'It's never anything bad': Manager of 150-year-old P.E.I. lighthouse shares 'haunting' stories

CBC's Island Morning is launching a new summer feature, speaking to different tour guides around Prince Edward Island about the tours they give and why you should take them. 

As the West Point Lighthouse celebrates its 150th year, its general manager is glad to share why she isn't so sure it is not hosting some spooky inhabitants. 

"I was a huge skeptic when I first started six years ago, and it did not take me long to start believing," said Kendra Smith. 

"We tend to hear a lot of heavy footsteps throughout the building. All of a sudden you'll turn your back to let a guest — what you think is a guest — pass by you and no one is there. 

"Things will move on us all the time, we have a lot of unexplained things happen with water — just different things like that."

Island Morning6:13We begin Tour Guide Tuesdays at the West Point Lighthouse

We take you on a tour of the beautiful and allegedly haunted West Point Lighthouse Inn and Museum, and learn more about what continues to make this place special after 150 years.

Reader's Digest magazine once named the site in western Prince County as one of the 10 most haunted places in Canada, and the lighthouse and its adjacent inn have long garnered attention from tourists and Prince Edward Islanders alike.

Smith has a personal connection with its long history: the first keeper, who helped build it in the 1870s and served there for five decades, retiring in 1925.

"William MacDonald would have been my great-great-great uncle," she said. "He was here for 50 years, never took a day off."

Smith said when she first started work at the lighthouse, she didn't believe it was haunted. What really changed her mind was an experience she had with her daughter and a friend one day when the lighthouse was closed to the public.  

"I came in winter time. It was March. I was going to climb to the top to get some pictures for social media."

During the winter, there is no running water or heat at the lighthouse.

It's never anything bad; we call them tricks. This is their building, after all.— Kendra Smith

"My daughter heard a sound, so of course we kept listening and I'm like 'What is that sound?' I look down the hallway and everything is in pure darkness," she said.

Except for one room — "of course, it had to be room 13" — that had the lights on and water running full-out in the bathroom.

Smith said it didn't take them long to get out: "My daughter and her friend dove for the door, and I wasn't long after them after I shut the lights off and locked up.

"But it's never anything bad; we call them tricks," she added. "This is their building, after all."

Smith said these "hauntings" have made the old lighthouse and inn notorious, bringing in lots of curious visitors.

"This will be something the front desk staff get asked all the time: 'Is it really haunted?' So we're definitely known for that and they just love hearing the stories."

Visitors are welcome to walk in for self-guided tours at the West Point Lighthouse Inn and Museum from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. from May to mid-October. Admission is $10 for adults, $5 for seniors and children, and $25 for a family of four.

Money from these tours goes to the upkeep of the lighthouse, Smith said.