The Science of Ghosts

by Joe Nickell

  Remote sentinels on rocky shores, lighthouses have been called “America's castles” (Hermanson n.d.). Certainly, they are places of scenic beauty, romance, and legend. From the late eighteenth century until the last lighthouse tower was automated in the 1960s, lighthouse keepers and their families worked around the clock at the lonely job of maintaining light stations—keeping the beacons lit and, when necessary, the fog signals sounding. If many popular writers are to be believed, the spirits of some keepers, shipwreck victims, and others still maintain their lonely vigils (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, vii; Thompson 1998, 7).

  INVESTIGATING ON-SITE

  Over the years I have visited and investigated many of these “haunted” sites. I climbed the 219 steps of the 165-foot lighthouse at St. Augustine, Florida. As “assistant keepers,” my wife, Diana Harris, and I stayed a few days in the remote Big Bay Point Lighthouse on Michigan's upper peninsula, perched on a cliff overlooking Lake Superior. We did the same at Thirty Mile Point Light on Lake Ontario (so named because it is thirty miles east of the mouth of the Niagara River) (figure 13.1). A bonus of the latter was access to a few years’ worth of entries recorded in its guest books—or maybe I should say ghost books, given the various mentions, pro and con, of spooky phenomena.

  In addition, I have visited other reputedly haunted sites, such as Lake Michigan's Seul Choix Point Lighthouse (figure 13.2) (escorted up to the lantern room by Coast Guard maintenance men); the “French Castle” (officers quarters) at Old Fort Niagara, which had a navigational light placed atop it in 1780 (Grant and Jones 2002, 112–13); and the old and new lighthouses at Presque Isle, Mich igan, on Lake Huron; as well as other lighthouses and proximate coastal areas.

  At some of the sites—such as Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia, and Cape Hattaras and Ocracoke, North Carolina—ghosts are not reported in the lighthouses per se but rather are experienced as apparitions seen along the nearby seashore.

  APPARITIONS

  Among apparitional experiences—which involve the supposed sensing of a dead person (by sound, scent, or even touch)—a minority are visual sightings (Guiley 2000, 16). For example, as with supposedly haunted inns, some historic lighthouses and keepers’ cottages have overnight guests who may awaken to see a spectral figure. Such was the case with intrepid lighthouse photographers Bob and Sandra Shanklin, who were able to spend a night at Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts. According to Bob: “I saw a woman's face hovering about fifteen or sixteen inches above Sandra's face. She had a blue-green, iridescent appearance, and she was wearing an old-timey garment that buttoned tight around her long neck.” When he looked away for a moment, she vanished. “I hate that I didn't wake up Sandra, so she could see her, too,” he added (Shanklin 1999).

  Given the woman's quaint dress, the Shanklins thought she might have been the ghost of Hannah Thomas. Hannah had carried on the duties of her husband John while he served in the Revolutionary War and for a period following, when he failed to return and was presumed dead. In 1790, officials made her the first designated female lighthouse keeper in America (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 15–21).

  The report of another spectral sighting comes from Big Bay Point Light house. Several years ago, a lady saw “a man in a beard and hat” standing at the foot of her bed. The credulous believe he was the “restless spirit” of former lighthouse keeper William Prior who—despondent over the death of his son—hanged himself in the woods in 1901 (Stonehouse 1997, 32).

  Actually, however, neurologists and psychologists attribute such “ghost” sightings to a type of dream that occurs in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness (as we discussed in several earlier cases). Called “waking dreams” (known in earlier times as “night terrors”), they are quite common and are very realistic to those who experience them (Nickell 1995, 41, 117).

  But what about apparitions that are seen during normal waking activity? My own investigative experience, as well as other research data, demonstrates that apparitions are most likely to be perceived during day dreams or other altered states of consciousness. Many occur, for example, while the experiencer is in a relaxed state or concentrating on some activity like reading or performing routine work. Under such conditions, particularly in the case of imaginative persons, a mental image might emerge from the subconscious and be briefly superimposed on the visual scene, yielding a “sighting” (Nickell 2001, 291–92). Researcher G. N. M. Tyrrell (1973) noted that apparitions of people appear fully clothed and are often accompanied by objects, just as they are in dreams, because the clothes and objects are required by the apparitional drama.

