Even After All These Years, It Still Smells Like Blood

sea who so desperately depended on them for safety. Is it any wonder lighthouses are notoriously haunted that in death those who once manned them still feel enough of a sense of duty to return and diligently walk hundreds of steps, forever manning a beacon in the darkness. And how sad that something once so noble and important has long been replaced with technology, superpowered lights and lenses. How do these spirits feel now? What are they trying to tell us?

Is time and time again they don't leave their posts, even after they have long passed away. Perhaps the Pensacola Lighthouse can guide us to an understanding. I'm Amy Brune, and this is Haunted Road. If you were to hike along San Carlos Beach near the Pensacola Naval Air Station, and you glanced up on a dark night, you might see a brilliant beam of light in the sky. It would pulse on for twenty seconds, then flicker off again, only to light up once more after another twenty seconds.

The beam comes from the one thousand watt bulb mounted in the Pensacola Lighthouse, a beacon that's amplified by the historic over one hundred and seventy year old fresnel lens. It's so you can spot it from twenty seven miles away. Unlike many haunted places, the Pensacle Lighthouse is still in operation today. It's not abandoned or in a state of disrepair. It also doesn't have an on site keeper operating its

machinery anymore. Its processes are all automated. The roughly one hundred and fifty foot tall tower looms over the two story keepers quarters. The residence, now home to historic exhibits for the public, is surrounded by balconies on each floor. It has a cheerful red roof, while the lighthouse itself is brown and white. The narrow base is a mere thirty feet in diameter, but the higher it goes, the narrower it becomes to a scant fifteen feet at the top.

If you were to ascend the one hundred seventy seven steps up the winding spiral staircase, as I have done in the past, and I do not necessarily recommend it, you'd find an automated light system. It's completely surrounded by swirled glass that redirects and amplifies the beam. As reported by the National Park Services website. On the fresnel lens outside sixteen gargoyles ring a catwalk around the lighthouse exterior.

These are spouts meant to redirect rainwater from the building, but the Pensacola Lighthouse and Maritime Museum claims they also keep evil spirits at bay. Given the lighthouse as history, it's no wonder the builders were worried about malicious energies. The city of Pensacola, nestled right on the boundary between Florida and Alabama, is named after the indigenous people of the area. The town was founded in August fifteen fifty

nine and almost immediately destroyed like a bad omen. According to the Pensacola Lighthouse and Maritime Museum's history page, a hurricane thrashed the community just weeks after it was founded, beginning on September nineteenth. The death toll hit the hundreds, and the devastation destroyed the supplies the sour virus needed to ensure their town's success. After that settlement failed, nearly a century and a half passed until Spanish colonists erected

Fort San Carlos State Astoria in the same place. Once again, the community only had a short time to flourish before disaster struck. Armed conflict broke out between the Spanish and the French, and later the British entered the mix to Finally, General Andrew Jackson, who later become president, seized the city now known as Pensacola for the United States in eighteen eighteen. When construction on the lighthouse began six years later, there

were more bizarre disasters. The Pensacola News Journal reported that early in the building process, large numbers of highly venomous water moccasins migrated from the Gulf coast to the construction site. The snakes would lurk in piles of bricks, attacking any worker unfortunate enough to cross their path. The servants were even occasionally spotted on high scaffolding, and no one could

explain how the snakes had climbed so high. In spite of these concerning harbingers, the lighthouse was completed and opened its doors in December of eighteen twenty four. The first keeper, Jeremiah Ingraham, moved into the on site accommodations. For two years, he lived there alone. Every other hour he'd have to climb to the top of the lighthouse to operate the mechanism that kept it lit. Luckily, Jeremiah didn't remain in

solitude for long. He was married in eighteen twenty four, and he and his wife, Mikhaela, had three children together. She took over his keeper's work when he died, and when she passed, her son in law inherited the job. He also oversaw numerous renovations, including the significant improvements that were made to the lens at the top of the tower.

He resigned around the time of the Civil War, and operation of the lighthouse transferred to new keepers, many of whom continued to improve the facilities and upgrade the technology. They also rebuilt the lighthouse keeper's quarters in the midst of these improvements. The next few decades were marked by more strange natural disasters. The lighthouse was hit by lightning twice.

