August 23, 2025 • 50 mins
In December 1900 three lighthouse keepers vanished without a trace from a deserted island in Scotland. To this day no one knows exactly what happened to them. Find out all about this strange situation in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josham. For this week's select I've
chosen our episode on the Flann and Isle Mystery from
November twenty twenty one. This is one of those rare
instances of a missing person's unsolved mystery disappearance case where
the people weren't murdered. Well, I almost certainly weren't murdered.
(00:21):
That is one theory, but it's a lesser theory and
isn't that refreshing. Hope you enjoy this one even if
you've heard it before. I can attest it's still good again. Enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and
there's Charles W Chuck Bryant over there, and Jerry's out
here too, So since the gang's all here, the three
of us alone on a deserted eye Stuff you should know?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Can I mention a couple of things here?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I think you should.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I want to pre apologize to our Scottish listeners, whom
we love. We toured in Scotland, had a great time,
one of our best live shows in the beautiful city
of Edinburgh. Yes, wonderful people love the Scots, but we
are going to butcher some of these names, and I apologize.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
That's yeah, we're sorry.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
And what was the other thing?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Oh, the other thing was it's impossible to talk about
the Flannon Isles Lighthouse Mystery and research it without almost
always thinking about the movie The Lighthouse.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, and actually it comes up a lot in the
research too.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I think one reason is because it's clear that, oh,
what's the guy's name he made it.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I can't think of his name, William Akers. It's not
William Aker's well, flinnin day Viggers.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It's an Eggers, right, Yeah, I'm Robert, I think Robert.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yes, okay, Robert Eggers, Okay, yes.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
He clearly did his research. And you know, I remember
when that movie came out. I spoke on the show
that I wrote a movie, a period movie about a
lighthouse and a murder that takes place, and then the
movie The Lighthouse came out, and I was like, so
much for that. But I did a lot of research
at the time, and it was clear that Eggers did
a lot of research because it was a very accurate film,
(02:29):
especially when you read and research the flann And Isles
Lighthouse Mystery you're.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Like, Oh, yeah, that's like from the movie. And that's
like from the movie.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Apparently they mentioned it in the movie. I didn't go
back and watch it again, but I saw something really
that they may they make a reference to the mystery
in the movie.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Oh cool, that's awesome, I thought so too.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, man, I can't wait for that Viking movie to
come out.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Me too.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
And this made me want to see the lighthouse again,
which I didn't think I wanted to do, but now
I do.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Same.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Here, so we are talking about one particular lighthouse called
the flann And Isles Lighthouse, and it was located on
one island in the Flannin Isles called Island More. That's
not exactly like Chuck was saying, the Scottish pronunciation scott Gaelic,
but it's close enough and it actually means in English.
(03:17):
I guess the More island, right, Okay, So anyway, that's
where this lighthouse is and it's situated. It's still there today.
It's automated, though it went automated in nineteen seventy one,
but it sits Its light is about seventy five feet
atop the cliff, which is the highest point of island.
More and that cliff is two hundred feet above sea
(03:41):
level and it's a pretty good place for a lighthouse
because this area of Scotland is kind of treacherous for ships.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yes, and it's important how high this one was. It
figures into the story.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I'm not just showing off with stats here.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, it is treacherous. It's a windy area.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
There are big winds in Scotland, especially out there on
those islands. I think it is close And this is
kind of funny the name of it, But isn't it
nearby supposedly the windiest place?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Is it the windiest place in the UK? And what's
the name of it?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
The Butt of Lewis. Come on, I'm serious, but it
makes sense.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Twelve years old.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Lewis is a nearby island which is inhabited in the region,
which is pretty rare I think, But this part of it,
one end of the island, is called the Butt of
Lewis Island and it's the windiest part.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
The Butt of Lewis is the windiest island right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So the area that these flann And Isles are in
so Island More is in the Flannin Isles. The flann
And Isles are part of the larger island chain on
the northwest of Scotland called the Outer Hebrides, and to
the west of them, you can just keep going and
going and going, and then you'll finally reach North America.
(05:04):
They're pretty remote, they're pretty isolated. They are indeed windy,
and like we were saying, the seeds are kind of
rough around there. I think that's kind of putting it mildly. Plus,
the islands themselves are often very rocky and jagged and
so it's treacherous. So of course you'd want to put
a lighthouse there.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, yeah, the winds blow strong from the butt of Lewis.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
But the lighthouse that was built there finally on Island
More wasn't installed until eighteen ninety nine, which is kind
of late considering that Scotland had something called the Northern
Lighthouse Board that they organized in seventeen eighty six to
basically oversee and standardize lighthouse keeping in that country.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, so they were headquartered there in Edinburgh. And here's
how it worked at the time. And this checks out
according to my research. When I was writing my movie
and the movie The Lighthouse, Oh and Xicot they were staff.
You had your principal lightkeeper called the principal keeper, and
then usually depending on you know, where the lighthouse was,
how busy it was, how big it was, and as
(06:06):
far as needed personnel for operation, you had one or
two assistants, and they were all ranked as you know,
you weren't just like, oh, I'll be the first keeper
this week, like you earned that spot. Yeah, it was
a promotion. And then you were assigned to these stations
by the board. Just like in the movie. You don't
stay there forever. You kind of rotate and you go
(06:28):
there for a little while, and you may get stationed
with someone you've never worked with before, and you have
to get to know that person very intimately over the
course of you know, a short period of time, or
it's somebody you have worked with before and you're old
friends with maybe or old enemies, yeah, exactly, or old enemies.
So aside from these two to three people as principles
(06:50):
and assistants, you had what was called the occasional keeper,
and this is someone who actually lived nearby, either an
inhabited island resident or if it was uninhabited, if it
was at least close enough to where they could get
there easily and they would help out during the day,
but they would go home at night and sleep and
stuff in their own betty bye.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
And that was the standard. But for a place like
Island More, where the Flann and Isle's Lighthouse was located,
if you were an occasional, you were there for two weeks.
That's how hard it was to get to the island
and how hard it was to get off of the island.
So the purpose of the occasional was to give two
weeks rest off to one of the other two or
(07:29):
three people who were permanently temporarily stationed there for much
longer than.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
You, right, And then those cases, the keeper the occasional
does not go home and sleep right.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
So one of the things that stuck out to meet
Chuck was that, you know, when you think about lighthouse keeping, like, yes,
the person has to live there, and it's a lot
of work and they have to attend to the light
and everything. But I think lighthouse keepers are very frequently
portray is weirdos. Yeah, just complete alcoholics who can't do
(08:06):
anything else but live by themselves, almost like they're placed
there because there's nothing else for them to contribute to society.
So they're kind of cast off for ostracized. That's not
the case, at least not in Scotland. That was not
the case. Like, if you were a lighthouse keeper, that
was a very very important job. You took it very
very seriously, so much so that there was a study
(08:29):
that found between eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred, fifty years,
there were only fifteen recorded instances of a lighthouse keeper
falling asleep at their post, which was about as bad
as it gets as a lighthouse keeper.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I mean that's not to say there weren't drunks and
myths andthropes here and there. Maybe those are the fifteen.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yes, But I did a little more further math, Chuck,
if I may be so indulged as to share it.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I saw that. I thought that was pretty funny.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
So get this. Let's say you have about one hundred
and fifty lighthouses in operation between eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred,
and if you calculate that number of lighthouses times the
number of nights that occurred over that fifty years in Scotland,
you have what we'll call two point seventy five million
lighthouse nights. Out of those two point seventy five million
(09:23):
lighthouse nights in Scotland over those fifty years, only fifteen
of those nights found a lighthouse keeper asleep on duty.
That's how seriously they took it.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Did you account for leap years?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Oh, Chuck, I just really wanted to drive that home. Man.
I really thought that was an important point and it
didn't come across with fifteen instances of fifty years.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Who cares, no, I mean it's a big deal because
you know, the purpose of a lighthouse I guess we
have not really said, is to light the way around
rocky shores and islands. Boats don't run into them.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, unless you've been living under a rocky shore, you
know that it's.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
A very important job. Though.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I love lighthouses. We've talked about him quite a few
times on the show, Big Big Fan. Every time I
am near a lighthouse, I will do my best to
climb that thing if it's allowed.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
So who'd done it? In your lighthouse mystery?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Who did do it? It was a good story.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Actually, well, then maybe you should hang on to it
in case somebody comes along, because it's not like The
Lighthouse is the only lighthouse movie you ever made.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
The briefest synopsis is it's two sisters who are tending
the lighthouse because it was their family job and their
parents died there. So it's these two sort of like
a like maybe a twenty year old and a sixteen
year old out there alone in this island. And then
these two men wash ashore one day in a shipwreck,
and they tell the awful story of their ship going down,
(10:57):
and it turns out that the real story as they
were prisoners aboard a ship being transferred and they escaped
their shackles and murdered everyone aboard. Wow, and then there
was a shipwreck. So they were bad guys who got
washed ashore.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Oh, it's a bit like a reverse dead calm.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Sort of, and they charmed the girls. But there is
I guess I didn't know the name was an occasional keeper.
