Lighthouses may be beacons of light and hope for some; for others, they are haunted places. With their rugged seaside locations, connection to shipwrecks, and other maritime accidents during storms, not to mention the association of loneliness and madness that some lighthouse keepers experienced, it's only fitting that lighthouses are the subject of ghostly tales.

Here are three local Midcoast lighthouses which have had its share of spooky sightings.

Owls Head Light

According to NewEnglandLighthouses.net, Owls Head Light, which juts out on a stunning promontory, has more than its share of ghost stories. Here is one:

In the mid-1980s, Coast Guard keeper Andy Germann went outside one night to ensure some construction materials were in their proper place as the lighthouse and tower were undergoing renovations. His wife, Denise, told The Bangor Daily News that she felt the bed move and assumed her husband had come back inside. According to the story by New England Lighthouses' website: "When she turned over, she saw the 'indentation of a body' next to her. The indentation was moving as if an invisible person was shifting in the bed. 'I’m a pretty practical person,' she says. 'I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I’m positive it wasn’t a dream.' After a few minutes, she asked the 'visitor' to go away so she could get some sleep."

Matinicus Rock Light

New England Folklore's blog has an unsettling story reiterating a ghostly tale from Horace Beck's 1957 book The Folklore of Maine. Beck researched lighthouses in Maine for the book, including the lighthouse on Matinicus Rock, located about five miles from Matinicus Island in Penobscot Bay. Built in 1827, the lighthouse had two towers, a north and south tower; however, only the a south tower remained lit while the north tower was decommissioned and locked up. After inquiring why, Beck was told that a long time ago, a lighthouse keeper hanged himself in that tower and that his ghost "could be heard roaming through the tower on dark, windy nights. The ghost also broke dishes, slammed doors, and made equipment malfunction."

Marshall Point Lighthouse

There was nothing scary about Tom Hanks running up the walkway in the 1994 movie Forrest Gump, but if you go back to the early 20th century, people reported seeing the ghost of a teenager around Marshall Point Road who was allegedly killed by rumrunners who discovered he'd found their stash. According to American Ghost Walks, the boy, Ben Bennet, was murdered after running through the woods to escape the rumrunners, and people still claim to see his ghost wandering that road in foggy nights. 

"I have heard of ghost stories attached to Owls Head Light and Matinicus Rock," said Bob Trapani, the Executive Director for the nonprofit American Lighthouse Foundation said, Along with having served as a U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliarist and a lighthouse technician for 22 years assisting the USCG in maintaining the lights and fog horns at 26 lighthouses from Port Clyde to the Canadian border, he is also the author of Gleams and Whispers: Maine’s Lighthouses and Their Allure and was featured in a PenBay Pilot article. 

Still, Trapani has yet to experience what other lighthouse keepers have.  "I spent twelve years working in the keeper's house at Owls Head, and personally, I have not experienced anything unusual," he said.

It's Halloween night; do you dare go visit one tonight?

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com