Haunted Lighthouses and Haunted Beaches

It's almost the first day of summer, but even we horror-loving, autumn-worshipping fools need a summer vacay. Why not head to a haunted lighthouse or haunted beach? There are so many to choose from!

Tragedies and Legends: Lighthouse Keepers

There is little more romantic and tragic as the life of a lighthouse keeper. It was a lonely isolated business that involved long hours with nothing more than the pounding of water on the rocks and cries of seagulls for company. In that very isolation, a sort of cabin fever syndrome could create some pretty tragic outcomes. Let's have a look at the life of a lighthouse keeper of the past. 

NEW LONDON LEDGE LIGHTHOUSE

New London Ledge Lighthouse in Connecticut was established in 1909 and designed to fit in with the homes on shore so residents wouldn't have to look out an out of place building offshore. The legends built around the active haunting in the building involved a man named Ernie who supposedly slit his throat at the top of the lighthouse and his body fell to the sea below, never to be found. To this day, Coast Guard staff have reported odd happenings in there, attributing it to Ernie. 

Boston Light, Massachusetts

The Boston Light, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts was the first lighthouse in the New World. At first, in the 1600s, locals lit fire on the land there, but in 1715, a lighthouse was erected. 

The daughter of the first lighthouse keeper stood on shore waiting for her father to take a canoe out to a ship and bring family and friends ashore, when it capsized and she watched them all drown. The next lighthouse keeper drowned within days of taking on the job. The lighthouse saw much damage during the Revolutionary War and rebuilding.

Bird Rock Lighthouse,
Crooked Island, Bahamas

Built in 1876, the Bird Rock Lighthouse in the Bahamas was a gorgeous design for its time. In the late 1800s, two lighthouse keepers were assigned and they coincidentally were married to childhood best friends. The two couples embarked from England to the Bahamas to begin their stint. They found out that, because of the rocks around the island and its precarious situation, supplies could only be brought to them twice a year. 

The excited couples arrived, finding a woman in a wheelchair, the widow of the lighthouse keeper who was struck by lightning, and a man hobbling about, a lighthousekeeper who had rheumatism. The third person that was there was a woman who was exhausted, having to take care of the other two nonstop for months and months on end. 

At first, they lived in contentment, fishing, killing birds for food and the women attempted gardening and fixed up their lighthouse home. Over time, however, it became very monotonous. At one point, on exploring the store rooms, they found a coffin with weights. It had a message that if someone should die while on the island, to put them in the weighted coffin and drop them to sea.

At the six-month point, supplies came with magazines and fresh foods and everyone perked up again.

Then, one wife became sick and, even with medicines and instructions, her husband could not save her. They had to lower her coffin to the sea. The widower became quiet and stoic and, over time, the other couple worried about him. 

At one point, the only woman left decided to toss the flowers from the flower box into the sea where her friend had been lowered. The widower went into hysterics because the woman had a premonition dream when they found the coffin that one of the women would be in it. She had caused it - he threatened!

The couple had to hide away the firearms and stay ever vigilant as the widower now had a knife he constantly sharpened. 

At night, the widower pounded on the couple's door, ranted and raved. At times, the husband considered shooting the widower just so they could have peace and safety. 

One day, after a few days of quiet, the husband saw the widower sitting on a rock out on the island where they had lowered the man's wife to the sea. He decided to take a chance and light the beacon. He had his wife lock the door after he left the room and raced up the tower. 

Not too long after the husband left, the wife became anxious. She grabbed up a gun and started up the spiral staircase for her husband. 

Unfortunately, as she reached the top, the widower had been lying in wait and had pounced on her husband, a struggle ensuing. Pregnant and awkward, she raced to try and help, pointing the gun, but the men were wrestling and they went over the railing to the dark sea below.

The wife fainted to the floor. When she came-to and realized what had happened, she looked over the railing, considering jumping and joining them, but she could hear her husband's voice in her mind telling her to live for their child.

She spent lonely and depressed days after that, alone on the island. 

As the wife went into labor all alone, unable to light the light for the ships, a ship crashed. One man managed to pull himself out to the rocks below. 

He scrambled through the lighthouse, thinking he was alone until he found the wife and baby in bed, the wife's face pale, and she was unresponsive. He shook her awake and she said she didn't want to live, but he told her she had a child to live for. The man had lost his wife in childbirth and memories flooded him. 

The wife and baby strengthened as the man took care of them and a relief ship came, taking them back to England and the couple married.

This is a wonderfully romantic tale that was published in a small publication long ago. 

- Movies with lighthouses -

Half Light

Rachel Carlson, a successful novelist moves to a small Scottish village to move on with her life after the death of her son. Strange things start to happen when she is haunted by ghosts and real life terror.

