January to February 2002 Newsletter Retrospective

Two fires, a vanished keeper's cottage, and a landmark that has outlived every keeper who ever climbed its stair. The January to February 2002 newsletter of the Ontario Ghost Society is a dated primary source for how Toronto's oldest lighthouse haunting was being tracked, filed and discussed at the turn of the millennium. Readers who want their folklore anchored in records rather than rumour will find that the issue sits at the meeting point of local history, testimony and archive work.

The details cited in this entry were checked on Gibraltar Point Lighthouse entry.

The Gibraltar Point Lighthouse is the piece of geography that holds the whole file together. It stands on Hanlan's Point, the most westerly of the Toronto Islands, at coordinates 43°36′49.2″N 79°23′07″W. Begun in 1808, the lighthouse is the oldest existing lighthouse on the Great Lakes, and one of Toronto's oldest buildings. Its first keeper was John Paul Radelmüller, a German-born man whose death in 1815 supplies the plot, the ghost and the argument that the newsletter was set up to document.

The page carries a title, a date range and photographs, and it carries the texture of a working society: minutes, findings, follow-ups, correspondence. If you collect folklore, you already know that a story changes shape depending on who is telling it and when. A dated newsletter is useful precisely because it freezes one version of a haunting at one moment.

Why does the tale of the first keeper matter so much?

Because the keeper is the lighthouse. The page states that the lighthouse is perhaps best known for the demise of its first keeper, German-born John Paul Radelmüller, whose 1815 murder forms the basis of Toronto's most enduring ghost story. This is not a faint rumour attached to an anonymous building; it is a name, a date and a charge.

Recent scholarship has verified many aspects of the traditional tale. The page notes that research confirmed the basic truth of many aspects of the popular legend, and that it identified the soldiers charged with the crime and later acquitted. That combination, a confirmed violent death plus a set of acquittals, is what keeps the file open. A haunting with a documented court outcome is harder to dismiss than one built on footsteps in a corridor.

Radelmüller's biography is also firmer than the legend usually admits. Born circa 1763 in Anspach, Germany, he worked as a servant of royalty for twenty years, in the households of the Duke of Gloucester and the Duke of Kent, and accompanied the latter to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1799. He arrived at York in 1804 and was appointed keeper of the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse on July 24, 1809.

What does the popular version get wrong?

According to local lore, soldiers from Fort York visited Radelmüller on the evening of January 2, 1815, in search of his bootlegged beer. They had too much to drink, a dispute broke out, and the keeper was murdered. The dispute may have been about the bootleg being watered down. The inebriated soldiers, so it is claimed, tried to conceal the crime by chopping apart the corpse and hiding the remains.

That last detail has not survived scrutiny. The page records that while research verified much of the traditional tale, the scholar Eamonn O'Keeffe cast doubt on some of the more dramatic elements: contrary to claims that the corpse was hacked to pieces and hidden, contemporary evidence suggests Radelmüller's body was not mutilated. It was found after his death by the lighthouse's fourth keeper, George Durnan, and his uncle Joe, when Durnan was a young man and his father was keeper. Durnan told John Robertson that he and his uncle had discovered bone fragments, most notably a jawbone, and fragments of a coffin 500 ft (150 m) west of the lighthouse, and he believed they belonged to the late Radelmüller.

The 1893 search by then-keeper George Durnan is the hinge of the story for a folklore reader: a keeper looking for a body near his own tower, finding a jawbone and coffin fragments, and being unable to prove the link. The page says plainly that it was impossible to definitively prove they were linked to Radelmüller. Even Mike Filey, writing on the truth of the keeper's demise, left it open: your guess is as good as mine. That is the honest state of the evidence, and the newsletter's dated pages belong to the same long conversation.

Who was charged, and who was acquitted?

Eamonn O'Keeffe identified the two soldiers charged with, but acquitted of, Radelmüller's murder as John Henry and John Blueman, both Irishmen of the Glengarry Light Infantry, a regiment that saw heavy action in the War of 1812. A named regiment, two named men and an acquittal are exactly the kind of detail that turns a campfire story into a case file.

The keeper's death is dated to January 2, 1815, aged approximately fifty-two, according to the most recent and definitive study of the murder, which confirmed the basic truth of many aspects of the legend but not all of its theatrics. The story keeps circulating because two things are true at once: the man died violently, and the men charged walked free.