There's a guy that lives one guy that lives on
the island that helps them out that is sort of
suspicious of the guys, and it sort of plays out
over the course of the movie where they're exposed ending
in a game of cat and mouse. One night nice
and I actually remember how it actually it was, Okay,
(11:36):
I mean I did it as an experiment because all
I've ever written is comedy, and I thought, hey, maybe
I'll write a serious thriller and it could be better
if a really good thriller writer got a hold of it,
I think.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
But were there's still like little jokes peppered as a sides,
like one of the sisters is running from the murderer
and says to herself, I left the mainland for this,
like you're he shines through Still.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Oh, I don't know. I'll have to dust that thing off.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
You should, man, it sounds like a good one, thank you.
So this lighthouse back to the flann And Isles lighthouse
on island more like we said that most of the
Outer Hebrides are uninhabited. I think we said that, didn't we?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Uh, I don't know, but you just said it then.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I think there's seventy islands in the Outer Hebrides and
only fifteen of them are populated, and Island More is
definitely not one of them. The only remote, it is
extremely remote. The only people, the only beings that live
there what you would recognize as a genuine normal being
as opposed to say paranormal, which we'll get into, are
(12:40):
the lighthouse keepers and some sheep. Even the people whose sheep.
Those are don't live on the island or even stay
there overnight. They go out a few times a year
check on the sheep, and then leave before nightfall. That's
kind of how Island Moore is viewed. It seemed kind
of as a place where maybe gods or ghosts or
(13:02):
just something otherworldly lives on island more according to the locals.
According to lore written about the locals, I've never spoken
to an outer Hebridian. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And I think the other thing we need to mention too,
because I believe it comes up later in one of
the supernatural explanations for what is to come here with
this mystery is the name Saint Flannin comes from the
fact that Island Moore was the site of a chapel
in the seventh century built by a traveling Irish monk
who eventually became Saint Flannin.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
And that's going to come up. Just put a pin
in that.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
It's a big time pin. Hang on to it, Okay?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Is that a good setup? Should we take a break?
Speaker 3 (13:42):
I think so, man, all right, we'll come back with
more spooky lighthouse mystery stuff right up to this, all.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Right, So we should probably mention the steamship actor or
arched actor. I've seen it both ways, but that kind
of kicks off the story for us, don't you think.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, well, we haven't mentioned the major players either yet,
have we.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
No? No, I guess we could go either way. We
can mention one or the other.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
First, all right, let's mention the players, because these are
the actual keepers of that lighthouse. You had the principal keeper,
James Ducatt, You had the second assistant.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Wouldn't he be the first assistant though?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
No, Donald MacArthur, We'll get into that.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Okay, Thomas Marshall was the second assistant, and then Donald
MacArthur was the occasional right.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Here's my bit. So he was filling in for a
guy named William Ross. William Ross was the first assistant keeper,
which meant that since Donald MacArthur was filling in for him,
Donald MacArthur was the first assistant keeper, even though he
was an occasional keeper.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Okay, that makes sense. And William Ross was on sick
leave and just judging from the movie The Lighthouse and
all this research, like you must have had to been
really sick to get taken off the island.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yes, but I think yes, that's what I thought too,
But doing research for this, I found that these guys
had all of them had a rotating two weeks off.
So at any given point over a stretch of two weeks,
one of those men, James Ducott, Thomas Marshall or William
Ross would not be on the island because they rotated
(15:48):
two week shore leave basically. So I yeah, I was
of the impression that if you went and tended a lighthouse,
they dropped you off, left you with some food and
said see you never.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
But that's not the case.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
No, No, I think they were well taken care of.
I get the impression of the Northern Lighthouse Board was
pretty good at its job and really cared about these
people and looked after them. I didn't see anything to
deny that.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah, well it's a brutal and important job, so surely
that they were taking care of at least to a
certain degree.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
But the upshot of all this is that there were
three men on the island, three dudes working that lighthouse,
and aside from some sheep, that was it, that was
the only people on the island. And this, by the way,
this is December of nineteen hundred, right.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, so this thing is brand new.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, they built it in eighteen ninety nine. That was
scheduled to take two years. It took four years. The
construction was started in eighteen ninety five, and what they
built was at the time a state of the art lighthouse.
But it took so long. It took twice as long
as they anticipated because the cliffs and the island itself
was so treacherous. That's how long it took just to
(16:58):
get materials up the cliff to build the lighthouse.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
So it's finally in operation, and then now comes the actor,
which is what you mentioned earlier, not act R, but
the actor, aht er.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah. It was a Transatlantic steamship from Philadelphia to Leith,
which is a port for Edinburgh.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
So they were out there. I was about to say
sailing around, but I guess they were steaming around and
they waited out of storm for a few days. And
then this part got confusing to me.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So the actor was passing by flann And Isles. It
passed by on December fifteenth, and the actor noticed that
the light was out, not that they couldn't see the
light because of weather or anything like that. Like the
light was straight up, not lit on the lighthouse on
flann and Isle's lighthouse like that. It was a very
strange thing to see and it was very noteworthy. They
(17:55):
ran into some weather on their way to Leith and
had to wait it out for a few days, and
when they finally made it into port, I guess they
passed the information along, but the Northern Lighthouse Board didn't
catch wing of it until the official relief supply ship
showed up a few days later, and the actor's observation
(18:16):
that the light was out wouldn't come into play until
an investigation was launched later on.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Right, So that relief ship was the Hesperus hgsp r Us,
and that arrived on December twenty sixth, nineteen hundred, which
was Boxing day after Christmas.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
And what these.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Ships brought was they usually brought either supplies or fresh
dudes or both, and in this case I think they
had supplies and a fresh lighthouse keeper. And it was
captained by Captain Harvey, and they were like, all right,
something's going on here. This light's out, the flag's not flying.
(18:56):
Let me toot on the horn a few times. Nobody
comes out. They're all right, well, let me send up
a flare they send up a flare. No one comes out,
and what they're trying to do is say, hey, we're here,
get you little your little railcar system going. It had
a little cable a little cable pulled railroad system that
was operated by a steam engine and a shack, and
(19:20):
so when the hip pulls up, they would toot the
horn and the dudes would come down and they would
get that steam engine going and get that cable car
ready to transfer the goods onto this thing. So they
could you know, it's like hundreds of pounds of stuff
going up a really really steep cliff side.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, there's just no way to move that stuff. Otherwise, no,
you'd have to do it.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
So nobody came out, no one gets that steam shack going,
and they're like, all right, something's going on. We're gonna
have to go on land and figure this out.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Yeah, And just the fact that they weren't greeted by
one or more of the guys from the lighthouse, which
is apparently custom, like even the most grizzled misanthrope lighthouse
keeper just knew it was to come down and greet
the relief ship.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
You're still dying to see someone else. Pretty much, I think, so.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah. So that like the fact that no one showed
up and then no one responded to their signals. They
were like, something really weird is going on here. And
they had Joseph Moore who was the relieving keeper, which
makes me think that William Ross was really really sick
because he would have been on sick leave for way
over two weeks by this side, because I believe the
relief ship was five days late because of weather, so
(20:28):
he must have really been laid up. And they sent
another relieving keeper, Joseph Moore instead, and Joseph Moore went
ashore and he was friends with these guys. He wasn't
some new dude or anything like that. So he was
genuinely concerned. And he went up the steps to the
lighthouse there's apparently one hundred and sixty of them, and
he just knew right away that something was way off.
(20:50):
There was no sign of life, there was nobody around,
there was the just nothing was going on. It was abandoned, basically,
and he didn't have a very good feeling about it.
So he runs back down to the boat to say,
I think we have a problem here.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yes, so he says, I think we have a problem.
And then that's when basically everyone on board said, all right,
we got to this is a situation now that we
all have to deal with. I think it was the
captain who went with more to search for other stuff,
and they said, in the meantime, you other guys, you
got to get up there and start operating this lighthouse
(21:28):
because it's been down and we need to get that
thing cranked up again.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yes, they so the first, for the first time, possibly
since December fifteenth, the lighthouse was lit again by these
relief guys who took over and kind of settled in
and were like, all right, this is our job now.
But that follow up search, it's weird. Like we'll talk
about some of the legends and layers that were added
(21:53):
to it over the years. But to me, the thing
that was like so weird about the follow up search
was that everything was in place. Yeah, like it would
be way more like kind of middle of the road
to me, this mystery if there was like signs of
struggle or you know, there were like everything was just
kind of a skew. It's way more eerie to me
(22:15):
that like everything was exactly how it should have been.
It's just the three human beings that were supposed to
be there were missing. But that's what Joseph Moore found
and the others found when they searched a lot more thoroughly.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Yeah, the door to the keeper's house was closed, the
gate was closed. In the kitchen, everything was all spick
and span. Everything was all cleaned up that it was
clear that someone had done some cooking in the grate,
but not anytime soon. There were ashes in there. The
beds were made, the clocks had all stopped because no
one was there to whine them, obviously, And everything was
(22:51):
fine except like you said that there was no one
around that there was a full fountain of paraffine oil.
