When Lighthouse Keepers Disappear...

on December 15 1900 three Lighthouse Keepers stationed off the coast of Scotland disappeared Without a Trace a series of bizarre circumstances and evidence Left Behind only complicate matters even today no one knows what happened to them but over the years this story has been polluted by half-truths unsourced claims and blatant fabrication so what's true and what isn't more to the point what happened that night on the flannon Isles foreign the flannon Isles are a group of islands off the west coast of Scotland they are technically considered part of the Hebrides an even bigger chain of islands by virtue of their geography the flannen Isles experience some of the worst storms at the North Atlantic has to offer they are absolutely Barren and virtually abandoned the nearest pieces of land to the flannon Isles are miles and miles away this means that the flannins have no protection from strong North Atlantic storms due to this hostile environment the islands have rarely been inhabited since they were discovered [Music] of the many islands that make up the flannon Isles the lighthouse in question was built on Eileen Moore in December of 1900 three men were stationed at that Lighthouse as its keepers because ilian Moore is subject to such extreme weather these Lighthouse attendants had to beat the best of the best principal keeper was James ducat who had spent two decades in the lighthouse service ducat had been chosen while the lighthouse was still under construction the Eileen Moore Lighthouse was such an undesirable and potentially hazardous job though that ducat had to be convinced by his family to even accept the job by December of 1900 ducat had spent a total of 14 months on Eileen Moore and was familiar with all of its idiosyncrasies his companions were the assistant Keepers Thomas Marshall and Donald MacArthur both of these men were quite experienced as well and they were both known as tough Sea Dog types indeed MacArthur himself was a former Soldier All Things Considered they were a good group to staff the lighthouse and they did so for some time without much trouble and then one night they just disappeared [Music] on December 26th the ship Hesperus approached the flannon Isles carrying on it the relieving Lighthouse Keeper the ship was scheduled to drop off a new keeper and pick up the previous shifts noticing the lighthouse was dark the Hesperus sounded its steam whistle in attempt to make contact there was no response the Hesperus then fired a rocket into the air as a signal again no response so the relieving keeper Joseph Moore quickly got into a Long Boat and approached the island Moore landed at the island and immediately it was clear that something was not right as he walked up the steps towards the lighthouse he saw no signs of life no lights on in the residence no supplies in use there were no other Lighthouse men coming to greet him as would be expected something was just a mess and indeed he would go on to find things that were entirely unexplainable the front door and the storeroom door were both shut but the door leading directly to the kitchen was wide open in the kitchen there were half finished breakfasts on the table the kitchen chairs were pushed aside as if the men had exited in a rush Moore also found that the fire had not been lit for several days bizarrely the clock had stopped completely when Moore searched the residence only MacArthur's coat was on its hook while the other two were missing this indicates that MacArthur went out in just his cotton undershirt if there is a storm strong enough to demand that the other men wear weatherproof coats why would MacArthur venture out in a T-shirt it seemed like an absurd decision it's also worth noting That official Lighthouse regulations said one man always must be present in the lighthouse there is no indication as to where the men had gone and clearly there was no trace of the men themselves nothing really made sense but there was a log book now the log book is one of the most bizarre pieces to the entire puzzle the entries leading up to the day of The Disappearance could be described as ominous or even mystical December 12th Gale North by Northwest C lashed to Fury stormbound 9 pm never seen such a storm everything Ship Shape ducat irritable 12 P.M Storm still raging wind steady storm bound cannot go out ship past sounding fog horn could see lights of cabins do cat quiet MacArthur crying December 13th storm continued through the night wind shifted West by North ducat quiet MacArthur praying 12 noon gray daylight me ducat and MacArthur parade December 15th 1pm storm ended see calm God Is Over All Moore and his crew concluded and later reported that the three men had gone outside for some unknown reason during a storm high winds blew them off balance off the cliffs and into the sea but clearly these logbook entries conflict with the idea of a storm the last entry specifically states that the C was calm to complicate things there's nothing to prove that there was even a storm when the logbook said there was local weather reports indicate pretty calm conditions in fact The Season's strong storm didn't occur until December 20th days after the last entry the keeper also wrote that the assistant MacArthur was crying MacArthur was a former Soldier and generally a tough man why would a storm make him break down into tears Even ducat's Silence feels odd as experienced Lighthouse Keepers a storm would basically be business as usual there are two ship Landings on the island upon inspection one of The Landings was entirely undisturbed and operational however the other was not on the path to the second Landing a box containing ships ropes had been moved some 70 feet away from its location and its contents were scattered on the ground the iron safety railing to The Landing had been entirely dislodged and broken from its concrete foundation it looked like water damage but this area of the island was over a hundred feet above sea level after combing over the entire Island the investigating crew never found any trace of the three Lighthouse Keepers and they never found anything to indicate where they had gone indeed we may never know what happened to those three men that's typically how the story is