HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
WWII coastal-defense bunkers and Delaware's ghostly Corpse Light, on one cape
15099 Cape Henlopen Drive, Lewes, DE 19958
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Delaware state park vehicle entrance fee applies (higher for out-of-state plates); Fort Miles Museum inside Battery 519 charges separate modest admission.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved and packed-sand park roads and trails; the Battery 519 museum interior is level, but some outdoor bunkers and towers involve stairs and uneven dune terrain
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1940 · WWII Harbor Defenses of the Delaware · Cold War SOSUS Listening Post · 1682 William Penn Public Land Grant
Cape Henlopen has been public land since William Penn designated it as such in 1682, making it one of the first public-use parcels set aside in the Thirteen Colonies. Its exposed position at the mouth of the Delaware Bay made it strategically important for more than two centuries, from Revolutionary-era coastal watch to the modern era.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built Fort Miles on the cape between 1940 and 1942, formally named for Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles on June 3, 1941. As part of the Harbor Defenses of the Delaware, the fort was built to stop German submarines and surface raiders from reaching Philadelphia and Wilmington; at its peak it garrisoned more than 2,000 soldiers and civilians across some 250 buildings, with concrete gun batteries -- Battery 519, Battery Smith, Battery Herring, and Battery Hunter -- and fire-control towers built into the dunes. A German submarine, U-858, surrendered to Allied forces off the cape at the war's end in May 1945.
The fort's mission did not end with the war. During the Cold War, Battery Herring was repurposed as a top-secret U.S. Navy listening post monitoring Soviet submarine traffic. The Army stood the fort down in 1991, and the site became part of Cape Henlopen State Park, established in 1964. Battery 519 now houses the Fort Miles Museum, which the nonprofit Fort Miles Historical Association operates in partnership with Delaware State Parks.
Sources
Delaware's Government Information Center recounts the Corpse Light as a phantom beacon that has been reported offshore at Cape Henlopen where no lighthouse ever stood, allegedly luring ships onto the shoals below. The legend is most often tied to a documented wreck: in May 1798, the British warship HMS DeBraak sank in a storm off the cape, killing Captain James Drew and 46 of his crew. A surviving crew member reportedly claimed the ship had been following a light that vanished moments before the collision.
According to the story, on moonless nights the ghost of Captain Drew is said to leave the cemetery at St. Peter's Church in nearby Lewes and wander the shoreline, still searching for his lost crew. The Cape Henlopen Light itself -- built 1767-1769, the sixth lighthouse on the Atlantic coast -- stood until beach erosion undermined it in 1924; it collapsed into the sea in 1926, leaving the cape without a real light and, in local telling, room for the phantom one.
Notable Entities
Tour the exhibits inside Battery 519, a 15,000-square-foot underground bunker built as part of the WWII coastal-defense network that once housed more than 2,000 soldiers and civilians on the cape. Exhibits cover harbor defense operations, the fort's Cold War listening-post role, and daily military life.
Walk the state park's dune trails past the fire-control towers and gun batteries still standing above ground. The Corpse Light -- a phantom light with no known source, blamed since Delaware's colonial era for luring ships onto the cape's shoals -- is part of the park's oral history rather than a scheduled attraction.
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