Currituck Lighthouse

Oct 18 2016, 10:59 am

       Currituck Lighthouse on the northern North Carolina Outer Banks was first lit on December 1, 1875 and is 162 feet high with 220 steps to reach the lens. It is a first order lighthouse, meaning it has the largest of seven Fresnel lens sizes. This light has a 20-second flash cycle (on for 3 seconds, off for 17 seconds), and can be seen for 18 nautical miles. The distinctive sequence enables the lighthouse not only to warn mariners but also to help identify their locations. Currituck was the last brick lighthouse built on the Outer Banks. Its brick facade was left unpainted to distinguish the light from other lighthouses, and allows one to grasp just how many bricks it took to build. Like a million!

And it’s haunted………..

Well, not the light itself but the North Room of the light keepers house.

Of course, now the light is automated, but until the 1939 the light was manually operated, you know, by people, and their families who lived on the property. And it seems some of these people could still be hanging about.

The Johnson family was the first to live in the keeper’s quarters. They adopted Sadie Johnson after the death of her parents. While living there, it was believed Sadie’s bedroom was the North Room. That is, until she drowned. There are two versions of her death. One says Sadie was often told not to play in the sand by the shore but paid the no attention. One day she didn’t return from her sand castle building. The next day her body washed ashore. Another version says she was swimming with her friends and disappeared. Since then it has been thought her spirit returned to her old bedroom. In both versions everyone assumed the drowning was a horrible accident. Until the next deaths occurred, that is.

 A lady visiting the keeper’s wife was given the north bedroom.  She was stricken with a mysterious illness and died. Another keeper’s wife contracted tuberculosis and was confined and quarantined to the north bedroom. With family and friends kept away it’s said she lost interest in living and she too became a victim of the North Room. After she passed, so the story goes, her clothing and sheets were put into a barrel and kept in the room for fear of the disease spreading. After the automation of the lighthouse in 1939, the home fell into disrepair but the barrel remained in the North Room. Children from the village of Corolla were told not to go into the North Room. But you know kids. All they heard was go into the room. The kids opened the barrel and their parents found them playing with the clothes and sheets. The clothes and sheets were immediately burned.

Is a supernatural phenomenon really to blame for those deaths? No one can say for sure. What is known is that the North Room remains a dark, foreboding area in the historic house. Many a guest has refused to enter the room, citing a chill hanging in the air and feeling an icy breath on their necks. The light keeper in the 80s said a guest who spent the night in the house said during the night someone, or something, kept trying to pull the sheets off the bed. Really? And she stayed in the bed? O. Hell no.  Others have reported seeing visions.

The current keepers says there are no ghosts. It is simply drafts and a creaking, groaning old house. Whether ghosts actually haunt the North Room is uncertain. For over a century, the room has seen the loss of loved ones and their presence may remain, keeping watch over the North Room.