For Halloween, the tale of the piano playing ghost at Seguin Island is a perfect way to get into the spirit of the season. This tale was also featured in the Maine Sunday Telegram on October 28, so for those that haven’t seen it, let me share the story, along with an unsolicited letter I received in email not too long ago. Let me mention here that the person describing this haunting tale, A Memory on the Wind, is very reputable. Her evocative portrait of that sunny day on Seguin Island says more for the presence of the lingering spirit of the wife than anything I’ve read. With this unsolicited story, from a person that had no knowledge of any ghost story, Seguin Island, lone sentinel of an island in the Atlantic off the coast of Maine is truly one of our most haunted lighthouses.

From the Maine Sunday Telegram:

Sue Clark of Bristol loves lighthouses. She also loves ghosts.

What better state to live in, then, than Maine, where lighthouses and ghosts go together like candy corn and Halloween?

It’s not surprising that some lighthouses are haunted, Clark says, because they are lonely places with lots of intense emotion associated with them. People who lived there experienced shipwrecks and losses of life. The lighthouse keepers were very dedicated.

Clark’s love affair with haunted lighthouses began because of her volunteer work for Friends of Pemaquid Lighthouse.

“I would work as a docent and parents would drag their kids along to look at the lighthouse, and they are totally bored,” she said. “And so to engage them, I would tell them ghost stories, and they loved it.”

Clark started a Web site, www.hauntedlights.com where she tells tales of haunted lighthouses all over the country, including several in Maine.

The Fisherman’s Museum adjoining the lighthouse at Pemaquid Point is haunted by a red-haired lady wearing a shawl. At least that’s what Clark’s research shows — she hasn’t seen the ghost herself.

The Boon Island Light is also supposedly haunted, as is the Matinicus Rock Light, the Ram Island lighthouse, and the light at Owls Head, where a (late) former keeper helpfully polishes all the brass.

Clark’s favorite story of a haunted Maine lighthouse revolves around the Seguin Island Light, located in the waters a couple of miles south of Popham Beach. Years ago, one of the keepers brought his wife out to live with him there.

“She was young and not too well versed in living alone, and Seguin Island is kind of like out there and nowhere,” Clark said. “You could see land, but you couldn’t get to it. So to amuse her, he brought out a piano, but it only came with one sheet of music. But she was excited and started playing that particular song.”

The wife played that song over and over, and when the keeper tired of it and bought her some new sheet music it didn’t help.

“She just played that song over and over and over again until he just went (crazy) and took an ax and chopped the piano, and then killed her,”Clark said.

Ever since that tragic episode, visitors to Seguin claim they can hear the sound of the piano playing gently over the sound of the sea.

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A Memory on the Wind

I wanted to mention to you that when I went out to Seguin Island, ME with the USCG a few summers ago, after going to two other lights I did have an uncanny experience at Seguin Light. I should say first that I had heard nothing about any sort of ghosts, nor had I read anything at all about ghosts, and merely went along on this beautiful, sunny day with USCG while they did their repairs to the ATON.

Just a few days before, a couple had moved in to be the keepers house at Seguin for the season - they were from California as I recall. I was standing outside the tower at its base and casually speaking with the woman, and, as she was speaking, I heard a piano playing - a rather quick, Scott Joplin style tune - I thought perhaps it might be an unseen radio, although it did have an ethereal quality to it - almost more like a memory on the wind than music. Since she was speaking to me at the time, I did not think to question her about it, or say anything to her. We had just done a walk through of the structures which are impeccably restored.

When we returned to the USCG office, the Ex-O asked if his staff had told me about the ghost at Seguin which plays the piano!!….My heart literally stopped when I heard that question…there is no doubt that I had heard it.

It is a true story and unforgettable - all the more so in a way, since it was a sunny, almost timeless day, so quiet yet with high winds on the top of that cliff, with the music like a memory more than a song.

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What was so remarkable about this story, is the type of song that was playing on the wind. It’s not anything that would be played by local radio stations, nor would the sound be carried from the mainland out to Seguin. To me it’s proof that the spirit of the murdered wife lives on, perhaps in revenge for her husband murdering her.
Happy Halloween!

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