By Scott A. Grant
mail@floridanewsline.com
There are sources on the internet that proclaim the St. Augustine Lighthouse as one of the most haunted places, not only in Florida, not only in the United States, but in the world. This seems a little bit overstated to me. I wonder if the lighthouse is even the most haunted place in St. Augustine. The Castillo de San Marcos has been around a long time and many awful things happened there. One would think that the fort must have a plethora of ghosts.
On the other hand, you cannot fight the internet and if the internet says the lighthouse is the most haunted, it must be. A number of ghosts supposedly reside in and around the lighthouse. The most famous are the Pittee girls. This is their story.
In 1871, the old lighthouse was in such disrepair that a new one was needed. Congress allocated funds for the project. Hezekiah Pittee was hired to supervise the construction. He and his family travelled from their home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Hezekiah had been superintendent of lighthouse construction up and down the Atlantic coast. He was the perfect man for the job.
In order to unload supplies that came by sea, Hezekiah built a railway track and a cart that ran from the lighthouse to Salt Run several hundred yards away. The Pittee girls — Mary, 15, Eliza, 13, and Carrie, 4 — loved to play on this cart. They would ride it down to the harbor and then push it back up the hill and ride it down again. It was great fun! It was also what the law would call an “attractive nuisance.”
On July 10, 1873, the three Pittee daughters and an unknown African American friend, aged 10, got into the cart and took off for an exciting ride. The brakes failed. The cart flew off the end into the ocean and flipped over, trapping all four girls. A local worker, also an African American, named Dan Sessions rushed to the rescue. He jumped into the water and lifted the cart off of the four girls. His heroics were only enough to save one of the four children, four-year-old Carrie.
Dan Sessions was a former slave from Georgia. He emigrated to St. Augustine either during or after the Civil War. The first reference in our area shows him registering to vote here in 1867. The 1870 census shows Sessions working as a houseman at a local boarding house. Presumably, in 1873, he was working construction at the lighthouse.
Ever since that tragic day in 1873, visitors and employees at the lighthouse have reported strange happenings attributed to the three dead girls. The girls reportedly live in the basement of the keeper’s house. They enjoy playing hide and seek with guests and playing pranks on members of the regular ghost tours, like tying people’s shoes together. A number of visitors have reported watching the swings suddenly start to move when the girls’ names are mentioned.
They say there are other ghosts living at the lighthouse, lots of them.
Scott A. Grant is a local historian and asset manager. He would love to hear your stories about encounters with the ghosts of the St. Augustine Lighthouse at scottg@standfastic.com.
