The century between 1840 and 1940 is largely considered to be the golden age of the modern lighthouse. In the United States alone, the number of lighthouses went from 16 to roughly 1,500 during this time. The rest of the world, especially Europe and its colonies, also went through a lighthouse-building frenzy, but nowhere else reached the heights that America did.
Kevin Blake, a geographer at Kansas State University who has written about lighthouses, says that the buildings appeal to Americans’ “rugged individualism” and “pioneer spirit.” They represent a frontier and the spirit of survival—one keeper facing the odds, weathering the seas and storms, with self-sufficiency and grit. Keepers were often veterans, which added to the heroic air the job carried, according to Blake.
There’s also an aura of “mystery associated with lighthouses,” he says. As superior navigation equipment began to replace lighthouses and automated lighting systems began to replace the keepers for the ones that remained, “this slow loss of change, this sense that America was losing something unique, is when ghost stories came in.”
Michigan, with 129, has more lighthouses than any other state. Many of those lighthouses, says Stampfler, have a ghost story or two. A lighthouse is like a “safety port” for ghosts, she says, and spirits of “keepers, ship captains, sailors—they all can become residual spirits,” drawn, as you might expect, to the light.
One tragic story that has always fascinated Stampfler comes from South Manitou Island Lighthouse, on a small, sleepy island about 45 miles northwest of Traverse City. Between 1866 and 1878, Civil War veteran Aaron Sheridan and his new bride Julia operated the lighthouse. Julia was officially recognized as the lighthouse’s assistant keeper in 1871 (along with many other women who worked both as keepers and assistant keepers—even today). Over the course of 12 years there, the couple had six sons.
Then, on March 15, 1878, Aaron, Julia, and their youngest son Robert were returning from the Michigan mainland with the help of a local sailor named Christ Ancharson. The waters were calm until they neared the lighthouse and “the wind went down and one of the old seas capsized the boat,” Ancharson said later. The minutes ticked by as Christ, Aaron, Julia, and little Robert clung to the overturned boat, screaming for help. Baby Robert was the first to go, dying in Julia’s arms. Then, Aaron and Julia, too, slipped beneath the waves. Only Ancharson survived, after four and a half hours holding on to the slippery hull.
The bodies of the family never washed ashore, but their ghosts, according to legend, still haunt the remote lighthouse. “Visitors have reported hearing the echo of voices, the sounds of footsteps and other unexplained noises coming from the causeway, which connects the boarded-up keeper’s residence to the light tower,” writes Stampfler. Stampfler herself even visited the lighthouse and spent “time slowly climbing the tower and listening for the cries of the Sheridans,” without success, she says.