The Lantern Room

Our family moved to the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage on the edge of the salt marshes, three years after my father took the position as curator of the maritime museum. The cottage was charming at first, with its weathered shingles and the beacon that still swept across the water at night, though it was automated now. But we soon learned that the light wasn’t the only thing that lingered there.

It started about a month in. I’m an insomniac, and I often read in my room, which was a converted storage room on the top floor, just below the lantern room. One night, as I was into a particularly gripping novel, I felt a prickling at the back of my neck. It was as if someone were standing just behind my shoulder, peering at the pages. I turned, but the room was empty, the only light from my reading lamp and the distant beam sweeping outside. The feeling didn’t leave. It grew, a pressure at the base of my skull, until I had to shut the book and go downstairs, heart thudding. I wanted to tell my mother, but I knew she’d chalk it up to my imagination, or stress from the move.

The sensation persisted over the following weeks, always strongest in that top-floor room. Then the door to the spiral staircase started opening on its own. At first, I thought it was a draft, but the cottage was well-sealed, and the door was heavy, with a latch that required a firm push. It would swing open slowly, as if someone were nudging it, and I’d see the dark stairwell beyond. At night, it was worse. I’d lie in bed, listening to the click of the latch, the groan of the hinges, and I’d pull the covers over my head, trying to convince myself it was just the wind.

One evening, I decided to investigate. I had read about the lighthouse’s history: it was built in 1910, and its first keeper, a man named Elias Thorne, had vanished in 1915 under mysterious circumstances. The official report said he fell into the sea, but locals whispered he’d gone mad, spending his nights talking to the light. I found an old logbook in the museum, tucked away in a drawer, and in it, Thorne had written about a presence that watched him, a presence that wanted the light kept burning. He wrote of doors opening on their own, of footsteps on the stairs, of a cold that seeped into his bones.

Driven by morbid curiosity, I began to spend more time in the lantern room at night, watching the beam rotate, feeling the hum of the machinery. And I started to see things out of the corner of my eye: a figure standing on the catwalk, just beyond the glass. Every time I turned, it was gone, but the feeling of being watched intensified.

Then came the night I finally saw it fully. I had fallen asleep in the lantern room, and I woke to a sound: a rhythmic scraping, like a key being drawn along the floor. I sat up, and there, in the glow of the light, was a tall, gaunt figure in a heavy oilskin coat, its face hidden by a wide-brimmed hat. It was reaching out toward me, its fingers long and skeletal. I screamed, and it dissolved, as if it had never been, leaving only the cold.

After that, I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I told my mother everything, and she, to my surprise, didn’t dismiss me. She revealed that she had felt it too, especially in the kitchen, where the old stove’s pilot light would sometimes flicker as if someone were huffing on it. We decided to dig deeper into the lighthouse’s past, and we found a local historian who knew the story. She told us that Thorne had a daughter, a girl named Alice, who had died of consumption in 1914. He had gone mad with grief, and some said he tried to summon her spirit with the light, believing it could guide her home. When he vanished, his body was never found, but some said he was still there, waiting for his daughter.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I went up to the lantern room, and I called out, ‘Alice? Are you there?’ The room grew colder, and I heard a soft, childlike laugh. The beam of light flickered, and I saw, just for a moment, a small, pale girl in a white dress standing in the corner, her eyes empty and dark. She pointed at me, then at the sea, and I felt a pull toward the catwalk. I fought it, but my feet moved on their own, and I found myself at the railing, looking down at the churning waves.

A voice whispered in my ear, not in words, but in a feeling: ‘Let me in.’ I gripped the railing, my fingers white, and I screamed until my father, who had heard me from the house, came running. He dragged me away, and I sobbed, telling him what I had seen. He said he’d call the authorities, but we all knew that would do nothing.

We moved out shortly after, but the experience left its mark. I still have nightmares of that white dress, and sometimes, when I see a lighthouse or a beam of light sweeping across the dark water, I feel a cold breath on my neck, and I know that Elias Thorne is still there, waiting, and that once you’ve seen his light, it never lets you go.