If you missed the first one…
This post is brought to you by the upcoming Bearshirt collection, The Beacon House and Other Young Arthan Stories by G. W. Thomas. Of the seven tales, “The Beacon House” features a lighthouse, but not one on the coast of the sea. This tower is in the middle of a plain, and its purpose is far more sinister than directing ships. If you like creepy lighthouses and Sword & Sorcery, then check it out next month.
The Golden Age of Comics gave way to the more restrictive Silver Age. We still have haunted lighthouses but the thrills are more subtle (or is that sleepy?) Last time I said all the stories were supernatural. This time the Science Fiction elements creep in as DC tries to find a way to keep their Horror titles going. (There are no Bugs Bunny or detective mysteries here though.) Warren’s black & white comics keep the eerie tradition (see what I did there?) alive in the 1960s, until finally Horror comics return in the Bronze Age. Despite all these changes, the traditional ghost ships, tentacular beasties and people falling off of lighthouses continues…
Silver Age
“Lighthouse on the Reef” (Adventures Into the Unknown #71, February 1956) has John Tucker, lighthouse keeper, wish he was back in the old days of pirate Andre Duprez. A ship full of pilgrims lands on the island and he can’t quite believe they are from the past. When Duprez shows up and has John help bury his treasure, he can’t deny it. Suddenly, he is back in our time and knows exactly where the treasure was buried. John can’t explain any of it.
“They Wait Below” (Uncanny Tales #42, April 1956) Matt Ronson is lonely as a lighthouse keeper. One night a pretty woman shows up. She wants him to not light the beacon. A ship is destined to crash. Matt will be rich. The girl becomes several girls. In the end, he signals the ship using an oil lantern. He thinks the girl was a dream but there are footprints in the sand. This one was reprinted in B&W in The Haunt of Horror #3 (September 1974).
“The Deserted Lighthouse” (Strange Tales #48, July 1956) begins with a stranger seeing a lit beacon in a lighthouse on a reef. A local man explains the lighthouse has been abandoned for a hundred years. The visitor is a fugitive (Les Mis style) from Europe. He goes to the reef to hide. There he encounters beings from another dimension. The pursuing policeman Dumont comes to the lighthouse on the convict’s trail. The prisoner hopes to flee to the other dimension to be rid of the cop. Only it turns out, Dumont’s the one the beacon was for.
“Prisoners of the Lighthouse Creatures!” (Tales of the Unexpected #36, April 1959) a crew of a ship see a lit beacon from an abandoned lighthouse. The beam picks up their boat. They are captives of a gigantic space creature that puts them in a rocket ship and sends them to another planet. There the giant creatures place the men inside a rudimentary lighthouse of their own. Turns out they are naughty children, and even bigger adults take them away. The men rush back to the rocket to fly home. Robert A. Heinlein’s Star Beast used this idea in 1954.
“I Spent a Night in the Haunted Lighthouse!” (Journey Into Mystery #56, January 1960) was written by Stan Lee and Larry Lieber. John hears about the abandoned lighthouse that the locales think is haunted. When he gets caught in a storm while boating, he ends up spending a night on the island. He sees a ghost ship and ghost pirates. The next morning he proves the vision by showing his friends a life preserver from the Flying Dutchman. (The Kisbie Ring wasn’t invented until a hundred years after the Flying Dutchman was supposed to sail, but….)
“The Lighthouse From Nowhere!” (Strange Tales #87, August 1961) was written by Stan Lee. A coastal village is in need of a lighthouse. When one mysteriously appears, they think they are lucky. The local schoolteacher investigates and then blows up the beacon. It turns out it was part of an alien invasion of Earth.
“The Lighthouse” (Eerie #3, May 1966) was written by Archie Goodwin. Matthew Frye comes to the old lighthouse looking for author, Eric Standish. He meets a young woman who tries to push him over a cliff. Eric shows up and saves him. The writer shares some research he’s been doing about the lighthouse. Eighty years ago a ship called the Windfall ran aground because of the negligence of the lighthouse keeper. There was one survivor, a woman. The lighthouse keeper was Frye’s grandfather. The woman appears and and sends Frye over the top of the tower. The next day they find Frye’s body being clutched by an eighty year old skeleton.
“The Flying Dutchman” (Ghostly Tales #58, November 1966) was written by Joe Gill. Again the Flying Dutchman legend comes into our story. A lighthouse keeper tells his young recruit about the pirate crew of the Dutchman when an old hulk floats by. The pirates got a fortune in gold but also got plague from the infected gold sacks. The new guy investigates the old wreck to find the ghost pirates are still there.
