Lighthouse Water View
by D Hackett
Title
Lighthouse Water View
Artist
D Hackett
Medium
Photograph - Digital
Description
Lighthouse Water View by D Hackett
A Spanish watchtower, built in the late 1500's was the predecessor of the present St. Augustine Lighthouse. St. Augustine is the site of the oldest aid to navigation in North America. The original watchtower became Florida's first lighthouse in 1824. However, by 1870, the tower was threatened by shoreline erosion and construction began on the current lighthouse. The new tower was completed in 1874. The old tower succumbed to the sea during a storm in 1880.
Constructed of Alabama brick and Philadelphia iron, the lighthouse is St. Augustine's oldest surviving brick structure. In 1876, a brick light keeper's house was added to the site. Light keepers' and their assistants lived and worked there until the tower was automated in 1955.
The St. Augustine Lighthouse rises 165 feet above sea level and contains 219 steps. At the top, a first order Fresnel lens serves the beacon but today is lit by a 1000 watt bulb, and maintained by the museum and volunteers. The St. Augustine lens consists of 370 hand-cut glass prisms arranged in a beehive shape towering twelve feet tall and six feet in diameter.
Many visitors and others believe that the lighthouse and surrounding buildings have a history of paranormal activity. Allegedly, visitors and workers have seen moving shadows, heard voices and unexplained sounds, and seen the figures of two little girls standing on the lighthouse catwalk (who purportedly were daughters of Hezekiah Pittee, Superintendent of Lighthouse Construction, during the 1870s; the girls drowned in an accident during the building of the tower). Other reports are of a woman seen on the lighthouse stairway or walking in the yard outside the buildings, and the figure of a man who roams the basement, or the unexplained smell of cigar smoke. The male figure is said to possibly be Civil War hero and former lighthouse keeper William A. Harn.
Stories like these led The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) to the site, where they shot an episode of the Syfy show Ghost Hunters. During this episode, TAPS claim to have captured a few mysterious incidents on video, such as the disembodied voice of a woman crying "help me", and a shadowy figure moving about the stairs above them. One of their DVR cameras also captured what appeared to be a figure looking over the railing of the lighthouse. A TAPS member called the Lighthouse the "Mona Lisa of paranormal sites".[20] Due to the ratings success of the first investigation, TAPS later returned for a follow-up investigation and experienced similar incidents.
Today, the St. Augustine Light Station consists of the 165-foot (50 m) 1874 tower, the 1876 Keepers' House, two summer kitchens added in 1886, a 1941 U.S. Coast Guard barracks and a 1936 garage that was home to a jeep repair facility during World War II. The site is also a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather station.
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October 27th, 2015
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