A faulty lightning rod allowed one of these jolts to damage it during a thunderstorm, according to the lighthouse website. A few years later, a tornado further wrecked the building, and an earthquake shook the lighthouse so hard it made the bottom floor's pendulum clock stop at nine oh seven pm. All the while, occasional hurricanes raged in the Gulf of Mexico, wearing down the facilities further. But these years were marked

by heartwarming good fortune too. On January twenty first, eighteen eighty four, the lighthouse keeper's wife gave birth and the on site residence. In the Pensacola News Journal, reporter Dot Brown noted that this was the first dock documented instance in which anyone was born within the keeper's quarters. About twenty years later, it seems the first recorded death on the property occurred. At that time. The keeper was a

man named George T. Clifford. His daughter, Ellen, who went by Ella, apparently had a lot of affection for the property. She was married in the lighthouse in nineteen o three, and she returned to the quarters when she became seriously ill in late January nineteen o five. It's not clear what was making her sick, but many believes she suffered

from complications after giving birth five months earlier. The twenty three year old passed on the evening of January twentieth, and it's believed she breathed her last in the keeper's residence. There don't seem to have been any other deaths on the property, but the lighthouse's history is full of more eerie occurrences, like the time a flock of wild ducks passed through the lens room, damaging the equipment, and the

lighthouse was the site of grave injustices too. In nineteen oh nine, the US federal government forced several families to relocate off the land surrounding the lighthouse. The officials claimed this was federal territory and the families there had no right to stay, in spite of the fact that many had dwelled and paid property taxes there for decades. The displaced residents included a widow named Winnie Hart. Her husband, Charles,

was an escaped, formerly enslaved person. According to a nonprofit called Impact one hundred Pensacola, he worked on construction for the lighthouse and other structures on the surrounding naval base. How ironic that his family was no longer welcome on the land he'd helped develop. In the nineteen thirties, the Hatton family moved onto the property after the patriarch accepted

a job as lighthouse keeper. Winnie Who of the Pensacola News Journal reports that when they surveyed the keeper's quarters, they noticed a strange red stain on the floor in the second story southeast bedroom. According to Who, the mark was about a foot long, just beside the fireplace. Additionally, there were circular red dribbles throughout the room, some up to a quarter in diameter. No one in the hat and family knew how it got there, but they recognized

what the stain was blood. The keeper's young son, Emmett Hatton, watched his mother spend who knows how much time scrubbing the floor to remove the disturbing splotches, but her efforts were fruitless. The rusty discoloration was permanent. Who reported that at some point in the nineteen fifties, one of the lighthouse's residents must have installed vinyl tiles to cover the

blood stains. From then, the spots went undiscovered until nineteen ninety four, when renovators pulled up the tiles and revealed the old marks, still visible and unnerving roughly forty years later. This kicked off a period of research in which countless people tried to determine how so much blood could have spilled on the floor. Two theories emerged, both of which are unsupported by the historic record. Some say the spots are the last remaining evidence of a homicide that took

place in the pensacle A lighthouse. Specifically, rumour says that the very first lighthouse keeper, Jeremiah Ingraham, was killed by his wife, Mikayla. Depending on the story, she may have attacked him in a murderous frenzy because the isolation at the remote lighthouse had driven her mad, or perhaps Jeremiah attacked her first and Mikayla killed him in self defense. Ultimately,

those rumors are almost certainly idle speculation. Mikayla and Jeremiah both died before the current lighthouse keeper's quarters were even built. Other murderous gossip suggests the victim was one of the keeper's anonymous assistants, but these stories date to the nineteen nineties, well after the alleged homicide would have happened. Some argue these discolourations are from when Ella Clifford Miller, the lighthouse

keeper's daughter who died in the quarter's, gave birth. However, the baby wasn't born in the lighthouse, but in a hospital, so the mystery remains unsolved today. That said, when people visit the blood stained bedroom, many report that even after all these years, it still smells like blood. Besides that, visitors to the lighthouse have reported that doors open and close by themselves, lights flicker, and bursts of cold air

rush through the building even on warm days. Guests may hear disembodied voices or footsteps or knocking on the windows. It's said that numerous people have been groped while ascending the stairs, and at least one visitor felt someone pull her hair. You hear similar accounts about the keeper's quarters, plus stories about figures appearing in windows and a lingering

scent of tobacco even when no one is smoking. Alan Brown's Ghosts of Florida's Gulf Coast says when tour guides are alone in the residence, they hear disembodied voices calling their names. One of the lighthouse's tour coordinators, Rob Booth, says there are six ghosts who haunt the Pensacol Lighthouse, but only two have a verifiable history with the building. These are Ella, the keeper's daughter, and another lighthouse keeper

named Samuel Lawrence. He's said to lurk in the stairwell and at the top of the tower, grabbing visitors who ascend the steps. Local lore suggests two enslaved people named Thomas and Reynald also haunt the lighthouse grounds. Booth claims they ran away, only to be recaptured and hanged near the lighthouse, but there's no record of such an execution in the area. Of course, that doesn't rule out the

