Weird Los Angeles: The Lighthouse Ghost

beachghost.jpgThere is something distinctly eerie about a lighthouse. Jutting out from the shoreline, alone and battered by the cold air and frothing waves of the sea, puncturing the horizon and so strangely remote, haunting the night like a tall wraith. Point Vicente Lighthouse is situated near the intersection of Palos Verdes Drive and Los Verdes Boulevard in the Rancho Palos Verdes section of Los Angeles. It has its own ghost.

When the locals began to complain about the searching light from the structure, the officials thought that the only thing to do to keep the residents happy was to black out the beam, but legend has it, that whilst the light may have been smothered, something ethereal was clearly not happy about the area being bereft of the beacon.

Nobody really knows who haunts the lighthouse but the apparition is of a tall, slim woman but her hair, matted and strewn across her face suggests a soul in turmoil, and at night those unfortunate enough to encounter the spirit say that she wanders around the subdued lighthouse, her flowing gown flapping in the cool air as she aimlessly circles the dark, forlorn structure.

Many people have tied the mystery to one of the old lighthouse keeper's; they say that the spirit is of his wife, a lost ghost who while on this Earth, became lost in the enshrouding mists one dark night and stumbled over a cliff. Has the female ghost returned through vengeance, or merely to dance eerily in the darkness, the only symbol of the light that was never meant to go out?

Photo by moonsheep via Flickr

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Comments (1) [rss]

Lighthouses are "distinctly eerie"? You, sir, are not a sailor. Wrecks in the shoals near rocky outcropping into the sea are eerie, though. I think lighthouses are kind of stalwartly romantic (even if sometimes haunted). I like the tall wraith part, however. Not all wraiths are menacing.

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