Earlier this month, we enjoyed a ghost walk in the town of York, Maine. My friend Steven from Manchester, NH told me about it and we joined him, our friend David and others. Today's blog is about York, the tour, origin of tombstones, and a ghost story about the ghost who haunts nearby Boon Island!
Photo: The tour guide, dressed in the black robe and sandals with white hair and a long beard explains to the group of 30 or more people the rules of the tour. Credit: R.G.) 
ABOUT YORK - It is a HUGE Tourist town. There are a lot of souvenir shops, restaurants and amusements. Situated beside the Atlantic Ocean on the Gulf of Maine, York is a well-known summer resort town. It is home to three 18-hole golf clubs, four sandy beaches, and Mount Agamenticus. The population in the 2020 census was 13,723. In the summer that number must reach 4 or 5 times that!
OUR TOUR GUIDE - The tour was led by "The Madman of York," a very animated and funny older man with a long white beard, dressed in a black robe. He was full of funny, quirky historic trivia and several ghost stories. To me, he had the voice of one of the muppet characters, like Grover. :) Which made it all the more entertaining. DEVIL WAGONS- He called cars "Devil wagons" and had the group do funny gestures everytime one passed while we were walking the tour.
(Photo: My friend Steven from Manchester who told me about the ghost walk, joins me for a picture together. Credit: R.G)HOW TOMBSTONES CAME TO BE - Here's something appropriate for a ghost tour... The Madman of York told us the origin of tombstones, so I looked it up and it's true: The tradition of using tombstones, also known as headstones, gravestones, or markers, may date back to the Neolithic and Bronze ages, around 3,000–6,000 years ago. Early tombstones were often large prehistoric stones, called megaliths, that marked burial chambers instead of individual graves. They were sometimes made of wood or rocks, and placed on gravesites in early religions to prevent the dead from rising. It wasn't until the 1600s that they became common in cemeteries. Boon Island's Lighthouse Ghost - This is a story that appeared in Seacoast Online in October 2013. Click Link to see original article
Six miles off the coast of York, the Boon Island lighthouse can be found on a rocky island in the sea. According to William O. Thomson, the Kennebunk author of 26 books including "Stories and Legends Along the Maine Coast," the story begins sometime in the 1840s when a young lighthouse keeper, Luke Bright, brought his new wife, Katherine, to the island to live.
The couple was married only a short time, Thomson said, when December brought a howling nor'easter to the island. Despite the danger to himself, Luke Bright decided he needed to make his way from the house to the light tower to light the light so any ships out in the storm would be guided safely to shore.
"He tied a rope to his waist and went out in the storm," Thomson said. "He was trying to secure the bolt in the tower when he slipped into the ocean and drowned."
His widow, Katherine, dragged Luke's body back to the tower and sat with her dead husband.
"She held his hand," Thomson said. "And she kept the light going for five days, climbing 164 steps each time. Finally, the lantern went out because she had run out of fuel."
(Photo: Boon Island Lighthouse, 9 miles off the Maine coast of York Beach. Station Established: 1811, First Lit: 1855, still operational. Credit: U.S. Coast Guard)
Once the people on land realized the light had gone out, a fisherman rowed out to the island to check on the Brights. They found Luke dead and Katherine beside him in the freezing cold tower.
"It was 10 below in the tower," Thomson said. "She died a short time later."
It wasn't, however, the last people heard from Katherine.
"Keepers on the island reported hearing a woman's voice," Thomson said. "It cries, 'Luke'."
On dark nights, keepers have also reported strange things.
"They hear a knock on the door," Thomson said. "When they go out, they see an apparition in the form of a woman. It floats away to the tower."
Several keepers have reported that when they were unable to get back to the island to light the light, someone's done it for them and foghorns have also gone off by themselves.
(Photo, some of the crowd on the ghost tour, including our friend David, second from left. Credit: R.G.)
HISTORICAL INFO ABOUT BOON LIGHT: Researched and written by Melissa Buckler, a volunteer through the Chesapeake Chapter of the U.S. Lighthouse Society.
- Boon Island is an inhospitable piece of land about 9 miles from the coast of York, Maine. The first lighthouse on Boon Island was a 50 foot wooden tower built in 1799. It lasted five years before a storm destroyed it.
- A stone day beacon was erected to replace the wooden tower. It was used until 1811 when a new tower was built. At this time the station was officially established. The tower was only 32 feet above sea level and was destroyed in a storm in 1832.
- Finally a tower that could stand the storms of the Atlantic was built. A stone 133 foot tower was built in 1855. The tower is 25 feet in diameter at the base and 12 feet at the top. It is the tallest lighthouse in New England from base to tip but it is not the highest light above sea level. A new keeper’s dwelling was also built at this time.
- In 1899 the keeper’s house was basically rebuilt and a second story was added
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