It was all like the light was ready to be burned.
The lamp that Frenelle lens was cleaned up and ready
to go. The blinds were drawn, the records were all
filled out, you know, all the way up until Saturday,
I think, the morning of December fifteenth, right, yep. And
(23:13):
so everything was great, except for there were two missing
sets of rain gear they're called oil skins, their coats
and their boots. Two of those were missing out of
the three guys, and so that's sort of the only
thing out of the ordinary at this point.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, that was basically the only trace of the
missing men. Like, had those oil skins still been there,
you would have taken the lighthouse in the area as
like having been prepared for somebody else. They just hadn't
shown up yet. Like the missing oil skins were the
only trace that those men were missing, that there had
(23:52):
been men there that were no longer there anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Right, And then there were a couple of pieces of
literature that kind of confused things after the fact, right.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, that really kind of made this, like to a
lot of people, like a much bigger mystery. I think
some people came along and weren't satisfied with how mysterious
it was on its own, and so added to it
and added to it over the years through magazine articles
and newspaper reports and then later on like podcasts and stuff,
and so you really have to be careful navigating these waters.
(24:20):
I feel excuse the pun or the stupid metaphor when
you're researching this, because so much of it is just
regurgitated as fact because it has been part of the
story for one hundred years that it was actually thanked
to thanks to the efforts of a journalist named Mike Dash,
who if you are at all interested in nonfiction writing,
(24:43):
especially nonfiction history writing, go check out Mike Dash's website.
He's probably the best in the business. Oh yeah, but yes,
he's just amazing. But he he set his sights on
getting to the bottom of this, and he did some
stuff and basically finally definitively proved no. This was added
(25:04):
to it later on. This was added to it later on.
This is not true that kind of stuff. So it
hats off to Mike Dash for demystifying a lot of it.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
True but also making it not as fun because it's
decidedly creepier with these newspaper stories as they were written.
One of the newspaper stories talked about the log book
and this is completely fabricated, you know, like Mike Dash
exposed it as fabrication, but it's still pretty creepy. The
(25:33):
log entries in the fake log entries were by a
second well not by a second assistant, Marshall, but this
is how they wrote it, and wrote on December twelfth,
they saw severe winds the likes of which I've never
seen before in twenty years, and wrote, and these are
people that have seen some of the worst storms you
could imagine out there on these outer islands and pretty
(25:53):
unshakable guys, I would think, And he said he wrote
in the next few days that the storm continued. It
was so unbearable that Ducat, their principal keeper, was struck
mute by the storm, and that occasional keeper MacArthur, who
was supposedly a really tough guy, was recorded as weeping
uncontrollably for days because of how bad the storm was.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Right, yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
It is good stuff, but Mike Dash made mincemeat out
of it, and he's kind of my hero for it.
One of the things that he basically just points out
is if this were an official logbook, if you were
a second assistant you put that in there, you would
you would basically get fired for that kind of thing,
Like that's not what a logbook is for, And you
certainly wouldn't put that your superior was weeping uncontrollably in
(26:41):
the log book, Like that's just not what you would
put in a logbook for the for in the first case.
And then secondly, he also said that somebody being quiet
because of a storm or whatever or their mood, like
it also kind of mentions their mood a lot too,
that that would have no bearing on anything. In the
only way that that makes sense in relation to the
(27:02):
story is after the fact, which he said obviously, that
means that these were written after the fact. And then
years later, after he'd first investigated it, he finally turned
up a copy of the magazine that this came out
in in like nineteen twenty one, and it was like
a like a pulp magazine called like True Confessions or
something like that. So he definitely deconstructed that for sure,
(27:26):
to my great satisfaction. I love it.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Yeah, it's kind of funny though, like the logbook was
basically like your diary.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
That's exactly right, he said, like logbooks were not diaries. No,
he actually specifically said that, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
That's funny.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
The other thing he uncovered or did he uncover the
poem or was that just.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
I think that was a little more common knowledge. But yeah,
he wrote about the poem being the poem too.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
So in nineteen twelve, there was a poem by Wilfred
Wilson Gibson who wrote a poem about this mystery where
he says there was an untouched meal on the table,
cold meat pickles and potatoes. The kitchen chair was knocked over.
The only sign of life was the keeper's canary half
starving on his spurch Like, these are all the things
(28:09):
that you mentioned would have made this a different story.
But everything was really just fine. I don't even think
the chair was turned over, right, I don't know. I
think the guy later on, well, we'll get to him.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah. The way that Mike Dash treated it is that
it's possible. Okay, I don't know if Mike Dash treated
it like that way. Mike Dash wrote about a later
guy who will talk about who treated it as facts, So.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Oh, okay, I I don't.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I think what the upshot of it is that in
doing like this research on primary resources, like what Joseph
Moore wrote, what Robert Muirhead who will talk about wrote,
these people who were actually there when it happened or
right after it happened, that nobody mentioned anything like a
turn overchair, and based on what they did mention, it
(29:03):
seemed like they probably would have mentioned a turned overchair.
They were so meticulous in the details.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
All right, Well, let's talk about some of the evidence
that was there, okay, because what we're really talking about is.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Was there.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
I mean, the kind of obvious thing you would think
about is was there some big storm that washed these
guys away forever? Like That's kind of the one reasonable explanation.
And so as far as evidence goes, most of it
is storm related. For the you know, to sort of
support that and to go against it, there was a
railway that we talked about and that had a crane,
(29:40):
and the crane was sort of, you know, built to
help unload things off of this platform, off the cargo container.
And it was about seventy feet above sea level, and
it was fine. It was It even still had the
canvas wrapped around it. So if there was some big storm,
and evidence shows there probably was one, right mm hm,
(30:01):
but at least this crane seventy feet up wasn't damaged
and that canvas was still there, which is a little weird.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
It is a little weird because even a little higher
up toward the top of the cliff, So the crane
was at about seventy feet above sea level, right, yeah,
a little higher up than that, at about one hundred
and ten feet above sea level. There was a box,
a big box that held a lot of like mooring
ropes and ropes for the crane and to some really
(30:29):
important stuff tackle, and it had been busted open and
the contents like strewn all down the cliff's face. There
was a booy that was tied to the railing right
around the same place as that crate, one hundred and
ten feet above sea level. It had been torn clean
away from the ropes that had lashed it to the railing.
The ropes were still there, but the buoy, just a
(30:51):
little piece of booy was left attached to it, and
yet the crane was intact. And then even weirder, the
iron railings around on the crane that you would use
as handrails had just been completely twisted and wrenched out
of place.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
That's a heck of a storm.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
It's an amazing storm. It's crazy to me that the
crane was left intact and that the canvas was even
on it still.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
That was really weird.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
There was a two thousand pounds stone that was up
on the cliff that slid down, and then I believe
the railway tracks were even torn up from the concrete.
And then the grass at the top of the cliff,
this is two hundred feet up at the very top,
was ripped up as far back as thirty feet from
the edge.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
That's nuts, Like, do you know how much force a
wave would have to have to tear up grass in
the first place, and then that thing would have to
be over two hundred feet tall to even reach that grass.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
That's a bad storm.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
It's a monster wave. But the storm part that kind
of confounds things big time. And I think we should
take another break and we'll talk about how everything's just
so confounded still to this day, which is why this
is a mystery.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Right after this, all right, we've got this mystery brewing.
(32:34):
These three men are missing. It's pretty clear that there
was a big storm that blew through there. So, like
I said earlier, the obvious explanation was these strong windsors
came along and just blew these guys the heck off
this island and they were never seen again.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
That's not entirely out of the question because of the
butt of Lewis.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
That's right, strong winds flow from the butt of Lewis.
As everyone knows, and I'm twelve years old. Robert Muirhead
he was a super tendant of lighthouses, and he investigated
this disappearance. He knew all these guys, some really really well.
But I think the occasional keeper he knew the lease,
but he still knew pretty well.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
He's the one that did this investigation personally and went
out there, wrote up this report. And I think he
was the last person. He was out there, you know,
because it was a new lighthouse, I guess, sort of
finishing up, and I don't know if he christen it
or whatever, but he was one of the last, in fact,
maybe the last person even see them alive.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
He says in his report that he's probably the last
person to shake hands with these men and see them
alive when he shoved off on December seventh, when the
last relief ship, the previous release ship had come along all.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Right, So in his official report, he said, I don't
think it was a strong wind that literally blew them
off the island. It was blowing westerly that day, and
that means it would have blown them back inland toward
the island, and there's there's no way that these guys
would have blown completely across the whole face of the
island off the other side. Because they know what to do.
