Designed by George Meade and first lit in 1857, New Jersey's tallest lighthouse was built after a shipwreck killed 311 — and its 228-step tower draws reports of pipe smoke, phantom footsteps, and a disembodied woman's voice.
31 S Rhode Island Ave, Atlantic City, NJ 08401
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Small admission fee for tower climb; check website for current pricing. Museum and grounds access included.
Access
Limited Access
228-step spiral iron staircase with no elevator. Grounds and keeper's quarters museum are accessible.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1857 · Designed by George Meade (later Gettysburg commander) · New Jersey's Tallest Lighthouse · Built in response to Powhatan shipwreck (1854) · National Register of Historic Places
In the early morning hours of April 16, 1854, the German emigrant ship Powhatan broke apart in a nor'easter off the New Jersey coast near Long Beach Island. Of the 311 passengers and crew aboard, none survived. Bodies washed ashore along the Atlantic City beaches for days. The disaster intensified pressure already building on Congress to fund a lighthouse at Absecon Inlet, where the shallow and shifting shoals had claimed numerous vessels.
Dr. Jonathan Pitney of Absecon — the same physician who had been lobbying for Atlantic City's development as a resort and for the Camden and Atlantic Railroad to run through the region — was among the most persistent advocates for the lighthouse. Congress had appropriated funds, and work began in 1854 under Major Hartman Bache. The site presented an immediate engineering problem: groundwater kept filling the excavated foundation. Bache's solution was to bring in a steam engine and run pumps continuously to keep the hole dry while the masonry went in. When Bache was reassigned, Lieutenant George Meade took over the project. Meade applied the same meticulous approach to the construction that would later characterize his operations at Gettysburg.
The tower was completed in 1857. At 171 feet from base to lantern, it was the tallest lighthouse in the United States at the time and remained so until the 1873 completion of the current Cape Hatteras Lighthouse. The original first-order Fresnel lens, manufactured in France and shipped across the Atlantic, weighs 12,800 pounds and remains in the lantern room today.
The lighthouse was deactivated as an active navigational aid in 1933. Jack E. Boucher initiated preservation efforts in 1964, and a comprehensive restoration was completed in 1999 when the lighthouse reopened to public visitation. The keeper's quarters replica opened as a museum in 2002. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the New Jersey Register of Historic Places.
Sources
The paranormal reports at Absecon Lighthouse have settled into a recognizable pattern over the decades since the site reopened. The most commonly reported phenomenon is the smell of cigar or pipe tobacco in the tower — an odor with no contemporary source, attributed in local tradition to former lighthouse keepers who served through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Footsteps on the iron spiral staircase are the second most consistent report. Visitors and staff describe hearing the sound of someone ascending or descending the 228 steps while they are alone in the tower, the rhythm of footfalls above or below them with no one visible. Some reports add the sensation of being watched from the gallery above.
The New Jersey Paranormal Research Organization conducted a formal investigation and recorded what they reported as a female voice responding to a direct question with the words 'I like you.' The investigators also described seeing what appeared to be legs descending the staircase with no visible person attached. A separate category of reports involves children's laughter and giggling in the tower with no children present.
The SyFy channel's Ghost Hunters (season 6, episode 4, 'Phantoms of Jersey') filmed an investigation at the lighthouse on March 24, 2010. The investigation was cut short by weather, but the TAPS team captured footage of a camera appearing to move on its own inside the tower and an unexplained light in one of the rooms — anomalies they could not attribute to the wind or structural causes.
Media Appearances
Climb 228 steps to the watch room and gallery for views over Atlantic City and Absecon Inlet. The original first-order Fresnel lens — 12,800 pounds of lead glass — remains in place. The restored keeper's quarters at the base house exhibits on lighthouse history, maritime disasters off the Atlantic City coast, and the Meade-Bache engineering history.
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