November 5, 2023 • 14 mins
Buy Me Coffee (please!) - https://paypal.me/greatlakestruecrime
Website - www.greatlakestruecrime.net
TwitterX - https://twitter.com/greatlakescrime
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/greatlakescrime
All music by Kai Engel licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For more info, please visit https://www.kai-engel.com/.
Produced, written, edited, and hosted by Steve from Great Lakes True Crime.
**Positive reviews really help out the show and are always appreciated**
SOURCES:
Willis, James A. Ohio’s Historic Haunts: Investigating the Paranormal in the Buckeye State. Kent State University Press, 2015.
https://www.rockthelake.com/buzz/2017/10/ghost-cat-fairport-harbor-lighthouse-eerie-erie-story/
http://www.lhdigest.com/Digest/StoryPage.cfm?StoryKey=1136
https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=285
Website - www.greatlakestruecrime.net
TwitterX - https://twitter.com/greatlakescrime
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/greatlakescrime
All music by Kai Engel licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For more info, please visit https://www.kai-engel.com/.
Produced, written, edited, and hosted by Steve from Great Lakes True Crime.
**Positive reviews really help out the show and are always appreciated**
SOURCES:
Willis, James A. Ohio’s Historic Haunts: Investigating the Paranormal in the Buckeye State. Kent State University Press, 2015.
https://www.rockthelake.com/buzz/2017/10/ghost-cat-fairport-harbor-lighthouse-eerie-erie-story/
http://www.lhdigest.com/Digest/StoryPage.cfm?StoryKey=1136
https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=285
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
For many years, workers and volunteersat the Fairport Harbor Lighthouse Museum in northeast
Ohio swore that they saw a ghostof a cat running around the museum and
jumping up on furniture. It allseemed to be maybe nothing more than a
silly legend. That is, untilone day in two thousand and one when
they found it from the south shoreof Lake Erie. This is Great Lakes
(00:24):
True Crime. Before we get started, I wanted to confess that this episode
(01:42):
was supposed to be this year's Halloweenepisode. However, when I originally recorded
this episode, the audio was terrible. Some of you may have even heard
the version that was published originally,but I did almost immediately take it down
for whatever reason. It's it soundedfine on my laptop, but when I
uploaded it onto the internets, soundedlike hot garbage. Hopefully this version is
(02:07):
better anyway. Located east of thecity of Cleveland, Ohio, in Lake
County, Fairport Harbor is a villageof approximately thirty one hundred people on the
shore of Lake Erie. Lake Erieis the shallowest of the Great Lakes,
and treacherous storms can whip up veryquickly, producing waves up to seven feet
(02:30):
high and occasionally even much higher thanthat. Early in the port's history,
the townspeople knew that a lighthouse wasbadly needed, so in the fall of
eighteen twenty five, a fifty fivefoot tall lighthouse and adjacent keeper's house were
completed, and the fixed white light, which was fueled by whale oil,
(02:54):
was lit for the first time.As one of only eight lighthouses on the
Great Lakes, Fairport Harbor Lighthouse attracteda growing number of vessels to its port,
and before long Fairport was known asa sailor's town, rivaling the nearby
port of Cleveland. In eighteen thirtyone, the harbor became the first federally
(03:17):
designated shipping port on Lake Erie.The prominent industries in Fairport Harbor at the
time included shipbuilding, fishing, intransportation of dry goods such as coal,
salt, stone, and many otheritems. The job of lighthouse keeper initially
(03:37):
went to Samuel Butler, who wasthe first of fourteen lighthouse keepers at Fairport
that would tend to the lighthouse severaldecades later. In eighteen sixty eight,
it was discovered that the lighthouse wasin such bad shape that it had to
be replaced, and so on Augusteleventh, eighteen seventy one, a new
Fairport Harbor Lighthouse went into service,but in certainly the original keeper's house from
(04:01):
eighteen twenty five remained intact. CaptainJoseph Babcock was the first keeper at the
new Fairport Harbor Lighthouse. He actuallyled a very interesting life before becoming a
lighthouse keeper, having narrowly escaped deathin a Native American attack at the age
of eight. He was saved onlywhen it was discovered that his mother was
(04:24):
also Native American, and he wouldlater become noteworthy for his involvement in the
American Civil War. Two of JosephBabcock's three children were born at the lighthouse,
and one of them, a son, unfortunately died of smallpox. Another
son, Daniel, served as assistantlighthouse keeper from nineteen oh one to nineteen
(04:47):
nineteen, and then as headkeeper untilthe lighthouse was decommissioned in nineteen twenty five.
