tour guide for the lighthouse. Steele relates that Jeremiah Ingraham, who died in 1840, is believed to have been killed by his wife, Michaela, who took over the lighthouse keeper's duties until her own death fifteen years later. Although Ingraham died in the original lighthouse, his ghost is believed to roam the present structure built a short distance away. Unexplained bloodstains were reported in an upstairs bedroom of the keeper's quarters, covered by tile laid during an earlier renovation. In the later renovation, completed in 1995, tile was removed and indeed bloodstains were there. The original pinewood floor revealed the stains as workers removed the felt and vinyl tiles which had lain there since the 1950s. “The stains are definitely blood,” said Leo Glenn, a construction supervisor. The stains include one large, dark blotch and several splatters. “We figured there was a bed here in the middle and they fought all the way around the bed,” he said. Although there are no official records of a murder having taken place in that room, Dick Callaway, Cultural Resource Manager for the Naval Air Station, believes the stains are blood.
 Emmit Hatten, who lived in the lighthouse when his father was keeper, told of how his mother scrubbed the bloodstains to remove them, only to have them repeatedly reappear. Hatten also said he heard human breathing when no one else was around, and his parents heard footsteps on the massive iron staircase at night.
A Navy Recreation Department employee had experiences that have gone unexplained. During his rounds, he noticed that one of the windows about halfway up the lighthouse was open. He climbed the stairs, and closed and locked the window. When he returned to his car, he noticed that the window was again open. He climbed back up, relocked the window, and, returning to his car, saw that it had been opened yet again.
Steele, the former Coast Guard tour guide, has found several doors open that were supposedly secured. When he and his wife were in the lighthouse one time, they heard a heavy iron trap door, at the top of the stairs which allows access to the light room, slam shut. Steele said he went to investigate, and the door was locked. “This is a strange place,” Steele was quoted as saying. |
