New London Ledge Light

The story

New London Ledge Light stands on a reef at the entrance to New London harbor, on the Thames River in Connecticut, on the Groton side. It was authorized in 1906 and first lit on 7 November 1909. Contracts were awarded in 1908: the foundation gives the T. A. Scott Company and a ceiling of 115,000 dollars (Wikipedia lists Scott for the foundation), while the National Register file has T. A. Scott building the timber foundation crib and the Hamilton R. Douglas Company of New London erecting the lighthouse on it. It was originally called Southwest Ledge, which caused confusion with another light, and it was renamed New London Ledge in 1910. The building is a brick dwelling with the light on top; the National Register nomination calls it a rare twentieth-century combined lighthouse and keeper's dwelling in a revival style, and a rare water-bound lighthouse of its period not built of prefabricated cast iron. Its original fourth-order Fresnel lens is now on display at the New London customs house.

In 1938 a hurricane drove water up to the second floor and the keepers took shelter in the lantern. In 1939 the Coast Guard took over the lights, and the station was automated in 1987. The head keepers listed on Wikipedia include W. B. Petty (1909-10), George Hansen (1910 to at least 1917), Howard Beebe (1926-38), Leonard Fuller (1940), Michael Scanlan (1943-49) and William Clark (1954-59). Lighthouse Digest adds Coast Guard crews around 1981 and 1984. The lighthouse was entered on the National Register of Historic Places on 29 May 1990. In the fall of 2014, according to the foundation (Wikipedia says 2015), ownership passed from the Coast Guard to the New London Maritime Society, and the Ledge Light Foundation now leases and manages it.

The legend

The ghost is Ernie, a supposed keeper, usually placed in the 1920s or 1930s. As told on websites we could not verify, the commonest version says his young wife, left ashore, ran off with the captain of the Block Island ferry, and Ernie jumped from the roof; his body was never found. In another version he kills himself with a fishing knife and falls from the tower; in others he simply jumps or falls. Some tellings give 1936, which we could not trace to a source. The activity attributed to him includes the fog horn sounding in clear weather, doors, television sets going wrong, cold spots, whispers and boats coming loose from their moorings. New England Lighthouses reports a December 1981 visit by a self-styled ghost psychologist and his wife, a medium, who named the spirit John Randolph, and notes that no keeper of that name is on record. Another account says two mediums freed him in 1981; we could not verify that.

The earliest dated references we found are that 1981 visit and a Coast Guardsman's log entry on the last day before automation in 1987, “Rock of slow torture. Ernie's domain. Hell on earth.”, both reported by New England Lighthouses without a documentary source. We did not see the log. None of the sites we read names a first teller, and a search of American newspapers from 1770 to 1963 for the light under both its names returned nothing, so there is nothing about Ernie in print before 1963 in what we searched. Three sources we read are doubtful. Lighthouse Digest says he "supposedly" died and its keeper list has no Ernie, New England Lighthouses says there is no record of any suicide attempt, and the Ledge Light Foundation's own history concedes that the evidence is thin, in effect saying that Ernie is as real as we want him to be. A local newspaper, The Day, ran a piece titled “The Spirit of the New London Ledge Lighthouse”, and a search summary suggested its author was not convinced; the page we opened had no text, so we cannot confirm that. We found no hoax demonstrated, but also no proof that any keeper had that name.

The story may have begun as oral lore among Coast Guard crews, since the light was occupied until 1987, and was later amplified by television, though no source we read shows this. Ghost Hunters (TAPS, then on the Sci Fi Channel) investigated in an episode listed as season 2, episode 6, first aired on 31 August 2005. As summarized by Wikipedia, the team found not enough evidence to establish paranormal activity, though a few things went unexplained, among them cold spots. We did not read the original TAPS page. The light also appeared on Scariest Places on Earth, which we did not see.

What remains today

The lighthouse still works as a solar-powered aid to navigation, and the foundation that leases it runs visits. The rest of this description comes from the National Register file and is dated; we could not confirm the present state. The 1985 nomination says the original fourth-order Fresnel lens, made by Henry LePaute and turned by clockwork, was replaced in 1984 by a smaller automated rotating light, flashing three times white and once red in each 30-second cycle. It describes a house with a center hall, rooms on three floors and cast-iron stairs, with floors carried on steel beams and cinder concrete, a method it treats as advanced for 1906. The 1989 update records the building as unoccupied and automatic, the window openings blocked with plywood and the interior window trim removed. The file says nothing about a ghost.

Visiting

The light stands on a reef and can only be reached by boat. Visits are organized by the Ledge Light Foundation, whose website gives a contact email; we did not read its tours page, so check there for dates, prices and boarding arrangements. Do not try to land on your own; the lighthouse is an active navigation aid.

Sources

1. National Register nomination #89001471 (texte intégral) — U.S. National Park Service · Public record
2. National Register of Historic Places file (NRHP #89001471) — U.S. National Park Service · Public domain (U.S. government)
3. Wikimedia Commons category : New London Ledge Light — Wikimedia Commons
4. USGS 1:24000-scale Quadrangle for New London, CT 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
5. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for New London, CT 1892 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1892 · Public domain (USGS)
6. Ernie Still Haunts New London Ledge Lighthouse in Connecticut — New England Lighthouses
7. Ledge Light Foundation, history — Ledge Light Foundation
8. New London Ledge Lighthouse (database entry) — Lighthouse Digest
9. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.