Ocracoke Lighthouse

Built in 1823, the Ocracoke Lighthouse is the second-oldest operating lighthouse in America and the smallest on the Outer Banks at 75 feet. It guards Ocracoke Inlet, near where the infamous pirate Blackbeard met his violent end.

The Ocracoke Lighthouse stands at the southern end of Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks, a squat white tower just seventy-five feet tall that has guided mariners through the treacherous waters of Ocracoke Inlet since 1823. Built by Massachusetts contractor Noah Porter, it is the oldest operating lighthouse in North Carolina and the second oldest in the United States. The lighthouse was strategically placed near the inlet that had served as both a vital shipping channel and, a century earlier, as the favorite hideout of the most notorious pirate in American history.

Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, made the sheltered waters around Ocracoke his base of operations during the final years of the Golden Age of Piracy. The shallow channels and hidden coves around the inlet -- particularly the stretch of water known as Teach's Hole -- provided ideal anchorage for his fleet. On November 22, 1718, the British Royal Navy cornered Blackbeard in a fierce battle at Teach's Hole. Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the HMS Pearl engaged the pirate in close combat. According to historical accounts, Blackbeard sustained five musket ball wounds and twenty sword cuts before he finally fell. Maynard severed the pirate's head and hung it from the bowsprit of his sloop as proof of the kill, later collecting the bounty placed on Blackbeard by the Governor of Virginia. The headless body, according to legend, was thrown overboard -- and swam seven full circles around Maynard's ship before finally sinking beneath the dark waters of Pamlico Sound.

Blackbeard is Ocracoke's most famous ghost, and sightings of his spirit have been reported across the island for three centuries. Near the lighthouse and along the beach, visitors describe seeing a headless figure in tattered seafarer's clothing wandering the shore, sometimes carrying a spectral lantern that flickers with an unnatural light. Others report a strange glowing beneath the water at Teach's Hole, as though something luminous moves just below the surface. On windy nights, some claim to hear a voice roaring across the water with the words, "Where's my head?" -- the eternal question of a pirate who was denied even the dignity of a complete burial.

The lighthouse and the waters it overlooks carry another supernatural legend. Each September, on the first night of the new moon, a flaming ship is said to sail past the coast of Ocracoke Island. The phantom vessel resembles the ships that brought German refugees from the Rhine Valley to America in the early 1700s, and according to local tradition, it burns silently across the horizon before vanishing. Whether this ghostly ship is connected to Blackbeard, to the countless vessels that foundered in the Graveyard of the Atlantic, or to some other tragedy lost to history, it adds another layer of the supernatural to an island already steeped in legends of piracy and the dead.

The Ocracoke Lighthouse is maintained by the National Park Service as part of Cape Hatteras National Seashore. While the tower itself is not open for climbing, the grounds are accessible, and the lighthouse remains an active navigational aid. Visitors come for the history and the beauty, but on dark nights near Teach's Hole, some come hoping to glimpse the headless pirate who still searches for what Lieutenant Maynard took from him more than three hundred years ago.