possibility of an unrecorded lynching. If Thomas and Reynold's story is true, one of them may be the figure who has been spotted in the basement of the keeper's quarters. The specter, who may be a child or an adult, looks like an enslaved person and is sometimes seen hiding behind the stairs. The last two spirits Booth identified were both children, a girl named Lizzie and a boy named Joey. They both supposedly died of yellow fever in nineteen twenty two,

but there's no documented yellow fever outbreak that year. There was one in eighteen twenty two, but this redated the construction of the lighthouse, so once more, it's challenging to verify how much of this story is real. We may never know the names of all these ghosts or how they came to be at the Pensacola Lighthouse, but that hasn't stopped the building from earning a reputation as one

of the most haunted lighthouses in the United States. In his book Ghosts of Florida's Gulf Coast, Alan Brown described a woman who's been seen walking along the catwalk at the top. When the beacon turns its brilliant light on her, it shines straight through as though she's transparent. Guests have also seen a child and a kind elderly woman roaming through the tower, and some visitors say they've spotted the original lighthouse keeper and his wife, Jeremiah and Mikayla Ingraham,

And concerningly, some spectral encounters have a threatening edge to them. Earlier, I mentioned a renovation that happened in the early nineteen nineties, which resulted in the bloodstains on the bedroom floor being uncovered. During that same project, a pair of workers found a coil of rope encircling some water pipes. As Alan Brown wrote in Ghosts of Florida's Gulf Coast, the workers tried to remove the rope, but hadn't finished. When their shift ended.

They left a job partially done, presumably intending to resume the next day. Instead, they returned in the morning to find the rope wasn't on the pipes anymore. It had been suspended from a light fixture in the shape of a noose. Now as to whether this was intended as a warning, a threat, or a spectral prank is hard to say, but we can learn more about the spirits of the Pensacola Lighthouse by talking to people who have investigated it. I'm one of those folks, and so is

my next guest, mister Adam Berry. All right, so I am now joined by almost a series regular here on Haunted Road, mister Adam Berry. Welcome to the program, mister Berry.

investigate very often. Like it was actually a really big deal that we got to investigate there, and so like I found one person who had investigated, but it had been like, you know, fifteen years ago, and I was like, wow, I know Adam and I investigated it together fairly recently in twenty twenty two, and I had investigated it even before that in two thousand and nine with ghost Hunters. So it turns out I'm the person who I know

who's investigated it more than anyone. Actually, what's really fun. So I remember when we went back in twenty twenty two, I thought this was all going to happen again. But the first time we went there to investigate with ghost Hunters, it was a way more secure of a location when we investigated it in two thousand and nine with Ghosts. I don't know what happened to the base since then, but I remember like telling everybody when we went back, when we go back now, I just want you to

know they're going to go through everything. They're very like security is tight, because in two thousand and nine they literally went through all of our gear that we had to open all of our cases. They took dogs that went through all, like all the cars, they had mirrors where they looked under the vehicles. And when we went back in twenty twenty two, none of that happened. Like, I don't even think they checked our ID when we went in.

or was that at light this lighthouse? But I do remember distinctly some of the things I experienced at Pensacola in particular, were definitely footsteps that lighthouse keeper had to go up and down those stairs every two hours, twenty four hours a day, right, so the original keeper there, and so I feel like he is still very much there, like I just yeah, or at least that that presence, Like I can't imagine he just never got a full night's sleep, like I could not, Like he just had

to get up every two hours and walk all the way up those stairs, yeah, and check on that light and come all the way back down.

lot of things. But when I tried to climb to the top of this lighthouse with Dave or with you specifically, and with Dave, I was wearing converse and these metal stairs go all the way up and there's like a handle, but like it was slippery. So the higher that I got, the more nervous I got, and on my foot kept slipping, and I was like, this is an absolute no for me, Like I I had to. I sat down. It was like, Nope, not going any further. I'm just not going to go.

See now see Cheetoh's going to talk about it. He's barking in the background.

And we were both like that, it's very weird. And you know, it took a soft guard, but it did sound like a man, like it could have been a man, maybe the light keeper.

very hard on evidence. And he was completely like, I don't know what's going on here, and that's always weird because when you're in the lighthouse, it's just you and the like your camera operator whoever, you know, there's three of you, like, and it's very clear to tell like a sound is coming from somewhere else because the way like it's like literally one big hollow tube and so, which it can play tricks on you, but not in

that sense at all. And so and then there's also like the keepers quarters are supposedly haunted, and so I know that, like Britt and I Brit Griffith who used to be on GH. So the first time I investigated there, that was when Steve and Dave were doing Ghost Hunters Academy.

