Ghost Hunting (19 page)

ST. AUGUSTINE LIGHTHOUSE JANUARY 2006

T
he St. Augustine Lighthouse was the site of one of our greatest ghost-hunting adventures ever. And yet, we almost overlooked it in our whirlwind tour of St. Augustine, a city on Florida’s east coast just south of Jacksonville.

T.A.P.S. was there to investigate what has become known as the most haunted town in Florida, if not the entire United States. In the process, we learned that St. Augustine is the oldest permanent European settlement in North America, preceding the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, by more than forty years. It was named by the Spanish, who established a garrison there on the Feast Day of St. Augustine in the year 1565, part of their plan to run the French out of the area.

The city is full of haunted restaurants, haunted inns, and haunted landmarks, like the city gates. There was so much to investigate that we had no intention of looking at a lighthouse. But wherever we went, the locals kept telling us, “Check out the lighthouse! You’ve
got
to check out the lighthouse!” Finally we decided to take some mopeds over there and see what the fuss was about.

We were glad we did. Even from a distance, the lighthouse’s tower sent chills up and down our spines. It had red and white stripes like a gigantic candy cane, but there was nothing sweet about it. You got the feeling there was something creepy going on inside.

The first thing Steve said was, “I can’t go up there.”

As we have noted already, he has a fear of heights. We make fun of it sometimes, but we also know it’s a legitimate phobia. We assured Steve that he wouldn’t have to go up into the tower.

We made arrangements to stay and investigate the lighthouse. But as it turned out, there weren’t many reports of supernatural activity in the tower. Most of them were in the lighthouse keeper’s house, which was more than a hundred feet away.

The day of the investigation, there were six of us representing T.A.P.S.—Grant, me, Dustin, Donna, Steve, and Brian Harnois. Brian had broken up with his girlfriend and had asked to rejoin the group. After much soul-searching, we decided to let him back in, and he hadn’t yet given us reason to regret it.

But Brian was no longer our tech manager. Steve had taken over that position and was doing a great job at it. So in effect, Brian was working for Steve now.

The lighthouse’s director of education, Paul Wenglowsky, was waiting for us when we arrived. He told us that at 140 feet, St. Augustine is the eighth-tallest lighthouse in the country, and also the oldest in the state of Florida. He also said that it has been the setting for tragedy right from the beginning.

While the lighthouse was being built in the 1870s, its supervisor of construction, a guy named Hezekiah Pity, moved his family down there. Unfortunately, the move was one he would regret. He had set up a handcar-style rail system to get supplies up from the beach, and his kids loved to get in the rail car and ride it down. One day the brakes failed and the car plunged into the ocean, drowning two of Pity’s daughters, Mary and Eliza.

People said the girls’ spirits lingered in the lighthouse keeper’s house, manifesting themselves in the form of voices in the parlor and footsteps running up the stairs. And it wasn’t just employees who had heard them. Patrons had experienced them as well.

Some years after the girls’ death, one of the lighthouse keepers hanged himself on the front porch of his house. According to reports, his spirit remains there as well. The last keeper, James Pippin, reported that he had heard footsteps and voices, and had seen the lights go on and off on their own. He finally abandoned the place and went to sleep in a little Coast Guard bungalow.

However, most of the activity had been in the basement. The executive director of the lighthouse had been down there one day and saw a man walk past her. When she called out to him, no one answered, and though she looked around she couldn’t find anyone there. Others had reported seeing a man in uniform in the same area.

It took us a while to negotiate the 219 steps that spiraled up to the top of the tower. The landing at the halfway point, we were told, had seen some ghostly activity. There was a bucket there full of sand that simulated the weight of the oil the lighthouse keeper would lug up the stairs. Over the years, people had reported hearing the bucket picked up and dropped.

Surprisingly, Steve made it to the top along with the rest of us. But he wouldn’t go outside on the catwalk that circled the tower. For once, I didn’t give him a hard time. I knew how tough it had been for him to get that far.

We were joined on the catwalk by Allan Studer, a retired lighthouse guide, who told us that every evening the employee in charge of closing the tower would padlock the door up there. But it wasn’t unusual for the door to be found open again in the morning, its alarm never having gone off.

People had also seen a woman in white or a little girl in period dress on top of the tower during severe storms. It was hard to picture such a scene considering how blue the sky was at the moment. Still, the image made me shiver a little.

When we set up our equipment, we distributed most of it throughout the lighthouse keeper’s house. Our newest toy was a portable Geiger counter developed for us by Ron Milione, our T.A.P.S. tech guy back home. The theory is that supernatural entities emit a radioactive frequency. With a Geiger counter, we had the wherewithal to detect that frequency.

Ghost hunting is a difficult business. You can work at it for years and not record any documentation of your experiences. When it’s available, you want to make sure you have the tools to capture it.

We put very little equipment in the tower, because there hadn’t been much activity there. One device we did deploy there was a wireless audio unit. It was Brian’s job to place it where we could access it from our mobile command center.

He knew that if he placed the unit on a metal surface, he would get reverberation. So he positioned it two-thirds of the way up the stairs on a wooden bench. At that point, he was ready to move on to the next task.

But I wanted the unit all the way up at the top of the tower, so I asked Brian to reposition it. He wasn’t happy about climbing back up the stairs again, but he did it. And again, he figured he was through with the job.

Unfortunately, the unit wasn’t working. When Grant saw that, he asked Brian to change the battery. Muttering to himself, Brian dragged himself up to the top of the tower again and changed the battery. Then he came back down.

But the reception from the unit was tinny because of the steel surface on which it was sitting. So Brian had to go up again and put it back on the wooden bench where he had left it in the first place. And he didn’t complain once, at least not loudly enough for any of us to hear him.

