Here's a story about a mummified cat in a lighthouse keeper's house in Ohio. The story is from my book, Haunted Ohio V: 200 Years of Ghosts, Copyright 2003 Chris Woodyard. Not to be reproduced or reused without permission.
THE CAT CAME BACK
While I am completely at sea with nautical terms and technicalities, I admire the curve of a hull, the wing of a sail, and the blazing brilliance of a Fresnel lens. So I happily spent some time prowling through the Fairport Harbor Museum.
As I was getting ready to leave the Museum to climb the Lighthouse, I came in on the tail end of a conversation between two volunteers about post mortem photographs, the Victorian practice of photographing the dead. One of the volunteers said something to the other volunteer about, “They didn’t have embalming in those days.” My ears perked up. Any mortuary topic is dear to my heart.
“Ah, but they did wonders with ice!” I said brightly, leaving the two staring after me.
This exchange on preservation techniques was gruesomely appropriate. The Lighthouse in Fairport Harbor was the site of a grisly discovery: the remains of a mummified cat, found in a sealed crawl space.
The Fairport Harbor Light was designed and built by a Connecticut native named Jonathan Goldsmith. He submitted a bid of $2,900 for the lighthouse and the adjoining keeper’s house, but neglected to build a cellar under the keeper’s house. He claimed that the cellar hadn’t been on the original specifications and soaked the Collector of Customs at Cleveland for another $2,132.
Although Goldsmith had a good reputation, he seems to have cut corners on the lighthouse. The tower’s foundation settled so much that it had to be replaced at great expense.
The Collector of Customs had the last laugh. Six years later Goldsmith applied for the position of light keeper. His application crossed the desk of the same Collector of Customs who had handled the cellar addition and the faulty foundations. The position of light keeper was given instead to Samuel Butler, the first of a line of seventeen keepers to serve at the Fairport Light.
The port overseen by the light was busy and prosperous. Goods from all over the world flowed through the harbor. The light keeper kept the records of marine traffic and collected wharf fees. He also handled a different sort of goods from the southern states which began to flow through the port in the 1840s: fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. It is believed that some slaves hid in the cellar of the keeper’s house.
Lake Erie winters and the shoddy construction which had dogged the light from the beginning made a new light imperative. This time the foundation was laid 12 feet deep in concrete. On August 11, 1871, the new light threw its beams 18 miles across the lake.1
Captain Joseph Babcock was the first keeper of this new Fairport Light. Two of his children, Robbie and Hattie, were born in the keeper’s house. Robbie died there at the age of five, of smallpox. The boy is said to haunt the first floor of the museum. The staff have described the ghost as “a presence of dread.” The spirit also manifests as a cold breeze and a foul smell either of decay or the distinctive stench of smallpox.
A far more pleasant lighthouse spirit is a ghostly cat. A former curator, Pamela Brent, lived upstairs in the museum for several years. The phantom feline looked like a puff of gray smoke. “It would skitter across the floor near the kitchen, like it was playing, but without feet…I would catch glimpses of it from time to time…one evening I felt its presence when it jumped on the bed. I felt its weight pressing on me. At first it kind of freaked me out. But ghosts don’t bother me. They are part of the world.”
Other staff members were skeptical of the idea of a cat ghost. That was before workers installing air conditioning vents under the lighthouse found the mummified cat.
I’ve seen a photo of the mummy. Its skin is leathery. Its empty eye sockets are cobwebbed. It is not a cuddly cat. It is emphatically not a thing to come upon in the twilight in an empty keeper’s house at the bottom of the basement stairs.
In addition to doing publicity for the museum, Carol Bertone is also on the building and grounds committee. She went over one spring evening to change the timer on the lights in the Keeper’s House basement.
“I was there by myself. It was getting dark and going down into the basement was always kind of creepy. I got to the bottom of the steps and I saw this thing. There was a mummified cat kind of standing on all fours, its face turned towards me. I screamed and ran back upstairs. Of course, I’d always heard the stories about the ghost…
“Then I got to the top of the steps and said to myself, ‘This can’t be. I have to go back down.’ So I actually got up enough courage to go back down the stairs and I saw that it was a mummy. It had its whiskers, its eyelashes, its feet so perfectly formed, its claws…. Of course, I had no idea how it had gotten there.”
It was discovered when workmen installing air conditioning were working in the basement. One of the men climbed into a tight crawl space with his flashlight.
“He was looking at something and laid his head down on something which just happened to be a mummified cat,” Carol said.
The workmen who discovered the cat didn’t know what to do with their desiccated discovery. They left it at the foot of the basement stairs to snarl out of the twilight at Carol.
For a time the mummy cat was kept in a cardboard box at the museum, much to the delighted terror of schoolchildren. Some people thought keeping the cat distracted from the mission of the museum. Others thought it unhygienic or unsuitable for the faint of heart. The trustees decided to have it taken away.
Where did the cat come from? Captain Babcock’s wife was bedridden for a number of years during her husband’s tenure as keeper. She kept many cats, both for company and to keep down vermin. It has been suggested that the unfortunate cat was accidentally trapped beneath the house and starved to death, mummifying naturally in the dark, cool space.
I think there are two other possibilities. In the United Kingdom, and in some places in the U.S., it is not at all unusual for mummified cats to be found inside walls, in crawl spaces, and above rafters. Sometimes they are found posed in aggressive positions, sometimes even with a rat or mouse skeleton in their mouths. It’s a kind of folk magic: live cats keep away mice and rats; a dead cat will keep away evil spirits and witches. If a witch came prowling around with her “familiar,” which was often a cat, your watch-cat in the walls would know how to deal with her.
The second reason a mummified cat might be sealed up in a crawl space has to do with the very ancient belief in foundation sacrifices. This Celtic tradition states that if one wants to ensure that a building will stand firm and to bring good luck to the building, a living creature must be buried alive in the foundation. Humans were preferred, but a cat would do.
Goldsmith’s original light and keeper’s house were a nightmare of shoddy construction, cracked foundations, and cost overruns. Is it outlandish to suggest that some English or Irish workman privately decided a quiet foundation sacrifice might help save the new Fairport Light from the same fate? After all, who would miss a cat?
In 1925 the light in the tower was extinguished, replaced by an unromantic foghorn station. Scheduled for demolition, the lighthouse was saved by the citizens of Fairport, who raised funds to establish a marine museum and preserve the lighthouse.
Today the light keeper’s house is the Fairport Marine Museum. Displays tell the story of Lake Erie’s maritime past and lore through relics like the old Fairport Light Fresnel lens, set like a multifaceted diamond in its polished brass setting, and the pilothouse of the Great Lakes carrier Frontenac. There are ships’ models, and pieces of tackle, stories of shipwrecks, lake tragedies, and heroic rescues. The 70-foot tower can be climbed by a lace-like spiral iron staircase. Don’t look down as you climb, but if you brave the stairs, you will be rewarded with a spectacular view of the lake.
No one lives in the keeper’s house anymore so the ghostly cat, who is still heard skittering overhead, perhaps plays with the ghostly little boy Robbie. Carol Bertone assures me that the mummy cat is “still in the village.”
There is an old song called “The Cat Came Back” by Harry Miller (1893). To a thumpy jumpy tune the cat comes to the end of its nine lives and falls dead, inspiring the last chorus eminently appropriate to this story:
But its ghost came back the very next day,
Yes, its ghost came back, maybe you will doubt it,
But its ghost came back; it just couldn't stay away.
Also see
http://www.ncweb.com/org/fhlh/ghostcat.htm for the Fairport Harbor Light website.
"I was a reference librarian in a previous life."
