Haig Point Lighthouse Ghost Legend on Daufuskie Island

THE LEGEND: A lighthouse keeper’s daughter is said to linger at Haig Point, waiting for a love who sailed away

No one can say exactly when Maggie Comer became part of the folklore surrounding the Haig Point Lighthouse. Some versions say she died of a broken heart. Others acknowledge what the historical record tells us: Maggie lived well beyond her years at the lighthouse, married, helped raise a family in Savannah and died in 1930. Somewhere between those facts grew one of Daufuskie Island’s enduring ghost stories.

The lighthouse was new in 1873 when Patrick Comer became its first keeper. His daughter, Maggie, grew up overlooking the restless waters of Calibogue Sound, watching ships come and go and helping her family with life at the light station. According to the legend, a lighthouse service engineer arrived aboard a tender to work on the lantern. During his stay, Maggie became enamored with the visitor. Then he departed and never returned. The story says Maggie continued climbing the tower, watching the channel and waiting for his vessel to appear on the horizon. With each retelling, the waiting grew longer and the romance more tragic until Maggie herself became part of the lighthouse’s lore.

More than a century later, guests have reported soft footsteps on the spiral staircase, a rocking chair moving on a still evening and doors seemingly opening or locking on their own. Fishermen have told of a woman dressed in white appearing in the lantern room just before fog rolls across the sound. Others claim to have seen her standing motionless in an upstairs window, her gaze fixed on the shipping channel. History gives Maggie a less tragic ending. Family accounts say she married her deceased sister’s widower, Capt. Walter John Thompson, helped raise her sister’s three surviving children in Savannah and died in 1930. She is buried in Laurel Grove Cemetery. Yet on Daufuskie, fact has never entirely displaced folklore. The Maggie who lived a full life and the Maggie who eternally watches the water now exist side by side — one preserved in records, the other in stories. At Haig Point, both versions still linger.