HAMILTON POINT NAVAL STATION
Location: Bermuda is 580 miles off the coast of the United States east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina into the Atlantic Ocean. The Hamilton Point Station was once on the cliff south of town and reached by a long winding driveway that wove up the cliff. It is still considered private American property.
Description of Place: Bermuda consists of 150 small islands, islets and rocks with Great Bermuda as the main island. With all the underwater coral reefs and narrow channels, navigation can be dangerous. The highest point reaches up to 260 feet with a total area of 20.59 square miles of land. There are no fresh water resources on the island; rain is the only source for drinking water. In its prime, the Hamilton Point Naval Station on the mainland was a cliff top edifice looking over Hamilton Bay with living quarters, a kitchen and observation deck. Later damaged and pummeled by storms, it fell into neglect and finally vanished altogether. All that remains is a concrete foundation, a few standing iron beams and the remains of the path to the beach. A descending tunnel into an underground lab within the cliff has been closed off, but rumors are it can be reached through an underwater cave.
Ghostly Manifestations: It is not the legend of the Bermuda Triangle nor the rumors of large cryptid sightings that attract the attention of the Collinsport Ghost Society to this lonely windswept Bermuda cliff, but rather the memories of the paranormal described as happening here by now fifty-something Magnus Dens, a sensitivity trainer from Bismarck, North Dakota. Dens was the son of Marine Biologist Lionel Dens who was swept into the sea and lost when a storm hit the cliff in 1962. Both Dens and his wife, Grace, was lost in the waters below that night, but Magnus survived when the top portion of his bed shielded him from the collapsing ceiling. Years afterward, rumors were the lost biologist and his wife were returning to look for their son, but Magnus returned to Bermuda to seek the truth in 1978, he learned far more of the area's legends than he ever wanted to know.
"I was only one of two kids that I know about who lived on the island in the Fifties." Dens told Steve Barnette of the CGS. "There was myself, and Jennie, and yet, I was told there were no young girls on the island when I lived there. Yet, I have memories of this girl and playing with her on the beach. She was not a ghost. She was real. We spent a whole summer together before she moved away and before I met Eric Johnson, who also became my best friend. His arrival followed the last time I saw Jennie. I know she existed."
Now living as far from the sea as he can, Dens has spent much of his life shuttled from relative to relative and moving from psychiatric institutions and hippie communes for much of his life. His 1978 return to Bermuda was not so much an invitation from Eric to visit, but an effort to lay to rest the ghosts of his past. Now deceased, Johnson was a marine biologist following the call of Lionel Dens, but he also knew well the ghost stories of the island. Curious tourists who saw the deserted naval base from afar and explored it sometimes reported they were frightened away by an unnatural presence they never saw but felt. Others described a beautiful woman soaking wet walking the interior, but they never found her wet footsteps. On the beach below, tourists on the beach were scared away by the ghostly giggling sounds of a little girl watching them and tossing rocks at them. In 1980, a vacationer looking for sea shells at dusk reportedly saw the spectral young girl sitting on the rocks with her back to him. As she became aware of his presence, she turned to face him. There was a black void where her face should have been.
While sightings are rare, most guests who explore under the former naval post have heard voices most often from the cliffs. With the wind, birds and the waves, there is enough to misinterpret into voices, but some witnesses have received responses and even picked out words. Young single men have heard their names being called. Mothers with children have heard the distant calls of children. So says Laotia Qui, a native islander who practices Voodoo and sells charms to the tourists:
"She comes from out there." She points out to the sea. "In what you call the Triangle. She is always the same being, but she can appear as a beautiful woman or as a little girl. She drowns men to be her lover, and she protects the great beast that sinks the ships that pass through the region." The great beast is an allusion to a sea monster that has been claimed to sink ships and tear up the nets of fishermen. The late Dr. Theodore Paulis, a local biologist, believed the "sea monster" was a large sea turtle, but he later died in the same storm that took the life of Eric Johnson. Magnus Dens was the only survivor of that tragedy.
"Some people will claim I was saved by Jennie..." Magnus reveals. "As to what I believe... I don't know."
From 1980 to 1987, several mainland newspapers reported on the stories of phantom women, spectral girls, disembodied voices and even haunting music wafting from the derelict and deserted structure. Orbs were photographed in the structure in March 1983, and still later in 1985, a photograph of a dark presence standing n the vicinity was taken from a distance. Most agree its a play of light, but some can see a woman's figure and torn skirt floating on the property without any visible legs. A few months later, a reporter with an amateur ghost hunter tried staying the night in the unstable structure, but they both came running out shortly after midnight after hearing a loud force coming up out of the basement.
History: Bermuda was first discovered by accident by Spanish Navigator Juan de Bermudez in the 16th century with the first settlement not founded until British colonists were shipwrecked there in 1609 under Captain George Janos. Once called Somer (Summer) Island, the island was settled by British and American settlers and of noted strategic importance that the United States rented the British Colony as a military base during World War Two. The American presence on the island saved the colony from depression and later turned it into a famous resort and fishing base. Of the structures the US Navy created in their occupation was the Hamilton Point Naval Station overlooking Hamilton Bay. The structure was later reclassified to a biological station under Marine Biologist Lionel Dens. In 1962, however, a powerful hurricane pounded the cliff top station and left it unfit for occupation. Another hurricane leveled the rest of it in 1987.
Identity of Ghosts: In cryptozoology, a jennie hanniver is the name of a fake mermaid, the dried out remains of a capuchin monkey sewed on to the headless body of a fish to create what looks like a dead mermaid. However, the name actually goes back to the legend of a real woman allegedly from Bermuda. According to the legend, Jennie Hanniver (1701? - 1723) was the daughter of rich parents forced into a marriage she did not want. She escaped to Bermuda in the Early 17th Century, but her would-be husband found her and brought her back to the mainland for the marriage. On the way back, a terrific storm came up. Afraid to die, Jennie made a pact with the Devil to take everyone on board if he would save her. Jennie survived as a portent of the sea as the ship vanished beneath the waves. She remained eternally beautiful forever as a result, only appearing to drowning men and those about to die at sea.
There is a grave marker in Bermuda for a Jennie Hanniver who vanished at sea in 1723, but the legend about her was possibly developed around the ghost story. Oddly enough, the first sightings of Jennie's ghost were first recorded in 1726; there are no accounts of her ghost near Hamilton Bay before 1723.
Source/Comments: The Bermuda Depths (1978) Loosely compared with Flannan Lighthouse on Eilean Mor in the Flannon Islands off Scotland, Great Isaac Lighthouse on Great Isaac Cay in the Bahamas, US Coast Guard Station in Nantucket, Massachusetts, the Pensacola Naval Air Force Station in Pensacola, Florida and Sonoma State Hospital in Sonoma, California.
Jenny's Song (lyrics)
Jenny
Is she a poem of the sea?
A sailor's melody...
A shadow of the deep...
Jenny...
And if I doubt that she is real...
Then what is it I feel?
That makes me so in love...
Jenny...
Have I imagined holding her?
Was it a dream my loving her?
Still feel the warmth of kissing her
I'll spend my lifetime missing her...
Jenny.....