(34:08):
They know to drop and get flat and hold on
and they probably would not have been blown all the
way off if it was westerly.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
They need to stop drop and do not.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Roll yet, don't roll, please, don't roll. Not in that case,
I grab something heavy.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah, anything, a sheep, whatever, anything that will keep you
from being blown off. But that's just nuts. It shows
you how windy it is up there. That was a
possibility that Merr had considered and was plausible enough that
he had to at least put it in the report
as a possibility.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
The one that he focused on that most people who
think in level headed ways kind of agree with two
is that instead a wave probably came along and knocked
these men off.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, I mean this one.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
I'm an amateur when it comes to like figuring out
island Scottish Island mysteries and weather. This one makes a
lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, totally agree. So being blown away by wind tuns
kind of nuts unless you think about it, in which
case it's not super nuts. In this instance, at least,
there were more slightly nuttier explanations. And like the thing is,
you can't fully discount any one of these because the
(35:28):
men's bodies were never found, so there was never any
conclusive proof of what happened, even still to this day,
and some of the likelier, less likely scenarios seem to
always focus on Donald MacArthur, who was supposedly a bit
of a hot head, quick to fists, kind of dude,
(35:49):
not necessarily the kind of occasional keeper you'd want to
have on rotation for two weeks with you, But that's
what a lot of these secondary theories kind of presuppose.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
He would have been the Willem Dafoe, right, I.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Guess so, yeah, I kind of imagined him as such.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
He had got the story from this, didn't he?
Speaker 1 (36:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I'm curious that she did.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I'd have to.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Watch it again now that I know that. I hadn't
even heard of this story when I saw the Lighthouse,
so I need to watch it again and see what
I think.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
I'm gonna do some research on that.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
I doubt if he like based it on this, but
I wouldn't be surprised if it triggered the idea or
something gotcha.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
All right?
Speaker 3 (36:29):
So he MacArthur was, like he said, a tough guy,
a hot head, and he of course there's gonna be
speculation that he started a fight and they all got
in a big fight and they all fell off the
cliff together. Or maybe he murdered these two guys and
then knew what his come uppance would be and flung
himself off the cliffs himself in sort of a murder
(36:51):
suicide situation.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, again, it's plausible, like some people can go nuts, like,
especially in extreme isolation kind of thing. But there's just
no know evidence whatsoever of any sort of fight. It's
possible to fight started entirely outside, but it just doesn't
satisfy all of the evidence, right, I.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Don't think so.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Like the guy whose weather proof coats were still there
was Donald MacArthur. So why would he start a fight outside?
And whether that was bad enough that his comrades would
put on their weather.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Gear, right, or maybe when it comes to fighting, you
don't want that raincoat on.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
I guess maybe you found it restrictive. That's entirely possible too,
But that's again as far as like these secondary kind
of paranoid theories go, those make a lot more sense.
The other ones, sister, are much more squarely in the
realm of paranormal.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Yeah, you could say that.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
The outer hebrides are home of the Kelpie, and the
Kelpie is a water spirit, a shape shifting water spirit
that drowns human victims. But there are two problems with this.
One that is not real, and two even if it
was real, let's just do a thought experiment. Everyone knows
(38:07):
that the Kelpies are not seaside dwellers. They are inland
at the locks.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Right, They're not known to frequent the seaside.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
No, they don't like that saltwater.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
No, so the Kelpies probably did not kill these men
and cart them away.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
There's more supernatural there.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Right, Yeah, the island being named after Saint Flannin and
that ruined chapel being there, and the idea that the
locals just kind of view that island as a weird place.
There was this one author, a supernatural like a Fortian
type author who came along and said, all right, I've
(38:43):
got it. Everybody ready for this. So the locals think
that this place is kind of inhabited by spirits. I'm
guessing that the pagans who used to live here sacrificed
people on this island, and that the gods came to
be used to a certain type of sacrifice, and that
with the Northern Lighthouse Board installed these three men in
(39:06):
a tower on island More.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
It awoke something and.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
The gods mistook it as a sacrifice, so they took
their sacrifice, and that's what happened to the three men.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
I think he skipped over the best part of this
whole thing though, what it was an ancient race of
tiny people?
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Well so I can't tell if that guy made that
part up or if that is actually a local belief,
but yeah, that was part of it too.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
How small were they?
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Supposedly they found small bones that seemingly belonged to humans,
and so there was a race of tiny people who
supposedly lived there before.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
But are we talking like, are they the size of
a of a sea rat or a like two or
three feet tall person?
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Am I Scottish? I don't know, Uh huh, all right, I.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Was just curious a sea rat. He was tiny.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
That's a very tiny, tiny person, pagan. But I think
that's really interesting that the idea that the gods mistook
the lighthouse keepers as a human sacrifice, that's what happened
to him. I love that one.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
It's like a big wicker man or something.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yes, exactly. I think that's exactly the point that I
was making.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
All right, so those are obviously all bunk. What probably
really happened is as follows. And I think this is
a pretty plausible. I think this is pretty plausible.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Was but even still it's still astounding if you step
back and look at it.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, well, and there's no way to prove it. So
it's kind of like these mysteries where you just don't know,
you know. So here's what could have happened. Is that
there was bad weather reported, but it wasn't maybe that
bad on the fifteenth. But let's say that that box
(40:53):
is looser, well, I got to get loose. Let's say
that box needs tending to. That's holding all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Right, it's an important box. Don't forget it's an important box.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
And I think Marshall had previously been fined what would
be about twenty pounds a day for having lost some equipment,
so he may have been like really quick to like, hey,
we got to secure that box. And so maybe Ducott
and Marshall went out there to like they left their
quarters while the other dude, the occasional keeper MacArthur, is
(41:22):
up there in the lighthouse still and they're securing this
box down and then maybe this freak wave comes through,
or maybe they just get in trouble, and then MacArthur
needs to really leave quickly, which would explain why they
did have their rain gear on and MacArthur didn't because
MacArthur had to leave really quickly to go down there
and help these guys.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yes, so like that definitely checks all the boxes that
after that MacArthur was swept away as well. But the
thing is is, like that supposes something really amazing, Chuck,
that there was a freak wave that the men just
did not expect that carried at least one of them away.
(42:07):
The second one who survived that wave ran back to
get help from MacArthur to help get the first guy
who went in, and a second freak wave washed those
two away, just cleaning the island of its human inhabitants
in two swift waves over the course of a minute
or two.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Because the idea is that the storm wasn't bad enough
to just sweep them all away.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, and the act had to be a rogue wave, right.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
And the steamer the actor noted that the area because
the actor passed by just a few hours, a couple
hours probably after this event, happened, and they noted that
it was calm but stormy, which is the opposite of
what you would think. You would think it was not
stormy which would draw the men out to make them
I mean, stormy enough that they needed to secure the box,
(42:54):
but not so stormy that they felt like it couldn't
go out. But calm really kind of makes it. The
idea of two freak waves really freaky, because that would
mean that those waves just came out of nowhere and
swallowed the men up.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
But in the whole I mean, we did an episode
on rogue waves, and the idea is that it's a wave, yeah,
or is there a set of rogue waves?
Speaker 1 (43:18):
I think if I remember correctly, it was a wave.
But that's what I think. Maybe there is more. I
don't know, but yes, that's how this That's the only
way that could happen is because MacArthur wasn't wearing his
rain gear, which suggests that he ran out in a
hurry into bad weather, which means that one of them
would have had to have come and gotten him. He
(43:39):
wouldn't have been there with the other two, so it
could not have just been one freak wave. It would
have had to have been two successive freak waves that
cleared all three.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Well, and this does lend some credence to the idea
that this thing was big enough to damage the turf,
you know, two hundred feet above sea level and destroy
that box and wash that two thousand pounds stone down
the cliff too.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Right, Yeah, And there was also there's a chance that
all that stuff that just was evidence of a terrible
storm actually came after the men had been washed away
from the island several days later, when there was a
really bad storm on December twentieth.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Okay, that makes sense. I didn't think about that.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Isn't that weird to think that that damage had happened after.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
The fact, right? And sure, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Because it's almost certain that this event happened on December fifteenth.
The last info they had on the log slate was
nine am December fifteenth, like we said, so it couldn't
have happened earlier than that, and it would have happened
before dark on December fifteenth, which would have happened about
four pm, because otherwise they would have lit the light
(44:48):
that night and the steamer actor would have seen the
light in the lighthouse as it passed by on December fifteenth.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
I think all this gets really interesting nineteen fifties when
a lighthouseman named Robert Aldebert who worked there served as
principal keeper between fifty three and fifty seven. He lived there,
obviously had a little time on his hands, and was
really enthralled by this mystery and was like, I'm going
to do some research and I'm going to take a
lot of pictures and do keep a lot of records
(45:19):
in my diary. And he said that, you know, I
was in the lighthouse itself, and and so that's how
many feet above sea level.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
They got the top of that seventy five Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Like two hundreds close to three hundred feet up and
got sea spray from some waves. So he's like, it's
very possible that a big wave could come through and
reach these heights.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Yeah. He did tests where he took coils of rope
and put them on the top of the cliff and
they get washed away by some of those horrible waves.
