'It's never anything bad': Manager of 150-year-old P.E.I. lighthouse shares 'haunting' stories

Ryan McKellop · CBC News

· Posted: Jul 13, 2025 5:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 7 hours ago

CBC's Island Morning is launching a caller summertime feature, speaking to antithetic circuit guides astir Prince Edward Island astir the tours they springiness and wherefore you should instrumentality them. 

As the West Point Lighthouse celebrates its 150th year, its wide manager is gladsome to stock wherefore she isn't truthful definite it is not hosting immoderate spooky inhabitants. 

"I was a immense skeptic erstwhile I archetypal started six years ago, and it did not instrumentality maine agelong to commencement believing," said Kendra Smith. 

"We thin to perceive a batch of dense footsteps passim the building. All of a abrupt you'll crook your backmost to fto a impermanent — what you deliberation is simply a impermanent — walk by you and nary 1 is there. 

"Things volition determination connected america each the time, we person a batch of unexplained things hap with water — conscionable antithetic things similar that."

Reader's Digest mag erstwhile named the tract successful occidental Prince County arsenic 1 of the 10 astir haunted places successful Canada, and the lighthouse and its adjacent inn person long garnered attraction from tourists and Prince Edward Islanders alike.

Smith has a idiosyncratic transportation with its agelong history: the archetypal keeper, who helped physique it successful the 1870s and served determination for 5 decades, retiring in 1925.

"William MacDonald would person been my great-great-great uncle," she said. "He was present for 50 years, ne'er took a time off."

Smith said erstwhile she archetypal started enactment astatine the lighthouse, she didn't judge it was haunted. What truly changed her caput was an acquisition she had with her girl and a friend 1 day when the lighthouse was closed to the public.  

"I came successful wintertime time. It was March. I was going to ascent to the apical to get immoderate pictures for societal media."

During the winter, determination is nary moving h2o or heat astatine the lighthouse.

"My girl heard a sound, truthful of people we kept listening and I'm similar 'What is that sound?' I look down the hallway and everything is successful axenic darkness," she said.

Except for 1 country — "of course, it had to beryllium country 13" — that had the lights connected and h2o moving full-out successful the bathroom.

Smith said it didn't instrumentality them agelong to get out: "My girl and her person dove for the door, and I wasn't agelong aft them aft I unopen the lights disconnected and locked up.

"But it's ne'er thing bad; we telephone them tricks," she added. "This is their building, aft all."

Smith said these "hauntings" have made the aged lighthouse and inn notorious, bringing successful tons of funny visitors.

"This volition beryllium thing the beforehand table unit get asked each the time: 'Is it truly haunted?' So we're decidedly known for that and they conscionable emotion proceeding the stories."

Visitors are invited to locomotion successful for self-guided tours astatine the West Point Lighthouse Inn and Museum from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. from May to mid-October. Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for seniors and children, and $25 for a household of four.

Money from these tours goes to the upkeep of the lighthouse, Smith said.