told and as much as I love a spooky story modern investigation using primary sources has revealed some issues with the tail The Story Goes that there were half-eaten meals on the table and that the chairs were astray all over the kitchen this is nowhere in Moore's original report or in any primary source covering the incident that detail is taken from a newspaper called The Open Times this paper wasn't known for embellishing but no other source confirms food being left on the table or chairs strewn across the kitchen In fairness there's nothing that refutes it outright but I don't think we can call this detail factual with much confidence the clock had also stopped this is true it would be fun to speculate about a Time Warp opening in the lighthouse but in the 1900s clocks had to be manually wound to keep going if the men had disappeared a few days before Moore arrived no one had one on the clock so it stopped as for the missing coat that is pretty odd but we can guess that MacArthur went out in just a huge hurry whatever happened to the three missing men it likely happened to the two keepers first before MacArthur ran out of the lighthouse to Aid them without waiting to put on his coat so it was just him being in a hurry the most compelling and mysterious part of this story is definitely the log book entries but there are some problems with these mainly that they probably aren't real there's no primary source that indicates these entries actually came from any log book they first appeared in a 1920s American pulp magazine and were attributed to quote various English sources the tone of the entries is also bizarre nautical logs are just that logs they are lists of things that occurred expressed with pinpoint accuracy and no editorializing think dates weather conditions the heights of waves and so on just data but the entries are much more expressive they use phrases like the sea lashed in Fury and gray daylight they read more like the Diary of a would-be author rather than an official government document it's also worth noting that the entries are out of order on one day the 12 pm entry is written after the 9 pm entry in addition the log is said to have been written exclusively by Thomas Marshall but standard Naval procedure says that each man makes his own log during his own turn on watch one guy wouldn't have written the entire log what's more as second assistant keeper Marshall was both the youngest and least experienced of the three men if one man was for some reason given the job of logkeeping it wouldn't have been him and why would the most Junior keeper write insubordinate things about his senior officers in a log book that he knew would be reviewed by the lighthouse Board of Commissioners because that was just standard procedure these criticisms are pretty circumstantial perhaps panic and Solitude could be blamed for the frenetic logbook entries or just laziness or bad log keeping practices but these alleged entries go until the 15th of December the records of the northern Lighthouse board explicitly say that the flannon station's logbook stopped on December 13th and they have the actual book so unless the lighthouse board is just lying to everyone which maybe is possible these journal entries were probably fabricated all of those issues aside the point indeed remains we don't know what happened to those men there are a few theories for the mystery but none of them can be proven with any certainty and admittedly some seem more likely than others one theory is that they became unwilling human sacrifices to some Supernatural entity another version of this Theory says they were turned into seabirds these intriguing if not xenophobic theories say that the local people's Gods demanded some type of sacrifice this idea likely comes from the fact that the flannon Isles are revered with mysticism by the area's Natives and they have been for hundreds of years in the past the flannins have been seen as an otherworldly place somewhere between our Earth and the other side make of this Theory what you will one popular and slightly more plausible idea is madness one of the three Keepers went crazy and killed his colleagues he then dumped their bodies into the sea and threw himself into the ocean as a suicide this is entirely possible it wouldn't have been the first time A man was driven to Insanity by the isolation of a lighthouse But ultimately like many things in this story there's nothing to prove or disprove this Theory it's also possible that the men were removed from the island by some unknown ship this is a plausible explanation but again it is entirely conjecture then there's the original theory that the men were blown off the island by high winds although based more in science than mystery this is also unlikely the damage caused to the iron in concrete Landing fixtures was simply too severe for wind to be the culprit today the most prevailing theory is that of a rogue wave or waves two of the keepers went out after a bad storm to inspect the landing a wave came and swept one of them out to sea and then the other returned to the lighthouse to summon the help of the third MacArthur MacArthur in his haste went out without his code to go help that's the two remaining Keepers got to The Landing another Rogue Wave swept them out to sea the destruction of the landing seems consistent with this as do many of the anomalies left behind by the men but this theory has its own flaws for one the iron and concrete Landing rails were 110 feet above sea level a 110 foot Rogue Wave would be quite rare but certainly not unheard of indeed there have been confirmed reports of rogue waves much larger than that in recent history but a bigger issue is two such waves happening back to back in a span of minutes You could argue that two of the men had basically been forewarned of the danger when their colleague was swept away so it's unlikely that they'd fall prey to a rogue wave immediately thereafter all in all this explanation is plausible but also unlikely in its own way the fact is no one knows and most likely no one ever will know what happened on the flannon Isles that night

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Length: 15min 42sec (942 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 20 2022