I think it was the first season, and so it was me and Britt investigating, and I know we had separated in the keeper's quarters and we were like really far away from each other, basically trying to see if we could see shadows between us because that's one of the most kind of famous things that happened there. And I know we heard a lot of unexplained noises in

that area. I just feel like it's just not investigated that often, Like it's one of those spots that whatever spirits are there, they're not having investigators coming in talking to them very often, which makes me wonder like if that affects the activity at all.

am supposed to do. It's like it's like a watchman, like their watch is never over.

exact right moments. If the weather starts to turn a certain way, you have to change, like you know the pattern of the light, and like it just and now it's like it's so routine that it was actually fairly easy for humans to automate that eventually, which really kind of got rid of the whole idea of a lighthouse keeper, which is really depressing and sad to me because I think it was probably one of its just kind of one of the most I don't want to say, just

kind of an whol old school job, like you're the keeper of the light. You're keeping this going, and you're just like ensuring that chips don't crash, Like is there anything more important than that? And now we've just given that to machines.

So I think there's things, there's routines. I think there's a set of rules and those are easily explored by investigators to you know, to trigger activity. I think that that's.

But I saw it, and I don't remember if you saw it. But so supposedly there's a large blood stain

in the keeper's quarters that cannot be cleaned. Yes, and so it was, it was, it was covered up until the mid nineties and then they were like, Rea, there was linoleum over it, and so then they tore up linoleum and they found the hardwood floors beneath and the stain is still there and they have not been able to determine, like they're just like, yep, it's blood, and so part of me is just like, why can't we

test it? I really want to know, Like all you need is like a cadaver dog or like some I mean, I just I don't know why, like they hang under that story and don't try to prove whether it's real or not.

wasn't like the right correct kit. Yeah, but I remember they did go get something and they really tried to see if we could get some like a kit to test that that would.

is a historic monument. It stood for you know, over one hundred years, and they trust us to go into these spaces and to explore in the dark, to try to connect with the spirits and I think we're very lucky that we get to do that kind of thing because mostly, you know, it's tours. You see it during

the day, there's ropes everywhere. But when we get to do these kind of things, those ropes come down, and so you we immerse ourselves in this environment and we get to go back back in time for a brief moment and really explore what it might be like to you know, live there during like a big hurricane or when it was really active. And I think that's the best part.

not going to trust any team with that. And that's why I think it's really important, like when you're investigating the paranormal, to kind of maintain that level of integrity where places like that will feel good about bringing you in because they know that you're going to do justice to the history and they know you're going to do justice to the activity and to their ghosts, and that's important.

I think that's why we get called into so many you know, like we get called into libraries, ge get called into schools, we get called obviously into military bases. And I don't think that happens for a lot of other paranormal shows, but I think paranormal teams in particular, you can formulate that kind of reputation as a team and get called into those places. You don't need a TV show to do it. So that's one of the many reasons why we tried to kind of be on the level at all times.

only like kind of deaths there. There was a keeper who died while they were still serving as a lighthouse keeper. So now there's this I weren't going by. You know, we're waving way back away from the road. It's very loud here today. I wanted to do this in person, but A we never had a chance, and.

sound in the lighthouse. I absolutely heard footsteps, and so there were definitely things going on, but I didn't get the vibe that it was something like either a aggressive or b like really trying to get anyone's attention. Like it just seemed very much like it just sort of existed.

lightning at one point. But the weirdest one, which I wanted to tell you because I wanted to see how you feel about it, is that while they were building it, there was this like freak occurrence where all of these snakes like these I think they were even poisonous snakes like traveled across the water and all came and started nesting in the construction site and so like thousands of them, so as they were trying to like build, they would like fall down on the workers.

luck with everything. And yeah, I guess that's it. I guess we need to get back. Let's go to the pensacle A lighthouse right now, because I guarantee it's warmer there.

take care. Like a ship navigating through dark water, you can never know for sure what risk lies ahead. I'm Amy Brunei and this was haunted road. Are you tired of the same old, vague Haitian destinations and cookie cutter experiences? Do you crave a sense of mystery, wonder and adventure that can't be found in ordinary travel brochures? Do you listen to this podcast and think I'd like to visit

that spooky place. Well, that's why I started Strange Escapes, a paranormal based travel company that takes you to some of the most haunted locations in the world. Frankly, it's my excuse to combine all of my favorite things, which is ghosts, beautiful hotels, food and wine, and other weirdos like me. To be honest, If that sounds right up your alley and you want to learn more, then visit Strange Escapes dot travel and hopefully you can join us sometime.

Mild from Aaron Menkey. Learn more about this show over at Grimandmild dot com and for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.