Suky Occasions Blog

Tales of Adventure and Ghosts in Maine Lighthouses

Long before satellite-powered GPS navigation and radar, the only guiding light to safety was the lonely lighthouse. Many men and woman owed their lives to these trustworthy sentinels of the sea and their solitary inhabitants; the Maine lighthouse keepers. And while lives were saved, many souls were lost and hopes dashed along the rocky shores near these Maine lighthouses. Tales of great bravery live on to this day. One occurred in 1885 during the wreck of the schooner Australia during a ragging snowstorm in huge waves and below zero temperatures. Disregarding his own safety, lighthouse keeper Marcus Hanna heroically waded into the icy numbing ocean waters and saved two “nearly dead” sailors on the rocks below the Cape Elizabeth Light.  Of course, there are tales of keepers gone mad from isolation. Some of these stories rival the horror of Maine author Stephen King’s “The Shining.”  One such tale includes the murder of the keeper’s wife on the Sequin Island light. Located offshore in one of the bleakest and ”foggiest places in the United States”, the keeper bought his wife a piano to ease her boredom. She only knew one tune which she played over, and over – and over again. Driven to madness, the keeper “strangled his wife and took and axe to the piano” and then committed suicide. To this day, some say you can still hear the ghostly refrain wafting through the fog on moonless nights on the Kennebec River.