Not your typical lighthouse, round and residing where land and sea meet, the Connecticut New London Ledge Lighthouse is a square, house-like structure sitting not on the edge of a harbor but out in the water. Unlike other offshore lighthouses built around the same time (early 1900s) this lighthouse is constructed of brick rather than cast-iron.
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The design of the lighthouse is French Second Empire, supposedly to reflect the elegant homes on shore at nearby Long Island Sound. Ironically, many of those homes situated nearest to shore where destroyed by a hurricane on September 21, 1938, just a few years after the lighthouse’s construction. Originally manned by civilian light keepers, Connecticut’s New London Ledge Lighthouse was tended by the coast guard from 1959 until its automation in 1987.
Like any lighthouse worth its salt, Connecticut’s New London Ledge Lighthouse has its own ghost. The ghost, named Ernie, was either a light keeper who threw himself from the lighthouse due to a broken heart or a worker who fell to his death during the lighthouse’s construction. Each story has its defenders; the second story being put forth by the New England Ghost Project after their investigation of the strange occurrences reported there.