  Such mental images may be the basis for sightings of figures like the “Lady in Blue,” who has allegedly been seen over the years near the lighthouse at Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia (“Peggy's Cove” 2008b); the “girl wearing a red dress” in the keepers’ dwelling at St. Augustine Lighthouse (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 41–45); the apparition of a shipwrecked “old salt” at Ram Island Light in Boothbay Harbor, Maine (Thompson 1998, 71); or the figure of Aaron Burr's daughter, Theodosia, on the beach near Cape Hattaras Lighthouse (or is it the lighthouse on Ocracoke Island?) (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 65–73; Elizabeth and Roberts 2004, 9, 11; Zepke 1999, 78–81). In any event, all of these sightings are accompanied by multiple conflicting stories—what folklorists call variants, evidence of the transmission process that produces folklore (Brunvand 1978, 7). Dissemination of the tales prompts more sightings from imaginative individuals, giving the supposed ghosts something of a life of their own.

  OTHER PHENOMENA

  In addition to visual apparitions, other touted phenomena at lighthouses (and their environs) are similar to those reported at other alleged spirit-dwelling sites. They include the following:

  Ghostly footsteps. The sounds of footfalls are frequently reported in haunted lighthouses or keepers’ homes. This is despite the irony of ghosts being such ethereal entities that they pass through walls yet allegedly depress floorboards as they walk.

  My wife Diana and I failed to hear the footsteps that have been reported in the lightkeeper's dwelling at Seul Choix (pronounced Sis-shwa) on Lake Michigan (again, see figure 13.2). Supposedly, they were heard once by a carpenter while he was nailing subflooring at the base of the staircase. Because the footsteps stopped whenever he ceased nailing, he concluded that the sounds were merely echoes of his hammering—that is, until he finally put down his hammer and still heard “heavy footsteps” upstairs. Reportedly he “packed up his tools and left, ‘vowing never to return by himself’” (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 85–86).

  The precise truth of this tale is anybody's guess, but there are a number of likely causes for audible footsteplike noises in a “haunted” place. Among them are simple creaking sounds caused by an old building's settling, from woodwork that yields knocking and popping sounds as the result of temperature changes, or from myriad other causes (Nickell 1995, 47–48; Christopher 1970, 169, 171). At Thirty Mile Point Light on Lake Ontario, one overnight guest commented in the log book, “People write of ghosts. We haven't heard any yet, just a lot of noises from the pipes when the heat turns on!” (“Thirty Mile Point Light: 2001–2007”).

  Still another force seems a likely culprit for the “footsteps” heard in the tower of Battery Point Lighthouse near Crescent City, California. They invariably occurred “during stormy weather,” indicating that the sounds were probably caused by the wind. Although previous keepers had experienced many such “ghostly” happenings at Battery Point, a subsequent couple did not. The wife attributed her lack of haunting incidents to the fact that she absolutely did not believe in ghosts (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 50–63).

  Moans and shrieks. Eerie sounds attributed to mournful or distraught spirits are commonly reported—as if vocalizations are possible without a larynx. In one instance, such sounds were found to come from the wind blowing through an open sewer pipe. Comments William O. Thompson in his Lighthouse Legends and Hauntings (1998, 33), “Perhaps this is how some of our ghost stories get star
ted. Every lighthouse is exposed to strange sounds and an active imagination can be very creative.”

  Consider New Presque Isle Light Station on Lake Huron (north of Alpena, Michigan). According to ghost mongers, the site is haunted by the unrequited spirit of a former keeper's wife. She went insane (according to one version of the tale) due to the stark isolation and numbing boredom of lighthouse life or (says another version) due to being locked in the tower whenever her husband visited his mistress in town. In any event, the woman supposedly died at the site, and “people have re ported hearing her screaming” near the tower. In a rare moment of skepticism, however, the writers concede that “perhaps it's just the fierce Lake Huron wind screaming around the tower” (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 12).