So he basically said it was almost certainly a wave
that got these guys. That's not the craziest part. The
craziest part is it was two waves, almost like the
sea was waiting for all three of them and took
them all.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
It's pretty weird. I wonder if he got fine for
losing those ropes.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
I don't know. Maybe so if it's the Northern Lighthouse Board,
I know he definitely did well.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
And he what was his final exp because he's the one.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
That we mentioned earlier that said that that one of
the chairs was turned over in the kitchen, right, like
he kind of bought into that.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yeah, false narrative.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah, but I wonder because this is a good you know,
forty years after that poem had been written, maybe it
was so woven into the story by then he just
presumed that it was true or not.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
So how that comes in is he's basically like, all right,
after dinner happens, like there's bad weather going on, these
two guys go out there and are see this doesn't
make sense to me, and I'll tell you why in
a second. But these two guys go out there to
secure this box or whatever, cookies back in there washing
(46:53):
up and cleaning up, and that's where everything's nice and tidy. Yeah,
and then all of a sudden they need help, and
so he turns the chair over because he just like
runs out of there real quick. Yeah, but wouldn't that
be wouldn't someone have to be in the light too,
isn't that four guys?
Speaker 1 (47:07):
No, that's why they think that this happened in the
afternoon of the fifteenth, because they never went to light
the light. They hadn't lived the light yet. Remember the
light was all set up and ready to.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Be lived for the easies. It was daytime, yes, it
was before.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
It was before sunset, which would have been before four pm.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
All right, that's the one part I didn't get. I
get it now. White House is China night yep, And
I forgot that part when I wrote my movie. Everything
takes place during the day.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Right, I left the mainland for this. You got anything else?
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Good stuff?
Speaker 1 (47:41):
No?
Speaker 2 (47:41):
I like a good mystery. You're good at finding.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
These, man. I love this one, so thank you very much. Yes, well,
if you want to know more about the flann And
Isles mystery, go read Mike Dash's work on it. It's
really interesting stuff. It's pretty comprehensive too. And since I
said it's pretty comprehensive, everybody, that means it's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
I thought this is really interesting. This is a follow
up to the Dingoes episode about dingoes not really barking much.
Hey guys, In response to the statement that dingoes don't bark,
you left out a very fun fact and perhaps a
topic for another show. While domesticated dogs bark throughout their lifetimes,
wild adult dogs do not routinely bark. One popular theory
(48:22):
is that domesticated dogs were bred for tameness, which, as
a result, selected for dogs that never reached full maturity.
The upshot of this is that our domesticated dogs are
trapped in a state of suspended adolescence. They are more
or less trapped in puppyhood, an age where all dogs
wild and domestic, bark, play, lick, and, most important of all,
(48:43):
don't kill, which is an important trait for the family
pet and send an article from Tampa Bay dot com
Whys why do dogs Bark? From nineteen ninety one Love
the show That is from of Vonnier vo n I E. R.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Bonier.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
Yeah, either one of those will work, depending on whether
you're in France or not.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
And Peter's a PhD an owl oncology.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Research also with an interest in dog barking.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Sounds like Peter just is interested in stuff, which is
our favorite kind of listening.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Yes, there is a died in the wool Stuff you
Should Know listener. Thanks a lot, Peter. That was a
very interesting email and we appreciate it. Belated congratulations on
your PhD. If you want to get in touch with us,
like Peter did, you can send us an email, right, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
You surely can. Then you might get a response even.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
Yeah, or you might end up on listener mail. Who knows? Yeah,
I try to answer these Why don't you roll the
dice and find out by sending your email to Stuff
podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite show else
Hey, everybody, it's me Josham. For this week's select I've
chosen our episode on the Flann and Isle Mystery from
November twenty twenty one. This is one of those rare
instances of a missing person's unsolved mystery disappearance case where
the people weren't murdered. Well, I almost certainly weren't murdered.
(00:21):
That is one theory, but it's a lesser theory and
isn't that refreshing. Hope you enjoy this one even if
you've heard it before. I can attest it's still good again. Enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and
there's Charles W Chuck Bryant over there, and Jerry's out
here too, So since the gang's all here, the three
of us alone on a deserted eye Stuff you should know?
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Can I mention a couple of things here?
Speaker 1 (01:06):
I think you should.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I want to pre apologize to our Scottish listeners, whom
we love. We toured in Scotland, had a great time,
one of our best live shows in the beautiful city
of Edinburgh. Yes, wonderful people love the Scots, but we
are going to butcher some of these names, and I apologize.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
That's yeah, we're sorry.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
And what was the other thing?
Speaker 3 (01:33):
Oh, the other thing was it's impossible to talk about
the Flannon Isles Lighthouse Mystery and research it without almost
always thinking about the movie The Lighthouse.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Yeah, and actually it comes up a lot in the
research too.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I think one reason is because it's clear that, oh,
what's the guy's name he made it.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I can't think of his name, William Akers. It's not
William Aker's well, flinnin day Viggers.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
It's an Eggers, right, Yeah, I'm Robert, I think Robert.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Yes, okay, Robert Eggers, Okay, yes.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
He clearly did his research. And you know, I remember
when that movie came out. I spoke on the show
that I wrote a movie, a period movie about a
lighthouse and a murder that takes place, and then the
movie The Lighthouse came out, and I was like, so
much for that. But I did a lot of research
at the time, and it was clear that Eggers did
a lot of research because it was a very accurate film,
(02:29):
especially when you read and research the flann And Isles
Lighthouse Mystery you're.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Like, Oh, yeah, that's like from the movie. And that's
like from the movie.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Apparently they mentioned it in the movie. I didn't go
back and watch it again, but I saw something really
that they may they make a reference to the mystery
in the movie.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Oh cool, that's awesome, I thought so too.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, man, I can't wait for that Viking movie to
come out.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Me too.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
And this made me want to see the lighthouse again,
which I didn't think I wanted to do, but now
I do.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Same.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Here, so we are talking about one particular lighthouse called
the flann And Isles Lighthouse, and it was located on
one island in the Flannin Isles called Island More. That's
not exactly like Chuck was saying, the Scottish pronunciation scott Gaelic,
but it's close enough and it actually means in English.
(03:17):
I guess the More island, right, Okay, So anyway, that's
where this lighthouse is and it's situated. It's still there today.
It's automated, though it went automated in nineteen seventy one,
but it sits Its light is about seventy five feet
atop the cliff, which is the highest point of island.
More and that cliff is two hundred feet above sea
(03:41):
level and it's a pretty good place for a lighthouse
because this area of Scotland is kind of treacherous for ships.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yes, and it's important how high this one was. It
figures into the story.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
I'm not just showing off with stats here.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah, it is treacherous. It's a windy area.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
There are big winds in Scotland, especially out there on
those islands. I think it is close And this is
kind of funny the name of it, But isn't it
nearby supposedly the windiest place?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Is it the windiest place in the UK? And what's
the name of it?
Speaker 1 (04:19):
The Butt of Lewis. Come on, I'm serious, but it
makes sense.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Twelve years old.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Lewis is a nearby island which is inhabited in the region,
which is pretty rare I think, But this part of it,
one end of the island, is called the Butt of
Lewis Island and it's the windiest part.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
The Butt of Lewis is the windiest island right.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
So the area that these flann And Isles are in
so Island More is in the Flannin Isles. The flann
And Isles are part of the larger island chain on
the northwest of Scotland called the Outer Hebrides, and to
the west of them, you can just keep going and
going and going, and then you'll finally reach North America.
(05:04):
They're pretty remote, they're pretty isolated. They are indeed windy,
and like we were saying, the seeds are kind of
rough around there. I think that's kind of putting it mildly. Plus,
the islands themselves are often very rocky and jagged and
so it's treacherous. So of course you'd want to put
a lighthouse there.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Well, yeah, the winds blow strong from the butt of Lewis.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
But the lighthouse that was built there finally on Island
More wasn't installed until eighteen ninety nine, which is kind
of late considering that Scotland had something called the Northern
Lighthouse Board that they organized in seventeen eighty six to
basically oversee and standardize lighthouse keeping in that country.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, so they were headquartered there in Edinburgh. And here's
how it worked at the time. And this checks out
according to my research. When I was writing my movie
and the movie The Lighthouse, Oh and Xicot they were staff.
You had your principal lightkeeper called the principal keeper, and
then usually depending on you know, where the lighthouse was,
how busy it was, how big it was, and as
(06:06):
far as needed personnel for operation, you had one or
two assistants, and they were all ranked as you know,
you weren't just like, oh, I'll be the first keeper
this week, like you earned that spot. Yeah, it was
a promotion. And then you were assigned to these stations
by the board. Just like in the movie. You don't
stay there forever. You kind of rotate and you go
(06:28):
there for a little while, and you may get stationed
with someone you've never worked with before, and you have
to get to know that person very intimately over the
course of you know, a short period of time, or
it's somebody you have worked with before and you're old
friends with maybe or old enemies, yeah, exactly, or old enemies.
So aside from these two to three people as principles
(06:50):
and assistants, you had what was called the occasional keeper,
and this is someone who actually lived nearby, either an
inhabited island resident or if it was uninhabited, if it
was at least close enough to where they could get
there easily and they would help out during the day,
but they would go home at night and sleep and
stuff in their own betty bye.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
And that was the standard. But for a place like
Island More, where the Flann and Isle's Lighthouse was located,
if you were an occasional, you were there for two weeks.
