The Girl in the Lighthouse

Just a short ten-minute drive from my town is a small-secluded beach. Its not very well known so there's only about a dozen or so people who visit it every summer. My family, along with maybe three other families, owns a small cottage on the beach that we visit very often. What I like best about it is how peaceful it always is. There's no noisy traffic coming in or going out, no annoying screaming of little kids playing. I could just lay out under my umbrella all day and listen to the waves lap against the shore. My favorite spot, however, would have to be the large mass of smooth black rocks at the far edge of the shore that we call "Sailor's Peak." My mom used to tell me stories about people using Sailor's Peak as a diving board back in the 70's. I prefer the peak at night when you can sit and look out on the entire expanse of the sea. On clear nights you can see the lights in town reflecting off the water.

Sailor's Peak is also home to a large candy cane colored lighthouse. Built in the 1800's the lighthouse is no longer in use. At this point in it's life its only purpose seems to be as a simple decoration. Or, it could very well still be there because of the beach owner's odd fear of it. In fact, I'm the only one who still goes up the peak because of the lighthouse. You see, about 20 years ago a girl my age died when she fell from the top of the peak. They never even found her body.

Since that day all sorts of people have claimed to see the girl wandering around the lighthouse. It got so bad that they finally had to close the lighthouse in 1990 because even the lighthouse keeper wouldn't go near it. I was convinced that these people were all just being paranoid...until last Friday.

I had been up on Sailor's Peak like always. I had just climbed down and was on my way home when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. When I looked up I saw someone standing on the peak. It was a girl about my age with long blonde hair. She was wearing a yellow sundress and staring out onto the horizon. I found this pretty odd since I knew for a fact that I was the only 15 year old girl who came to this beach. I shrugged it off and continued home. I was probably hallucinating or something. The only problem with that theory was that I saw her the very next night. After seeing her three nights in a row, I finally decided to go up and see who she was. I don't know why, but not knowing her was really starting to bother me.

That night when I saw her standing up there I climbed the rocks and slowly approached her.

"Excuse me," I said. I must have startled her because she jumped and ran off. Before she did though, I managed to get a good look at her face. I recognized her from somewhere but couldn't place where. I didn't see her again after that night, which irritated me. Being a small privately owned beach, we keep a record of everyone who comes and goes. I figured I could find out who she was by checking that record. It would be just my luck that when I did check it, I could place every name to a face. None of them were the girl on the peak.

This frustrated me to no end. Why couldn't I figure out the identity of one person on such a small beach? I flipped through the pages of the utterly useless record book, looking for anything the least bit helpful. On the last page of the book was an article about the girl who died 20 years ago. Included with the article was a photo of the girl. She had long blonde hair and was wearing a yellow sundress. At that moment it hit me: the girl in the photo and the girl I met on the cliff were one in the same.

I haven't been to the peak since that day nor have I seen the girl. While I'll admit that my experience was pretty freaky, I still refuse to believe there's a ghost in the lighthouse. Isn't it more logical that I was just imagining all of that? I mean, that girl could have been anyone. Besides, there's no such thing as ghosts. There can't be...right?