{"id":2269,"slug":"tybee-island-lighthouse-savannah-georgia","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Tybee Island has had a lighthouse since 1736 — the day-mark Oglethorpe ordered for the entrance to the Savannah River three years after the colony was founded, the second lighthouse in America and the tallest structure in the colonies at ninety feet. The first tower was wood and brick on cedar piles; the sea took it in five years. The second went up in 1742 — Oglethorpe called it the best building of its kind in America — and the sea took that one too, reaching its door by 1748. The third, built in 1773 on safer ground, is the one whose lower sixty feet are still inside the present tower.","The current lighthouse went up in 1867 on the stump of the 1773 tower — the Confederates had burned the upper section to keep it from the Union, and the rebuild stacked a hundred and forty-five feet of brick on the colonial base. The first-order Fresnel lens installed that year is still in it — the light that has marked the river mouth through every war and storm since, automated in 1972 and never dark.","The light station is the most intact in the country — the keeper's house, the assistant keepers' quarters, the summer kitchen from 1812, the cistern, the fuel building, all on the three acres the station has always occupied. The ghosts the staff report are the keeper kind: footsteps in the tower, figures in the quarters, the presence of the men who climbed the hundred and seventy-eight steps every night to keep the lamp lit.","Tybee is the archive's stacked file — the lighthouse built on the lighthouse built on the lighthouse, the 1867 tower standing on the 1773 walls that stand on the site the sea cleared twice, still burning the lens it was lit with the year the war ended."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Tybee Island is the archive's layered file — the 1736 day-mark the sea took, the 1742 tower it took again, the 1773 tower whose base holds the 1867 light that still burns, the most complete light station in America on the river mouth it has marked for three centuries.","A lighthouse that survived the sea keeps its keepers — the file's suggestion being that Tybee's haunting is the job itself: the footsteps on the stairs of the men who climbed them nightly, in the tower that rose three times because the river needed it to."]}],"name":"Tybee Island Lighthouse","aliases":[],"type":"LIGHTHOUSE","type_label":"Lighthouse","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HISTORIC_SITE","HAUNTED_LIGHTHOUSE"],"groups":["legends","maritime"],"desc":"The 1867 tower on a 1736 light site—Keeper Jackson’s daughter lore.","full_desc":"A lighthouse in Savannah, Georgia, built in 1867, Tybee Island Lighthouse is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The 1867 tower on a 1736 light site—Keeper Jackson’s daughter lore. The name the accounts keep returning to is Keeper's daughter. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Savannah","county":null,"state":"Georgia","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":32.012457,"lon":-81.194157,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":1867,"year_opened":1867,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Haunted lighthouse batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":1653,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Visitors report a girl’s figure and footsteps on the 178 stairs. The figure answers to Keeper's daughter in the retellings. Crews leave marks on vessels long after they muster out, and Tybee Island Lighthouse in Savannah, Georgia had crews enough. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. It is the sighting the place is known for, and it hasn't stopped.","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","evidence_label":"Local folklore","entity":"Keeper's daughter","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Tybee Island Light","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tybee_Island_Light","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":1654,"type":"REPORTED_ANOMALIES","description":"Reported voices and a presence in the keeper’s house. The vessel's reports concentrate where the work was hardest — ships and lights keep their own roll call. Witness accounts, no evidence file: the claim is anecdotal and stays that way. 'Tybee Island Light' carries the account. The pattern of small anomalies is itself the claim — none dramatic alone, persistent together.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Tybee Island Light","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tybee_Island_Light","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The light station dates to 1736; the current tower is 1867 atop the 1773 base. A vessel with a documented working life gives the file real substance underneath the maritime lore. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. The detail is preserved in 'Tybee Island Light'. The record keeps it — history, not lore.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1736","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Tybee Island Light","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tybee_Island_Light","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Visitors report a girl’s figure and footsteps on the 178 stairs. A vessel with Tybee Island Lighthouse's service record gives the reports an unusually crowded roster to draw on. It survives as local folklore, which is to say it survives because people keep telling it. The report is preserved in sources like 'Tybee Island Light'. Legends accrue where records go silent; this one filled the gap and stayed.","earliest":null,"evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","source":{"name":"Tybee Island Light","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tybee_Island_Light","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"Keeper's daughter","claimed_identity":"Keeper's daughter","verified":null,"summary":"Visitors report a girl’s figure and footsteps on the 178 stairs. The file calls it Keeper's daughter. Maritime lore is the oldest ghost file there is; Tybee Island Lighthouse in Savannah, Georgia is a fully credentialed entry. The account appears in 'Tybee Island Light'. Named presences persist where anonymous reports fade — the file's name here is Keeper's daughter.","behavior":"Visitors report a girl’s figure and footsteps on the 178 stairs.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Tybee Island Light","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tybee_Island_Light","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Lighthouse site; tower climbs, if offered, are usually seasonal and may require tickets.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Tybee Island Light","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tybee_Island_Light","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Tybee Island Light","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tybee_Island_Light","desc":"Lighthouse in Georgia, United States","extract":"The Tybee Island Light is a lighthouse located on the north end of Tybee Island, Georgia. It overlooks the Savannah River at the point where the river meets the Atlantic Ocean. The Tybee Light is one of seven surviving colonial-era lighthouse towers in the United States, but it was heavily modified during the mid-nineteenth century.","img":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Tybeelight.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","score":88,"lat":32.02223,"lon":-80.84566},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}