While many boating stories focus on sunshine and smiles, some lighthouses you may have passed by have a darker side.

When it comes to spine-chilling histories involving mysterious mumblings and phantom footsteps, Bob Allen knows boatloads of hair-raising tales. This lighthouse keeper’s descendant and historian is brimming with spooky stories.

He starts with eerie occurrences at Plum Island Lighthouse. The island itself, home to the federal Animal Disease Center, is shrouded in myths and mystery. Legends abound of strange sights and sounds around the secretive laboratory charged with research into foreign animal diseases.

“When I worked in a warehouse next to the Plum Island Lighthouse in the 1990s, strange things happened once the sun went down,” says Allen. “I’d hear the sounds of mumbled voices, though I couldn’t pick out any words. There would be footsteps without anyone there, and things would move about on shelves. You’d hear a loud clang but never know what caused it.”

Allen’s friend, Rich Kenney, used to be a lighthouse keeper at Plum Island. Kenney recounted that the former keeper sped off the island the moment he was relieved of his duties, and he soon understood why. The new lighthouse keeper’s nighttime routine of closing the blinds, shutting the windows, and locking the door were undone by some other-worldly specter by the time Kenney woke each morning — it became almost useless to latch hatches that the spirit wanted open!

Per Allen, the dozing guards pushed from their chairs as well as others who heard mumblings on Plum Island seem to agree that Colonel Thomas Gardner’s ghost was demonstrating his frustration at being buried on Plum Island. The Revolutionary War figure had died from a contagious disease, so he was banished to the island to spend eternity.

Despite the unsettling supernatural disturbances attributed to Gardner at and nearby the lighthouse, Allen doesn’t think Gardner means any harm. “He’s just an aggravated spirit that didn’t want to be buried there.”

People who perished once their ships wrecked on Race Rock Reef didn’t want to end up there, either. According to Allen, before the Race Rock Lighthouse crew began construction in 1871, “Many, many ships were caught in the strong current (of the Long Island Sound) and smashed against the rocky ledge of the reef.”

In 1848, the steamer Atlantic broke apart after hitting the reef. Of the 59 people aboard, only 14 survived; Allen says the spirits of the 45 who died “found a place to go when the lighthouse was built” three decades later. Stories flourish about light keepers and boaters who hear the anguished cries of drowning people. They also claim to see the outline of a sea captain who’s momentarily illuminated by the Race Rock Lighthouse’s sweeping beam.

Allen recounts hearing what happened after the shower was dismantled at the Race Rock Lighthouse — personnel assigned to inspect the now-automated lighthouse heard water running and “spotted wet footsteps leading away from where the shower had been.”

The spooky spirit said to haunt the New London Ledge Lighthouse is a keeper who died there. Allen says the chilling yarns vary — he may have slipped and fell to his death or committed suicide after discovering that his wife had run away with the captain of the Block Island Ferry.

The legend tellers have nicknamed this mysterious keeper “Ernie” and recount how he turned the TV on and off, yanked the covers off those sleeping at the lighthouse, and mopped the floors.  “Some spirits aren’t particularly haunted,” Allen explains. “They just come back because they feel like they let other people down and didn’t fulfill their jobs.”

Some ghosts need not be scary or even two-legged. Allen’s great-grandfather, the keeper of the Long Beach Bar Lighthouse, had a canine companion named Brownie. Though the lighthouse Brownie scampered through burned 23 years after his death, some still detect his presence in the rebuilt structure. Indentations left behind on a made bed could be those from a mischievous dog, and the visitors (and paranormal investigators) who leave bones for Brownie find them in different spots when they return.

A poltergeist puppy may not be the only spirited soul engaged in tomfoolery at the Long Beach Bar Lighthouse.  Some unseen hand kept pulling the earrings off the ears of Allen’s daughter, Susan, when she visited. Maybe all that glitters attracts ghosts?