The Fog

Legend says that Antonio Bay was built in 1880 with blood money obtained from shipwrecked lepers but no one believes it. On the eve of the town's centennial many plan to attend the celebrations, including the murdered lepers.

The Phantom Light

A lighthouse keeper has been murdered in mysterious circumstances and, during the ensuing investigation a Phantom Light keeps appearing at the scene of his death.

The Lighthouse Keepers

The Lighthouse Keepers is a silent, black and white short, shot as a 1920s style horror melodrama. It tells the dramatic story of a pair of lighthouse keepers, a father and son, who meet a sorry fate in isolation, while carrying out their duty. The Lighthouse Keepers was filmed on location in an historic lighthouse on a dramatically placed Northern Irish island. Using silent film techniques the story unfolds with minimal dialogue and makes use of expression, music, and inter titles to tell the story. The high drama of the situation lends itself well to this means of filming and the melodrama leaves space for innovative use of the live music and sound effects accompaniment that is central to live screenings of the film.

The Ring

A journalist must investigate a mysterious videotape which seems to cause the death of anyone in a week of viewing it.

Shutter Island

A U.S Marshal investigates the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane.

The Light at the Edge of the World

Pirates take over a lighthouse on a rocky island. They then execute a devious plan to cause ships to run aground, pillaging their wrecks. A lone member of the lighthouse crew survives, and he deperately fights their plot. A shipwrecked maiden that avoids the pirates slaughter soon complicates the situation.

Lighthouse

A prison ship on its way to a remote island prison runs aground on rocks and sinks. Mixed survivors of cons and prison guards struggle ashore, only to discover to their horror that another survivor has made it ashore before them. Murderous psychotic, Leo Rook, who not only had a hand in the ship's sinking but has decapitated all but one of the island's lighthouse crew. Stranded, with no means of escape or call for help, the survivors must face a night of terror as they know that since they've learned that Leo survived going down with the ship he can't let any of them live and is hellbent on adding their severed heads to his collection.

South Solitary

Set in 1928, Meredith is a 35 year-old unmarried woman who arrives at a remote lighthouse island with her uncle, the new head keeper.

**Tomorrow's Post is "Sea Monsters"**

Terrors Of the Sea!

Between Bermuda Triangle, horrifying deep sea creatures, cryptid monsters, mermaids, haunted lighthouses, shipwrecks, ghost ships and more - the sea is the location of a great deal of horror!

I think the sea is the most amazing mystery. We float atop of it, but beneath is a world of mystery and death.

Flying Dutchman

This legend involves a ghost that sank 1641 off the Cape of Good Hope.  The captain cursed the ship as it was sinking that he would continue to sail it to doomsday.  The legend became a ship forced to sail the seas for an eternity.  The movie "Pirates of the Caribbean" portrayed this concept quite nicely. Many areas of the ocean and even the Great Lakes have tales of the Flying Dutchmen.  

Japanese Ghost Ship

This ghost ship was found adrift a year after the Japanese earthquake. Gives one chills to imagine ships with no one sailing them.

Amelia Earhart

This 1930s female pilot in a male-dominated field, wanted to push her records at flight again and again. In 1937, she decided she wanted to try to fly around the world. What happened next has remained a great aviation mystery even 80 plus years later. Over the Pacific, she went into radio silence and was never heard or seen from again. There were a lot of theories that the Japanese shot her down and took her as a prisoner of war, that she landed on an island and lived there until finally passing, or that she simply ran out of gas. One thing we learn as we study these sea-related creepy things, the water hides its victims and at sea there are no witnesses.

Shipwrecks

The largest loss of life in a single ship disaster in the US was considered the wreck of the SS Eastland on the Chicago River in Illinois in 1915.  When all was said and done, 844 passengers lost their lives on what was going to be a festive occasion. The precariously built ship had a narrow hull and when loaded with over 2500 passengers and new post-Titanic regulation for lifeboats which were mounted high, it pitched one way and another with the weight of the passengers shifting on the deck. It finally listed onto its side and the effects were tragic.

Philadelphia Experiment

I

Here’s the concept for the Philadelphia Experiment:

The legend revolves around a supposed 1943 experiment led by the Navy at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard on a ship called the USS Eldridge. According to the tale, this was an attempt at trying out the unified field theory laid out by Albert Einstein. The idea was to find a way to bend light around an object so it becomes invisible, thus making an ideal warship in dealing with the enemy during WWII. The ship was reported to be rigged with four immense generators along with Tesla coils, electron tubes and many miles of inch-thick cable running throughout the ship’s cables.

