Spectral Keepers of the Lights

The Haunted Foghorn?

On October 7, Newsday posted a story about the repair of the foghorn at Huntington Lighthouse in Huntington Bay, New York. The warning device had fallen silent when an underwater electric cable failed three years ago. The Coast Guard installed solar panels, but they only generated enough electricity to power the light, so the foghorn remained quiet. Recently they added new panels to the lighthouse, which will generate enough power to sound the booming foghorn again.

The Huntington Lighthouse Preservation Society, which has been restoring the 1912 structure for 22 years, for boaters who relied on it for navigation and residents who just like the noise it was great to hear it back.
“It’s back and we’re very excited,” said lighthouse society president Pamela Setchell. After the foghorn ceased operation, she said, “people complained about it all the time, especially a lot of the baymen.”

Well…..

Ask and ye shall receive, I guess, because two days later (October 9), the foghorn still hadn’t stopped. It’s been booming continuously for two days, ever since the Coast Guard attached the old foghorn and its optical detector to the new panels to test it, and decided to leave the system hooked up in operating mode. But as soon as the technicians left, the horn started up and hasn’t stopped, booming around the clock and depriving residents of Lloyd Harbor of sleep. Oh, and there is no fog, so it’s clearly a malfunction, or maybe it’s haunted?

The Coast Guard said it was sending an aids to navigation team from Connecticut to the lighthouse to try to repair it, but until they arrive the foghorn will be blasting all night long. At least this is a little faster than the last time the foghorn malfunctioned, back in 1994. It blasted around the clock then, too, for 41 days until the Coast Guard managed to repair it.

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