St. Augustine Lighthouse

The lighthouse at St. Augustine is striped like a barber’s pole — black and white bands spiraling up a tower 165 feet tall, topped with a bright red lantern room. It stands on Anastasia Island, across the bay from the oldest continuously occupied European-founded city in the United States. On clear nights, its beam still sweeps out over the Atlantic, as it has since 1874.

It is one of the most photographed lighthouses in America. It is also, according to the people who work there, one of the most haunted. And the ghosts most often reported are two little girls.

The Old Tower

There has been a watchtower on this part of the Florida coast for centuries. The Spanish built one in the late 1500s to watch for ships and enemies. Later it became a lighthouse. By the mid-1800s, the old coquina-stone tower was in danger: the shoreline was eroding, and the sea was creeping closer every year.

In 1859, according to the lighthouse’s history, a keeper named Joseph Andreu was painting the old tower when the scaffolding gave way. He fell to his death. His wife, Maria, took over as keeper — one of the first Hispanic women to serve in the U.S. Coast Guard’s predecessor service.

By 1870, it was clear the old tower would soon fall into the sea. (It did, in 1880.) Congress funded a new lighthouse half a mile inland, and construction began in 1871.

The Superintendent’s Daughters

The man in charge of building the new lighthouse was Hezekiah Pittee, a construction superintendent from Maine. He brought his family with him to Anastasia Island, and they lived on the site while the tower slowly rose.

To haul bricks, stone and supplies from the boats at the water’s edge to the construction site, workers had built a small railway with a wooden cart that ran on tracks down to the bay. For the children living on the site, the cart was irresistible. On the slope down to the water, it would roll on its own.

One day in July 1873, Pittee’s daughters Mary, fifteen, and Eliza, thirteen, were playing in the cart with their younger sister Carrie and a young boy whose family also lived at the site. The cart broke loose and rolled down the tracks, gathering speed, and plunged off the end into the bay. It flipped over, trapping the children beneath it in the water.

Workers ran to help. They pulled out Carrie and the boy, who survived. Mary and Eliza drowned.

The new lighthouse was lit the following year, on October 15, 1874. The Pittee family left St. Augustine soon after.

The Girl in the Blue Dress

For many years, keepers and their families lived at the lighthouse, in the large brick keeper’s house that stands beside the tower. Lighthouse keepers were practical, hardworking people, not given to fancy. But over the decades, stories began to accumulate.

The most frequent reports are of little girls. Visitors and staff describe hearing children laughing, giggling or whispering at the top of the tower, or on the stairs, when no children are there. Some describe a girl in a blue dress with a bow in her hair, standing at the top of the tower or on the catwalk around the lantern, looking out to sea. Others have seen two girls together, running across the grounds near where the old construction railway once ran.

Staff have reported hearing a child’s voice call their name in the keeper’s house. Some say they’ve felt a small hand tugging at their clothes.

The Keeper

There are other presences, too.

Visitors climbing the 219 steps of the tower have reported hearing heavy footsteps coming up behind them, or the sound of someone breathing hard just below them on the iron staircase — but when they turn, the stairs are empty. Some believe it is Joseph Andreu, the keeper who fell. Others think it might be one of the later keepers, still climbing to tend the light.

In the keeper’s house, staff and visitors have reported smelling cigar smoke. According to lighthouse lore, a longtime keeper of the early twentieth century, Peter Rasmussen, was known for his love of cigars. The smell, they say, comes and goes in the rooms where he lived.

People also report a tall figure in the basement of the keeper’s house. Some describe a man who stares at them and then disappears. No one knows who he might be.

Ghost Hunters

The St. Augustine Lighthouse became famous for its hauntings after it was featured on the paranormal television series Ghost Hunters in the 2000s. During their investigation, the team reported hearing a woman’s voice calling for help, and claimed to see a figure leaning over the railing at the top of the tower. The episode was one of the most popular in the series. Today the lighthouse offers regular evening ghost tours and paranormal investigations.

A Family’s Grief

It’s easy, when you read about haunted places, to forget that they began with someone’s grief.

Hezekiah Pittee came to Florida to build something beautiful and useful: a light that would guide ships safely through dangerous waters. He brought his family. And during that work, he lost two of his daughters in a single terrible afternoon, in sight of the tower he was building.

I find it hard to think of that striped tower without thinking of him, a father from Maine on a hot Florida summer day, running toward the water. Every time the light turned on, for the rest of his life, it must have reminded him.

If there are two girls at the top of the lighthouse, looking out to sea, I hope they’re at peace. They have the best view in St. Augustine.