DeTour Village — There was an alien cult deep in the eastern U.P. once, but nobody really knows much about it. It was never big enough to garner any kind of meaningful national attention. There wasn’t any internet or social media back in the 1970s when the cult was kicking. Back in those days, there were more cracks to hide in, believe in, to build flying saucers in.
Ironically, putting together the puzzle of the alien cult of the eastern U.P. involves stringing together fragments scattered across the weird and wild internet. Posts from strange users claiming to be descendants, odd accounts alleging to have been there in the hanger, all knowing too much or giving too much detail to question otherwise. What results is a bizarre stained-glass window full of countless “allegedly” qualifications with half the pieces missing.
There was a man named Warren Goetz. He lived in the eastern U.P. around the area of DeTour Village in the 1970s. According to his son, Goetz was a skilled engineer who worked for the U.S. government prior to World War II. He was highly skilled and mechanically astute. He was, allegedly, able to sit inside his home and diagnose engine issues of a car running outside. He was also a man of convictions most of us might aptly call “exotic.”
In 1974, Goetz published a book titled “The Intelligence of the Universe Speaks.” In this grand tome, which is almost impossible to find these days, he detailed his beliefs regarding a variety of things, including, but not limited to, flying saucers he had personally witnessed, his powers of clairvoyance, how Atlantis was destroyed by a cold sun, and an incident of a wild fireball that invaded his home.
Goetz, armed with the firepower of his intergalactic revelations, assembled a crew of devoted followers on the shores of Lake Huron and went about completing Project Bluebird and the building of his spacecraft in a pole barn. Under the tutelage of Goetz, the builders brought forth a broad saucer measuring 33 feet in diameter designed for space travel one day in the not-so-distant future. According to Goetz and his devotees, the apocalypse was nigh. The spacecraft they had built would, one day, when the moment was right, be towed out into Lake Huron where the mothership would finally meet them and take them away to a safer world among the stars.
Unfortunately for the believers, the rendezvous with their extraterrestrial beings never happened. The cult disbanded for reasons unknown. The pole barn was emptied, the ship dismembered, and the dome found a resting place outside the DeTour Passage Historical Museum down by the dock where the ferry to Drummond Island leaves every hour. Though the dome rested in peace by the docks for quite a while, it was eventually dismembered and taken from the museum grounds after local residents got sick of looking at the heap of rusty debris piled down by the water.
DeTour Village doesn’t really linger on the cult of Goetz and Project Bluebird these days. There are no physical signs it was ever a thing. It was long ago, and few residents were alive back then. But some were.
On June 24, 2013, a user by the name of “makrbrak” posted on the unexplained-mysteries.com forum:
“I spent many hours at Warren’s house, and was present, although not directly involved, during many of the meetings held at his dining room table. My parents were directly involved in the development and production of the spacecraft. The whole experience has had a profound impact on my life and that of my family members, but not necessarily in a negative way. I was a young boy, but I have vivid memories of being at the hangar that housed the ship, and remember a lot of details about it….
….I am still fascinated with some of the things I learned, and rarely talk about them, other than with family and close friends. I believe that Warren was genuine and sincere with his beliefs, and knowledge, and he even made claims of having direct contact with lifeforms from other planets or dimensions. I live only a few miles from the site of the project, and the landing site where Warren claimed to rendezvous with his alien contacts. I also know people with no knowledge of the project, who have seen strange lights or objects at this very location.”
For some reason it is completely unsurprising that Goetz and his dream of the aliens in Lake Huron occurred in the 1970s. Cults, communes, and all sorts of gritty bands of believers thrived in that decade. I don’t know if it was what they were smoking or if they were just high on life, but they were on another level back in the wild decade sandwiched between the midcentury-ism of the 1960s and the electronic futurism of the 1980s. The 1970s were a liminal time where everything was up in the air and anything could happen.
The time explains the Goetz phenomenon, but so does the place. Cults, aliens, the supernatural, unexplainable phenomena, and all things weird and otherworldly seem to live most comfortably in the places far away. King Strang led his band of followers on Beaver Island back in the 1800s. Then in the 1900s, the House of David sect made High Island their base for a bit. Northern Michigan and the U.P. are the perfect places for a cult or a sect or any other kind of strange intuition or bizarre belief to find a temporary home.
When we are far out on a two-track with no cellphone service, out on the water in a boat all alone, so far from the road we can’t hear any cars, and when we can’t see any lights from the windows in the living room, anything can happen. It’s in these places that the world feels more free or the ceiling of reality not quite so suffocating.
Of course Goetz believed the mothership was going to come down to earth in the cobalt waters of northern Lake Huron just off the coast of the desolate eastern U.P. forest.
Where else?
O.W. Root is a writer based in Northern Michigan, with a focus on nature, food, style, and culture. Follow him on X @OW_Root.
