Rose Island

The story

Rose Island is an 18.5-acre island in Narragansett Bay, just off Newport, Rhode Island. Its Native American name was Conockonoquit. The English name is said to come from its outline at low tide, which supposedly resembles a rose. It can only be reached by boat.

The island's history is mostly military. Fortifications went up during the American Revolution, and around 1798 the federal government began building Fort Hamilton here, one of the coastal forts of the early republic. It was never finished, though infantry units were stationed on the island and the stone barracks still stand. In both World Wars the island served the Navy as an explosives depot, attached to the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport. After World War II the government gave up the island, apart from the lighthouse, and declared it surplus. In 2001 the fort's remains joined the National Register of Historic Places under the name Fort Hamilton Historic District.

The lighthouse was built on the fort's old South Battery and first lit on January 20, 1870; a Wikimedia Commons caption credits the design to the Vermont architect Albert Dow. Its most famous keeper, Charles S. Curtis, served as head keeper from 1887 until 1918 or 1919 (sources differ), the longest tenure on the island. He left only because a 1918 law forced lighthouse keepers to retire at seventy.

The opening of the Newport Bridge in 1969 made the light redundant, and it was switched off in 1971. A local nonprofit, the Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation, formed in 1984, restored the station. It reopened to the public in 1992, has guided shipping again as an official navigation light since 1993, and the foundation took charge of the rest of the island in 1999.

The island also has a darker past that feeds the ghost stories. A lighthouse history blog states that Rose Island held quarantine stations during outbreaks of cholera in the 1820s and yellow fever in the 1850s, with sick people sent from Newport and lodged in the old fort barracks, and that keepers' logbooks mention two unmarked mass graves whose location is unknown. This comes from a single source and should be treated with caution.

The legend

Most stories center on Charles Curtis, who seems never to have wanted to leave. Guests staying in the lighthouse describe footsteps coming down the tower steps and halting once they reach the kitchen; the local explanation is that the old keeper is still going down for his customary glass of milk after his watch. People also report murmuring in the lantern room and odd sounds at the top of the tower. A visitor once photographed what looks like a face mirrored in a framed picture's glass in the keeper's living quarters; it was afterward set beside an image of Curtis.

Other presences are tied to the fort. The quarantine patients said to have died on the island are blamed for voices heard in what is called the quarantine room, and for footsteps and slamming doors around the barracks. A woman in a blue dress is said to have been seen by many people in the so-called merchant room, though only one source mentions her. One overnight guest claimed her iPad typed out the words "I am Ena. I live here." Grimmer tales, such as bodies in Civil War-era clothing exposed by the 1938 hurricane and skeletons found when a water tower was built, appear in a single blog and could not be verified. The same blog places the first sightings in the early twentieth century without citing any specific report.

The island reached television in 2010, when Ghost Hunters investigated it for the episode Signals from the Past (season 6, episode 15), which also covered the Baseball Hall of Fame. The team showed a pale shape filmed at the far end of the barracks, faint recorded voices, a child's voice saying "Mama," a door that swung open and struck investigator K.J. McCormick, and a figure on the thermal camera leaving the building. Kris Williams set the reflection photo beside a portrait of Curtis, and the team concluded that some of the evidence could not be explained. In the merchant room the team could reproduce a moving shadow and a noise only with Jason Hawes at a window, but the recap says the noise recurred when they called out with no source found, and it presents this as activity rather than a debunk. The island featured again in 2020 in Kindred Spirits, in an episode called Keeper of the Light (season 4, episode 11).

Worth noting: the foundation's own history pages and the Lighthouse Friends profile tell Curtis's career in detail without saying a word about ghosts, and the quarantine and mass-grave history rests on one source.

What remains today

The restored lighthouse is the island's centerpiece and once again an active navigation light. The stone barracks of the unfinished Fort Hamilton survive, along with other fort remains included in the historic district. A fog signal building is also used for guest stays. The rest of the island, once a Navy explosives depot, is managed by the nonprofit foundation.

Visiting

Rose Island is reached only by boat, with seasonal ferry service. As of November 2026 the foundation's site says the lighthouse is open only for private tours arranged in advance. The foundation also offers overnight stays in the lighthouse, the fog signal building and the barracks, and a week-long volunteer program in which guests act as keepers. No organized ghost tours are known; staying overnight is the legal way to experience the island after dark. Check the foundation for ferry schedules, fees and season dates, and respect the rules of a working lighthouse and a historic site. Do not land outside official access.

Sources

1. Rose Island; the strange story of a love adventure at sea — Internet Archive · Russell, William Clark, 1844-1911, 1899-01-01 · Public domain (pre-1929)
2. Wikimedia Commons category : Rose Island (Newport, Rhode Island) — Wikimedia Commons
3. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Providence, RI 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
4. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Newport, RI 1889 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1889 · Public domain (USGS)
5. Episode Recap: Signals from the Past (Ghost Hunters S6) — Syfy — Syfy
6. Hauntings by Rose Island Light Keeper and Victims of Disease (Allan Wood, 1 Oct 2025) — New England Lighthouses (NELights.com) — New England Lighthouses (NELights.com
7. Rose Island Lighthouse — Lighthouse Friends — Lighthouse Friends
8. The Lighthouse — Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation (not read directly) — Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation (seen in search results only
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.