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Heavily Investigated

Stand at the base of those 219 spiral steps after dark and listen — because the lighthouse is already listening back. On July 10, 1873, two of Hezekiah Pittee's daughters drowned when a construction cart broke loose and plunged into the bay; people swear Eliza and Mary never quite left. Visitors report disembodied laughter drifting down from the lamp room, music boxes in the gift shop springing open on their own, and the unmistakable sensation of small fingers brushing past in the dark. Ghost Hunters once called it the "Mona Lisa of paranormal sites" — and that was before the shadow figure appeared at the railing.

The current St. Augustine Lighthouse was completed in 1874 on Anastasia Island — its predecessor, a Spanish-era coquina tower, had obligingly collapsed into the Atlantic in 1880, as if clearing the stage. Superintendent Hezekiah H. Pittee oversaw construction of the 165-foot brick tower, whose distinctive black-and-white spiral was a deliberate mariner's landmark. Designed by Paul Pelz — later famous for the Library of Congress — it is the oldest and tallest brick structure in St. Augustine, and a designated National Historic Landmark. The record shows a lighthouse. The legend insists it is something considerably more attentive.