It was then that another new lighthouseopened up on an offshore breakwater in
Fairport Harbor, which provided a muchbetter vantage point as a navigational beacon,
and this rendered the inland older FairportHarbor Lighthouse obsolete with construction of the new
(05:18):
offshore lighthouse, orders eventually came infrom the bureaucrats in Washington, d C.
To tear down the old Fairport HarborLighthouse. After hearing about this decision,
the villagers were in an uproar,and the federal government eventually backed down
and left the old lighthouse standing.But it just stood there, empty,
(05:41):
not serving any real purpose for years. In nineteen thirty nine, the US
Coast Guard took over duties of theLighthouse Service and they again talked about tearing
down the Fairport Lighthouse. They couldsimply find no reason for them to keep
maintaining it. Local protests again wereloud and clear, but this time there
(06:04):
was a plan for the lighthouse.It would serve as a museum along with
the keeper's house. In nineteen fortyfive, the Fairport Harbor Historical Society was
formed with the primary objective of savingthe Fairport Harbor Lighthouse. The Historical Society
(06:24):
immediately began making improvements at the site, gathering historical artifacts and housing them in
the Keeper's House, which was opento the public as the Fairport Harbor Marine
Museum, which is a museum stillin operation today. Throughout the history of
the museum, one topic of conversationhas prevailed, and that is ghost stories.
(06:48):
And the one thing these ghost storiesall seem to have in common is
that of the first keeper of thenew lighthouse, Joseph Babcock, or,
to be more accurate, Joseph's wifeMayor. Joseph Babcock actually served two terms
as keepers of the Fairport Harbor Lighthouse. His first stint was from eighteen seventy
(07:09):
one to eighteen eighty one, atwhich time he stepped down to become assistant
lighthouse keeper so that he and hisfamily could move into town rather than being
isolated out at the lighthouse. Butthen in nineteen hundred, Captain George L.
Riker, who had served as headkeeper at Fairport Lighthouse for nineteen years,
(07:30):
suddenly died of a heart attack.Joseph Babcock, who had been serving
as assistant lightkeeper under Riker, tookover again as head lighthouse keeper, but
back to Joseph's first stint at thelighthouse. When he and his wife Mary
moved into the lighthouse keeper's residence ineighteen seventy one, they brought along their
(07:51):
children, Daniel, Hattie and Robbiewhen little Robbie was five years old,
he passed away from small This obviouslyleft Mary Babcock depressed and broken hearted at
one point. We're not sure exactlywhen Mary became bedridden. We also don't
(08:13):
know the exact nature of this bedriddenstatus, whether she had a short term
illness or injury, or perhaps shewas sick from depression. Whatever the case,
though, Daniel procured a couple additionalcats to keep Mary company in bed,
as Mary's always liked to have catsaround the house. As an aside,
(08:33):
you never hear about people being bedriddenanymore, do you. Why is
that? I mean, could Ihave said I was bedridden when I had
the COVID? I may have missedan opportunity there. Anyway, Mary really
took to one of her new cats, a plumpy gray one, and that
cat was very fond of Mary too, almost never leaving her side until the
(08:56):
day she died, at which pointthe cat, named Sentinel, disappeared.
And here's where the ghost story begins. The cat was never seen again after
Mary died, but decades later,in the nineteen eighties, Paula Brent,
a curator who lived at the museumfor a number of years, had reported
(09:20):
seeing the ghost of a gray cat. She was quoted in a local newspaper
as saying, quote, it wouldskid her across the floor near the kitchen
like it was playing. I wouldcatch glimpses of it from time to time.
Then one evening I felt its presencewhen it jumped on the bed.
I felt its weight pressing on me. At first, it kind of freaked
(09:41):
me out. But ghosts don't botherme. They're part of the world.
