St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum
St. Augustine, Florida, United States
Other · established
The Story
At St. Augustine’s spiral-striped lighthouse, stories of childlike laughter and disappearing figures sit alongside the lives of the keepers. The museum offers both historical admission and specific paranormal experiences, including Dark of the Moon and investigation-only events.
The Hauntings
A working coastal light is also a place where people once made a home. The tower and keepers’ quarters at St. Augustine preserve those two worlds: navigation above, family rooms below. The museum’s evening programs change the way visitors encounter the station, allowing time for its ghost stories after the ordinary daytime visit. They also keep the experience connected to the care of a real historic site, with its maritime collections and surviving lighthouse machinery. The museum recounts a staff member hearing laughter high in the tower, climbing to check for a remaining visitor, then hearing the same sound below. It also preserves accounts of a little girl seen beside a bed or on the wooded grounds, disappearing when the observer looked again. These stories are associated locally with children who died during the station’s construction. Earlier keeper lore concerns footsteps in the house when no one could be found upstairs. The museum connects that recollection with its last period of resident keepers in the 1950s. The named historical children and the figures in later reports belong to different kinds of evidence: the museum tells the haunting connection as a tradition, without a recovered identity for every child apparition.
The History
On July 10, 1873, a construction cart carrying four girls overturned into the water. Mary and Eliza Pittee and an unnamed Black girl drowned; Carrie Pittee survived. The museum has not established the third child’s name through its historical research. The Coast Guard chronology dates the new tower’s first lighting to October 15, 1874. Keepers moved into the new station in 1876, and the older tower later fell into the sea. Automation in 1955 ended the resident-keeper era. After a destructive 1970 fire in the keeper’s house, preservation efforts led by the Junior Service League helped rescue the station. The lighthouse remains an active aid to navigation under nonprofit stewardship.
A sense of place.
Visitor Experiences
Have you experienced something here?
This future chapter will bring together stories from the PHASM community. An unexpected encounter, a lingering feeling, or a quiet visit—your experience will be welcome.
Submissions are not open yet.
Sources & further reading.
- St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum — Ghost Stories: The Pittee Girls (history)
- United States Coast Guard Historian’s Office — St. Augustine Lighthouse (history)
- St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum — Ghost Stories: The Pittee Girls (reports)
- St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum — Plan Your Visit (visiting)
Plan Your Visit
Use the official visitor page to choose ordinary admission, a storytelling tour, Dark of the Moon or an investigation-only experience. Private after-hours arrangements require separate approval. The museum lists 100 Red Cox Drive as its GPS arrival address. Tower climbing is weather-dependent and subject to height and mobility conditions; a general ticket does not grant after-hours access. Commercial photography and drone use require additional permission.