The ship took off from Philly to Norfolk, turning on this equipment, whereupon it was shrouded in a green fog and then disappeared. This resulted in an accidental teleportation back to Philly from Norfolk. When the ship arrived, accounts say that the men were in agony, sick, mentally crippled, and many were dead, some even fused to the hull of the ship!

Although it made for a fantastic movie (a must see), the Philadelphia Experiment is regarded by the military as a bunch of hooey. There’s still conspiracy folks who hang onto it and, why not? After all, aren’t we the folks who sent chimps into space? Had our own astronauts burn on a launch pad? Tested nuclear weapons with visitors gazing upon the glory on the New Mexico sands? Dropped bombs on Japan that caused huge devastation? Built a secret base in Nevada? It doesn’t seem our government/military has a lot of boundaries when it comes to our individual welfare, only our welfare as a conglomerate(save our country), screw the individuals (people are expendable, countries are not). So, there is that excuse for people to hang onto the notion of such an horrendous experiment.

Bermuda Triangle

This region in the Atlantic has supposedly claimed the lives of thousands of people over the centuries, and yet according to statistics, it is not even one of the top 10 most dangerous areas in the seas around the world. Yet, the mystique of it has been built up over the decades of people reporting strange fogs, instruments that won't work, even an entire squadron of planes going missing during military exercises.  Explanations have ranged from a portal to another dimension, electromagnetic earth issues, alien intervention, time travel, and more. The actual source of all these missing and wrecked ships and planes hasn't been identified absolutely, but on any given part of the ocean, we are likely to find a great pile of similar missing vessels.

Sea Monsters

Mermaids, dinosaur-like creatures, giant octopus; all reported throughout time including the ancient tales of sirens luring sailors onto the rocks. With all the unknown beneath them, bad weather, lack of supplies, fear of getting lost, there were lots of reasons for sailors to develop tales over the centuries to explain misfortune. Some of the tales are quite romantic, like the half female/half fish mermaid, and some are more terrifying, like giant octopus taking down a ship. Today, we still find odd things upon the beach and have to wonder.... 

Haunted Lighthouses

Why are lighthouses reportedly so haunted? Is it the isolation? The shipwrecks? The fog? Is it the cylindrical shape combined with pounding water on the rocks and a huge amount of power to produce the light creating a nature-made battery?  Whatever the explanation, some lighthouses get a real reputation and perhaps one that had their reputation jump overnight for being featured on a very chilling episode of "Ghost Hunters" was St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida that saw a few deaths and had a lot of reported phenomena. While there, the team captured a shadow figure that seemed to move many floors at once and a woman screaming for help, as well as whispered conversations.

Deep Sea Creatures

The sea comes up with some weird creatures, but the deeper you go, the weirder they get - 

  

Carroll A. Deering

 

The Carroll A. Deering was a 5-masted ship that in 1921 came aground in Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, with all the crew missing.  It was one of the greatest sea mysteries. There are many theories from piracy to Bermuda Triangle and everything in between.  The log and navigation equipment, life rafts and personal belongings were all gone from the ship. Yet, the galley showed foods in various states of meal preparation. It still remains a sea mystery whispered about in wonder and fear.

 Mary Celeste

In 1872, the merchant ship, “Mary Celeste” sailed left in November from New York to Genoa. On December 5th, halfway between the Azores and Portugal, the captain of the ship “Dei Gratia” sighted the Mary Celeste ship that he recognized. The only problem was it was riding out of control which was not at all something the ship’s pious and stern captain, Benjamin Spooner Briggs, would have ever allowed. The captain hailed the other ship, but for hours he got no response.

He then set off on a small boat with some men to board her.

The men found the ship to be seaworthy and having the appearance of being left in a rush. The investigating captain’s impression by the possessions left behind is that the crew left in a rush for fear the ship was sinking. The ship had contained 7 crewmen, the captain, the captain’s wife, and his small child.

Over the years, this story has become filled with tales of steaming cups of coffee and food on the stove and such being found. This was not the actual case. Here is what the captain of the “Dei Gratia” found:

One pump out of order
Two hatches off and a fair amount of water between the decks
The clock and compass were destroyed
No alcohol was found on board
The chronometer and sextant were not found on board
The ship’s register and captain’s log were both gone
The stove was off kilter and dishes strewn and lots of water in the galley
There were no boats on board

We’re left with many theories from a small explosion caused by munitions onboard to a rogue wave, and the fact that there had been strong storms for days that may have overwhelmed the ship’s capabilities. With the crew and captain and his family exiting on the small boats, they would have become victims of the rough sea.

