Main Piece: Lighthouse Point Vicente  

The following was a story told to me by a friend of mine, BS, in my Anthropology lab, and I am DM. The story was about a haunted lighthouse in Palo Verde.

BS: As a kid, I grew up looking at this lighthouse every night. I always saw a women, but I never knew the story of why she was up there. When I began to work at a like local culture center, I finally heard the story about that women. A long time ago, there was a boat called the SS Destroyer, which was an army ship, and they were in a boat wreck. One of the crew member’s wife jumped off the lighthouse after she heard the news of her husband. Now, every night she will go out on to the lighthouse and moan for her dead husband.

Background/Context:

The participant is nineteen years old in his first year of college at the University of Southern California. He is American. In my Anthropology lab, we were sharing folklore with one another for our final project and BS decided to share with us a ghost story he had from his hometown.

DM:Why do you know this ghost story/ Why do you like telling this ghost story?

BS: I know this story because they told me stories as a kid. I also learned more about the story when I began to work in the cultural center.  I like talking about it with other people who saw her and know about the history.

DM: Where/who did they learn it from?

BS: I saw it as a kid, then people told stories about it, then  at the cultural center I saw the story again. I finally looked it up online when I wanted to know more.

DM: Why is this ghost story important to you?

BS: This is important to me because it was my first ghost encounter or experience. This is also important to me because I will never forget how scary it was seeing her every night or sometimes during the day.

Analysis/ My Thoughts:

There was another version of this story which involved the richest family in Palo Verde, the Vanderlipp’s. They say that the lady that is moaning in the night is Mrs. Vanderlipp because they owned that lighthouse. It is more of a claiming her territory type of thing. In class, we talked about how ghosts can cause a real estate problem because the ghosts feel entitled to the land. The land is actually supposed to be passed down to their family, but when it gets sold to other people, the spirits on the property get angry. 

One can also find this story at:

Walton, Stephanie. “A Lighthouse Legend.” Daily Breeze, Daily Breeze, 6 Sept. 2017, www.dailybreeze.com/2008/04/18/a-lighthouse-legend/. This article talks about the same thing as my interviewee said only with more descriptions and more of the facts. The article has more information about what exactly happened to the lady on the lighthouse.