7 Creepy Lighthouses Featured In Horror Films

One of John Carpenter’s more humble films, involving a deadly ghost-bringing fog, is the movie to round off this lighthouse-centric list.

Starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Adrienne Barbeau, we see the residents of Antonio Bay being cursed by the ghosts of a leper colony they wronged a hundred years ago. Through the medium of a creepy fog, these ghosts come in from the sea to kill six people in vengeance for the town’s past crimes.

The lighthouse comes in to play through the character of Stevie Wayne. A location that initially seems romantic, Stevie owns a lighthouse where she broadcasts her dreamy small-town radio show. But as the film progresses, the lighthouse’s role becomes lifesaving.

Lighthouses have always been used to warn people of oncoming danger. In The Fog, Stevie is able to see the whole of Antonio Bay, and can therefore discern where in the town the fog is heading.

She is the first to spot it coming from the sea, and when she realises its deadly capabilities, she is able to warn the citizens via her radio show. In this way, she takes on the role of a lighthouse keeper.

One of the best lighthouse-related parts of this film is when Stevie is chased up to the roof of the structure by a horde of ghosts. You may be thinking: wait a minute, the roof of a lighthouse must be tiny – and you’d be right. However, that small sloped “roof” at the top of the building is where Stevie faces her final struggle for survival. And it is intense.