End quote. According to Paula,she actually played with the ghost cat from
time to time. It was onlyever seen on the second floor of the
museum, though never the first floor. So the old old lighthouse keeper's house
(10:01):
seemed to have a ghost cat roamingthe second floor, which was the ghost
of Mary Babcock's beloved companion Sentinel.The years passed on, and with the
new millennium, the museum trustees decidedit was time to install some air conditioning
in the museum. As the newair conditioning system in ductwork was being installed,
(10:24):
a worker wriggled his way into adark, tight crawl space in the
basement. At one point he turnedhis head and was startled by what he
was staring at It was the mummifiedremains of a cat staring right back at
him, a mummified gray cat.That is so, legend has it that
(10:46):
this was Sentinel, the gray cat, whose ghost has been haunting the second
floor of the museum for decades.Over the years, many ghost hunters,
paranormal experts, and the like haveactually researched the building to see what they
could find. In one case,an organization called the Ohio Researchers of Banded
(11:07):
Spirits in two thousand and nine spentthe night in the lighthouse investigating paranormal activity.
During the night, they recorded whatthey said was a meow. And
if that is an evidence of aghost cat, I don't know what is.
Another paranormal researcher actually brought in catnipand cat toys trying to lure the
(11:31):
ghost cat out to play, butnothing came from that endeavor. And it
should also be noted that there areno stories about ghosts in the lighthouse itself,
just the keeper's house. Oh andif you're curious about Sentinel the ghost
cat, you can see him.He's on display at the museum. Yes,
(11:52):
that's right. A mummified cat isone of the many displays you can
find at the Fairport Harbor Marine Museumand Lighthouse. You can find out more
details on their website at Fairport HarborLighthouse dot org. And that's the story
of Sentinel the ghostcat on the topicof ghosts and lighthouses, though, I
(12:16):
actually worked at a Great Lakes lighthousea couple decades ago. While on the
job, I occasionally spent some nightsin the vacant old keeper's house. It
was similar in age and size tothe old lighthouse and keeper's house in Fairport
Harbor. The cellar of this keeper'shouse, however, had been used in
(12:37):
the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundredsto store dead bodies from a nearby island
in the winters when the ground wasfrozen. They were stored there only until
the ground thought out and graves couldbe dug back on the island in the
spring. Needless to say, thishouse was creepy, very creepy. Being
(13:00):
there at nights was unsettling, tosay the least. I can't say that
I ever saw any ghosts, though. And that's all for this brief episode
of Great Lakes True Crime. Youcan follow the show on Facebook and Twitter.
Just search for Great Lakes True Crime. You can also check out links
in the show notes for sources andmore information. And lastly, I really
(13:24):
want to thank our loyal follower Betty, who's been helping out the show and
supporting us for years now. ThanksBetty. You can email me at Great
Lakes Truecrime at gmail dot com withany thoughts or case suggestions for Great Lakes
True Crime. This has been Steve, your host and producer. Thanks for
listening. Buys cokeeping a protect theproblems, getting to control, attuned to
(14:20):
put the problem coptic develop
For many years, workers and volunteersat the Fairport Harbor Lighthouse Museum in northeast
Ohio swore that they saw a ghostof a cat running around the museum and
jumping up on furniture. It allseemed to be maybe nothing more than a
silly legend. That is, untilone day in two thousand and one when
they found it from the south shoreof Lake Erie. This is Great Lakes
(00:24):
True Crime. Before we get started, I wanted to confess that this episode
(01:42):
was supposed to be this year's Halloweenepisode. However, when I originally recorded
this episode, the audio was terrible. Some of you may have even heard
the version that was published originally,but I did almost immediately take it down
for whatever reason. It's it soundedfine on my laptop, but when I
uploaded it onto the internets, soundedlike hot garbage. Hopefully this version is
(02:07):
better anyway. Located east of thecity of Cleveland, Ohio, in Lake
County, Fairport Harbor is a villageof approximately thirty one hundred people on the
shore of Lake Erie. Lake Erieis the shallowest of the Great Lakes,
and treacherous storms can whip up veryquickly, producing waves up to seven feet
(02:30):
high and occasionally even much higher thanthat. Early in the port's history,
the townspeople knew that a lighthouse wasbadly needed, so in the fall of
eighteen twenty five, a fifty fivefoot tall lighthouse and adjacent keeper's house were
completed, and the fixed white light, which was fueled by whale oil,
(02:54):
was lit for the first time.As one of only eight lighthouses on the
Great Lakes, Fairport Harbor Lighthouse attracteda growing number of vessels to its port,
