Has anybody else noticed an odd trend with the lighthouses featured in the latest scary movies? I guess it started with The Ring, where a lighthouse played a decent role in the movie… The movie “They” had a decent flyover of one if I remember correctly, and the previews for the new movie “Darkness Falls” has numerous shots of a flyover of a lighthouse (and a image with static on TV, and a kid drawing an image… Sounds like a combo of the Ring and They)… So what’s the deal? When did lighthouses become all supernatural and scary?!
A lighthouse was a scary place to be in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953). More recently, Round the Twist (90’s) played up the spooky angle. People who watched Round the Twist as kids are probably running hollywood today.
They probably became scary around 1980 . I blame The Fog
The History Channel has had a series about haunted places for a long time, before The Ring came out. As has already been noted, lighthouses have been featured in other films for a long time.
As to the question I quoted, consider that lighthouses are often in lonely places – stuck out on a spit of land or on a rock way out in the ocean. Many lighthouse keepers lived alone in them. A few died in them. I think that lighthouses in film are like the “lonely cabin in the forest” that featured in splatter films from the 1980s, and even back to stories by the brothers Grimm. So I think that an isolated lighthouse on a stormy night, probably abandoned (since most have been replaced by signal bouys) makes a natural “scary place” for a thriller.
The Point Lookout Lighthouse in Maryland is supposed to be one of the most haunted palces in the world.
Lighthouses have long suggested an ideal venue for hauntings. They’re isolated, by their nature, and many folks find isolation to be spooky enough on its own-- It’s popular to characterize lighthouse keepers as somehow “haunted” themselves, seeking to escape from something in the world.
Lighthouses also play a life-and-death role in the protection of sea-going folk- a good place for vengeful ghosts to be drawn to, should some error lead them to their deaths.
Lighthouses and their environs are romantic, and yet suggestive of adventure. It’s only natural that we mythologize them. We always have.
Because if you get startled at the top of a lighthouse, you can’t just jump out the window and run.
How do you measure that exactly? I checked with my local instrument supplier and they reckon they’ve been trying to source a supplier for hauntometers for years without success.
Maybe you can get them in Maryland.