This is why we’ve kept the guy around for so long. He might have given us ulcers from time to time. He might have made us want to kill him. But when push comes to shove, nobody works harder than Brian Harnois.

Dustin and Steve, meanwhile, were in the basement of the house, checking out claims of voices, footsteps, and apparitions. After Brian joined them, they thought they heard a female voice, and they tried to trace it to its source. Unfortunately, they couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.

At that point, Grant and I were in the tower. We had positioned a thermal camera at the bottom shooting up, just to see what we could pick up. Climbing the stairs to the landing, we picked up the sand bucket and dropped it. The sound shot through the tower like the crack of a whip.

Then we checked out a window a few feet away. It turned out that it was held shut by a sandbag. Apparently, it didn’t close very well.

Without the sandbag, the window was free to swing with the wind. After a while, it slammed—and then slammed again. Grant and I smiled at each other. The sound of the window slamming was almost exactly the same sound as the bucket dropping. We had debunked our first claim of the night.

We were about to leave the tower when we heard something—the sound of people talking. On the other hand, the conversation might have been an echo of our own. We talked again and listened for an echo, but there wasn’t any.

Strange. And it got stranger when we heard a little girl’s voice, followed by footsteps. And more conversation. A man and a woman, it seemed to us. Then it sounded like a man and a child, and the child was jabbering something.

The voices seemed to be coming from farther up the tower, so we ascended the stairs. It was then that we saw something walk by a window, blotting out the light—not once, but twice. It looked like the head and shoulders of a man. And it seemed to be moving up the stairs, just as we were.

We started moving up the stairs again, hoping to catch up with whatever we had seen. Then something stopped us cold. It was a human silhouette, not more than ten feet away. And it was leaning over the railing, looking down at us.

We didn’t want it to get away. Without thinking, I bolted up the stairs in an attempt to catch up with it. Grant stayed behind with his flashlight in hand, making sure nothing got past me. When you’ve worked together as long as we have, you can move without hesitation because you know what the other guy’s going to do.

I couldn’t catch more than a glimpse of the dark figure as I climbed, but I was sure it was navigating the spiral stairs above me. If it was a race, I might not have won it. Lucky for me the tower ended not too much higher up.

Finally, I reached the top—but there was nothing there except a padlocked door. Cursing to myself, I called down to Grant. But he hadn’t seen anything go past him. Whatever we were chasing, it had vanished into thin air.

One thing we knew was that we wanted to send Dustin and Brian into the tower to see if they would experience anything like what we had experienced. Having heard what happened, they were more than eager to give it a shot.

“Hello?” they called as they started up the stairs.

Almost immediately, they heard a response. It was unquestionably a female voice, moaning, asking for help. They were still absorbing it when they saw movement on the stairs above them.

Running up the stairs, they saw something grab the hand-rail and look down at them. Then it seemed to disappear—and reappear a level closer to them. It was as if the thing was coming down, not running away from them. Then they saw a small explosion of light and the figure vanished.

Brian was jazzed beyond belief. What he had experienced made everything worthwhile—all the angst, all the backbreaking work. He had seen almost a full-body apparition, the Mona Lisa of paranormal activity. “I can die a happy man now,” he told us.

Grant and I had seen the thing. So had Brian and Dustin. The only one who hadn’t was Steve, who had held back from exploring the tower because of his acrophobia. But what we had seen changed his mind. He had to experience it for himself.

It wasn’t easy for him to go up those stairs in the dark, all by himself, even with a flashlight in his hand. But he didn’t want to be the only one who left the lighthouse emptyhanded. After a while, Grant and I decided to join him for support.

It wasn’t long before we heard footsteps. A moment later, we caught a glimpse of something—a moving shadow. But it wasn’t as close or as distinct as what we had seen before.

“Show us a sign,” we asked. “Please.”

Just then, we spotted something on the landing above us—a shadow. And we heard noises like the ones Grant and I had heard before. We swept up the stairs, hoping to see the figure again.

But we couldn’t find it.

Steve was disappointed. We stayed on the stairs for a while, hoping something would happen. But eventually, we had to call it a day. As we left the tower, I heard Steve mutter to himself, “Damn.”

Later that night, when we had a chance to talk with our TV production crew, we found out they had had experiences as well. Justin Tucker, a production assistant, had seen bright orange light come out of the tower entrance and go off into the trees just after Grant and I entered the lighthouse. Others heard their voices being called several times, but couldn’t see who was calling them.

Some of them were so spooked they refused to go back into the lighthouse, even if it cost them their jobs. Kendall Whelpton, the camera operator, felt his headphone removed from one of his ears and heard someone whisper to him. It shook him up so much he needed a moment to regain his equilibrium.

The sound man back in the lighthouse keeper’s residence, who was monitoring the audio in the tower, heard the cry for help that Grant and I had heard. It was so clear, so distinct, that he almost dropped his coffee. After that, he wouldn’t go near the tower for anything.

Finally, we called it a night, packed up, and took the data we had collected back to our hotel. We’re always eager to see what we’ve unearthed on an investigation. This time, “eager” didn’t begin to describe it.

The evidence was everything we could have hoped for. Our video footage clearly showed a shadow at the top of the stair. A moment later, we heard a female voice crying for help, and saw the shadow dart to the right.

It was exactly what Grant and I had witnessed in the tower. Then something or someone peeked over the railing. Had it been a person, a light would have gone off, triggered by the tower’s motion sensor. But it remained dark.

We took the video back to the lighthouse and showed it to Wenglowsky, who had always been amused by the lighthouse’s reputation but hadn’t believed in anything like ghosts. When he saw the footage and heard the call for help, he turned pale. “That lighthouse is haunted,” he said.