For readers who follow how a witness account becomes a retold legend, this is the classic shape of the process. The record has a date, a victim, two accused and an acquittal. The tale adds the beer, the axe and the restless ghost. You can trace both versions side by side in Gibraltar Point Lighthouse's enduring legends retold, where the story's afterlife is the subject rather than its truth.

How the tower itself was built and lit

The light came before the legend and outlasted everyone in it. Authorized in 1803 with two other lighthouses by an Act of the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada, construction of the Gibraltar Point lighthouse did not begin until 1808. It was built to a height of 52 feet (16 m) and extended to 82 feet (25 m) in 1832. The diameter ranges from about 7 metres (23 ft) at the base to about 2.1 metres (6.9 ft) at the top. The base is made from stone quarried in Queenston and the extension from Kingston stone. Construction and maintenance were paid for through a harbour fee levied upon all boats entering the harbour.

When completed in August 1809, the lighthouse stood 25 feet (7.6 m) from the shore. Since then, sand has built up over time so that it now stands about 100 metres (110 yd) inland. When it opened, it was accompanied by the lighthouse keeper's cottage, a squared-log house clad in clapboard, two storeys, with two rooms on the first floor and sleeping space in the attic above. When ships approached, the keeper would run up a flag to notify the Toronto harbour master. The cottage no longer exists; it was demolished in 1950.

The lighting technology changed with the century. The tower light was initially an oak and glass cage, illuminated by candles. It switched to sperm oil from 1832 and to coal in 1863. The original lamp structure was wood and was replaced with steel in 1878. An electric light was installed in 1916-17 and updated in 1945. The light was first lit in 1809 and deactivated in 1956.

ChangeYearDetail recorded Construction begins1808Tower begun; completed August 1809 Height extended1832From 52 ft (16 m) to 82 ft (25 m) Lighting1832 / 1863Sperm oil, then coal Lamp structure1878Wood replaced with steel Electric light1916-17Installed, updated 1945 Light deactivated1956Smaller automated aids take over

What the keepers' list looks like

The page publishes a keeper list running from John Paul Radelmüller, 1809 to 1815, through William Halloway, 1816 to 1831, James Durnan, 1832 to 1854, and George Durnan, 1854 to 1908. Later names include Captain Patrick J. McSherry, 1905 to 1912, Blake Matthews, 1912 to 1917, G.F. Eaton, 1917 to 1918, and F.C. Allan, 1918 to 1944, followed by Mrs. Ladder, 1944 to 1955, Mrs. Dedie Dodds, 1955 to 1958, Mr. Terry Jesty, 1958 to 1998, and Mr. Manuel Cappel, 1999 to today, a line the page marks as needing a citation.

Read that list slowly and you notice the Durnan family occupying the tower for most of the nineteenth century. The jawbone found near the lighthouse comes from inside that family's tenure, which is part of why the discovery carries weight in the retelling.

In 1958, Metro Parks took over operations and made renovations in 1961-62. Currently unused, the lighthouse is occasionally open for public tours, including on the annual Doors Open Toronto weekend. Since the decommissioning, smaller automated lighthouses, two at Humber Bay Park in the west and Bluffer's Park to the east, along with Toronto Harbour Light and floating bell or light buoys and navigational masts, have provided navigational aid along Toronto's waterfront and harbour. The tower that once warned ships is now the thing people come to see.

Where the tower sits in the wider record

The lighthouse carries a set of filing labels that tell you how institutions classify it: lighthouses in Ontario, lighthouses completed in 1808, buildings and structures in Toronto, reportedly haunted locations in Toronto, and Toronto Islands. That last pair is the interesting one. The same structure appears in heritage lists and in haunting indexes, and the categories sit side by side rather than in separate worlds.

If you want the full account, from the 1803 authorizing Act to the contemporary research, the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse entry is the place to start. It gathers the coordinates, the construction chronology, the keeper list and the citations in one place and lets you follow the footnotes yourself. The page does not publish a full transcript of the 1815 proceedings, so the courtroom detail beyond the acquittals stays out of reach there.

Next time a walking tour pauses at the tower on Hanlan's Point, ask which version of the keeper's death the guide is telling, and where the dates come from. The answer will usually be a mixture of a documented murder and a legend that grew around it.