That's how hard it was to get to the island
and how hard it was to get off of the island.
So the purpose of the occasional was to give two
weeks rest off to one of the other two or
(07:29):
three people who were permanently temporarily stationed there for much
longer than.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
You, right, And then those cases, the keeper the occasional
does not go home and sleep right.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
So one of the things that stuck out to meet
Chuck was that, you know, when you think about lighthouse keeping, like, yes,
the person has to live there, and it's a lot
of work and they have to attend to the light
and everything. But I think lighthouse keepers are very frequently
portray is weirdos. Yeah, just complete alcoholics who can't do
(08:06):
anything else but live by themselves, almost like they're placed
there because there's nothing else for them to contribute to society.
So they're kind of cast off for ostracized. That's not
the case, at least not in Scotland. That was not
the case. Like, if you were a lighthouse keeper, that
was a very very important job. You took it very
very seriously, so much so that there was a study
(08:29):
that found between eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred, fifty years,
there were only fifteen recorded instances of a lighthouse keeper
falling asleep at their post, which was about as bad
as it gets as a lighthouse keeper.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I mean that's not to say there weren't drunks and
myths andthropes here and there. Maybe those are the fifteen.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Yes, But I did a little more further math, Chuck,
if I may be so indulged as to share it.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I saw that. I thought that was pretty funny.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
So get this. Let's say you have about one hundred
and fifty lighthouses in operation between eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred,
and if you calculate that number of lighthouses times the
number of nights that occurred over that fifty years in Scotland,
you have what we'll call two point seventy five million
lighthouse nights. Out of those two point seventy five million
(09:23):
lighthouse nights in Scotland over those fifty years, only fifteen
of those nights found a lighthouse keeper asleep on duty.
That's how seriously they took it.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Did you account for leap years?
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Oh, Chuck, I just really wanted to drive that home. Man.
I really thought that was an important point and it
didn't come across with fifteen instances of fifty years.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Who cares, no, I mean it's a big deal because
you know, the purpose of a lighthouse I guess we
have not really said, is to light the way around
rocky shores and islands. Boats don't run into them.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
Yeah, unless you've been living under a rocky shore, you
know that it's.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
A very important job. Though.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
I love lighthouses. We've talked about him quite a few
times on the show, Big Big Fan. Every time I
am near a lighthouse, I will do my best to
climb that thing if it's allowed.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
So who'd done it? In your lighthouse mystery?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Who did do it? It was a good story.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Actually, well, then maybe you should hang on to it
in case somebody comes along, because it's not like The
Lighthouse is the only lighthouse movie you ever made.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
The briefest synopsis is it's two sisters who are tending
the lighthouse because it was their family job and their
parents died there. So it's these two sort of like
a like maybe a twenty year old and a sixteen
year old out there alone in this island. And then
these two men wash ashore one day in a shipwreck,
and they tell the awful story of their ship going down,
(10:57):
and it turns out that the real story as they
were prisoners aboard a ship being transferred and they escaped
their shackles and murdered everyone aboard. Wow, and then there
was a shipwreck. So they were bad guys who got
washed ashore.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Oh, it's a bit like a reverse dead calm.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Sort of, and they charmed the girls. But there is
I guess I didn't know the name was an occasional keeper.
There's a guy that lives one guy that lives on
the island that helps them out that is sort of
suspicious of the guys, and it sort of plays out
over the course of the movie where they're exposed ending
in a game of cat and mouse. One night nice
and I actually remember how it actually it was, Okay,
(11:36):
I mean I did it as an experiment because all
I've ever written is comedy, and I thought, hey, maybe
I'll write a serious thriller and it could be better
if a really good thriller writer got a hold of it,
I think.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
But were there's still like little jokes peppered as a sides,
like one of the sisters is running from the murderer
and says to herself, I left the mainland for this,
like you're he shines through Still.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Oh, I don't know. I'll have to dust that thing off.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
You should, man, it sounds like a good one, thank you.
So this lighthouse back to the flann And Isles lighthouse
on island more like we said that most of the
Outer Hebrides are uninhabited. I think we said that, didn't we?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Uh, I don't know, but you just said it then.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I think there's seventy islands in the Outer Hebrides and
only fifteen of them are populated, and Island More is
definitely not one of them. The only remote, it is
extremely remote. The only people, the only beings that live
there what you would recognize as a genuine normal being
as opposed to say paranormal, which we'll get into, are
(12:40):
the lighthouse keepers and some sheep. Even the people whose sheep.
Those are don't live on the island or even stay
there overnight. They go out a few times a year
check on the sheep, and then leave before nightfall. That's
kind of how Island Moore is viewed. It seemed kind
of as a place where maybe gods or ghosts or
(13:02):
just something otherworldly lives on island more according to the locals.
According to lore written about the locals, I've never spoken
to an outer Hebridian. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And I think the other thing we need to mention too,
because I believe it comes up later in one of
the supernatural explanations for what is to come here with
this mystery is the name Saint Flannin comes from the
fact that Island Moore was the site of a chapel
in the seventh century built by a traveling Irish monk
who eventually became Saint Flannin.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
And that's going to come up. Just put a pin
in that.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
It's a big time pin. Hang on to it, Okay?
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Is that a good setup? Should we take a break?
Speaker 3 (13:42):
I think so, man, all right, we'll come back with
more spooky lighthouse mystery stuff right up to this, all.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Right, So we should probably mention the steamship actor or
arched actor. I've seen it both ways, but that kind
of kicks off the story for us, don't you think.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah, well, we haven't mentioned the major players either yet,
have we.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
No? No, I guess we could go either way. We
can mention one or the other.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
First, all right, let's mention the players, because these are
the actual keepers of that lighthouse. You had the principal keeper,
James Ducatt, You had the second assistant.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Wouldn't he be the first assistant though?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
No, Donald MacArthur, We'll get into that.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Okay, Thomas Marshall was the second assistant, and then Donald
MacArthur was the occasional right.
Speaker 1 (14:59):
Here's my bit. So he was filling in for a
guy named William Ross. William Ross was the first assistant keeper,
which meant that since Donald MacArthur was filling in for him,
Donald MacArthur was the first assistant keeper, even though he
was an occasional keeper.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Okay, that makes sense. And William Ross was on sick
leave and just judging from the movie The Lighthouse and
all this research, like you must have had to been
really sick to get taken off the island.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yes, but I think yes, that's what I thought too,
But doing research for this, I found that these guys
had all of them had a rotating two weeks off.
So at any given point over a stretch of two weeks,
one of those men, James Ducott, Thomas Marshall or William
Ross would not be on the island because they rotated
(15:48):
two week shore leave basically. So I yeah, I was
of the impression that if you went and tended a lighthouse,
they dropped you off, left you with some food and
said see you never.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
But that's not the case.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
No, No, I think they were well taken care of.
I get the impression of the Northern Lighthouse Board was
pretty good at its job and really cared about these
people and looked after them. I didn't see anything to
deny that.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah, well it's a brutal and important job, so surely
that they were taking care of at least to a
certain degree.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
But the upshot of all this is that there were
three men on the island, three dudes working that lighthouse,
and aside from some sheep, that was it, that was
the only people on the island. And this, by the way,
this is December of nineteen hundred, right.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Yeah, so this thing is brand new.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, they built it in eighteen ninety nine. That was
scheduled to take two years. It took four years. The
construction was started in eighteen ninety five, and what they
built was at the time a state of the art lighthouse.
But it took so long. It took twice as long
as they anticipated because the cliffs and the island itself
was so treacherous. That's how long it took just to
(16:58):
get materials up the cliff to build the lighthouse.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
So it's finally in operation, and then now comes the actor,
which is what you mentioned earlier, not act R, but
the actor, aht er.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah. It was a Transatlantic steamship from Philadelphia to Leith,
which is a port for Edinburgh.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
So they were out there. I was about to say
sailing around, but I guess they were steaming around and
they waited out of storm for a few days. And
then this part got confusing to me.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
So the actor was passing by flann And Isles. It
passed by on December fifteenth, and the actor noticed that
the light was out, not that they couldn't see the
light because of weather or anything like that. Like the
light was straight up, not lit on the lighthouse on
flann and Isle's lighthouse like that. It was a very
strange thing to see and it was very noteworthy. They
(17:55):
ran into some weather on their way to Leith and
had to wait it out for a few days, and
when they finally made it into port, I guess they
passed the information along, but the Northern Lighthouse Board didn't
catch wing of it until the official relief supply ship
showed up a few days later, and the actor's observation
(18:16):
that the light was out wouldn't come into play until
an investigation was launched later on.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Right, So that relief ship was the Hesperus hgsp r Us,
and that arrived on December twenty sixth, nineteen hundred, which
was Boxing day after Christmas.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
And what these.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Ships brought was they usually brought either supplies or fresh
dudes or both, and in this case I think they
had supplies and a fresh lighthouse keeper. And it was
captained by Captain Harvey, and they were like, all right,
something's going on here. This light's out, the flag's not flying.
