What happened
Gibraltar Point Lighthouse on the Toronto Islands (Toronto was then York) was built in 1808–1809 and is considered the oldest surviving lighthouse on the Great Lakes. Its first keeper, appointed in June 1809, was John Paul Radelmüller (Rademuller in the legend), a German from Ansbach who supplemented his income by selling bootleg beer. On the evening of 2 January 1815 he was killed. The York Gazette of 14 January reported a “horrid crime,” and two suspects – soldiers of the Glengarry Light Infantry, John Henry and John Blowman (Blueman) – were arrested and tried on 31 March. Both were acquitted. According to a legend written down almost a century later, soldiers from Fort York came to the keeper for beer and quarrelled with him – because he refused to sell or because he cheated them – then killed him, cut up his body and hid the remains around the lighthouse. In 1893 keeper George Durnan is said to have dug up fragments of a coffin and part of a jawbone nearby. Ever since, the keeper's ghost is said to haunt the tower, which paranormal groups visit regularly.
Witnesses
The York Gazette (14 January and 15 April 1815) on the crime and the acquittal; the legend, based on keeper George Durnan's account, was recorded by John Ross Robertson in Landmarks of Toronto (1908), who himself called it a fairy tale.
Explanations and hypotheses
Historian Eamonn O'Keeffe, who went through the contemporary records, confirmed that Radelmüller died on 2 January 1815 and that two soldiers were charged and acquitted (the trial papers do not survive). No source from the time mentions dismemberment or a missing body, however – on the contrary, everything suggests a coroner examined the body and the keeper was buried near the lighthouse. If the bones found in 1893 really were his, they point to an ordinary burial rather than a corpse hidden by killers. The killing most likely took place in the keeper's cottage, not on the tower stairs. Visits by paranormal groups have produced, in the words of the islands' parks supervisor, “nothing concrete.”
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Eamonn O’Keeffe, The Fife and Drum, vol. 19, no. 5 (Friends of Fort York, 2015)
- CP24 – Ghost stories still haunt Gibraltar Point Lighthouse on Toronto Islands (2018)
- John Ross Robertson, Landmarks of Toronto (J. Ross Robertson, 1908)
More: Wikipedia (en)