and before long Fairport was known asa sailor's town, rivaling the nearby
port of Cleveland. In eighteen thirtyone, the harbor became the first federally
(03:17):
designated shipping port on Lake Erie.The prominent industries in Fairport Harbor at the
time included shipbuilding, fishing, intransportation of dry goods such as coal,
salt, stone, and many otheritems. The job of lighthouse keeper initially
(03:37):
went to Samuel Butler, who wasthe first of fourteen lighthouse keepers at Fairport
that would tend to the lighthouse severaldecades later. In eighteen sixty eight,
it was discovered that the lighthouse wasin such bad shape that it had to
be replaced, and so on Augusteleventh, eighteen seventy one, a new
Fairport Harbor Lighthouse went into service,but in certainly the original keeper's house from
(04:01):
eighteen twenty five remained intact. CaptainJoseph Babcock was the first keeper at the
new Fairport Harbor Lighthouse. He actuallyled a very interesting life before becoming a
lighthouse keeper, having narrowly escaped deathin a Native American attack at the age
of eight. He was saved onlywhen it was discovered that his mother was
(04:24):
also Native American, and he wouldlater become noteworthy for his involvement in the
American Civil War. Two of JosephBabcock's three children were born at the lighthouse,
and one of them, a son, unfortunately died of smallpox. Another
son, Daniel, served as assistantlighthouse keeper from nineteen oh one to nineteen
(04:47):
nineteen, and then as headkeeper untilthe lighthouse was decommissioned in nineteen twenty five.
It was then that another new lighthouseopened up on an offshore breakwater in
Fairport Harbor, which provided a muchbetter vantage point as a navigational beacon,
and this rendered the inland older FairportHarbor Lighthouse obsolete with construction of the new
(05:18):
offshore lighthouse, orders eventually came infrom the bureaucrats in Washington, d C.
To tear down the old Fairport HarborLighthouse. After hearing about this decision,
the villagers were in an uproar,and the federal government eventually backed down
and left the old lighthouse standing.But it just stood there, empty,
(05:41):
not serving any real purpose for years. In nineteen thirty nine, the US
Coast Guard took over duties of theLighthouse Service and they again talked about tearing
down the Fairport Lighthouse. They couldsimply find no reason for them to keep
maintaining it. Local protests again wereloud and clear, but this time there
(06:04):
was a plan for the lighthouse.It would serve as a museum along with
the keeper's house. In nineteen fortyfive, the Fairport Harbor Historical Society was
formed with the primary objective of savingthe Fairport Harbor Lighthouse. The Historical Society
(06:24):
immediately began making improvements at the site, gathering historical artifacts and housing them in
the Keeper's House, which was opento the public as the Fairport Harbor Marine
Museum, which is a museum stillin operation today. Throughout the history of
the museum, one topic of conversationhas prevailed, and that is ghost stories.
(06:48):
And the one thing these ghost storiesall seem to have in common is
that of the first keeper of thenew lighthouse, Joseph Babcock, or,
to be more accurate, Joseph's wifeMayor. Joseph Babcock actually served two terms
as keepers of the Fairport Harbor Lighthouse. His first stint was from eighteen seventy
(07:09):
one to eighteen eighty one, atwhich time he stepped down to become assistant
lighthouse keeper so that he and hisfamily could move into town rather than being
isolated out at the lighthouse. Butthen in nineteen hundred, Captain George L.
Riker, who had served as headkeeper at Fairport Lighthouse for nineteen years,
(07:30):
suddenly died of a heart attack.Joseph Babcock, who had been serving
as assistant lightkeeper under Riker, tookover again as head lighthouse keeper, but
back to Joseph's first stint at thelighthouse. When he and his wife Mary
moved into the lighthouse keeper's residence ineighteen seventy one, they brought along their
(07:51):
children, Daniel, Hattie and Robbiewhen little Robbie was five years old,
he passed away from small This obviouslyleft Mary Babcock depressed and broken hearted at
one point. We're not sure exactlywhen Mary became bedridden. We also don't
(08:13):
know the exact nature of this bedriddenstatus, whether she had a short term
illness or injury, or perhaps shewas sick from depression. Whatever the case,
though, Daniel procured a couple additionalcats to keep Mary company in bed,
as Mary's always liked to have catsaround the house. As an aside,
(08:33):
you never hear about people being bedriddenanymore, do you. Why is
that? I mean, could Ihave said I was bedridden when I had
the COVID? I may have missedan opportunity there. Anyway, Mary really
took to one of her new cats, a plumpy gray one, and that
cat was very fond of Mary too, almost never leaving her side until the
(08:56):
day she died, at which pointthe cat, named Sentinel, disappeared.
