Photo of Nancy Hall A.K. “Ikey” Pesonen, first Light Keeper (1898-1924) at Cape Disappointment´s North Head Light.

Now that I know that their nicknames were “Ikey” and “Soney” and I have actually seen their faces, I feel like I know Alexander. Pesonen and his wife Mary. Never mind that they’ve been buried at the Ilwaco Cemetery for more than 80 years and that I had never heard of them until fairly recently. I am delighted to say that, at last, I’ve made their acquaintance.

Alexander, who was sometimes called “A.K.” but was known as “Ikey” to his friends, was the first light keeper at the North Head Light at Cape Disappointment. His wife and helpmate for more than 25 years was “Soney,” more formally known as Mary Watson Pesonen. It is said that she is the unsettled soul who haunts the grounds of the North Head Lighthouse.

It was long after I had finished writing (for the Chinook Observer) a series of stories about Long Beach Peninsula hauntings that I first heard of Mary Pesonen. According to all accounts, she was a victim of “melancholia,” as they called severe depression in the 1920s. However, she had been treated successfully in Portland and, following a six-week hospital stay, had returned home to her beloved light keeper husband. But, even though Pesonen was scheduled to retire in six months and they had plans to develop a cranberry bog on some acreage near Willapa Bay, there would be no “happily ever after” for Soney and Ikey.

The story was too good not to explore and, although I found enough information to include in my recently published book, “Ghost Stories of the Long Beach Peninsula,” I could never get any personal details about Mary or Alex. Nor could I find any photographs. And there it stood for more than a year until early last week when I opened an email from an unknown correspondent, Nancy Hall.

I volunteer at the South Bend visitor center and museum and spent some time today looking through your new Ghost book. I was intrigued by the last ghost… at the North Head lighthouse. A.K., or Ikey as they referred to him, and his wife Soney were close friends of my grandparents. I have some paperwork relating to his employment with the lighthouse service, a couple of pictures, and a letter written by Soney and kept after her death, presumably. I just scanned them on my computer and wondered if you want them. Actually, I’ll attach them and you can download them if you want. There is some confusion over the names. I grew up hearing about Ikey… he signs his name A.K., Soney referred to him as Alex in her letter, one letter names him Aleck, and elsewhere he’s Alec. The pictures show Soney’s brother Alex. Obviously confusing. I hope you’re interested…

“Interested” doesn’t even come close to describing my excited reaction. I don’t think the librarians in St.-Omer, France. who just days before had run across a previously undiscovered first folio of Shakespeare’s plays, could have been any more ecstatic than I. When another piece of the historic puzzle is found, it is cause for rejoicing, no matter if it’s a first folio of interest to scholars world-wide or the likeness of Mary Pesonen, a ghost known only to a select few North Head Lighthouse fans.

As far as I could learn when I was researching Mary’s story, there were no photographs extant of her or of her husband, Alexander. An interpreter at the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center (LCIC) kindly sent me a “maybe” photograph. It shows the grounded Columbia River Lightship No, 50 being hauled across Cape Disappointment Isthmus to Baker Bay in March 1901. The time frame was right and the couple in the center foreground could have been the Pesonens. The man in question even appears to be wearing a cap with the lighthouse insignia on it. But, it was a definite “maybe.”

And, as these things often go, my book “Ghost Stories of the Long Beach Peninsula” had been out less than a month when the true identity of that couple was discovered. Again, it was the interpreter from LCIC who discovered that the couple was not the Pesonens at all. He had found the same photograph reproduced in “Man and the Sea” by former Chinook Observer editor Wayne O’Neil. The late historian and Peninsula resident Rod Williams had identified the couple as his maternal grandparents, Annie Warner King and Alfred F. King. “So much for speculation,” thought I.

And then came the email from Ms. Hall. With photographs and documents attached! But, of course, I now have additional questions. Mary Pesonen (or Soney as I now think of her) looks to be such a pleasant person. She is seen standing on the beach with her brother, clasping his hand affectionately and smiling broadly for the camera. It’s hard to believe that she threw herself off the cliff those long years ago. Or… maybe that’s not what happened at all. Perhaps a future historian will make a discovery that will put the mystery (and the ghost) of Mary Pesonen to rest at last.

Peninsula author and historian Sydney Stevens lives in her family’s ancestral home in Oysterville.