St. Augustine Light

The story

Some kind of lookout or light has stood on Anastasia Island, across the bay from St. Augustine, for more than four centuries. Baptista Boazio's 1589 map of Sir Francis Drake's raid on the town shows a wooden watchtower, and Drake's own account calls it a "beacon." By 1737 the Spanish had built a sturdier tower of coquina, the local shell stone. The archives do not show clearly whether it carried a light under Spanish rule, but in the British period after 1763, ships' logs and charts regularly called it a lighthouse.

In 1824 the new American territorial government made the old tower Florida's first official lighthouse. The National Register nomination puts the conversion in 1823. At first it burned lard oil in lamps with silver reflectors, and in 1855 a fourth-order Fresnel lens took their place. Joseph Andreu became keeper in 1854. In December 1859 he fell to his death when the scaffold he was using to whitewash the tower gave way, as the St. Augustine Examiner reported at the time. His widow, Maria Mestre de los Dolores Andreu, took over the post in January 1860 and is honored as the first Hispanic-American woman in the service that later became the Coast Guard. When the Civil War began, she and harbor master Paul Arnau, a future mayor, removed the lens and hid it to keep the coast dark for Union ships. The lens was recovered only after Arnau was held on a ship offshore and forced to say where it was.

By 1870 erosion was undermining the old tower, and in 1871 work started on a replacement built farther from the water. Construction was supervised by Hezekiah H. Pittee, a Maine man who oversaw lighthouse projects along the Atlantic coast. During the work, on July 10, 1873, his daughters Mary, 15, and Eliza, 13, were playing with a younger friend on a cart used to haul building supplies on a rail line from the dock. The cart ran down the track into the water and overturned on them. A worker, Dan Sessions, managed to lift it, but only four-year-old Carrie Pittee survived. The museum says a stop board was missing, while another account blames failed brakes. The family buried the two sisters in Maine. The third girl, about ten years old and African-American, may have been the daughter of a worker on the site. Her name was never recorded, and her grave has not been found.

The new tower was finished in 1874 for about $105,000, and keeper William Russell lit it that October. He was the only keeper to serve in both towers. The old coquina tower collapsed into the sea in 1880. William A. Harn, a Union artillery officer who had commanded a battery at Gettysburg, kept the light for years with his wife Kate and their six daughters in the brick keepers' house completed around 1876. Kerosene replaced lard oil in 1885, and electricity arrived in 1936. The Coast Guard took over in 1939 and automated the light in 1955, when keeper James Pippin retired. In 1970 a fire whose cause was never explained partly destroyed the keepers' house.

The legend

The museum that runs the lighthouse tells the ghost stories itself, and they are tied to people who really lived and died here. The best known are the Pittee sisters. Staff and visitors talk about children giggling and small footsteps in the tower and the keepers' house, and about laughter that seems to move up the stairs as if someone were playing hide-and-seek. Shoelaces have been found untied, and in one case a guest's lace was tied to the staircase. People have described a girl in Victorian clothes reading on a bench who then vanished. On one tour, a woman heard from another guest that her "daughter" had stayed by her side all night. She had come alone, with no child. The girls' unnamed playmate is often said to be with them. A psychic once called her "Ellie" or "Eleanor," but the museum says that name is not confirmed. Some retellings claim that all three Pittee sisters, or "three sisters and a friend," drowned. That is wrong, since Carrie survived.

The keepers have their own ghosts. Joseph Andreu is said to walk the shoreline. His widow Maria is said to appear at the top of the tower or among the trees, often in white, and some climbers say they felt a hand at their back steering them upward. Peter Rasmusson, head keeper for about 23 years until he retired in 1924, is associated with a whiff of cherry pipe tobacco or cigar, which supposedly drifts in when someone speaks badly of him. A 2022 News4Jax report added William Harn, whose cough people claim to hear, and a shadow figure some identify as Kate Harn, though only one source names them. The same report lists windows opening by themselves, a rocking chair moving, dents appearing in cushions, sighs, and a staff member who got locked inside the tower.

