From the earliest days of civilized man, lighthouses have captivated the imagination of the human race. For every one of us there is an appeal in these isolated sentinels, suggesting hope and trust. Standing alone on the ocean highways, they represent the eternal watchfulness of their keepers, whose slogan through the ages has been vigilance.
-From Edward Rowe Snow’s 1955 book, Famous Lighthouses of America
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ust last week, Jeremy D’Entremont added another paranormal activity investigation to his tally in a Rhode Island lighthouse. “We did something called ‘table-tilting’…and we had unbelievable results…the table was alive,” his voice ecstatically explained through the phone. “We were barely touching it at times, and most of the people had their hands an inch off of the table, so they weren’t even touching it. The thing was just rocking back and forth like it was going to go flying, you know one leg would come off the floor and it would just go crashing back. Sitting around an old table, D’Entremont knew for certain that no one was touching it.
Alongside D’Entremont sat Ron Kolek, founder of New England Ghost project and co-author of two books, Ghost Chronicles and A Ghost Day. “I love working with Jeremy, we’ve done a number of investigations together,” said Kolek who was recently awarded Volunteer of the Year. “I like [working with] Jeremy because he is very skeptical, be he also has an open mind” continued Kolek.
Kolek shares D’Entremont’s fascination for lighthouses. “I love lighthouses. I’m a member of the Friends of Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse Board.” The board is a chapter of the American Lighthouse Foundation. Kolek, Director-at-Large, works alongside D’Entremont, Operations Manager.
D’Entremont’s love affair with lighthouses dates back 25 years, he estimates. “My interest in maritime history in general really goes back to when I was growing up,” said D’Entremont. D’Entremont grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts. Growing up in the 1960s, he would regularly listen on the radio and watch on the television a historian by the name of Edward Rowe Snow. “He was a great story teller—a very dramatic story teller… and he was a dramatic guy, a big guy with a big mop of white hair,” D’Entremont explains of Snow, who was also a famous author. Even after publishing over 40 books about the history of lighthouses and other various aspects of maritime culture, Snow is most notorious for one thing primarily, even still today. “Edward Rowe Snow was the Flying Santa over lighthouses for over 40 years,” proudly stated D’Entremont.
After 40 publications and 40 years, Snow’s legacy lives through the ‘Flying Santa’ tradition as it continues today, where helicopters drop presents over various New England U.S. Coast Guard basis to show appreciation during the holidays. The tradition was born in 1927 by Captain Bill Wincapaw. 1955 marked Snow’s 19th season from the date he took over the reins. Christmas of that year would have made Snow’s 20th consecutive holiday flight, but in 1942 there was no Flying Santa. Snow was serving with air corps in North Africa. His wife, Anna-Myrle, accompanied her husband for the majority of his festive air journeys. 1955 also marked Snow’s four year-old daughter’s fourth successive trip; she made the run with her father every year since birth. If calculated correctly, that makes Snow’s daughter fifty-six years old today.
“[Snow] got involved in the mid 1930s and he kept it going until 1980, about a year before he died,” D’Entremont explained of his childhood hero. “It is continued today by helicopter over Coast Guard stations through a profit called ‘Friends of Flying Santa.’”
But it was Snow’s broadcast tales of shipwrecks, pirates, and lighthouses that truly sparked D’Entremont’s interest in the history of maritime subjects; specifically lighthouses. After a handful of opportunities where D’Entremont gratefully met Snow, he was inspired to produce a local cable television series about the story-telling historian. “In the 1980s I lived in Winthrop, Mass…and that was Edward Rowe Snow’s hometown, so I ended up producing a series on local television cable about Edward Rowe Snow, and that got me even more into maritime history and lighthouses,” said D’Entremont, by way of explanation.
“So it’s been about 25 years for me now,” said D’Entremont. “I always warn people about catching the ‘lighthouse bug.’” D’Entremont caught the” good but contagious disease” as he likes to call it when he turned from producing to driving vans—Lighthouse van tours, that is. “People do get hooked,” D’Entremont believes, “and it becomes a huge hobby and they feel a need to visit as many lighthouses as they can.” In the warmer months, D’Entremont offers a series of lighthouse tours by van; the majority of lighthouses the he brings guests up-close and personal to stand on the ocean highways north of Boston.
