“The tale of the camp,” writes Edwin Warfield Beitzell in his book, Point Lookout, Prison Camp for Confederates, “is a horrid story to tell. It is a story of cruel decisions in high places, a story of diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid and typhus, of burning sands and freezing cold in rotten tents. It is a story of senseless shootings by guards. It is a story of the despair and death of 4,000 prisoners, many of whom could have been saved.”

Thanks to its association with the prison camp, the 1830 lighthouse has earned the designation of “America’s Most Haunted Lighthouse,” Okonowicz said. “I’ve visited the lighthouse twice, and it is a really spooky and isolated place. It feels as though you’re at the end of the world.

A grisly past continues to haunt Point Lookout
Frederick N. Rasmussen
October 27, 2007