Delaware

Cape Henlopen

Cape Henlopen State Park

A cylindrical shaft of rough stone rises out of the mist here and shines like a flickering beacon at ships approaching the coast. Some locals call
it the Corpse Light; others have dubbed it the "Bad Weather Witch". The phenomenon is often mistaken for a lighthouse and has been
responsible for many deaths. The first disaster was on December 25, 1655, when the captain of the Devenshireman steered his vessel towards
the "lighthouse" during a storm. Nearly two hundred people died when the ship crashed against the rocks

Over the years, hundreds more also died in wrecks here. Legend says that the phantom lighthouse is an old Delaware Indian curse of a "drum
of stone signaling death" to all white men. The curse punished British soldiers who massacred a group of Indians celebrating a marriage
ceremony. On May 25, 1978, the British ship DeBraak was lured too close to shore and broke apart in the bay. Sometimes the phantom ship
returns to reenact the disaster. The ghost of a lone Indian atop a mysterious rock was sighted by multiple witnesses in 1800, just before an
excursion barge smashed against the rocks, killing many people. In 1980, the U.S.S. Poet, a twelve thousand ton grain carrier, vanished
without a trace near the coast here.

King's Highway

Woodburn

Four ghosts haunt Delaware's Governor's Mansion. The great house was built in 1790 by a Revolutionary War colonel, Charles Hillyard, on land
given to his family by William Penn. When a Quaker by the name of Daniel Cowgill owned the house during the Civil War, a tunnel was dug
from the cellar to the St. Jones River, and escaped slaves used the mansion as a stop on the Underground Railway. The house was haunted for
over 160 years before it became the official home of the governor of Delaware in 1966. The first ghost at Woodburn appeared in 1805 to Lorenzo
Dow a Methodist evangelist staying there. He described the elderly "stranger upstairs" to the wife of the owner of the house one day. She told
him no one else lived in the house, but later she saw the same apparition. In the 1870's, another house guest had to be revived from a fainting
spell when he saw the ghost of an elderly man sitting by the fireplace. The phantom could be the original owner, Charles Hillyard, who died in
the house. Another ghost is a man in a powdered wig, who has a taste for fine wine. Governor Charles Terry Jr., accused the ghost of draining
off some of the vintage wines in the cellar of the mansion, and one of his servants saw the ghost help himself from a decanter in the dining
room. Earlier residents placated the dry spirit by setting out wine decanters, which mysteriously drained overnight. The ghost of a slave
kidnapper seems to stay near an old poplar tree in the yard. It is the tree from which he was hanged, although he was not strung up with a
rope. He climbed the tree hoping to kidnap runaway slaves, when the house was owned by abolitionist Daniel Cowgill. But as fate would have it
the man slipped, and he head was caught between two branches. On moonlit night his struggling ghost can be seen dangling from the gnarled
old tree. His awful moans and chain rattling sometimes fill the inside of the house as well. The fourth ghost is a little girl in a red checked
gingham dress. She was seen playing by the pool in the garden during in 1940's but has never been identified. At the January 1985 inauguration
party for Governor Michael Castle, guests complained of an invisible presence tugging at their clothing, and one woman saw the apparition of a
little girl in a corner of the reception room. The governor himself reported a few ghostly encounters and even allowed a teacher and three of their
students to bring their tape recorders and Ouija boards to Woodburn. After spending the night, the children were genuinely spooked, insisting
that a portrait of a woman in one of the rooms kept smiling at them.

Bibliography: Hauck, Dennis. Haunted Places: Ghost abodes, sacred sites, UFO landings, and other supernatural locations. New York:
Penguin Book, 1994.