The keeper who recorded a ghost on the stairs

The Penfield Reef Light sits about 1.1 miles off Fairfield Beach, standing guard over a patch of water on the south side of Black Rock Harbor entrance. Built in 1874, it is a chunky piece of Second Empire architecture. Instead of a lonely tower in the middle of nowhere, the design integrates a wood-frame tower directly into a one-and-a-half-story keeper's dwelling. It is built of granite ashlar with a mansard roof, reinforced with heavy timber and iron plates. It was one of the last offshore masonry lights built before the military-style cast iron towers took over.

History here took a turn for the grim on December 22, 1916. Keeper Frederick A. Jordan tried to row a dory to the mainland for Christmas. Assistant Keeper Rudolph Iten watched the boat capsize about 150 yards away and did nothing because the wind and tide were working against him. Iten took over the job, and his logbook contains some strange entries. Two weeks after Jordan died, Iten recorded a ghost floating down the stairs and dissolving into the darkness.

Usually, ghost stories are the desperate fiction of the lonely, but Iten had a reason to be seen as credible. He had tried to save the man, and multiple later keepers signed affidavits describing the same apparition. In 1942, two boys even claimed the ghost pulled them from the water after their own boat flipped.

Today, the lighthouse is an active aid to navigation, though it survived Hurricane Sandy in 2012 with 12-foot waves striking the structure. It remains a sturdy, slightly haunted monument to maritime safety.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons