Whispers of Fire Island Lighthouse being haunted are a longstanding fixture of Long Island lore, but is there any truth to these haunting rumors?
On the freezing night of Friday, January 7, 2022, seven paranormal investigators convened at the lighthouse, drawn like moths to the glow of its ghostly reputation. The frankly spooky videos and photos produced by this investigation and shared with Great South Bay News may help finally answer that question.
Many Fire Islanders grew up hearing some version of the following ghost story about our lighthouse: Years ago, a lighthouse keeper lived in the lighthouse with his young daughter. One day, she fell ill, forcing the lighthouse keeper to call for a doctor from the mainland. A storm delayed the doctor’s arrival, allowing the young girl to die before help could reach what was then a remote outpost. The lighthouse keeper was broken by this event and hung himself in the tower in an act of extreme guilt and grief. Now, the ghosts of the young girl and her remorseful father haunt the lighthouse to this day.
Jonathon Gaare, Executive Director of the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society (FILPS), says that neither he nor anyone else at the lighthouse has seen any documentation to validate this legend. However, he did say that the family tragedy “sounds like a very plausible story” for a lighthouse keeper and their family in that era.
Numerous documented shipwreck-related deaths occurred along Fire Island, which led to the construction of the lighthouse and multiple life-saving stations along the barrier island.
This paranormal lore and history led paranormal investigators Matthew J Haas and Gerard Simonelli to contact former FILPS Executive Director Tony Feminella in October 2021 to get permission to investigate the lighthouse. Permission was granted, allowing the investigation to proceed.
Great South Bay News spoke with of Hass Paranormal, a husband and wife-run volunteer paranormal research organization, about that investigation’s methods and findings. Haas was one of seven investigators representing three paranormal research organizations (Haas Paranormal, Beezy Paranormal, and Teds Paranormal) who were present that January night along with Feminella. Haas says it was the first time that the Fire Island Lighthouse has been opened up to paranormal investigation.
The investigation was conducted in pitch black using various devices called “trigger objects,” including traditional cameras, night vision cameras, thermal infrared cameras, electromagnetic field detectors, a device called a “spirit box,” and an EchoVox app. Haas said that many of these tools are premised on the “theory that when ghosts manifest, they’re drawing energy from around the environment,” making them viewable as phenomena like cold spots or electromagnetic readings. He clarified investigators rule out readings caused by appliances and other explicable factors.
The concept that ghosts control energy is also the idea behind the spirit box and EchoVox app. The spirit box is an AM radio playing white noise that supposedly allows “spirits to communicate by changing energy to create words” in the noise. Hass explained the EchoVox app as a library of phonetic sounds that play randomly until a spirit uses its energy-influencing abilities to make it say something specific like its name in life.
Using these tools, the paranormal investigators produced several noteworthy pieces of potential evidence of spirits within the lighthouse.
The most compelling was a night-vision camera video showing a disembodied translucent torso or “half apparition” appearing and disappearing in the lighthouse gift shop. Investigators also captured audio using EchoVox in the lighthouse basement of what they say was the ghost of Margaret Fuller (a prominent author and women’s activist who died in a shipwreck off Fire Island) saying her name. Fuller died in 1850, eight years before the current Fire Island Lighthouse was constructed. *
Finally, in the lighthouse tower, investigators captured an image of a shadow on an informational plaque that was supposedly invisible to investigators when the camera flash went off. Whether these images and audio are genuinely supernatural or mere pareidolia-fueled illusions captured by enthusiastic people actively looking for the inexplicable is best left to the reader.
“I have never seen any scary ghosts in our lighthouse,” said Gaare. “If there are ghosts, I’m sure they’re very nice.”
Gaare also shared his theory that the origin of historic lighthouse ghost sightings was the isolation and exposure to hazardous substances like lead and mercury faced by historic lighthouse keepers.
Meanwhile, while Haas admits that even with his tools, he cannot scientifically prove the existence of ghosts, he still believes that our lighthouse is haunted. He offers this challenge to skeptics: “Go visit that [haunted] location and see if you can’t have that experience yourself.”
Apparition in the Fire Island Lighthouse Gift Shop? See the Video by Haas Paranormal! Find additional footage on our Instagram page.