(18:56):
Let me toot on the horn a few times. Nobody
comes out. They're all right, well, let me send up
a flare they send up a flare. No one comes out,
and what they're trying to do is say, hey, we're here,
get you little your little railcar system going. It had
a little cable a little cable pulled railroad system that
was operated by a steam engine and a shack, and
(19:20):
so when the hip pulls up, they would toot the
horn and the dudes would come down and they would
get that steam engine going and get that cable car
ready to transfer the goods onto this thing. So they
could you know, it's like hundreds of pounds of stuff
going up a really really steep cliff side.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Yeah, there's just no way to move that stuff. Otherwise, no,
you'd have to do it.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
So nobody came out, no one gets that steam shack going,
and they're like, all right, something's going on. We're gonna
have to go on land and figure this out.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Yeah, And just the fact that they weren't greeted by
one or more of the guys from the lighthouse, which
is apparently custom, like even the most grizzled misanthrope lighthouse
keeper just knew it was to come down and greet
the relief ship.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
You're still dying to see someone else. Pretty much, I think, so.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah. So that like the fact that no one showed
up and then no one responded to their signals. They
were like, something really weird is going on here. And
they had Joseph Moore who was the relieving keeper, which
makes me think that William Ross was really really sick
because he would have been on sick leave for way
over two weeks by this side, because I believe the
relief ship was five days late because of weather, so
(20:28):
he must have really been laid up. And they sent
another relieving keeper, Joseph Moore instead, and Joseph Moore went
ashore and he was friends with these guys. He wasn't
some new dude or anything like that. So he was
genuinely concerned. And he went up the steps to the
lighthouse there's apparently one hundred and sixty of them, and
he just knew right away that something was way off.
(20:50):
There was no sign of life, there was nobody around,
there was the just nothing was going on. It was abandoned, basically,
and he didn't have a very good feeling about it.
So he runs back down to the boat to say,
I think we have a problem here.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yes, so he says, I think we have a problem.
And then that's when basically everyone on board said, all right,
we got to this is a situation now that we
all have to deal with. I think it was the
captain who went with more to search for other stuff,
and they said, in the meantime, you other guys, you
got to get up there and start operating this lighthouse
(21:28):
because it's been down and we need to get that
thing cranked up again.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
Yes, they so the first, for the first time, possibly
since December fifteenth, the lighthouse was lit again by these
relief guys who took over and kind of settled in
and were like, all right, this is our job now.
But that follow up search, it's weird. Like we'll talk
about some of the legends and layers that were added
(21:53):
to it over the years. But to me, the thing
that was like so weird about the follow up search
was that everything was in place. Yeah, like it would
be way more like kind of middle of the road
to me, this mystery if there was like signs of
struggle or you know, there were like everything was just
kind of a skew. It's way more eerie to me
(22:15):
that like everything was exactly how it should have been.
It's just the three human beings that were supposed to
be there were missing. But that's what Joseph Moore found
and the others found when they searched a lot more thoroughly.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Yeah, the door to the keeper's house was closed, the
gate was closed. In the kitchen, everything was all spick
and span. Everything was all cleaned up that it was
clear that someone had done some cooking in the grate,
but not anytime soon. There were ashes in there. The
beds were made, the clocks had all stopped because no
one was there to whine them, obviously, And everything was
(22:51):
fine except like you said that there was no one
around that there was a full fountain of paraffine oil.
It was all like the light was ready to be burned.
The lamp that Frenelle lens was cleaned up and ready
to go. The blinds were drawn, the records were all
filled out, you know, all the way up until Saturday,
I think, the morning of December fifteenth, right, yep. And
(23:13):
so everything was great, except for there were two missing
sets of rain gear they're called oil skins, their coats
and their boots. Two of those were missing out of
the three guys, and so that's sort of the only
thing out of the ordinary at this point.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, that was basically the only trace of the
missing men. Like, had those oil skins still been there,
you would have taken the lighthouse in the area as
like having been prepared for somebody else. They just hadn't
shown up yet. Like the missing oil skins were the
only trace that those men were missing, that there had
(23:52):
been men there that were no longer there anymore.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Right, And then there were a couple of pieces of
literature that kind of confused things after the fact, right.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, that really kind of made this, like to a
lot of people, like a much bigger mystery. I think
some people came along and weren't satisfied with how mysterious
it was on its own, and so added to it
and added to it over the years through magazine articles
and newspaper reports and then later on like podcasts and stuff,
and so you really have to be careful navigating these waters.
(24:20):
I feel excuse the pun or the stupid metaphor when
you're researching this, because so much of it is just
regurgitated as fact because it has been part of the
story for one hundred years that it was actually thanked
to thanks to the efforts of a journalist named Mike Dash,
who if you are at all interested in nonfiction writing,
(24:43):
especially nonfiction history writing, go check out Mike Dash's website.
He's probably the best in the business. Oh yeah, but yes,
he's just amazing. But he he set his sights on
getting to the bottom of this, and he did some
stuff and basically finally definitively proved no. This was added
(25:04):
to it later on. This was added to it later on.
This is not true that kind of stuff. So it
hats off to Mike Dash for demystifying a lot of it.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
True but also making it not as fun because it's
decidedly creepier with these newspaper stories as they were written.
One of the newspaper stories talked about the log book
and this is completely fabricated, you know, like Mike Dash
exposed it as fabrication, but it's still pretty creepy. The
(25:33):
log entries in the fake log entries were by a
second well not by a second assistant, Marshall, but this
is how they wrote it, and wrote on December twelfth,
they saw severe winds the likes of which I've never
seen before in twenty years, and wrote, and these are
people that have seen some of the worst storms you
could imagine out there on these outer islands and pretty
(25:53):
unshakable guys, I would think, And he said he wrote
in the next few days that the storm continued. It
was so unbearable that Ducat, their principal keeper, was struck
mute by the storm, and that occasional keeper MacArthur, who
was supposedly a really tough guy, was recorded as weeping
uncontrollably for days because of how bad the storm was.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Right, yeah, it's good stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
It is good stuff, but Mike Dash made mincemeat out
of it, and he's kind of my hero for it.
One of the things that he basically just points out
is if this were an official logbook, if you were
a second assistant you put that in there, you would
you would basically get fired for that kind of thing,
Like that's not what a logbook is for, And you
certainly wouldn't put that your superior was weeping uncontrollably in
(26:41):
the log book, Like that's just not what you would
put in a logbook for the for in the first case.
And then secondly, he also said that somebody being quiet
because of a storm or whatever or their mood, like
it also kind of mentions their mood a lot too,
that that would have no bearing on anything. In the
only way that that makes sense in relation to the
(27:02):
story is after the fact, which he said obviously, that
means that these were written after the fact. And then
years later, after he'd first investigated it, he finally turned
up a copy of the magazine that this came out
in in like nineteen twenty one, and it was like
a like a pulp magazine called like True Confessions or
something like that. So he definitely deconstructed that for sure,
(27:26):
to my great satisfaction. I love it.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Yeah, it's kind of funny though, like the logbook was
basically like your diary.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
That's exactly right, he said, like logbooks were not diaries. No,
he actually specifically said that, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
That's funny.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
The other thing he uncovered or did he uncover the
poem or was that just.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
I think that was a little more common knowledge. But yeah,
he wrote about the poem being the poem too.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
So in nineteen twelve, there was a poem by Wilfred
Wilson Gibson who wrote a poem about this mystery where
he says there was an untouched meal on the table,
cold meat pickles and potatoes. The kitchen chair was knocked over.
The only sign of life was the keeper's canary half
starving on his spurch Like, these are all the things
(28:09):
that you mentioned would have made this a different story.
But everything was really just fine. I don't even think
the chair was turned over, right, I don't know. I
think the guy later on, well, we'll get to him.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah. The way that Mike Dash treated it is that
it's possible. Okay, I don't know if Mike Dash treated
it like that way. Mike Dash wrote about a later
guy who will talk about who treated it as facts, So.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
Oh, okay, I I don't.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
I think what the upshot of it is that in
doing like this research on primary resources, like what Joseph
Moore wrote, what Robert Muirhead who will talk about wrote,
these people who were actually there when it happened or
right after it happened, that nobody mentioned anything like a
turn overchair, and based on what they did mention, it
(29:03):
seemed like they probably would have mentioned a turned overchair.
They were so meticulous in the details.
Speaker 3 (29:08):
All right, Well, let's talk about some of the evidence
that was there, okay, because what we're really talking about is.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Was there.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
I mean, the kind of obvious thing you would think
about is was there some big storm that washed these
guys away forever? Like That's kind of the one reasonable explanation.
And so as far as evidence goes, most of it
is storm related. For the you know, to sort of
support that and to go against it, there was a
railway that we talked about and that had a crane,
(29:40):
and the crane was sort of, you know, built to
help unload things off of this platform, off the cargo container.