Many legends have continued about the ship being a victim of some supernatural occurrence of the Bermuda Triangle variety. Even though these were dismissed, the fact remains; for a time the Mary Celeste was a ghost ship in the true sense, wandering the sea without a crew.

But why? 

Flying Dutchman Ship

The Flying Dutchman ship has been spotted many times in the last two centuries, with the late King George V of England writing a detailed account of his own sighting in 1880 off the coast of Australia: "At 4 a.m. the Flying Dutchman crossed our bows. A strange red light as of a phantom ship all aglow, in the midst of which light the masts, spars, and sails of a brig 200 yards distant stood out in strong relief as she came up on the port bow, where also the officer of the watch from the bridge clearly saw her, as did the quarterdeck midshipman, who was sent forward at once to the forecastle; but on arriving there was no vestige nor any sign whatever of any material ship was to be seen either near or right away to the horizon, the night being clear and the sea calm. Thirteen persons altogether saw her...At 10.45 a.m. the ordinary seaman who had this morning reported the Flying Dutchman fell from the foretopmast crosstrees on to the topgallant forecastle and was smashed to atoms." 

Abandoned Islands 

Hashima Island in Japan was once a thriving mining island and then the residents were moved out in 1974 when the coal facility closed down. It's sat as an intact abandoned island for decades. Recently, a decision was made to allow curious tours of the place.

Real Life Castaway

Found on the Pacific Ocean, this man is (deliriously) happy to be home! This man from El Salvador said he caught fish, drank bird's blood and was adrift for 13 months! His ship was covered in algae when they found him and had been retreating under a plastic container to avoid the sunlight. 

  

 Surviving a Tsunami

This father and son on a boating trip rode a wave that, well, was like something out of a cartoon. And, they survived! 
 
Want more???

An abandoned ship on the Ohio River - this might haunt you!

Perhaps the sea has more frights than the land ever had!

Ghost Ships

Why do ghost ships seem like such romantic images? Perhaps because if the crew is not aboard, it is still sailing with no one to handle it. Where is the crew? Davy Jones' locker, huh? You can take a person out of a car, but the car will crash. A ship, could float months, even years, without facing doom and sinking or even being found. It's a vast ocean out there!






I'd suggest you watch "The Fog" (original) if you're in the mood for a ghost ship now. 




You might be in the mood for this song about a sea tragedy -

 RECOMMENDED MOVIES

The Devil's Triangle (1974):  Documentary about the Bermuda Triangle.

Satan's Triangle:  (1975):  The female survivor of a shipwreck and two Coast Guard helicopter pilots sent to rescue her find themselves trapped in a mysterious part of the ocean known as Satan's Triangle. 

Jaws:  A tourist island on Fourth of July is terrorized by a monster great white shark. 
Castaway:  Following a plane wreck, a man is left alone for years on an island and then finds his way home only to find he wasn't who he was when he went missing.

Titanic:  Fictionalized movie based on the events that occurred when the Titanic sank.

Dead Calm:  A couple grieves the loss of a child and so goes on a quiet sea trip only to rescue a lone survivor in a life raft who puts them through hell.

The Fog:  A town has to come to grips with their dark past and the ship of ghosts who want to roll in with the fog and take their lives one by one.

The Haunted Sea:  A crew finds an abandoned ship at sea and an Aztec cursed treasure on board.
The Creature From the Black Lagoon:  A team goes to the Amazon to check out a potential relic monster only to find out it's still alive. 

Lost Voyage:  Twenty five years ago, the SS Corona Queen disappeared in the region known as, "The Bermuda Triangle". Now, it has returned. Seven people go on board to learn the truth behind her disappearance but the ship did not return alone..

Pirates of the Caribbean:  Based on the Disney ride, this sea tale is a rich and beautiful one, lighthearted, and romantic.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir: 

Halflight: A woman grieving for her dead child rents a cabin on the shore in Scotland only to find a man living alone in the lighthouse on an island off shore, a man that might be a ghost.

The Triangle:  (2001) A group of friend send up in the Triangle.

Cruise Into Terror:  (1978)  A pleasure cruise is carrying an Egyptian sarcophagus with the son of Satan inside.

Shock Waves: (1977)  Visitors to a remote island find Nazi's breeding zombie soldiers.

Death Ship: A team of salvage workers find a ship dead in the water and look it over for some goods only to find that it's occupied - by ghosts. 

The Philadelphia Experiment: Did the military create a time rift to WWII era?
Leviathan:  Deep sea underwater miners might have run into ET.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea:  A ship encounters a strange underwater submersible that shouldn't exist in their time period.
Sea Beast:  A crew on a ship has to deal with a weird monster in the water. 


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