Every time friends visit, we take them up the lighthouse. Somebody always asks about the ghosts on the way up. So I went looking for the people who actually died here, and what the records say about them.
Nicole and I have climbed the St. Augustine Lighthouse several times now, and almost every time it is because somebody is visiting. When guests come, it is always a hit. It is the one stop that works for everyone. Kids love the climb, the history people love the keepers’ house, and everybody loves the view from the top across the inlet and Salt Run to the old city.
I took my first picture of it within weeks of moving here, the week after Christmas in 2009. I had no idea yet that the tower has one of the best-known ghost reputations in Florida, or that it has been on national television for it.
I also didn’t know that, unlike a lot of the ghost stories in this town, the lighthouse ones start with real deaths. Real names, real dates, and in one case a family grave in Maine. So the same way I went through the newspapers on the Old Jail hangings, I went looking for who died here, and what the record says about each of them.
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A vintage-style St. Augustine Lighthouse, black-and-white spiral, red lantern and compass rose, on a canvas tote. Also on a tee if you’d rather wear it up the 219 steps.
Three Lighthouses on One Spot
The tower you climb today is the third light on this stretch of Anastasia Island. The Spanish kept a wooden lookout here not long after St. Augustine was founded in 1565, and later replaced it with a coquina watchtower. In 1824, after Florida became American territory, that old Spanish tower was converted into the first official lighthouse in Florida.
The ocean took it. By 1870 the high-water mark was 40 feet from the keeper’s dwelling, and the government started building a new tower further inland. The old coquina tower finally toppled into the sea on August 22, 1880.
The new tower was first lit on October 15, 1874. It is brick, painted in the black-and-white spiral that makes it one of the most recognizable lighthouses in the country, with its focal plane 165 feet up and a first-order Fresnel lens made in France at the top.
Did You Know? Nobody quite agrees on how many steps there are. The museum says 219. Some lighthouse histories count 214. And within weeks of the light going on in 1874, ducks flew into the lantern, broke three panes of glass and chipped the lens. A wire screen went up shortly after.
The Pittee Girls, July 10, 1873
This is the ghost story everybody hears, and it starts with something that really happened.
The new tower was being built by Hezekiah Pittee, the federal Superintendent of Lighthouse Construction, who had brought his family down from Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Supplies came in by boat at Salt Run and rode up to the building site on a small rail cart. The children of the site had a favorite game: ride the empty cart down the rails toward the water. A wooden board at the end of the track stopped it.
On July 10, 1873, the board wasn’t there. The cart ran off the end of the track into the water and flipped over on the girls riding it. A young Black construction worker named Dan Sessions lifted the cart off them, but three had already drowned: Mary Pittee, 15, her sister Eliza, 13, and a Black girl of about 10 whose father may have worked on the site. Their little sister Carrie, 4, survived.
What the record backs up
The accident is not a tour invention. Mary Adelaide Pittee was born in Cape Elizabeth on October 19, 1857, and died in St. Augustine on July 10, 1873. She and Eliza were taken home and buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in South Portland, Maine. Carrie grew up, married, had a daughter, and lived until 1944. In 2023, four of Hezekiah Pittee’s descendants visited the lighthouse and gave the museum three photographs of her.
What the record doesn’t
The third girl has no name in any record anyone has found, and the museum says it has never found her grave. You will hear her called Ellie, or Eleanor, on tours and on ghost websites. That name came from psychics, by the museum’s own account, not from a document. I would rather say plainly that we don’t know her name than repeat one that someone guessed.
She is the person in this story I keep thinking about. The Pittee girls went home to Maine and are in a family plot with their dates carved in stone. She is the one St. Augustine actually kept, and nobody wrote her name down.
Joseph Andreu’s Fall, December 1859
The other death at the light station happened at the old tower, 14 years before the Pittee girls.
