A Dead Lighthouse Flashes: The Kettle Point Signal

A Dead Lighthouse Flashes: The Kettle Point Signal

A retired mail carrier photographed an amber lamp pulsing inside a lighthouse that had no power and had been locked for months - eleven frames captured a slow, warm light visible from 150 yards away. Eleven hours earlier an automated distress alert with a real MMSI led a response boat to empty water, and that same diversion may have saved two fishermen; what linked the phantom DSC alert and the impossible light at Kettle Point?

In this episode, we recount the morning sighting at Kettle Point Light and the nighttime radio alerts that preceded it, following the eyewitness log entries, Coast Guard records, and timing that tie the two events together. How could a powerless, padlocked lighthouse glow while a registered DSC distress signal pinpointed an empty patch of sea?

Person: Ross Wilson
Date: September 14, 2019
Location: Pelican Neck, Maine
Event: DSC distress alert and Kettle Point lantern illumination
Status: Lighthouse had no electrical power since 1991

- Ross Wilson photographed the amber light from about 150 yards away and took eleven frames between 7:15 and 7:22 a.m.
- The Kettle Point Light building had been without electrical current since 1991 and was padlocked with nobody inside since April.
- At 9:47 p.m. on September 13 an automated DSC distress alert showed the registered MMSI of the sloop Ardenne about 1.4 nautical miles southwest of Kettle Point Light.
- A Coast Guard response boat reached the encoded position at 11:14 p.m. and found no vessel, debris, or flares after sweeping the area for twenty minutes.
- The lobster boat Cassie M. sent a voice mayday at 10:23 p.m.; its crew Pete and Danny Saucier were rescued because the response boat had been diverted to the phantom alert.

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