Still on Station

When the maintenance crew opened the sealed equipment panel behind the radio console in 2021—thirty-two years after Point Refuge Lighthouse had been decommissioned—they expected nothing more than obsolete wiring and corroded metal.

What they found instead was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, still mounted in a concealed bracket, a single tape loaded and threaded as if waiting for someone to press play.

The label was handwritten in blue ballpoint ink:

Backup Recording — October 23, 1989
J. Mitchell

The name belonged to James Mitchell, the Coast Guard radio operator who vanished from that lighthouse on the night of October 23rd, 1989.

The tape contained four hours of audio.

Four hours of transmissions the Coast Guard has no official record of ever receiving.

I have spent four decades covering maritime disappearances along the Atlantic coast. I have investigated storms that appeared without warning, equipment failures blamed on salt and neglect, men lost to exhaustion, alcohol, or bad judgment. I have seen tragedy in every familiar form.

What James Mitchell recorded during his final four hours did not resemble any of them.

James Mitchell was forty-three years old in October 1989. He had served twenty-one years with the Coast Guard as a radio operations specialist, volunteering repeatedly for isolated lighthouse postings most others avoided. His supervisors described him as calm, unshakable, the voice you wanted to hear when seas were rough and systems were failing.

Point Refuge Lighthouse sat on a bare rock twelve miles off the mainland, an automated beacon supported by a human-manned radio station. Ships transiting those waters relied on someone monitoring emergency frequencies.

On October 23rd, James began his overnight watch at 8:00 p.m.

At 8:15, he radioed Coast Guard Station Portland to confirm he was on station. Weather conditions were routine: clear skies, calm seas, light winds. He was scheduled to check in again at midnight, then at 4:00 a.m., and finally at 8:00 a.m., when his relief boat would arrive.

The midnight check-in never came.

At 12:17 a.m., Station Portland attempted to raise him. No response. Protocol required repeated attempts every fifteen minutes. By 1:15 a.m., with no contact, a response boat was dispatched.

They arrived at 2:30 a.m.

The lighthouse door was locked from the inside.

Inside, the lights were on. The radio equipment was running. James Mitchell’s coffee mug sat half-full on the console, still slightly warm. His logbook lay open, last entry timestamped 11:47 p.m.: All quiet. No traffic.

His jacket hung on its hook. His dinner dishes were washed and stacked.

James Mitchell was gone.

Searches continued for weeks. Helicopters, divers, forensic teams. There was nowhere to hide. No sign of struggle. No body.

The conclusion—reluctant and unsatisfying—was accident. Perhaps he stepped outside and slipped. The locked door was attributed to a faulty deadbolt.

In 1990, the lighthouse was decommissioned and sealed.

The case file was archived.

Until the tape.

The reel was in remarkable condition. When audio specialists loaded it onto a functioning machine, James Mitchell’s voice emerged—clear, steady, unmistakable.

The recording began at 8:03 p.m.

For nearly three hours, it captured routine radio traffic: fishing vessels requesting weather updates, cargo ships confirming positions, long stretches of silence broken only by static and the hum of equipment. At 10:47 p.m., James brewed coffee, humming softly to himself.

At 11:47 p.m., his voice logged the final routine entry.

Then, at 11:52 p.m., a new transmission broke through.

A male voice, calm but strained, carrying a faint accent—possibly Scandinavian.

“Coast Guard Station Point Refuge, this is the vessel Northern Star, requesting immediate assistance. We are taking on water.”

James responded instantly, shifting into emergency protocol.

Positions were exchanged. Six crew aboard. Water rising fast.

James attempted to relay the mayday to Station Portland.

No response.

He tried again.

Nothing.

For seventeen minutes, James remained with the Northern Star, guiding them through emergency procedures, his voice steady even as Portland remained silent.

At 12:09 a.m., the Northern Star made its final transmission.

“We’re going under. Tell our families.”

Then static.

James called again and again.

Nothing answered.

At 12:34 a.m., another voice broke through.

A woman. American accent.

“Point Refuge, this is the Lady Marie. We observed flares northeast of your position.”

James asked her to search for survivors. She agreed—then reported something odd. The Marine operator wasn’t receiving calls. At the coordinates, there was no debris. No survivors. No vessel.

When James asked for her registry number, the tape recorded papers shuffling.

There was no vessel registered under that number.

When he pressed again, the woman’s voice changed—still human, but subtly wrong.

James said it out loud, voice barely steady:

“There is no Northern Star. There is no Lady Marie. And I’m not actually transmitting to Portland.”

The voice that answered him was no longer pretending.

“You should look outside.”

James walked to the window.

“There are lights,” he whispered. “They’re moving. Ships don’t move like that.”

The radio fell silent, but another sound emerged on the tape—a low, humming resonance the analysts could not classify.

At 1:47 a.m., James tried Portland one final time.

“There’s something wrong here,” he said. “I need someone to confirm what I’m seeing.”

No one answered.

At 2:15 a.m., he made a formal record:

“I am observing multiple light sources moving in non-standard patterns. If this tape is found, it will serve as official documentation.”

For over an hour, he attempted contact on every frequency available.

At 3:22 a.m., something answered.

Not through the radio.

From outside.

“James Mitchell. Come outside.”

The voice was human—but wrong. As if language had been learned, not lived.

At 3:47 a.m., James made his final entry.

“They are not ships,” he said. “They are something else. They’re calling me outside.”

The tape continued.

Footsteps.

The deadbolt unlocking.

The door opening.

Ocean sounds swelling.

A final whisper:

“I see you. I understand now.”

At 4:01 a.m., the door closed.

The deadbolt slid back into place.

Silence.

Audio forensics confirmed the recording was authentic. Untampered. Accurate.

But there were problems.

Station Portland never logged James’s calls.

No vessels matching Northern Star or Lady Marie exist in any registry.

No ships were within twenty miles that night.

No satellites recorded lights or flares.

The voice outside the lighthouse did not match any known acoustic phenomenon.

A psychoacoustics expert from MIT described it simply:

“Something using a human voice.”

In 2022, a civilian researcher named David Chen identified a pattern: thirty-seven lighthouse disappearances since 1950, eleven at isolated posts, seven preceded by anomalous radio activity.

When he requested deeper files, they were classified.

In 2023, Chen disappeared while researching a decommissioned lighthouse in Alaska.

The door was locked from the inside.

Point Refuge Lighthouse still stands.

Fishermen say there are lights northeast of it sometimes—moving wrong, answering no hails.

Station Portland’s automated monitoring system occasionally logs brief transmissions on the old frequency. Too short to analyze. Always at night. Always between midnight and 4:00 a.m.

Technicians say it sounds like someone trying to check in.

Someone still on watch.

Still following protocol.

Still waiting for relief.

James Mitchell answered a call for help.

That is what radio operators do.

The tape proves it.

And whatever answered him learned something that night—how to speak, how to call, how to wait.

The lighthouse is sealed.

The frequency is open.

And somewhere between the water and the radio waves, James Mitchell is still on station.

Still transmitting.

Still waiting for someone to acknowledge.