Joseph Andreu was the head keeper. In December 1859 he was up on a scaffold whitewashing the tower when the lashing gave way. The St. Augustine Examiner of December 10, 1859, reported that he fell about 60 feet and landed on the roof of the building where the lamp oil was stored.
His widow, Maria Mestre de los Dolores Andreu, was appointed keeper in his place on January 7, 1860, at $400 a year. She kept the light until 1861, when the Confederacy ordered it darkened. She is remembered as the first Hispanic-American woman to command a federal shore installation, and the Coast Guard counts her among its own. That is a better story than most ghosts.
The tower Joseph fell from is the one that went into the ocean in 1880. So whatever people feel on the stairs today, it is not where he died.
The Keeper Who Smoked Cigars
Ask a guide about the lighthouse ghosts and Peter Rasmussen will come up. He was head keeper from 1901 to 1924, and staff and visitors have reported smelling cigar smoke in the keepers’ house. The museum leans into it with a sense of humor: its own staff wrote tongue-in-cheek “ghost profiles” of the Pittee girls, the Andreus and Rasmussen, and gave him a fondness for cigars and a dislike of tourists who wear hats indoors.
Here the record is thinner. Rasmussen served more than 20 years, but nothing I found says he died at the lighthouse. The cigar is a story people tell about a well-liked keeper, not a death anyone recorded.
What People Say They’ve Seen
The museum has collected reports going back decades, and to its credit it publishes them as reports and invites you to decide for yourself. The ones that come up most:
- In the 1950s, a relief keeper heard footsteps upstairs in the keepers’ house with nobody there. Head keeper James Pippin eventually moved out of the house into the World War II lookout barracks, saying the house was haunted.
- In the 1960s, a leather craftsman renting the house woke to a small girl standing beside his bed. She vanished when he blinked.
- A staff member heard a child giggling at the top of the tower, then below him on the stairs, with no one else inside.
- A visitor starting the climb found her shoelace tied to the iron staircase.
- A guest saw a girl in Victorian clothes reading on a bench on the hammock trail, who was gone when she looked back.
- After one night tour, a woman was told her daughter had been very well behaved all evening. She had come alone.
The night Ghost Hunters came
In its second season, the TV show Ghost Hunters spent a night in the tower, and it produced the clip that made this lighthouse famous. Two investigators chased something up two flights of stairs, then looked up to see a figure leaning over the railing above them. It was caught on camera, and a motion sensor right next to it never triggered.
The same team also debunked one of the lighthouse’s stories that night: a sound everyone described as a bucket falling down the stairs turned out to sound a lot like a window slamming. I like that they kept both in.
The Darker History Nobody Turns Into a Ghost Story
Some of the lighthouse’s worst moments have no ghost attached at all.
On July 28, 1970, after the station had been boarded up and put up for auction, an arson fire gutted the keepers’ house. It sat as a shell until the Junior Service League of St. Augustine took on the restoration in 1980. It opened as a maritime museum eight years later.
In 1986, someone fired a .30-06 rifle at the top of the tower and shattered 19 prisms in the original Fresnel lens. The caretaker called the FBI, investigators found powder burns on a palm tree nearby, and the suspect turned out to be 14 years old. The lens went dark in 1991 for repairs and was relit on May 22, 1993, with recreated prisms.
And during World War II, the top of this tower was a lookout post. After Pearl Harbor, lighthouses up and down the coast were turned into Coast Guard watch stations, and from July 1942 Coast Guardsmen stood watch at the top around the clock, looking for U-boats. They had reason to: on April 10, 1942, the tanker Gulfamerica was torpedoed just off Jacksonville Beach, about 35 miles up the coast. The barracks built for those lookouts still stand on the grounds and now hold the museum’s World War II exhibits.
Nic’s Pick: The Best View in Town
“The best view in St. Augustine, and it’s always fun to go there.”
Visiting the St. Augustine Lighthouse: Is It Worth It?
