The Jilted Wife of Bowers Harbor Inn

On the gorgeous Old Mission Peninsula, a slender finger of land reaching up between the arms of Grand Traverse Bay, sits an elegant old mansion that’s now a restaurant. For decades, the tale told to diners went like this:

A wealthy Chicago lumber baron named J.W. Stickney and his wife, Genevieve, built the place as a summer home. Genevieve, the story says, grew heavy in her later years, so her husband installed an elevator so she could move between floors, and hired a young nurse to care for her. The nurse and the husband fell into an affair. When J.W. died, he left his entire fortune to the nurse — leaving Genevieve only the house. Heartbroken and humiliated, Genevieve is said to have hanged herself in the elevator shaft. And ever since, staff and guests have reported her presence: a woman’s face appearing in mirrors, lights flicking on and off, objects flying off storeroom shelves.

It’s a deliciously gothic story. It is also, a local historian has carefully shown, almost entirely false — and this is where we get to do right by a real person. Researcher Julie Schopieray dug into the actual records. The couple were really named Charles and Jennie Stickney. They hired a widowed nurse in their old age — Charles used a wheelchair, which is the real reason for the elevator — and the family grew genuinely close to her and her children. Jennie died of heart disease and diabetes in 1947, in a hotel in Grand Rapids. She did not hang herself in any elevator shaft. Charles left money to their caregiver most likely to help support her kids. The real story, as the historian put it, is simply about two elderly people who needed help and the woman who gave it.

So the “Genevieve” legend is unfair to the real Jennie. But the building does have a long, gentle reputation for a playful presence — and that part, harmless and a little sweet, folks are welcome to keep.