“The Phantom Lighthouse” (The Twilight Zone #21, May 1967) was written by Paul S. Newman. While father and son are out ice fishing they run into an old man looking for his boat. They ignore him and soon regret it when the ice breaks up, stranding them on an ice flow. The iceberg takes them to sea where they discover an old lighthouse. The keeper is looking for the old man they met earlier. He takes them back to shore in a boat then goes on looking for his lost friend. Later the father learns from the local doctor that the lighthouse has been gone for a century.
“Head For the Lighthouse!” (Eerie #24, November 1969) was written by Bill Parente. The local lighthouse keeper entertains the local boys with tales of the sea. The local counsel decides to replace the keeper with an automated light. Then bad things begin to happen. Two men are killed in the installation. The salesman of the new system and McAllister the cop end up taking refuge in the tower. An undead lighthouse keeper attacks them. The next morning they find the salesman insane and McAllister dead, spinning on the new light. The old lich just wanted to tell his old stories…
Bronze Age
“Lighthouse of the Possessed” (Vampire Tales #4, April 1974) was written by Don McGregor. Morbius and his wife, Amanda, hide out in an old lighthouse. Too bad the creepy locales get possessed and the vampire has to take them out. Tom Sutton’s art is fabulous here, worth the price of the magazine alone.
“The Haunted Lighthouse” (The Unexpected #164, May 1975) was written by George Kashdan. A lighthouse keeper is mad, turning the beacon off to crash ships and steal their wealth. One of the ship’s crew survives but is captured by the madman. With the help of a woman captive, he escapes up the lighthouse. The lunatic pursues but the man kills him. Seeing all the stolen money, the sailor replaces the fiend, becoming a murderer himself. Later the police arrest him, blaming him for all the earlier killings too.
“Death Calling” (Weird Mystery Tales #19, June 1975) was written by Robert Kanigher. The lighthouse on Santa Bella Island allows a man to see a ghost ship crash and vanish. That night he sleeps and hears beautiful music calling to him. He later learns later the ship is called the Lorelei. He can’t leave it alone, and goes looking for the source of the music. It is siren-ghosts that drag him to the bottom of the sea. I feel Lovecraft’s “The Music of Erich Zann” and “The White Ship” inspired this one.
“The Searcher” (Ripley’s Believe It or Not #58, October 1975) begins in 1859 when a new lighthouse is built in the Bahamas. When the beacon is lit for the first time, the men see a strange woman wandering around. She is a phantom searching for her baby. Later a ship is wrecked and a baby boy is found alive in the arms of a dead woman. He is raised by the lighthouse keeper. The man and boy go back to the spot to allow the woman’s ghost to rest.
“Night of the Kraken” (Monster Hunters #10, October 1977) was written by Nick Cuti. When a lighthouse beacon is turned off, a giant octopus, the Kraken, devours a ship. The locals find the keeper dead and a beautiful woman with webbed hands and feet. They stone her, driving her into the sea. The new lighthouse keeper comes, discovers the girl, and a crate of dynamite. He blows up the Kraken and keeps the girl.
“Dead Fire” (Scary Tales #15, July 1978) was written by Keith Chapman. A love triangle in the circus ends with the knife-thrower, Clem Duff, killing the Viking strongman, Baddodr, because of his unfaithful wife, Ellen. Clem flees to a lighthouse to avoid the law. A ship wrecks near the island, depositing his wife and the coffin holding the strongman. A ghost of a Viking rises out of the coffin and kills Duff. The Viking ascends to Valhalla, a new legend.
“Tower of Vengeance” (Grimm’s Ghost Stories #59, May 1982) was written by Winston Blakely. A pack of modern pirates take over a lighthouse as a base of operations. The old lighthouse keeper warns them that the tower is haunted by the ghost of Captain John Windsor. They don’t believe him until the ghost shows up. The next day, some locals find the pirates, dead from fear.
Conclusion
The creepy lighthouse was fairly standard in comics, but what of Hollywood? I can remember the British couple trapped in one in The Day of the Triffids (1962). They are the ones to discover that salt water is the plants’ Achilles Heel. (“And I really hot, When I saw Janette Scott, Fight a Triffid that, Spits poison and kills…”) But much better was the recent Cold Skin (2017) with Ray Stevenson and David Oakes. This is a Lovecraft fan’s delight, with a lighthouse under siege by Deep Ones. The film has more humanity than most HPL stories and is everything these comics tried to do. And that Poe story I mentioned last time, the one finished by Robert Bloch. It got a film, too, The Lighthouse (2019) with Willem DaFoe and Robert Pattinson. Depressing and in black & white. What more could you ask for?
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