Point Lookout Lighthouse Investigation
(06/22/02)

Location: On the southern tip of Maryland, on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The lighthouse is located on a peninsula just south of Point Lookout State Park.

Date: Saturday, June 22, 2002

Moon Phase: ?

Solar Weather: ?

Investigators present: Hillary M. and Robert H.

Equipment: RCA digital voice recorder, Olympus C-3000 digital camera,  Pentax PC-550 35mm camera, Olympus Digital 2000 voice recorder, Kodak DC280 digital camera, Olympus 35mm camera.

Investigation: We arrived at the lighthouse at approximately 2 p.m.    Unfortunately, the park just outside the lighthouse was bustling with summer activity, which included a lot of vehicle traffic and noise from boom boxes on the nearby beach.  After a quick tour, we set up our recorders in the south side basement and south side den (second floor, facing the bay).   

Recordings from the South Side basement, middle room produced nothing remarkable.   During the last investigation, there was a heaviness felt in this room when Robert, Hillary and Laura were present in the room; an orb was captured during that session.   However, during this session neither the heaviness nor any orb activity was noted.    A noise was noted when Robert asked if someone was jealous of Laura; the noise could have been the faintly spoken word "No".

Robert was alone in the south side bedroom (second floor, facing the Potomac River) at approximately 3:36 pm, taking pictures down the hallway toward the entrance to the cupola.   He saw a diamond shaped light about 4 feet from the ground.   The light appeared to be  a refraction composed of multiple lines of light, and appeared to change in intensity, the brightness oscillating from left to the right in a circular motion.   The light was approximately 3 feet high and 1.5 feet wide in the center, tapering from the center upward and from the center downward.    The light was visible for about 4 seconds.    Robert snapped pictures as fast as the digital camera could process the signals.    A picture taken just after the light was visible contains a moving orb.    A picture taken only seconds later contains two orbs on either side of the hallway just outside the bedroom door.   A third picture taken only seconds later shows no orbs, so the likelihood of the orbs being dust particles is highly unlikely.    There is a chain hanging from a light in the ceiling, but the chain is dull so it is unlikely that the light was a reflection from the camera flash.    Before the lighthouse was raised to two stories in 1883, the height of the light was 24 feet above sea level (currently the light is 41' above sea level).    Based on the location and characteristic of the light, maybe this was an echo from the past (prior to 1883) when the lens was only 24 feet above sea level.   The light appeared farther down the hallway, approximately near the stairs that lead to the South Side Living room on the first floor; the light was specifically NOT directly underneath the existing light.

Hillary and Robert were upstairs recording and asking questions in the South Side Bedroom (second floor facing the Potomac) when they heard noises from the south side living room (first floor).   The South Side living room (facing the bay) contained a table with everything we brought into the lighthouse and it sounded as if someone were searching through our belongings, moving them about.   The tape recorder in the South Side Bedroom picked up the noises, but a tape recorder located in the living room did not.   We were so convinced that the park employee had returned to the lighthouse, that Robert went to greet the person.    Upon entering the top of the stairs to the South Side living room, the noise stopped.   Robert called out a hello but no one answered.    Robert searched the lower floors of the lighthouse and found no one.    In our previous investigation, we had a similar phenomenon happen at approximately the same time, 4:30 pm.    The crashing noises appeared on audio recordings at this investigation and at a previous investigation on April 12, 2002.   No rational explanation has be postulated for this recurring phenomena, although Hillary suggested for our next investigation that we bring a deck of cards and some objects that we can more readily observe if there is any movement.

While asking questions, Hillary and Robert recorded with Hillary in the South Side living room and Robert in the North Side Living Room.   Nothing remarkable happened.

As Robert was leaving the lighthouse, he snapped a picture from the top of the stairway on the North side of the lighthouse (this is the stairway where a woman in a long blue dress was spotted by someone visiting the lighthouse when Laura Berg lived in the lighthouse;  this staircase is sometimes referred to as the Ann Davis Staircase, since the lady in blue is thought to have been the spirit of the first lighthouse keeper, Ann Davis).    The picture contained a purple orb about half-way up the stairs (see pictures at:  Point Lookout Investigation 2 Pictures)

A review of the recordings from the day did not lead to any exemplary findings for EVP, with the exception of the crashing sounds on the first floor, a sound of a dog barking and a very faint "what a brat" as we were leaving the South Side Kitchen.


Conclusions:    The three main events for the day were the unexplained light and orbs that Robert saw, a purple orb on the North Side staircase and the unexplained crashing/shuffling  noises that both Hillary and Robert heard and captured on digital recorders.    Faint EVPs were recorded, but all were faint and difficult to discern.    The investigation was hampered by the limited amount of time available and the amount of activity at the point by summer vacationers.

Report Submitted by Robert Hall.