Do you believe in ghosts or haunted lighthouses? What better place for these sightings, phantom footsteps, fleeting apparitions, and those things that goes bump in the night, than a supposedly haunted lighthouse. This suggests that the dedicated residents of these historic lighthouses are there to stay?
What is it about lighthouses that seems to make them ideal settings for being haunted? Perhaps it’s the isolation or the extreme age of many of these magnificent structures. Or perhaps it’s because the lighthouse keepers – who are often said to be the ones haunting the buildings – lived in solitude for long periods of time, often cut off from other people for weeks, even months at a time. Perhaps this solitude leaves a shadowy imprint of their lives within the stone and mortar of these wind and wave-swept beacons.
North Island Lighthouse a haunted lighthouse is about fourteen nautical miles from historic Georgetown, South Carolina and stands eighty-five feet high, its shape is conical and it is made of white washed brick with a black lantern room. One hundred and twenty-four stone spiral steps lead to the top. The lighthouse today dates to 1812. There were times when the sound of chains dragging the floor overhead in the attic. Pictures would slide down the wall and crash to the floor. This went on for years and there were no reasons known to explain the noises and incidents. Is this a haunted lighthouse?
The Point Lookout Lighthouse sits on a peninsula that marks the entrance to the Potomac River in Chesapeake Bay, Maryland. The Civil War completely transformed the point from a pleasant vacation spot to a place scarred with permanent reminders of what had occurred on the landscape. Hammond General Hospital was constructed in 1862 to care for wounded Union soldiers. The next year, the Union began holding Confederate prisoners at the hospital. As a result, Camp Hoffman, the civil war’s largest prison camp, was constructed near the hospital. The prison camp held as many as 20,000 prisoners at one point. The prison grounds were filthy, very overcrowded and quickly became a breeding ground for disease.
When all was said and done, nearly 4,000 men had died at the camp from disease, starvation or exposure. Their bodies were buried in various locations on or near the lighthouse grounds. In later years when these gravesites were threatened by erosion, they were relocated to a spot just north of Point Lookout.
The trauma and death associated with the prison camp may help explain the many strange, paranormal events that have been reported by lighthouse keepers and visitors over the years, thus earning it the title of “America’s most haunted lighthouse”.
In the years following the end of the war, the onslaught of reports of paranormal occurrences in the area began. There were reports of strange noises such as footsteps, snoring, foul odors, lights going on and off, and disembodied voices carrying on conversations, laughing, singing happy tunes or even calling for help. One woman was reportedly awakened in the middle of the night to someone calling her name, but no one was there. Some of these strange sounds have actually been recorded by paranormal investigators over the years.
In addition to the sounds, there have also been numerous reports of apparitions. The most popular of the apparitions reported is that of the first lighthouse keeper, Ann Davis, who has been seen standing at the top of the stairs wearing a long, navy blue skirt and white shirt, her normal daily attire.
Saginaw River Lighthouse – When the Coast Guard took over the lighthouse, strange things started to be reported. There were sounds of heavy boots on the iron staircase but when the men checked it out there was no one there; therefore, this lighthouse is deemed haunted.
Heceta Head Lighthouse – The ghost is said to be haunted by the mother of an unknown baby whose grave was found on the grounds of the lighthouse. She moves objects and opens and closes cupboard doors. A man broke a window one day in the lighthouse and refused to enter the lighthouse to clean it up because he was told the lighthouse was haunted. The next day his coworkers found the glass had been swept in a pile but no one had done that.
Old Port Boca Grande Lighthouse – This haunted lighthouse has two ghosts one of which is the young daughter of one lighthouse keeper who died of whooping cough or diphtheria. People say that you can hear her playing in the upper rooms of the lighthouse. The other is the headless spirit of a Spanish princess named Josefa who refused to get married to a pirate so he chopped off her head it is said she walks the beach searching for her head.
Filed under: Haunted Lighthouses | Tagged: ann davis, camp hoffman, Chesapeake Bay, civil war, coast guard, confederate prisoners, ghosts, grave sites, graves, hammond general hospital, haunted, haunted lighthouse, Haunted Lighthouses, Heceta Head Lighthouse, lighthouse, lighthouse ghosts, lighthouse grounds, Lighthouse Keepers, lighthouses, maryland, Old Port Boca Grande Lighthouse, point lookout, point lookout lighthouse, princess, saginaw river lighthouse, spanish, spanish princess | Leave a Comment »
