Out of the Fog

Have you ever felt like you stepped back in time?

I’m not talking about those momentary feelings of deja vu that we all experience now and then. Those are pretty wild when they happen, aren’t they? What I mean is, do you ever think that some weird glitch has occurred in the space-time continuum and you have somehow entered a scene from a much earlier time?

This has happened to me on occasion, and two of those instances are especially memorable. They shared some similarities: both involved fog, a lighthouse, and a view from a window. I captured one moment on camera, the other one only in my mind.

The Ghostly Ship of Narragansett

It was mid-June 2000. I was in Newport, Rhode Island, to graduate from the Naval War College’s 3-year, non-resident program. It was a 5-day event that included a symposium with panel discussions about international naval strategy, luncheons with guest speakers, and nightly receptions. It all culminated in a beautiful outdoor commencement ceremony along the college’s famous sea wall.

There were blocks of free time here and there, which I and some colleagues spent exploring the area. We asked resident students for restaurant suggestions, and several recommended a place called the Castle Hill Inn. Located on a peninsula at the entrance to Narragansett Bay, the inn offers some fantastic views of the water and its surrounding rock-lined beach of white sand, as well as a glimpse of the Castle Hill Lighthouse next door.

We had a little trouble finding the place. This was in the pre-GPS years, and we were relying on handwritten directions someone had jotted down for us that weren’t totally accurate. To boot, it was a very foggy day, so we couldn’t see the mansion until we were almost on top of it.

We were seated at a table that the maitre d’ told us offered the best view of the cove and lighthouse—although for the first half of our meal, we could see nothing but thick white fog. The overall effect was somewhat eerie; we were eating in a mansion built in the late 1870s and decorated accordingly, there was no music or much sound of any kind other than our conversation, and we were unable to see the outside world at all. References to “Brigadoon” and “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” abounded.

I was facing the window, and at one point I thought I detected out of the corner of my eye some movement or a shadow in the blanket of fog. Looking closer, I could make out some dark vertical lines. Then a distinct shape suddenly became visible, much in the same way as when a shape arises from those 3D “Magic Eye” pictures. I thought at first I was seeing things, but then the conversation suddenly halted as the others facing the window saw it, too. Those on the other side of the table turned around to see what we were staring at.

As we watched, a tall ship emerged slowly from the fog, taking shape little by little before our eyes. For a few seconds, I honestly wondered if it was an apparition. It looked just like the ships in movies—picture the ones in “Pirates of the Caribbean” or the Horatio Hornblower series. Its black masts stood out in sharp contrast to the white fog. The beige-colored sails were a bit harder to see, but the mermaid figurehead was distinct, cutting through the haze as it led the way toward the bay’s entrance.

Someone said, “Everyone else sees that, right?” We all nodded, and continued watching in silence until the ship had sailed out of the view framed by the window and slipped back into the fog, out of sight. For me, those moments felt a bit surreal, almost as if time had stopped. The visual effect of the ship emerging from the fog cloud was beautiful and breathtaking. The momentary thought that I might actually be glimpsing the past was both exciting and a little scary. The awed silence that occurred while the ship was in view, combined with the burst of joyful exclamations a few seconds later as we realized what a special moment we had just shared, added another layer of sensory pleasure to the experience.

A waiter noticed us gaping and explained that the ship was participating in the Summer Millennium Celebration. That was an international sailing event that took place between May and July of 2000, bringing together hundreds of ships from around the world, with many participating in 4th of July celebrations along the East Coast. Although Newport wasn’t an official stop on the tour, several of the tall ships stopped there while headed toward Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other ports south.

I had no camera with me to capture the moment on film. But that scene is emblazoned in my mind as a very special, thrilling moment.

The Twin Lights at Navesink

The other standout fog experience happened 14 years later, in mid-October of 2014, as I was climbing the spiral metal staircase of a lighthouse tower. It was the 10th of 11 lighthouses my husband I visited during the annual New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge, which takes place over a single weekend. I was going pretty slowly because of some health issues, and he was a few flights ahead of me. (He wasn’t being rude—he climbs fast and doesn’t look down because of his discomfort with heights.)

The stairs in most tall lighthouse towers usually include a landing with a window every 2 or 3 spiral rotations. In this particular lighthouse, the Twin Lights at Navesink in Highlands, New Jersey, those windows were shaped liked arches. I have an affinity for archways, and I love taking pictures of them. So while I was catching my breath on a landing about two-thirds of the way to the top of the North Tower, I decided to take a picture of the window on that level. Partly because of the slightly foggy, overcast day, and partly because of dirt on the window, what I saw with my eyes was simply a white archway in reverse silhouette against the very dark, almost black, background of the tower’s inner wall.

But after I took the picture and looked at the results on the camera’s preview screen, I was surprised to see something inside that arch; in fact, I was startled, and I gasped and jumped back a little. It was the South Tower, which I hadn’t noticed just seconds earlier when I’d looked out the window. I looked again, and sure enough—there it was, framed within the arch and shrouded in the misty residue of the lifting fog.

Standing alone in the stairwell, I took in the moment. Just as I had felt transported in time 14 years earlier with the tall ship’s appearance, this too felt like I was actually peering into the past. I imagined a lighthouse keeper carrying heavy buckets of oil in each hand, pausing to rest on that same landing and peering out at the other light or the Sandy Hook Bay just beyond it. I tried to imagine how the South Light would have looked in the darkest part of the night, with its lens-reflected flame the only light source as far as the eye could see. I thought about sailors on board their ships, some of them similar to the tall ship I’d seen in Newport, looking to the light to help them navigate safely to shore.

I looked at the stairs, worn in their centers from the innumerable steps that hundreds, maybe thousands, of people had taken on them in 150 years. I took in the slightly musty smell of the tower, noticed the chilliness of the air inside it, and heard the clanging of a flag against a flagpole somewhere outside as it flapped in the wind. And, as sometimes happens when I’m in an historic place, I felt a tingling shiver over my entire body as I connected somehow, on some inexplicable level or plane, with those who had stood in the very same spot I was in, looking out the same window at the same tower.

I wondered if they had ever stood there and pictured what the city on the distant northern shore would look like 100 years in the future. Could they have ever imagined the skyscrapers of Manhattan or the sight of the first sunbeams of the dawn reflecting off the wire cables of a suspension bridge? Did any of them smile or get a feeling of delight upon seeing the tower framed perfectly within that arch, as I had? Was it possible that the architect had determined the best location for that window in order to achieve that perfect scene, understanding that even structures built solely for their function can still be things of beauty?

Looking back, I realize how symbolic these two moments were. I saw the tall ship soon after I had finally received a diagnosis that explained the mysterious, recurring health symptoms I’d been experiencing for years. The lighthouse event happened just a few weeks after the realization that I had truly overcome the depression spawned and fed by the many challenges of living with a disease that is non-life-threatening, but life-changing. In both cases, I was emerging from a type of fog, too, with a clearer picture of who I am, where I’m going, and how I plan to get there.

My reverie in the lighthouse turret was broken by the sounds of other visitors starting their climb, so I continued upward, thankful for the unexpected moment of communion with souls now in another dimension. I hope they felt my presence, too.

Foggy morning haze
offers me a ghostlike gaze
into days bygone.

-30-