"I've had people who want to spend the night. They want to set up Ouija boards, infrared cameras and hold seances. The paranormal psychology folks want to do time-lapse photography to catch the ghost," McDonnell says.

"I've never allowed it."

McDonnell is bracing for a new round of visits by the curious, thanks to Coastal Living magazine's recent choice of White River Light Station as one of America's top 10 haunted lighthouses.

"All the sudden, you get reporters and people from all walks of life in here wanting a good ghost story. I get a little weary of that because they all want to embellish it," McDonnell said.

Sheltered behind the Lake Michigan dunes on the south bank of the White Lake Channel, the White River Light is No. 10 on the list compiled by the magazine's editors.

Another Michigan lighthouse, Big Bay Point Light near Marquette in the U.P., is No. 5 on the list.

According to the U.S. Lighthouse Society, there are 594 light stations still standing in the U.S. Michigan has 90, the most of any state. The society's list does not note how many have ghosts.

Like White River Light, Big Bay Point is said by some to be haunted by its original keeper.

The lighthouse McDonnell and her son, Alexander Dziesinski, have called home for the past 23 years first gained nationwide notoriety, thanks to a mid-1990s Discovery Channel special on haunted lighthouses.

"Every Halloween they replay it on the Discovery Channell and the Travel Channel," McDonnell says.

The producers of the show, and many who have retold the tale in the years since, admittedly have embellished the story's ghostly elements, McDonnell says.

"People come in expecting to have some kind of ghostly production, as if I can manufacture something on the spot for five bucks," she said. "You're really not going to see much."

Not that odd things don't occur, just never when you're looking for them to happen, McDonnell explains.

"There are people in the community who think I'm sensationalizing this, but I'm not looking for the embellishment. I'm just living here."

She would like to believe the spirit of Capt. William Robinson and that of his beloved wife, Sarah, still inhabit the lighthouse, but she's never seen them.

"I would like to believe it, but I don't have proof of anything," McDonnell says. "When you hear a ghost story, sometimes you talk yourself into seeing something."

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