  Thompson (1998, 73) observes that lighthouses are “natural places” for people to have “ghostly experiences,” and he mentions the effects of wind whistling through cracks in the structures as among the causes of unaccountable noises. As well, analogous to what happens to wood work, he notes, old steel “creeps and moans” due to expansion by sunlight and contraction by cold, night air.

  Again, at Thirty Mile Point Light, guestbook entries report various ghostly sounds, while others give skeptical interpretations, like this one: “Ghosts? Well we heard all kinds of strange noises but it was very windy.” Another person wrote, “The very windy nights added to the ‘ghostly sounds’ of the building” (“Thirty Mile Point Light: 2001–2007”).

  Phantom smells. Among other “ghostly” phenomena at lighthouses are strange smells. For example, from Old Presque Isle Lighthouse, now a museum, comes a touching story by Lorraine Parris, a worker in the gift shop. Previously, she and her husband George were caretakers at the site for fourteen years, until he died of a heart attack at the beginning of 1992. According to Lighthouse Ghosts (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 8), “Sometimes she feels George in the dwelling with her.” Moreover, “she recalls waking up some mornings smelling eggs and sausage cooking—a familiar aroma since that's what George used to cook for her for breakfast every morning.” But surely, rather than a ghostly visitation the experience is instead the poignant effect of a memory arising lovingly from the subconscious.

  At other sites, such as St. Augustine Lighthouse, the motif of lingering cigar smoke appears in circulating ghost tales (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 40–49). Again, combined with the previously mentioned footsteps in the keeper's house at Seul Choix Point Lighthouse, the “strong smell of cigars” convinces some “that a lighthouse keeper is still at work” there (“Seul Choix Point Lighthouse” 2005), although others attribute the phenomena to a ship's captain named James Townshend, who died in the dwelling in 1910 (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 82–89; Smith 2003, 124).

  However, not only is the identity of the phantom questioned, but so is the nature of the smoke itself. In her Ghost Stories of the Sea, Barbara Smith (2003, 124) attributes the phenomenon to Captain Townshend but refers to it as “the smell of the man's ever-present cigarettes,” again stating that “the smoky smell from the man's cigarettes can still occasionally be detected” (emphasis added). Here, I think, is an important clue to what is really happening. The smell of actual smoke—whether from area chimneys or cigarettes or whatever other source—is interpreted as cigar smoke because that is what has been suggested and is therefore expected.

  Proof of this is evident from an incident at Seul Choix reported in Haunted Lakes II (Stonehouse 2000, 4). Two visitors, smelling what they thought was burning wiring, ran to tell the tour guide they thought the house was on fire. If “cigar smoke” can be mistaken for burning wiring, some other burning material could in turn be mistaken for it.

  Pranks. Mischief attributed to ghosts at various sites may have a far simpler explanation: the pranksters may not be dead after all!

  Consider, for instance, the shenanigans attributed to the aforementioned spectral cigar smoker at Seul Choix. Supposedly the ghost of Captain Townshend liked to “play pranks.” A docent claims that

  he sometimes turns over the silverware on the table (Captain Townshend used to hold his fork upside down when he ate). Once in a while the old captain shuts the Bible that's on display in the dwelling, and he seems to take great pleasure in turning the hat around on the mannequin that's dressed in an official keeper's uniform. Occasionally, Captain Townshend even puts a cigar or two in the pocket of the keeper's coat! (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 87)

  No, the cigars were not materialized from the Great Beyond. They had been set out “in strategic places in the house,” once by a group doing a magazine story and again by a couple of Boy Scouts and their Scoutmaster (Stonehouse 2000, 10). The temptation each time for someone to play ghost must have been irresistible. Over the years I have en countered many such pranksters (Nickell 2001), even catching a few red-handed myself (Nickell 2008).

  PHANTOM LIGHT

  The Old Presque Isle Light, first lit in 1840, was extinguished when the “new” lighthouse was built about a mile away in 1870. Yet according to some, the spirit of an old keeper still maintains a “phantom light” in the tower, which has been witnessed on numerous occasions.

  Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that whatever the source of the mystery light, it has nothing to do with spirits. It is crucial to note that it is never seen by anyone who is actually inside the lantern room. And it is described as lacking the intensity and whiteness of a true lighthouse beam. Indeed, it is not a beam at all (see the photo in Grant and Jones 2002, 139), and it is certainly not a rotating beam; rather, it tends to be only a “yellow glow” (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 6).

  Indeed, I think we can take a clue from similar reports; the motif of a ghost light is common in spooklore. The late magician and psychic investigator Mil bourne Christopher (1970, 172–73) told of a deserted house wherein persons at a distance from the structure could see a lantern, supposedly carried by a specter, moving from room to room. It always went from right to left. However, an investigator discovered that the light was not an interior one at all but rather the reflection of headlights on the window's glass each time a car approached the house. Other spirit lights in windows often turn out to be reflections from the moon or other light sources, an effect I have witnessed on more than one occasion (Nickell 1995, 50–51).

  Now, we are told that attempts have been made to stop Presque Isle's phantom light from shining. “We've had the glass covered inside and the lens covered, but the light was still there,” says Lorraine Parris. “It seems to shine right through. There's just no way to stop it” (quoted in Grant and Jones 2002, 139). Reportedly, coastguardsmen remained baffled, as the light persisted even when nearby lights were extinguished for a while one night (Elizabeth and Roberts 1999, 6).

  But all such actions are obviously predicated on the assumption that reflection is the logical culprit. Indeed, the fact that the light still shone after the glass was covered on the inside is telling: it seems a safe bet that it would not continue if the glass were covered on the outside. Moreover, the reflection hypothesis is given weight by the light's dependence on viewing conditions. It is reportedly best seen from a certain spot on the pier. Also, if the viewer is traveling along the road near the marina or in a boat on the lake, the “spirit light” will “blink on and off,” thus “making it appear to be the beam from a rotating beacon”—while it is, of course, no such thing. That effect may well be due to a light reflecting first from one flat pane of glass then another as the viewer's line of sight changes. And so it appears that here, as with other lighthouses, ghosts are really only illusions of our sometimes-haunted minds.

  At Yaquina Bay on Oregon's central coast stands a historic lighthouse with a unique story—the spine-tingling tale of a young girl murdered to keep a ghost company!

  YAQUINA BAY LIGHT

  The lighthouse, or “light” in sailors’ parlance, was built in 1871, just after the establishment of Newport, a fishing and fur-trade outpost on the bay's north shore. The light's prominence was shortened in 1873 by
the building of another, the Yaquina Head lighthouse, just three miles to the north. Its more powerful lamp reached some twenty-two miles, almost twice that of the “old” bay light, which was decommissioned in 1874.

  The Yaquina Bay structure is the only one in Oregon with the lighthouse keeper's living quarters combined with the light tower in the same building—looking rather like a two-story house with a great lantern atop. When the keeper and his family moved out, the premises remained empty for fourteen years. Then in 1888, the US Army Corps of Engineers began to use it for housing while building jetties at the mouth of the bay. The premises were acquired for a state park in 1934, but after a dozen years the derelict lighthouse was set to be razed. Citizens formed the Lincoln County Historical Society to save the structure, which was fully restored during the 1970s. Today, as the only wood lighthouse in Oregon, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (“Yaquina Bay Lighthouse History” 2011).

  GHOST STORY

  The Yaquina Bay Lighthouse's singular ghost tale is often told. As related in A Haunted Tour Guide to the Pacific Northwest:

  A ship landed at Newport and a man calling himself Trevenard came ashore. He left his daughter Zina (or Muriel) at a small hotel until he returned. In 1874 she joined a group of teenagers investigating the lighthouse. They discovered a metal door in the lighthouse third floor closet. They were preparing to leave when Zina said she had left her handkerchief in the lighthouse. She reentered, and in a few minutes they heard screams for help coming from inside. A trail of blood drops led upstairs, where they found her bloody handkerchief in the room where they had found the hidden door.