drifting and spiraling off to someplace else that—instinctively—he felt might have been the shores of Indiana.

Suddenly, an alarm sounded.

"Now what!" he shouted. "Blast-it, anyway!" Captain O'Roque was growing increasingly worried and impatient. Anyone in his situation would.

It was the steam pressure gauge which now indicated no steam pressure. And no steam pressure meant no power to propel the boat. In this condition the boat would be at the mercy of the storm and waves while spiraling off to anywhere. Should Captain O'Roque have gone to inspect the engine and see if the gauge actually told the truth?

Then, like an answer to all of his worries, he spotted a faint light in the distance. "A lighthouse!" Acting quickly, he turned up the volume of the two way marine radio and pressed the mic button. "This is Captain Chadwick O'Roque of the April cargo steamboat, en route to Chicago requesting..." He stopped speaking into the mic upon seeing that the transmit light did glow on the radio. He un-keyed and re-keyed. There was no clicking sound of the radio's internal relay or no glowing light to indicate transmission. "Confound-it, anyway!" shouted the captain. "Can't my radio even work?"

The lighthouse was the only source of hope to reach land alive and in one piece. Seeing that the engine lost power and that the radio could not transmit to call for help, the captain believed it was best to "abandon ship" and drop the life raft into water to make it to shore. There was no one on board except for him; no chance of guilty conscience for leaving crew members or passengers behind.

Unfortunately, the captain never survived his frigid voyage to shore that fateful Christmas night. His frozen, lifeless body was found washed up on shore nearly two days later. The steamship or any remains of precious cargo were never found.

So where did he end up? Captain O'Roque’s instincts were correct. Due to the flakey instrumentation and a steam engine that continued to lose power throughout the night, the April cargo steamboat drifted some hundred miles off course near the shore of northwest Indiana. The lighthouse was actually a small, unmanned lighthouse that stood at the top of a sandy hill of the beach. Had the captain reached shore, he would have had to hike some distance up land to reach the locked and unoccupied lighthouse.

It might sound unusual to many people; but the body of Captain Chadwick O'Roque was buried on the grounds of the small lighthouse. His wife and family felt that the lighthouse was his final journey in life, and that it should have served as his grave marker. And it served as his final resting place until some seventy years later when the beach front land where the lighthouse stood had been purchased by a developer to build homes. By then, the lighthouse had been decommissioned; and it was decided by the developer that the lighthouse was an eyesore. It was almost torn down until another party agreed to lift the lighthouse from its foundation and transport it off the beach to be sold as a decorative building.

The lighthouse now proudly stands at the entrance of Lighthouse Pointe in Frankfort, Illinois. But it sorely misses its resident of many decades, Captain Chadwick O'Roque. His body was left at the beach front property in northwest Indiana. Some say he forever wanders, in search of the lighthouse that provided him a final moment of hope. And according to recent reports, it appears that Captain Chadwick O’Roque has found the location where the lighthouse has moved.

If you happen to drive the dark road of Saint Francis Road in Frankfort, Illinois late at night; look for an older gentlemen with full beard dressed in early 1900s steamboat captain attire. He often stands near the lighthouse door and appears to knock to get in.