09/28/2026
✨COMING SOON! ✨ Ghost Stories of the Great Lakes by Mark Leslie, forthcoming with Wolsak & Wynn, October 13, 2026
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The unknown is alive in the depths of the great lakes. And it calls to us like the relentless waves lapping the shores.
The great lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world by total area and contain roughly 20 percent of the world’s fresh water – but they also hold six thousand lost ships and tens of thousands of drowned and missing souls. From phantom vessels still sailing their final routes to lighthouse keepers who never abandoned their posts to the Marysburgh Vortex where 270 to 500 ships have disappeared, Mark Leslie maps the supernatural history of North America’s inland seas in this fascinating collection.
Charting a clockwise journey through all five lakes, as well as their connecting waterways and bodies of water, including Lake St. Clair, Leslie draws on historical records, newspaper archives, Indigenous oral traditions and firsthand witness accounts in this fascinating mix of maritime history, regional folklore and paranormal nonfiction.
Whether you live near the lakes or simply love them, Ghost Stories of the Great Lakes will delight you with the hidden histories, Indigenous traditions and unsolved mysteries embedded in every shoreline.
Mark Leslie has been afraid of the dark his entire life – and has spent most of it writing about what lurks there. A writer, speaker and podcaster with more than thirty years in the Canadian book industry as a bookseller, bookstore manager and publishing representative, he turned his lifelong fascination with ghost stories into a body of paranormal nonfiction that includes Haunted Hamilton, Spooky Sudbury, Creepy Capital and Haunted Hospitals. In fiction he enjoys horror (One Hand Screaming: 20 Haunting Years) and urban fantasy (A Canadian Werewolf in New York). He grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, not far from the shores of Georgian Bay; lived in Hamilton, ON, for twenty years; and currently makes his home in Kitchener-Waterloo.
The Great Lakes have never been far from his home, nor his imagination. Visit him at www.markleslie.ca.
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