Yes, and it is where we take nearly everyone who visits us. The climb is the point. It is 219 steps (or 214, depending on who is counting) on an iron spiral staircase with landings to rest on, and the view from the gallery is the best in St. Augustine.
- Where: 100 Red Cox Drive, on Anastasia Island. You drive; it is not walkable from downtown.
- Hours: October through February, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily (last ticket at 5:30). March through September, 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. (last ticket at 6). The tower closes in bad weather.
- Admission: $17.95 adults, $15.95 seniors, $12.95 children 12 and under. The museum’s code LH15 takes 15% off general admission when you buy online in advance.
- Kids: children have to be at least 44 inches tall to climb.
- Ghost tour: the Dark of the Moon Ghost Experience is about 90 minutes, after dark, and includes a climb by glow stick. It’s $29.95 for adults and seniors and $24.95 for children 12 and under, ages 7 and up and 44 inches minimum. Dates run through January 2027; book ahead.
Our verdict: the daytime climb is the one to do with guests. If you have teenagers or anyone who wants the ghost stories, the night tour is the version they will talk about afterward. Either way, read the Pittee story before you go. The climb feels different once you know it.
St. Augustine Lighthouse Ghost Stories: FAQ
Is the St. Augustine Lighthouse haunted?
That depends on what you count. The deaths are real: three girls drowned during construction in 1873, and a keeper fell to his death from the earlier tower in 1859. The ghost reports have been collected for decades, including on the TV show Ghost Hunters, but nobody can verify them. The museum itself says it cannot explain what people report.
Who are the ghosts at the St. Augustine Lighthouse said to be?
Most often the Pittee sisters, Mary and Eliza, who drowned in 1873, and the unnamed girl who died with them. Visitors also tell stories about keeper Joseph Andreu, who fell from the old tower in 1859, and keeper Peter Rasmussen, linked to the smell of cigar smoke.
How did the Pittee girls die?
On July 10, 1873, they were riding a supply cart down the rails toward the water at Salt Run, a game the children on the site played. The board that normally stopped the cart was missing, and it ran into the water and overturned on them. Mary, 15, Eliza, 13, and a third girl of about 10 drowned. Four-year-old Carrie Pittee survived.
How many steps are in the St. Augustine Lighthouse?
The museum counts 219. Some lighthouse histories give 214.
Can kids climb the St. Augustine Lighthouse?
Yes, if they are at least 44 inches tall. For the night ghost tour, they also need to be at least 7.
How much is the St. Augustine Lighthouse ghost tour?
The Dark of the Moon Ghost Experience is $29.95 for adults and seniors and $24.95 for children 12 and under. It runs about 90 minutes and includes a night climb.
From the Shop
From the Shop
Haunted House Tee
A retro haunted house, bats and an orange moon. The keepers’ house after dark, more or less.
From the Shop
Skeleton Surfer Tee
Beach-vibes Halloween: a skeleton under the palms. For a town where October is still beach weather.
From the Shop
Gothic Crow Skull Tee
A raven and a skull in the memento mori tradition. Quietly gothic, wearable well past Halloween.
Keep Exploring St. Augustine
- St. Augustine’s Old Jail: I Heard the Hangings Every Night. Then I Found Their Names.
- Halloween in St. Augustine 2026
- The Ultimate St. Augustine Travel Guide
- Nights of Lights 2026–27
Have you climbed it, or done the night tour? Tell us what you heard on the stairs in the comments.
Header image: St. Augustine Lighthouse — Jon Zander (digon3) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). Keeper history from the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum; Joseph Andreu’s fall from the St. Augustine Examiner, December 10, 1859; Pittee family dates from Find a Grave and cemetery records in South Portland, Maine.
Ben & Nicole Mathews
We’re based in St. Augustine, Florida, sharing the places we’ve actually been — from our home turf to corners of the U.S. and abroad. Ben is an attorney and a retired Air Force JAG (22 years), and a private pilot, which is why aviation and military history shows up here too.