Introduction: In this article, still in the spirit of Halloween, Melissa Davenport Berry concludes her story about a haunted lighthouse in Boston Harbor. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
Today is the conclusion of the George Worthylake Boston Light series.
To recap: My last two stories featured the history of George Worthylake and the Boston Light (the first lighthouse in what is now the U.S.). (You can catch up by reading Part I and Part II.)
Life at the lighthouse became eerie after George, his wife, and a daughter died in a tragic accident. Here are stories from past keepers who reported haunted happenings at the Boston Light.
Ghost of George Worthylake
This Boston Herald article is about Boston Light’s history and its ghost.
This article reports:
Every now and then when a thick fog rolls in and waves are crashing on the rocks of Little Brewster Island, Coast Guard Petty Officer Gary Fleming says he can hear the ghost of Boston Light tromping around inside the historic building.
“It really does get spooky. You have plenty of time here and if you let your mind go, you can freak yourself out,” said Fleming, who definitely believes in spirits.
“Like last night, Sam (the light’s mascot black Labrador) was acting real weird. He would stand up, run out of the room for no reason and was shaking all over,” Fleming said.
The ghost is supposed to be George Worthylake, the first keeper of Boston Light, the oldest lighthouse in the country and one of the few manned lighthouses worldwide.
In 1718, Worthylake and his family drowned when the canoe they were riding back to the lighthouse was swamped in a sudden gale.
Young Benjamin Franklin, then a printer in Boston, wrote a ballad about the incident entitled “The Lighthouse Tragedy” and sold it on the streets of the young city.
That’s just part of the history of Boston Light, which opened Sept. 14, 1716, and has stood guard at the entrance to Boston Harbor ever since, through blizzards, hurricanes, and violent storms.
The Lighthouse’s worst days came during the Revolutionary War when the British captured it, then blew it up when they left Boston in 1776.
Very little was left of the building. The top of it was used to supply ladles for American cannons during the rest of the war.
Boston Light was rebuilt in 1783 and an addition was added in 1856, Fleming said.
The Ghost Likes Classical Music
There are also lots of Ghost George “spottings” mentioned in Sam Baltrusis’ book, Haunted Boston Harbor.
One came from Keeper Dennis Dever in the 1980s who told Baltrusis that one day he was in the kitchen of the keeper’s house looking out the window at the tower, and he clearly saw a man in the lantern room. This was quite alarming, as the only other person on the island was his assistant in the next room.
From a distance it appeared that the figure at the top of the tower was wearing an old-fashioned keeper’s uniform. Dever rushed to the tower and went up the stairs, finding the lantern room empty.
Keeper Dever also noted to Baltrusis that on several occasions working in the station’s boathouse he would be listening to his favorite rock station. With nobody else in the boathouse, the station would change itself to a classical station. Dever said he and other Coast Guard crew attributed events like this to “Old George” Worthylake.
In 1989 Dever was featured in several newspapers, including the Watertown Daily Times, because of the impending automation of Boston Light. The automation did happen – but the tradition of keeping a keeper at the lighthouse was maintained.
This article quotes Dever:
“You need a lot of ingenuity out here. We do pretty much the same things they did in the 1700s, except we have electricity and motorized lawn mowers. In the winter, the wind blows all the time. You can get an eerie feeling when it’s foggy and a door’s banging in the wind.”
Here is another version of one of the photographs that appears in the article.
The Witching Hour
“Old George” is not the only spook known to haunt the island. Reports through the years include paranormal activities accredited to others.
“Some strange things do happen out here,” Keeper Sally Snowman told the Boston Globe in 2003, “like the fog signal which works on reading moisture in the air going off at 3 AM [witching hour] on a star-filled night.”
Snowman also noted her mascot black lab gets pretty riled up when the sun sets and calls it “Shadwell’s hour,” named for George Worthylake’s servant who drowned that tragic night in 1718.
In 1991 Keeper Scott Gamble named his island mascot, a handsome German Shepherd, Shadwell.
Keeper Tells Yankee Magazine about Strange Happenings
In 1947 Mazie B. Anderson, along with her husband Boston Light Keeper Russell Anderson and their children, were caretakers living on the island.
Several years after the Andersons left their post Mazie was featured in Yankee Magazine (1998) relating her haunting encounters.
Mazie said that while her family was taking care of Boston Light, she frequently heard footsteps, but no one was there. One night as she tried to sleep, she felt a presence in the room and later “horrible maniacal laughter” echoing from the boathouse.
On one occasion the fog signal engines started and the light mysteriously went on by itself. Mazie saw a mysterious figure of a man who was laughing.
Another night she heard a little girl’s sobbing voice calling “Shaaaadwell!” over and over.
Later Mazie found out that Shadwell died while valiantly trying to save the others, including the Worthylakes’ daughter Ruth, during the tragic drowning in 1718.
Check out more intel on the site at New England Lighthouses.
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Note on the header image: Boston Light, Little Brewster Island, Boston Harbor, Massachusetts. Credit: Melissa Davenport Berry.
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