“Awful, I know.” Ryan wedged his hat between his knees to stop it from blowing away. “Anyhow, the tragedy took a toll on Theodore. He blamed himself, and over the following weeks and months his mental state deteriorated. He spent all his time inside the lighthouse, refusing to come out. The guilt drove him mad. He became so detached from reality that he was convinced the spirits of the dead crewmen were visiting him, haunting his lighthouse as punishment. ‘It’s them,’ he scratched into the walls of the tower, the ‘ghosts of the Madeline,’ ‘they’re here again.’ He quite literally lost his mind. It got so bad that his wife, who was probably worried sick, broke down the door so she could reach him. She went up those lighthouse stairs to confront her husband, but unfortunately that’s the last anyone ever saw of her alive.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Her body was found on the rocks not far from the wall of the lighthouse, with injuries consistent with someone who had suffered a fall.”

Amy gasped. “What! You can’t seriously mean that Theodore was responsible?”

“No one knows exactly what happened, but there’s one common theory.”

“And that is?”

“That Theodore snapped, that when his wife appeared before him in the lamp room, he was probably in the middle of a psychotic break. People think he might’ve mistaken his wife for a ghost, believed her to be an evil apparition, and in his desperation to rid himself of his demons, he threw her from the top of the lighthouse. It’s all speculation, of course, but Theodore made one final etching into the wall: ‘My God, forgive me,’ and his body was found washed up on the beach two days later, with many convinced that this was proof that he had thrown himself into the water and drowned once he realized the grave mistake he’d made.” Ryan paused and registered the look of horror sweeping across Amy’s face. “Not the most pleasant story.”

“That’s the most tragic thing I think I’ve ever heard!”