The earliest dated account goes back to the 1950s. A relief keeper heard footsteps upstairs in an empty house, and keeper James Pippin moved into the 1941 Coastal Lookout building, saying the "big house" was haunted. In the 1960s a man renting the house said he woke to find a small girl standing by his bed, and she then disappeared. Volunteers restoring the keepers' house after the fire reported more incidents, especially in the basement.

Television made the lighthouse famous. Ghost Hunters (Syfy) filmed there for Season 2, Episode 19 (2006). The episode is remembered for a figure that seemed to lean over the stair railing, a woman's voice apparently saying "Help me," footsteps, and a padlocked door found open. Not everything held up: the team traced a bucket-like noise to a slamming window. Even so, TAPS judged the station haunted, and the museum's head of education later said the visit turned him from doubter into believer. Grant Wilson came back for the A&E revival in Season 12, Episode 3, "Return to St. Augustine," which aired in September 2019. The lighthouse also appeared on My Ghost Story and in the 2018 "Restless Dead" episode of Most Terrifying Places in America on the Travel Channel.

Skeptics disagree. Investigator Joe Nickell looked into the claims and, according to Wikipedia, found no credible evidence of a haunting. He explained the strange sounds as wind and seagulls. The deaths are real and documented. The phenomena are personal accounts, and many are shared through the museum's own paid ghost programs.

What remains today

The 1874 tower still rises at the island's northern tip and still works as an aid to navigation, now maintained privately. The 1980 National Register nomination (reference 81000668) describes a brick tower 165 feet tall, painted with black-and-white spiral bands, with more than 200 steps up to the gallery. The original first-order Fresnel lens is still in the lantern. The tower, lens and grounds belong to the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum, a nonprofit that also looks after five other historic structures and runs programs in maritime archaeology and traditional wooden boatbuilding. After the 1970 fire, the Junior Service League spent about 15 years raising roughly $1.2 million to restore the keepers' house, the tower and the original lens. The ruins of the old coquina tower now lie offshore as a submerged archaeological site.

Visiting

This is one of the easiest haunted sites to visit legally. The museum is open almost every day of the year, and admission helps pay for upkeep. The climb has more than 200 steps, so plan for it. For the ghost stories, the museum runs its own after-hours "Dark of the Moon" ghost experience, which goes into the tower and the keepers' house. Book ahead, and check the official website for current times and prices.

Sources

1. National Register nomination #81000668 (texte intégral) — U.S. National Park Service · Public record
2. National Register of Historic Places file (NRHP #81000668) — U.S. National Park Service · Public domain (U.S. government)
3. Wikimedia Commons category : St. Augustine Light — Wikimedia Commons
4. USGS 1:24000-scale Quadrangle for St. Augustine, FL 1937 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1937 · Public domain (USGS)
5. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Daytona Beach, FL 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
6. "Employees, guests witness paranormal activity at St. Augustine Lighthouse keeper's house" — News4Jax / WJXT (31 Oct 2022). — News4Jax / WJXT (31 Oct 2022).
7. "Episode Recap: St. Augustine Lighthouse" (Ghost Hunters S2) — Syfy. — Syfy.
8. "Florida on a Tankful: St. Augustine Lighthouse's haunted history" — Spectrum News 13 (1 Oct 2020). — Spectrum News 13 (1 Oct 2020).
9. "Ghost profiles: learn a little about our lighthouse ghosts" — St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum (23 Apr 2020). — St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum (23 Apr 2020).
10. "Ghost Stories: The Pittee Girls" — St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum (Kelcie Lloyd, 2 Mar 2020). — St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum (Kelcie Lloyd, 2 Mar 2020).
11. "Maria Andreu" — Wikipedia (quotes the St. Augustine Examiner, 10 Dec 1859). — Wikipedia (quotes the St. Augustine Examiner, 10 Dec 1859).
12. Official website
13. "PopHistory | Hauntings at the St. Augustine Lighthouse" — Florida Newsline (Scott A. Grant). — Florida Newsline (Scott A. Grant).
14. "Sept. 4: New Ghost Hunters episode at the St. Augustine Lighthouse airs on A&E" — St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum (27 Aug 2019). — St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum (27 Aug 2019).
15. 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.