It’s a creepy story all right: A lonely island wife who played the same song on her piano over and over and over. A lighthouse keeper who couldn’t take it anymore, who picked up an axe. Splintered the piano. Killed them both.
Jeremy D’Entremont tells the tale behind one of Maine’s most popular haunted lighthouse legends . . . a tale that’s almost certainly fiction.
After 25 years of research and more than a half-dozen books, the New Hampshire author is a walking compendium of lighthouse facts, factoids and myths. We asked him to share in time for Open Lighthouse Day. On Sept. 18, 25 Maine lighthouses, some of which rarely open, will welcome the public. Read his tales, then check out the places for yourself.
Just keep an ear open for the tinkle of piano music on the breeze.
This work can take a toll: Fog dogs
Used to be that in poor weather, lighthouse keepers would start up a fog bell to warn passing ships not to come too close to the rocks.
Sometimes their dogs got into the act.
D’Entremont, who has written “Great Shipwrecks of the Maine Coast” and “The Lighthouses of Maine,” counts two well-known “fog dogs,” Sailor at Wood Island Light and Spot at Owls Head Light.
“I believe in both cases, from what I’ve been able to find, the dogs just started doing it on their own,” he said.
Sailor, a blackish dog who lived on the island 100 years ago, had a rep as a free spirit.
“He loved to greet the passing boats by ringing the bell and they would sound their horn or bell in response,” D’Entremont said. “It sounds like he just ate it up, really loved it. He was described as having almost-human intelligence.”
Spot also rang out hellos, and word is that he was a hero. The springer spaniel lived on Owls Head in the 1930s.
He was dozing once inside during a snowstorm when “all of a sudden he perked up like he heard something and he had to get outside. He ran outside and the (Matinicus) mail boat was coming very close to the rocks, they weren’t able to see well at all,” D’Entremont said.
“They say he just started barking as loudly as he could, frantically, at the boat, and the captain heard the barking in time. He was credited with saving that boat from being wrecked.”
Angeli Perrow turned it into a children’s book, “Lighthouse Dog to the Rescue.”
D’Entremont said it was pretty common for keepers’ families to have cats and dogs as pets. One of the stranger true cat tales: The story of a 19-pound tabby named Sambo Tonkus. He lived on Nubble Light, about 100 feet off Cape Neddick, in the 1930s.
“Visitors would see this big cat swimming back and forth across the channel, which they didn’t expect to see,” D’Entremont said. “They say he caught all the mice on the island then got bored out there and started swimming over to look for mice and things around the rocks.”
What, no Cow Island?
Maine lighthouse islands have been named from every sort of inspiration.
D’Entremont’s research found Burnt Coat Harbor Light came from Burnt Coast, which originated from Samuel de Champlain’s calling it Brule-Cote.
Seguin Island Light, D’Entremont writes on his extensive website, might be named after “a corruption of an Indian word that means ‘place where the sea vomits.’”
The animal aisles are a little more straightforward.
“There’s several Ram Islands and several Goat Islands on the coast,” he said. “In the early days, settlers would pasture animals on the islands. You didn’t have to build a fence or anything, it’s basically a self-contained area. . . . There’s some Sheep Islands, too.”
Bear Island, on the other hand? Probably nothing to do with actual bears, he said.
Wooo-ooo-ooo
Back in 2008, D’Entremont acted as host at the Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse in New Hampshire when Syfy Channel’s “Ghost Hunters” came calling.
“They had knocking they couldn’t explain, footsteps on the stairs, a slamming door in the keeper’s house and a number of other things,” he said. “We get calls and e-mails all the time from groups wanting to do investigations. We can’t handle them all.”
When it comes to bumps in the night, “there’s so many lighthouse ghost stories,” D’Entremont said.
He’s heard of a sea captain’s statue that might move by itself at the Prospect Harbor Light. Of a Woman in White spotted at the Boon Island Light. Of a real life murder-suicide on Wood Island — a drunk tenant killed his landlord, then himself — that could be responsible for the noises heard to this day, “weird sounds in the house like somebody’s there and nobody’s there,” D’Entremont said.
The story of the bored wife, her piano and the ax-wielding keeper was supposed to have taken place on Seguin.
“There’s no record of any murder or suicide on the island, and except for its early history, it was pretty much a multifamily station; there wouldn’t have just been one husband and wife there,” D’Entremont said.
So, case closed?
Not quite.
A few years ago he found himself on a Coast Guard boat with a woman who’d been out to Seguin the week before. She’d heard soft piano music. And she didn’t know about the tale.
“She described it as sounding like a memory, which is a pretty interesting way to describe music,” D’Entremont said. “There was a caretaker on the island, she said to him, ‘That was really pretty. Who was playing the piano?’ And he said, ‘There’s no piano here, nobody was playing any kind of music. You must have heard the ghost.’”
Weird, Wicked Weird is a monthly feature on the strange, unexplained and intriguing in Maine. Send ideas, photos and self-propelled statuary to [email protected]
Go and do
* The second annual Open Lighthouse Day in Maine is Sept. 18 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. It’s a team-up of the Coast Guard, Maine Office of Tourism and the American Lighthouse Foundation. Twenty-five lighthouses are open; some require paying for a boat ride.
FMI: lighthouseday.com
* New England Ghost Project is doing daytime ghost tours and an overnight investigation at Wood Island on Sept. 11 to benefit the Friends of Wood Island Lighthouse. The overnight investigation ($100/pp) is sold out; look for another next summer. Tours ($20/pp) at 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. have openings.
* NEGP and Friends of Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse are doing an evening investigation there that’s open to the public from 8 p.m. to midnight on Sept. 18 ($60/pp.)
FMI: portsmouthharborlighthouse.org
* On Oct. 27, author Jeremy D’Entremont is giving a talk on haunted lighthouses at the North Hampton Public Library in N.H., 7 p.m.
FMI: lighthouse.cc
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