Each tour runs approximately eight hours long. "I’d say it usually flies by," laughs D'Entremont of his daylong journeys driving with a van full of guests from lighthouse to lighthouse. "I can’t remember giving a tour where to me it seemed that it was dragging, and I hope that’s true for the passengers."
Travel time between each lighthouse, on all of his tours, never take longer than an hour at most. D'Entremont claims that conversations with his guests keep the van time interesting. Dialogue surrounds almost anything, lighthouses and beyond. "I don’t want to overwhelm people with lighthouse information. So I try not to throw facts at people, that can get boring fast if I’m just telling them the dates and the hard facts about the lighthouses, so I try to talk more about the human interest about the lighthouses, like the stories about the keepers and their families. I mean that’s what brings it all alive. I mean the structures are great, but it’s the people that bring [the lighthouses] alive."
According to D’Entremont, there are some lighthouses that are better visited by land than by sea. At the Portland Head Lighthouse, D’Entremont leads his tour group as they unbuckle from their seats and climb to the top. “So it’s an up-close and personal type of tour opposed to viewing them by boat, but people who are interested in lighthouses should try to do some of both I think,” said D’Entremont.
While some lighthouses are better explored by land than by sea, some lighthouses are better investigated by sea than by land. This summer, D'Entremont is teaming up with Kolek to deliver a series of haunted lighthouse and ghost hunt cruises.
“Jeremy contacted me,” Kolek explained of how the two got in touch to get the paranormal lighthouse cruises underway. “We’ve actually done quite a few investigations together since” Kolek said of he and D'Entremont's lighthouse paranormal adventures.
Ron is the founder of New England Ghost Project, and he’s written a couple of books, and he’s done, I don’t know what number exactly but it has got to be hundreds of investigations, over quite a few years now," D'Entremont estimates. "He also does fund raising haunted tours of the Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse to raise funds for the lighthouse as well, so not for our own benefit but for the lighthouse." Kolek's benefit tours by land might be one of the many reasons why he was the recent recipient of the Volunteer of the Year Award.
Together, D'Entremont and Kolek will lead a series of haunted lighthouse cruises called x-trex paranormal journeys. Departing from Rye, New Hampshire, guests can choose from two different cruises, all depending on how involved with the paranormal they are willing to get.
"The ghost hunt cruise is an hour longer than the haunted cruise and we go more in depth more investigation type stuff from the boat, and of course the haunted cruise is more of just you know telling the stories and it’s an hour shorter," D'Entremont explained. "So they are similar but they are also a bit different."
In both cruises, the Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse will be the main attraction. Although he admits that he is not a fan of TV shows like, Ghost Hunters, D'Entremont lead the producers of the SyFy show through an investigation of the Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse for an episode. "I’m in the show. I showed them around and everything, and with the end results they had a lot of stuff happen. They heard footsteps on the stairs of the lighthouse and knocking on the walls and stuff. That’s on YouTube I’m pretty sure, if you were to search for ‘Ghost Hunters Portsmouth Harbor’ you’ll see it," explained D'Entremont.
Sure enough, he was right. The episode is on YouTube. A local reporter ventures with the crew to investigate the lighthouse. In the episode, the reporter comments that D'Entremont is a valid source due to his credible knowledge of the lighthouse and not to mention, his skepticism.
The Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse is not located in town of Portsmouth, it is actually located in Newcastle, New Hampshire. "I have in the past ten years I’ve spent a lot of time inside and around Portsmouth Harbor and the Lighthouse…that's basically my home base." D'Entremont has had a number of personal paranormal experiences there, only some of which were highlighted in Ghost Hunters.
"I’ve heard a voice, and I’m not the only one, I was one of a few people that’s heard a voice," told D'Enremont. "Just in the middle of the day, a male voice will say ‘hello’ when there seems to be no explanation for it." The voice may have been one of a particular keeper who died about one hundred years ago. "People think he's still keeping an eye on things there, old Joshua Card" informed D'Entremont.
