More Than a Ghost of a Chance : Supernatural: Several buildings in the South Bay are reported to be the regular haunts of spirits with unfinished business on Earth.

The bearded man appeared almost out of nowhere, startling exterminator Fred Duran as he sprayed for ants at Wilmington’s historic Civil War drum barracks.

“Where’s Marie?” the man asked.

Sensing trouble with a possible estranged boyfriend, Duran avoided eye contact and said he didn’t know. The bearded man, dressed in an old military uniform, turned and walked away without another word.

There’s nothing particularly unusual about this brief exchange, except maybe for one thing: The bearded man and his wife, Marie, died more than a century ago.

The ghostly encounter at the Drum Barracks Civil War Museum this spring is one of scores of reported South Bay sightings of the supernatural. A tower atop the hills of Palos Verdes, an abandoned home in Hermosa Beach, a residence in old Torrance--all are rumored to be regular haunts of poltergeists who have unfinished business on Earth.

And while none of this can be confirmed by the scientific community, those who believe in spirits testify vociferously that something is going on, even if it can’t be explained to the satisfaction of most skeptics.

Unlike their flashier kindred spirits across the country who grab tabloid headlines by rattling chains and oozing blood down the walls, South Bay ghosts have not been nearly so theatrical--not yet anyway. Area spirits reportedly do little more than rearrange furniture, flick on lights, hover around stairways and make thumping noises in near-empty buildings.

Two aging local structures, steeped in historical significance, have achieved vaunted places in local lore and are said to be haunted: the Point Vicente Lighthouse in Rancho Palos Verdes and the Drum Barracks Museum in Wilmington.

During the Civil War, the museum served as headquarters for Union commanders and it is the only building left standing from the original 60-acre training compound. One of the commanding officers was Col. James Freeman Curtis, the bearded man Duran claimed he saw dressed in military blues.

“He looked like a real person,” Duran said. “I didn’t stare at the guy or anything. When a man asks about a woman, you don’t know what’s going on. He might be jealous, you might get shot for nothing.”

A city employee, Duran admitted that he thought the uniformed soldier was odd, but added it is not uncommon for city workers at other museums to occasionally dress from a different time period.

When Duran informed museum officials that a man in a Civil War uniform was asking for Marie, they told him he’d seen one of the Drum Barracks’ ghosts.

“Before I used to say, ‘Oh, come on’ if someone said they saw a ghost. And I’m sure people are going to say the same thing about me. ‘Oh, he didn’t see anything’ or ‘What’s he been smoking?’ But when it happens to you, it’s different,” Duran said.

Duran is not the only one to have had contact with the colonel in the creaky, 130-year-old house, which is operated by the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks. Another former skeptic, assistant museum director Forrest Ray Neal, now makes it a morning ritual to greet the colonel’s portrait, which hangs in the barracks’s parlor.

Neal is convinced that the colonel is responsible for turning on lights, tampering with exhibits and even moving around the heavy furniture after hours. His claims are supported by other museum volunteers, who attest to the strange goings-on. But none of the earthbound workers believe the spirits are hostile.

“I have spoken to them and they haven’t answered,” Neal said. “I’m not one who wants to talk to the dead. I don’t know what I’d do if they answered back, to be honest.”

The colonel’s wife, Marie, is also said to roam the corridors of the 16-room house, but she isn’t as active as her late husband.

According to museum director Marge O’Brien, a psychic was brought there and reported that Marie and the colonel are around to ensure that the drum barracks are preserved for posterity.

“I have smelled Marie,” said O’Brien, who explains that spirits often have a distinct odor.

At the Point Vicente Lighthouse, a female ghost called “The Lady of the Lighthouse” periodically materializes searching for her lost husband. Many different versions persist about the female apparition, but the most popular maintains the woman was the wife of a lighthouse keeper in the 1920s.

Legend has it that on one proverbial dark and stormy night the structure’s lamp needed repair. The lighthouse keeper trudged up the spiral staircase, only to be swept off the catwalk by heavy winds when he reached the top of the 67-foot edifice.

Shortly thereafter, the worried spouse, clad in a white robe, climbed the lighthouse to investigate her husband’s disappearance. She soon realized what had happened, and in grief, threw herself off the catwalk onto the craggy rocks below.

Reports of the grieving wraith with the flowing white robe circling the lighthouse walkway began surfacing as development in Palos Verdes picked up several decades ago.

“I think hysteria took over and people came here in the ‘50s and said they saw a woman walking across the catwalk,” said Nancy Pierce with the adjacent Point Vicente Interpretive Center. Tour guides at the interpretive center relay the spooky tale to visiting schoolchildren.

Palos Verdes resident Bill Eskridge vividly remembers seeing an apparition many years ago while driving by the lighthouse late one night.

“I definitely felt a presence,” Eskridge said.

But Coast Guard officials who operate the gated lighthouse facility explain that those reports coincide with the painting of half of the lighthouse’s glass dome. The coating was applied to shield oncoming cars on Palos Verdes Drive West from the tower’s blinding 1.1-million-candlepower beam.

According to Chief Warrant Officer John Buchhammer, who has lived on the fenced-in lighthouse compound for six years, the paint on the windows creates the misleading impression that a figure tramps the lighthouse walkway.

But rational explanations fail to persuade the faithful, even those in Buchhammer’s own family. His 11-year-old son, Jay, swears there’s a ghost up there.

“Jay’s really into the ghost. The ghost likes children, and he’s not afraid,” Buchhammer said.

Coast Guard officials note that the 66-year-old Point Vicente joins many East Coast lighthouses from Maine to Florida in generating local ghost stories. Jeff Gunn, who supervises lighthouse operations at Point Vicente, seriously doubts his facility is haunted.

Well, maybe not.

“I had to go out there (the lighthouse) about midnight once, and it’s a whole lot different than in the daytime. It’s spooky,” Gunn said. “Ghosts? Not during the daytime. At night, maybe.”