In Brief
At the St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida, the lore is two girls in 19th-century dresses, seen playing near the tower, and children's laughter that drifts down the steps at closing. They're said to be the builder's daughters, who drowned before the light ever lit.
The Full Story
Children's laughter drifts down the 219 steps of the St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida at closing time, or so the staff there will tell you. They tie it to two girls people report seeing in 19th-century dresses, playing near the base of the black-and-white tower. The girls are supposed to be the daughters of the man who built the place.
The current 165-foot tower went up between 1871 and 1874 on the north end of Anastasia Island, under construction superintendent Hezekiah Pittee. To haul materials from the supply ships at Salt Run, crews ran a small rail-cart down to the water and back. Pittee's children rode it for fun, like a rollercoaster, and a single wooden board at the end of the rail was the only thing that kept the cart from rolling into the water.
On July 10, 1873, the board wasn't there.
The cart flipped into Salt Run and pinned the children underneath it. A young worker named Dan Sessions reached them and, the official museum account says, "using all his strength, he lifted it from atop the girls." It was too late for most of them. Three of the four drowned — Mary, 15, Eliza, 13, and a girl about 10 whose name the museum can't be sure of. Only four-year-old Carrie Pittee came out alive. The tower the girls had been waiting on wouldn't be lit for another fifteen months.
The laughter, staff say, belongs to them. Visitors and guides report the two girls in dresses, giggling in the tower, doors found open after they were locked. On the night tours, staff say the girls tie shoelaces to the iron steps and play with the glowsticks handed out to guests.
These days the lighthouse sells the dark on purpose, with a "Dark of the Moon" tour that runs after hours. But the glowsticks the guests fidget with on those tours are the same ones the staff say small hands keep taking. The place packaged its own ghost story, then started handing the children toys.
