The St. Augustine Lighthouse, standing 165 feet above Anastasia Island at the entrance to the harbor of St. Augustine, Florida, was completed in 1874 to replace a colonial Spanish watchtower. It remains the oldest active aid to navigation in Florida and one of the most extensively investigated haunted structures in the southeastern United States. Its reputation rests on two clusters of deaths within its earliest years and on a century of reported apparitions that match those deaths in remarkably specific detail.
The first tragedy occurred during the lighthouse's construction in July 1873, when a small rail-mounted handcart used to transport building supplies down from the construction site ran away and crashed into the sea. Three young girls — Eliza and Mary Pittee, daughters of the lighthouse's construction superintendent Hezekiah Pittee, and a young companion — were aboard and drowned. The girls were aged fifteen, thirteen, and an African-American playmate whose name has been variously recorded. Numerous subsequent reports describe a girl in a blue Victorian dress and occasional sounds of childish laughter in the tower and adjacent keeper's cottage.
The second cluster centers on lighthouse keeper William Harn, who served from 1875 until his death from tuberculosis in 1889, and on keeper Joseph Andreu, who fell to his death in 1859 while painting an earlier beacon. A tall figure in a light-keeper's uniform has been repeatedly reported on the stairs and near the service-room at the top of the tower. The smell of cigar smoke is frequently noted in the basement.
In 2006, the SyFy Channel's Ghost Hunters team conducted an overnight investigation during which they claimed to capture a full-body apparition on thermal camera on the stairs. The episode drew record viewership and is often cited as the most compelling visual evidence ever produced on the program. The lighthouse today houses a museum and offers regular 'Dark of the Moon' investigation tours, anchoring its position as one of the most-visited haunted locations in Florida.