The fort located directly next to the lighthouse, is also believed to be haunted. On the fourth of July in 1809 there was a big explosion at Fort Constitution, killing ten people. The paranormal activity both found in investigations in the fort and lighthouse are blamed on that, according to D'Entremont. "We’ve had a bunch of different groups come in and do investigations, and felt that there was a lot of activity both in the Fort and the lighthouse" explained D'Entremont.
Last summer during one of the investigations in Fort Constitution there was a point where a number of the investigators felt an overwhelmingly strong presence in one specific part of the fort. "At the same time, I felt the strongest physical reaction that I’ve ever had, in any of these investigations that I have taken part in," D'Entremont hushed through the phone. "I almost felt like I was hit in the chest with something… like this incredible, I don’t know how to describe it… I mean it kind of doubled me over and almost like feeling hot." D'Entremont's stress was evident in his voice even talking about it. "You know… um… like I felt flushed, I felt kind of sick, I actually had to get out of this little tunnel where we were for a few minutes to get some air." D'Entremont's physical reaction occurred the same time as two other people were feeling physical effects and feeling strong answers in their dowsing that they were doing. "I know that I felt what I felt and it wasn’t my imagination," expressed D'Entremont.
D'Entremont believed that there could be another explanation for their shared experience as an investigative group. He can usually relate to the people who are skeptical of paranormal activity. "I tend to look for other explanations. I think that you can’t jump to conclusions, so it’s just interesting and fun. Fun in an unusual way, but it is fun."
The ghost cruise was offered last summer as well, but this year D'Entremont's goal is to bring the investigations to a bigger scale. Even in his first run of the ghost cruise last year, D'Entremont and his guests uncovered spooky evidence of spirits haunting the Isles of Sholes, a group of islands off of the New Hampshire sea coast where the White Island Lighthouse stands tall. Anchored off the shore of Smutty Nose Island, D'Entremont informed his guests of the tremendous history residing there. "It’s pretty famous for a few reasons, there’s shipwrecks there and there was also a famous double-ax murder there, in the 19th century" D'Entremont informed.
"[On this cruise] last year we tried recording sound from the boat. We were near Smutty Nose Island and we had a group of EVP there," D'Entremont began. EVP stands for Electronic Voice Phenomenon. A man who specializes in EVP held the microphone outside the boat. "He said something like, ‘is anybody there?’ and held the microphone out," continued D'Entremont. "When it was played back… and it is pretty clear… it really sounds like a voice is saying ‘we’re being rescued.’ And we were able to play that back over the PA system so everyone on board was able to hear it, it was pretty amazing."
"So we’ll do some of that," continued D'Entremont about his goals for this season. "Recording trying to catch EVPs and also trying to get some photography, maybe some infared type of stuff and also some things that are sort of fun but don’t scientifically prove anything."
Guests of D'Entremont's cruises will also use different forms of ‘dowsing,' as mentioned previously, where questions are proposed simultaneously as a pendulum swings and it moves according to the spirit's answer. In the cruise investigations, D'Entremont will introduce another term called 'table-tilting' to his guests.
"I just did an investigation with a lighthouse in Rhode Island with New England Ghost Project last week, and we did something called ‘table-tilting’…. it’s sometimes called ‘table-tipping.’" The evidence gathering strategy dates back to the 19th century. It’s still done by a lot of investigators today according to D'Entremont.
"Basically people just sit around a table and put their hands lightly on the edge of the table. Some people believe that it’s spirits, doing this and that you’ll say something like ‘if there are spirits here let us know you are here by moving the table’ and the table will start vibrating and rocking back and forth and we had unbelievable results last week at this place in Rhode Island where the table was alive."
D'Entremont says that the results can be interpreted in different ways. "It’s fascinating no matter what. To me it has to be a spirit or spirits are doing it or, and this maybe more likely that our energy was doing it collectively or something, but that’s amazing in itself that to have people barely touching the table and cause it to move violently like that. Either way it is pretty fascinating." D'Entremont ensures that with paranormal investigations of lighthouses or forts or wherever, "there's always creepy things that happen."
