Surrounded in a thick Cape Bonavista fog, a long drowning blast from a bellowing horn warns seafarers of the dangerous path ahead.
A flashing light pierces the fog with its steer-clear message.
As you make your way up the spiral staircase, out of the corner of your eye you see someone, or something, that quickly vanishes.
"What was it?" you wonder. "It doesn't make sense."
You've just met the ghostly light keeper known to wander around the Bonavista lighthouse.
Some say he's waiting for judgment day, when the sea gives up its dead, so he can fire up his ghostly light and lead the lost souls ashore.
That's just one of the many ghostly spirits known to wander the Bonavista region.
Don Johnson, site supervisor for the Cape Bonavista and Mockbeggar grounds, has become a well-versed in such stories.
He recalls stories such as a light on the water that would approach land when viewed through a telescope. One brave man dared to keep his telescope focused on the light but as light neared the shore, so the story goes, someone knocked the telescope out of his hands and the light disappeared.
The Mockbeggar grounds are no calmer.
It is rumored the area is haunted by the French.
"People have heard voices spoken in foreign languages," said Johnson. "There was a French presence here, and we have done some a archeology work and found evidence of them along the shoreline."
Johnson said the French were even buried in the town graveyards.
He said these stories have been collected and retold throughout the years.
"In dealing with the folklore, I like it, but being a skeptic it does create a connection with the past," he said. "It invokes people to start exploring who that person was, what their past was and why they ended up in Bonavista."
Because of such knowledge, it made Johnson the perfect guide for the Newfoundland and Labrador Paranormal group, who spent two nights in Bonavista recently searching for ghost.
Johnson couldn't speak about what the group was up to because he had signed a non-disclosure agreement with the production company. The group is in the process of filming a 13-part paranormal series to be aired on NTV this fall.
However, Johnson said, the group conducted themselves in a professional manner, and were very respectful of their surroundings.
In dealing with the folklore, I like it, but being a skeptic it does create a connection with the past,” he said. “It invokes people to start exploring who that person was, what their past was and why they ended up in Bonavista. - Don Johnson, site supervisor of Mockbeggar Grounds.
Erin Sonley, lead investigator for Newfoundland and Labrador Paranormal, said the group had an amazing experience in Bonavista - they spent a night at the lighthouse and a night at Bradley House.
To search for a paranormal presence, the group uses stationary and infrared cameras, infrared camcorder, ems detectors, laser temperature gauges, a thermal imaging camera, and voice recorders.
Sometimes they'll use an old-school approach.
"Depending on the age of the location, you go in and (technology) could intimidate paranormal entities," she said. "So sometimes we revert to the old ways using candles, compasses and just basic communications."
The paranormal team has been travelling the province seeking out the strange.
Sonley said there have been a lot of ghost hunts, but the group is interested in anything paranormal, which isn't uncommon to Newfoundland and Labrador.
Sonley said across this province there are stories for sea monsters, fairies that lure people away, old hags and even the first written account of a North American yeti, or Bigfoot.
"The very first Bigfoot sighting occurred in Newfoundland," she says. "Leif Erikson when he got here (986 A.D.), he wrote of a race of strange, huge, hairy beast-like men trading with the natives."
The rich history of Bonavista and noted ghost sightings, she said, was too much of a temptation for the group to pass up.
Because the program hasn't aired yet and the team is still sifting through hours of compiled video, Sonley couldn't speak about what happened during their stay.
She did say there were some interesting results.
"I'm the skeptic but I got the scare of my life in Bradley House," she said. "I'm still a bit flustered about it. It completely flips around the way you look at things."
