The lighthouse is perhaps best known for the demise of its first keeper, German-born John Paul Radelmüller, whose 1815 murder forms the basis of Toronto's most enduring ghost story.

Recent research has verified many aspects of the traditional tale of his death and identified the soldiers charged with but ultimately acquitted of the crime.

[5] When ships approached, the lighthouse keeper would run up a flag to notify the Toronto harbour master.

A local legend is that the lighthouse is haunted by its first keeper John Paul Radelmüller (often rendered incorrectly as Rademiller, Radenmuller, Radan Muller etc.

[2][6] According to local lore, soldiers from Fort York visited J.P. Radelmüller on the evening of January 2, 1815, in search of his bootlegged beer.

[2] In 1893, then-keeper George Durnan searched for the corpse and found part of a jawbone and coffin fragments near the lighthouse,[7] though it was impossible to definitively prove they were linked to Radelmüller.

As prominent Toronto historian Mike Filey wrote, when it came to the truth of the story of the keeper's demise, "Your guess is as good as mine.

Radelmüller indeed suffered a violent death on January 2, 1815, aged approximately fifty-two, according to the most recent and definitive study of his murder, which confirmed the basic truth of many aspects of the popular legend.