WHAT is it about lighthouses that seem to attract ghost stories?
I was steered on this unusual path recently by a Weekender reader who mentioned an online yarn about Australia's most haunted beach, near Norah Head Light, no less.
But more of this shortly.
North America has some notorious haunted lighthouses inspired by tales of murder and mayhem. These yarns are not from the modern era strangely enough, but typically go back 100 years.
I have a theory that, as people generally have become more worldly-wise, familiar tales of haunted houses have almost disappeared and replaced by stories of apparitions roaming once-manned remote coastal lighthouses.
Then there are hallucinations. No doubt, many 19th Century keepers manning isolated lights amid the eerie solitude saw and heard strange things. As wild seas hammered rocks below, and the wind rattled cottage windows, there might be an echo of voices and the odd sound of approaching footsteps . . . but they were alone.
Erratic behaviour in light towers in those early days, though, might be blamed on keepers inhaling vapours (each light prism once rotated in a bath of mercury), or from the hissing kerosene gas in confined spaces such as lantern rooms.
While shipwrecks near coastal beacons prompt ghost stories, why don't we have unsettling stories about Nobbys lighthouse, or up, say, at the Seal Rocks guiding light. Odd, isn't it?
After all, almost directly opposite Nobbys, about 60 people died when the paddle wheeler S.S Cawarra was swamped by stormy seas entering Newcastle Harbour in July 1866. It remains probably the city's worst maritime disaster.
Then there's the sinking of the vessel Catterthun off Sugarloaf Point (Seal Rocks) in 1895 with the loss of 55 lives.
But, then again, you can't dismiss the strange goings-on at the other "Sugarloaf" light on the far side of the country, on the south-west tip of Western Australia above Margaret River.
Near a pinnacle of granite just offshore called Sugarloaf Rock is the Cape Naturaliste lighthouse. It has breathtaking Indian Ocean views across shallow Geographe Bay. Built in 1903 of limestone, it's comparatively short (only 20m or 66ft tall), but sits atop a 100-metre ocean bluff. Its tower light shines 46 kilometres out to sea overlooking the scene of 14 shipwrecks.
The ocean sentinel is promoted as being the last manned light on mainland Australia in the late 1990s.
This Cape lighthouse is also home to two ghosts, according to locals and tour guides who talk in a matter-of-fact way about their live-in spirits. The most aggressive is a female called Bloody Mary, who is known to throw objects and push people. She supposedly haunts the three caretaker cottages, and has been known to yank the sheets off males trying to sleep. For this reason, the middle cottage is empty, used only as a storeroom.
The other, supposedly restless, spirit is that of a young boy in period clothing. The child was rescued from a shipwreck, but later died at the lighthouse. He appears at night on nearby roads, startling motorists.
But now back to our famous Norah Head lighthouse, near Toukley, on the Central Coast. Here, the last lightkeeper left in 1996, but the automated light still pierces the night.
The ocean out here, after all, is virtually a cemetery, with possibly 35 shipwrecks, including two major sinkings in World War II.
The tower's giant rotating eye sweeps over the black sea to briefly illuminate nearby Jenny Dixon beach, just to the north. This is reputedly Australia's most haunted beach.
Paranormal investigators have reported more than 50 sightings over past decades of a woman in a flowing dress with her arms outstretched, as if seeking a lost child.
Is the well-publicised apparition trapped on the beach? Maybe, but here is where things become even odder. This "Jenny Dixon ghost" is supposedly named after a beach shipwreck, but the vessel that sunk in 1870 was the collier Janet Dickson, and no one died. Maybe there's a much earlier wreck?
Even odder is the number of locals reporting a phantom hitch-hiker (also a woman) on nearby Wilfred Barrett Drive. She is reported to be the spirit of a girl who was said to have been raped by five male youths in the bush/beach in the 1970s. On her deathbed, she vowed revenge, or so the story goes. No one was convicted it seems, but local legend has it that five males all later died in nasty circumstances.
Reports of sightings usually are of a woman being picked up by car on the lonely road and sitting in the backseat. She then disappears on reaching Norahville Cemetery, where she supposedly lies in an unmarked grave.
At this point, before you roll your eyes, one researcher disturbingly claims there have been 300 reports of this particular Norah Head spectre over the past 50 years.
Then there's the reported haunting of South Solitary lighthouse, off Coffs Harbour. That's because of the hasty bathtub "burial" of a young girl there because the ground was too rocky to dig a grave. The girl was eventually buried at Sandgate Cemetery, near Hexham.
Now, finally, a story which suggests that if ghosts were real they would have every right to be angry and haunt secluded Maitland Bay, south of Gosford in Bouddi National Park.
Local folklore would have us believe that the agonising moans of 27 shipwreck victims who lost their lives here still hover above the sound of crashing surf.
This tale of an often neglected wreck is truly deserving to be linked to an Aussie lighthouse, except there isn't one there.
The remote beach, once known as Boat Harbour, was renamed Maitland Bay after the old 880-ton paddle steamer S.S Maitland ran aground here, then split in half.
It was May 1898. Bound for Newcastle from Sydney, the vessel was buffeted by huge waves and strong wind in what would become known as the "Maitland Gale".
Broadsided by the sea, one of the steamer's paddles was torn off and the vessel was driven against a rock shelf.
More than 40 shipwreck victims somehow survived, including a year-old baby called Daisy Hammond who grew up and later moved to Canada, where she died in 1988 aged 90.
Her ashes were brought back to Australia to be spread over the remains of the sunken ship.
There were stories of heroism, but what made the wreck story pitifully sad was the number of people who tramped along the coast, not to rescue survivors, but to loot the ship's cargo washed ashore. This included 83 kegs of beer and whisky.
The Gosford Times reported "a sad spectacle made extremely sadder by the riotous revelry of the drunken mob".
A policeman trying to recover a female corpse amid the beach debris was ignored by binge-drinking thieves.
The whole saga was rescued from obscurity a decade ago by Gosford council's local studies librarian Geoffrey Potter in his book Wreck of the Maitland; A Scene to Make the Angels Weep.
