Currituck Beach Lighthouse

The last major lighthouse erected on the Outer Banks, completed in 1875. The unpainted red brick tower stands in Corolla, and the adjacent keeper's cottage is now a gift shop. One room in that cottage, however, carries a terrible curse.

Currituck Beach Lighthouse stands on the northern Outer Banks in Corolla, built in 1875 as the last major lighthouse erected on North Carolina's coast. Its most distinguishing feature is that it remains in its original unpainted red brick form, rather than bearing the bold black-and-white patterns of other Carolina lighthouses. But the keeper's quarters nearby harbor a darkness that has lingered for over a century, concentrated in a single room that no one has been able to spend an entire night in since the last tenants moved out.

The chain of tragedy began with the first family to live in the lighthouse keeper's quarters. Their young daughter Sadie would wander down to the ocean almost every day, playing for hours on the shore before returning home. One day, Sadie didn't come home. Searchers found her body washed up on the beach the next morning, taken by a powerful riptide. The little girl's spirit never left.

Years later, another tragedy struck the final family that inhabited the keeper's quarters. The lighthouse keeper's wife contracted tuberculosis and was quarantined in the North Room, isolating herself from family and friends as the disease consumed her. She lost her battle and died alone in that room. Every piece of clothing and cloth she owned was forced into a barrel, sealed, and left in the North Room. Children of the village were warned to never touch that barrel.

But children being children, they eventually broke into the room, thrust open the barrel, and began playing dress-up in the dead woman's clothes.

The ghosts of little Sadie and the lighthouse keeper's wife are said to haunt the North Room to this day. That same room became the site of other deaths, illness, and bad luck over the years. Visitors exploring the lighthouse grounds have reported sudden cold spots, soft voices, and the sensation of being watched. Some say the presence of two women—a mother and a child—pervades the space.

A ship sank more than two hundred years before the lighthouse was built, its wreckage resting in an underwater grave nearby. The ghostly passengers may have wandered the coast for centuries before making the lighthouse and keeper's cottage their permanent home.

Today, visitors can climb the lighthouse and explore the grounds, but the North Room of the keeper's house carries a warning that few choose to test. The story of Sadie and the lighthouse keeper's wife comes from Nancy Roberts' book "Ghosts From the Coast," preserving a tale that the Outer Banks has never forgotten.