And here's where the ghost story begins. The cat was never seen again after
Mary died, but decades later,in the nineteen eighties, Paula Brent,
a curator who lived at the museumfor a number of years, had reported
(09:20):
seeing the ghost of a gray cat. She was quoted in a local newspaper
as saying, quote, it wouldskid her across the floor near the kitchen
like it was playing. I wouldcatch glimpses of it from time to time.
Then one evening I felt its presencewhen it jumped on the bed.
I felt its weight pressing on me. At first, it kind of freaked
(09:41):
me out. But ghosts don't botherme. They're part of the world.
End quote. According to Paula,she actually played with the ghost cat from
time to time. It was onlyever seen on the second floor of the
museum, though never the first floor. So the old old lighthouse keeper's house
(10:01):
seemed to have a ghost cat roamingthe second floor, which was the ghost
of Mary Babcock's beloved companion Sentinel.The years passed on, and with the
new millennium, the museum trustees decidedit was time to install some air conditioning
in the museum. As the newair conditioning system in ductwork was being installed,
(10:24):
a worker wriggled his way into adark, tight crawl space in the
basement. At one point he turnedhis head and was startled by what he
was staring at It was the mummifiedremains of a cat staring right back at
him, a mummified gray cat.That is so, legend has it that
(10:46):
this was Sentinel, the gray cat, whose ghost has been haunting the second
floor of the museum for decades.Over the years, many ghost hunters,
paranormal experts, and the like haveactually researched the building to see what they
could find. In one case,an organization called the Ohio Researchers of Banded
(11:07):
Spirits in two thousand and nine spentthe night in the lighthouse investigating paranormal activity.
During the night, they recorded whatthey said was a meow. And
if that is an evidence of aghost cat, I don't know what is.
Another paranormal researcher actually brought in catnipand cat toys trying to lure the
(11:31):
ghost cat out to play, butnothing came from that endeavor. And it
should also be noted that there areno stories about ghosts in the lighthouse itself,
just the keeper's house. Oh andif you're curious about Sentinel the ghost
cat, you can see him.He's on display at the museum. Yes,
(11:52):
that's right. A mummified cat isone of the many displays you can
find at the Fairport Harbor Marine Museumand Lighthouse. You can find out more
details on their website at Fairport HarborLighthouse dot org. And that's the story
of Sentinel the ghostcat on the topicof ghosts and lighthouses, though, I
(12:16):
actually worked at a Great Lakes lighthousea couple decades ago. While on the
job, I occasionally spent some nightsin the vacant old keeper's house. It
was similar in age and size tothe old lighthouse and keeper's house in Fairport
Harbor. The cellar of this keeper'shouse, however, had been used in
(12:37):
the eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundredsto store dead bodies from a nearby island
in the winters when the ground wasfrozen. They were stored there only until
the ground thought out and graves couldbe dug back on the island in the
spring. Needless to say, thishouse was creepy, very creepy. Being
(13:00):
there at nights was unsettling, tosay the least. I can't say that
I ever saw any ghosts, though. And that's all for this brief episode
of Great Lakes True Crime. Youcan follow the show on Facebook and Twitter.
Just search for Great Lakes True Crime. You can also check out links
in the show notes for sources andmore information. And lastly, I really
(13:24):
want to thank our loyal follower Betty, who's been helping out the show and
supporting us for years now. ThanksBetty. You can email me at Great
Lakes Truecrime at gmail dot com withany thoughts or case suggestions for Great Lakes
True Crime. This has been Steve, your host and producer. Thanks for
listening. Buys cokeeping a protect theproblems, getting to control, attuned to
(14:20):
put the problem coptic develop
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.