The Children at St Augustine Lighthouse
A real construction accident lies behind stories of footsteps and children near St Augustine’s lighthouse. The museum separates known names from one child whose identity it is still researching.
The account
The lighthouse stories turn children’s play into something heard after the children are gone. The museum recounts a relief keeper in the 1950s hearing footsteps upstairs and finding nobody there. A later tenant described waking to see a little girl beside his bed, then losing sight of her. These accounts became connected with an accident on 10 July 1873, when four girls rode a construction cart toward the water. The cart overturned. Mary and Eliza Pittee and a ten-year-old Black girl drowned; four-year-old Carrie Pittee survived.
Following the trail
The St Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum supplies the accident history and labels the later experiences as ghost stories. Its researchers had not established the Black girl’s name when the article was published. A name proposed by a psychic is explicitly unconfirmed and should not replace that missing archival identity. The documented accident and the later apparitions are different kinds of record.
Why it stays with us
The missing name is as important as the famous family name. Retelling this haunting responsibly means remembering all three children who died, while leaving the museum’s unanswered historical question visible.