Georgetown Lighthouse

The ghost of Annie, a young girl who drowned while tied to her lighthouse-keeper father's back during a storm, appears in Winyah Bay before hurricanes to warn sailors. Footsteps still climb the empty tower stairs.

Sailors in Winyah Bay used to say that if you saw a little girl on your boat before a storm, you'd make it home. That was Annie.

The Georgetown Lighthouse stands 72 feet tall on North Island at the mouth of Winyah Bay, built around 1812. For most of its working life it was a lonely post. The keeper and his equipment, a small dock, and whatever family he brought with him. One keeper was a widower raising his daughter alone. Annie was seven or eight years old.

The story goes like this: the keeper took a supply run to shore with Annie. On the return trip, the weather turned violent. Waves swamped the boat and it started to sink. The father tied Annie to his back, figuring he could swim them both to shore. He made it. Barely. He collapsed on the sand, completely spent, and fell asleep with Annie still strapped to him. When he woke up, he untied her. She was dead. She'd drowned while he slept, her face pressed against his back.

After that, the keeper fell apart. He stopped maintaining the light. He wandered the island calling Annie's name, falling to his knees on the beach. He died in the lighthouse not long after, though no account pins down exactly when or how.

Local fishermen and sailors started seeing a small boat in Winyah Bay crewed by a man and a little girl, rowing through calm water just before a hurricane or severe storm rolled in. They took it as a warning. If you saw Annie's boat, you headed for port. Over time, the girl became less of a ghost story and more of a navigational superstition. Seamen considered Annie a guardian angel who came aboard to warn them of what was coming.

Footsteps are still heard climbing the tower stairs when no one is inside. Nobody's sure if it's the keeper making his rounds or Annie trying to reach the top. The lighthouse is accessible only by boat, sitting on a largely undeveloped barrier island, which makes it one of the more remote haunted sites on the South Carolina coast.