About This Location
A striking lighthouse on the outermost island of the Isles of Shoals, guiding ships through treacherous waters since 1859.
The Ghost Story
The pirate Blackbeard is said to have abandoned one of his wives on this cluster of rocky islands, and her ghost has been searching the horizon for his return ever since. White Island Lighthouse was first constructed in 1820 and went into service in January 1821, making it one of the earliest light stations on the New Hampshire coast. Builders erected a forty-foot tower of undressed stone laid in lime mortar, with a diameter of twenty-two feet at the base and ten and a half feet at the top, on the barren rock of White Island in the Isles of Shoals -- a group of nine islands situated roughly six miles off the coast. The lighthouse was rebuilt and improved multiple times over the following decades, but the isolation and exposure to violent Atlantic storms made it one of the most challenging postings for any keeper.
The lighthouse's most famous keeper was Thomas Laighton, who arrived in 1839 with his wife Eliza, their four-year-old daughter Celia, and newborn son Oscar. Young Celia Laighton -- later Celia Thaxter -- grew up on White Island, learning to light the lamps and polish the reflectors alongside her father. The experience shaped her into one of New England's most celebrated nineteenth-century poets. Her journals and poetry describe the raw beauty and terror of island life: shipwrecks watched from the tower, storms that shook the foundation, and the profound isolation of being one of the only children in a world of sea, rock, and wind. Her poem "The Wreck of the Pocahontas" was inspired by a severe gale in 1839 that destroyed a vessel within sight of the lighthouse.
The ghost that haunts White Island and the surrounding rocks predates even the lighthouse. According to legend, the pirate Edward Teach -- Blackbeard -- visited the Isles of Shoals with one of his many wives and left her on nearby Lunging Island (originally Londoner's Island) to guard a portion of his treasure. He made her swear to remain near the cache until his return. Blackbeard never came back. He was captured and killed in North Carolina in 1718, leaving his wife stranded on a barren Atlantic rock with nothing but a pirate's broken promise.
Fishermen, lighthouse keepers, and visitors to the Isles of Shoals have reported seeing her apparition for centuries. She manifests as a tall woman cloaked in dark sea fabric, with long flowing blonde hair, standing on the rocks and gazing out at the water as though searching for a sail on the horizon. She has been heard shouting across the wind: "He will return." The apparition has been spotted on White Island, Lunging Island, and the rocky outcrops between them, always facing the open sea, always waiting. Historians note that the legend is "extremely unlikely" since Blackbeard's pirating activities were concentrated in the Carolinas and Caribbean, far from New Hampshire. But the apparition on the rocks does not seem concerned with historical accuracy. She stands, she watches, and she waits -- as she has for more than three hundred years.