And it was about seventy feet above sea level, and
it was fine. It was It even still had the
canvas wrapped around it. So if there was some big storm,
and evidence shows there probably was one, right mm hm,
(30:01):
but at least this crane seventy feet up wasn't damaged
and that canvas was still there, which is a little weird.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
It is a little weird because even a little higher
up toward the top of the cliff, So the crane
was at about seventy feet above sea level, right, yeah,
a little higher up than that, at about one hundred
and ten feet above sea level. There was a box,
a big box that held a lot of like mooring
ropes and ropes for the crane and to some really
(30:29):
important stuff tackle, and it had been busted open and
the contents like strewn all down the cliff's face. There
was a booy that was tied to the railing right
around the same place as that crate, one hundred and
ten feet above sea level. It had been torn clean
away from the ropes that had lashed it to the railing.
The ropes were still there, but the buoy, just a
(30:51):
little piece of booy was left attached to it, and
yet the crane was intact. And then even weirder, the
iron railings around on the crane that you would use
as handrails had just been completely twisted and wrenched out
of place.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
That's a heck of a storm.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
It's an amazing storm. It's crazy to me that the
crane was left intact and that the canvas was even
on it still.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
That was really weird.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
There was a two thousand pounds stone that was up
on the cliff that slid down, and then I believe
the railway tracks were even torn up from the concrete.
And then the grass at the top of the cliff,
this is two hundred feet up at the very top,
was ripped up as far back as thirty feet from
the edge.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
That's nuts, Like, do you know how much force a
wave would have to have to tear up grass in
the first place, and then that thing would have to
be over two hundred feet tall to even reach that grass.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
That's a bad storm.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
It's a monster wave. But the storm part that kind
of confounds things big time. And I think we should
take another break and we'll talk about how everything's just
so confounded still to this day, which is why this
is a mystery.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Right after this, all right, we've got this mystery brewing.
(32:34):
These three men are missing. It's pretty clear that there
was a big storm that blew through there. So, like
I said earlier, the obvious explanation was these strong windsors
came along and just blew these guys the heck off
this island and they were never seen again.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
That's not entirely out of the question because of the
butt of Lewis.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
That's right, strong winds flow from the butt of Lewis.
As everyone knows, and I'm twelve years old. Robert Muirhead
he was a super tendant of lighthouses, and he investigated
this disappearance. He knew all these guys, some really really well.
But I think the occasional keeper he knew the lease,
but he still knew pretty well.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
He's the one that did this investigation personally and went
out there, wrote up this report. And I think he
was the last person. He was out there, you know,
because it was a new lighthouse, I guess, sort of
finishing up, and I don't know if he christen it
or whatever, but he was one of the last, in fact,
maybe the last person even see them alive.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
He says in his report that he's probably the last
person to shake hands with these men and see them
alive when he shoved off on December seventh, when the
last relief ship, the previous release ship had come along all.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Right, So in his official report, he said, I don't
think it was a strong wind that literally blew them
off the island. It was blowing westerly that day, and
that means it would have blown them back inland toward
the island, and there's there's no way that these guys
would have blown completely across the whole face of the
island off the other side. Because they know what to do.
(34:08):
They know to drop and get flat and hold on
and they probably would not have been blown all the
way off if it was westerly.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
They need to stop drop and do not.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
Roll yet, don't roll, please, don't roll. Not in that case,
I grab something heavy.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah, anything, a sheep, whatever, anything that will keep you
from being blown off. But that's just nuts. It shows
you how windy it is up there. That was a
possibility that Merr had considered and was plausible enough that
he had to at least put it in the report
as a possibility.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
The one that he focused on that most people who
think in level headed ways kind of agree with two
is that instead a wave probably came along and knocked
these men off.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, I mean this one.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
I'm an amateur when it comes to like figuring out
island Scottish Island mysteries and weather. This one makes a
lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, totally agree. So being blown away by wind tuns
kind of nuts unless you think about it, in which
case it's not super nuts. In this instance, at least,
there were more slightly nuttier explanations. And like the thing is,
you can't fully discount any one of these because the
(35:28):
men's bodies were never found, so there was never any
conclusive proof of what happened, even still to this day,
and some of the likelier, less likely scenarios seem to
always focus on Donald MacArthur, who was supposedly a bit
of a hot head, quick to fists, kind of dude,
(35:49):
not necessarily the kind of occasional keeper you'd want to
have on rotation for two weeks with you, But that's
what a lot of these secondary theories kind of presuppose.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
He would have been the Willem Dafoe, right, I.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Guess so, yeah, I kind of imagined him as such.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
He had got the story from this, didn't he?
Speaker 1 (36:10):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I'm curious that she did.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I'd have to.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Watch it again now that I know that. I hadn't
even heard of this story when I saw the Lighthouse,
so I need to watch it again and see what
I think.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
I'm gonna do some research on that.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
I doubt if he like based it on this, but
I wouldn't be surprised if it triggered the idea or
something gotcha.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
All right?
Speaker 3 (36:29):
So he MacArthur was, like he said, a tough guy,
a hot head, and he of course there's gonna be
speculation that he started a fight and they all got
in a big fight and they all fell off the
cliff together. Or maybe he murdered these two guys and
then knew what his come uppance would be and flung
himself off the cliffs himself in sort of a murder
(36:51):
suicide situation.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, again, it's plausible, like some people can go nuts, like,
especially in extreme isolation kind of thing. But there's just
no know evidence whatsoever of any sort of fight. It's
possible to fight started entirely outside, but it just doesn't
satisfy all of the evidence, right, I.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Don't think so.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
Like the guy whose weather proof coats were still there
was Donald MacArthur. So why would he start a fight outside?
And whether that was bad enough that his comrades would
put on their weather.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Gear, right, or maybe when it comes to fighting, you
don't want that raincoat on.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
I guess maybe you found it restrictive. That's entirely possible too,
But that's again as far as like these secondary kind
of paranoid theories go, those make a lot more sense.
The other ones, sister, are much more squarely in the
realm of paranormal.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Yeah, you could say that.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
The outer hebrides are home of the Kelpie, and the
Kelpie is a water spirit, a shape shifting water spirit
that drowns human victims. But there are two problems with this.
One that is not real, and two even if it
was real, let's just do a thought experiment. Everyone knows
(38:07):
that the Kelpies are not seaside dwellers. They are inland
at the locks.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Right, They're not known to frequent the seaside.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
No, they don't like that saltwater.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
No, so the Kelpies probably did not kill these men
and cart them away.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
There's more supernatural there.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Right, Yeah, the island being named after Saint Flannin and
that ruined chapel being there, and the idea that the
locals just kind of view that island as a weird place.
There was this one author, a supernatural like a Fortian
type author who came along and said, all right, I've
(38:43):
got it. Everybody ready for this. So the locals think
that this place is kind of inhabited by spirits. I'm
guessing that the pagans who used to live here sacrificed
people on this island, and that the gods came to
be used to a certain type of sacrifice, and that
with the Northern Lighthouse Board installed these three men in
(39:06):
a tower on island More.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
It awoke something and.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
The gods mistook it as a sacrifice, so they took
their sacrifice, and that's what happened to the three men.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
I think he skipped over the best part of this
whole thing though, what it was an ancient race of
tiny people?
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Well so I can't tell if that guy made that
part up or if that is actually a local belief,
but yeah, that was part of it too.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
How small were they?
Speaker 1 (39:32):
Supposedly they found small bones that seemingly belonged to humans,
and so there was a race of tiny people who
supposedly lived there before.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
But are we talking like, are they the size of
a of a sea rat or a like two or
three feet tall person?
Speaker 1 (39:48):
Am I Scottish? I don't know, Uh huh, all right, I.
Speaker 2 (39:51):
Was just curious a sea rat. He was tiny.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
That's a very tiny, tiny person, pagan. But I think
that's really interesting that the idea that the gods mistook
the lighthouse keepers as a human sacrifice, that's what happened
to him. I love that one.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
It's like a big wicker man or something.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yes, exactly. I think that's exactly the point that I
was making.
Speaker 3 (40:14):
All right, so those are obviously all bunk. What probably
really happened is as follows. And I think this is
a pretty plausible. I think this is pretty plausible.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Was but even still it's still astounding if you step
back and look at it.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Yeah, well, and there's no way to prove it. So
it's kind of like these mysteries where you just don't know,
you know. So here's what could have happened. Is that
there was bad weather reported, but it wasn't maybe that
bad on the fifteenth. But let's say that that box
(40:53):
is looser, well, I got to get loose. Let's say
that box needs tending to. That's holding all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
Right, it's an important box. Don't forget it's an important box.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
And I think Marshall had previously been fined what would
be about twenty pounds a day for having lost some equipment,
so he may have been like really quick to like, hey,
we got to secure that box. And so maybe Ducott
and Marshall went out there to like they left their
quarters while the other dude, the occasional keeper MacArthur, is
(41:22):
up there in the lighthouse still and they're securing this
box down and then maybe this freak wave comes through,
or maybe they just get in trouble, and then MacArthur
needs to really leave quickly, which would explain why they
did have their rain gear on and MacArthur didn't because
MacArthur had to leave really quickly to go down there
and help these guys.
Speaker 1 (41:43):
Yes, so like that definitely checks all the boxes that
after that MacArthur was swept away as well. But the
thing is is, like that supposes something really amazing, Chuck,
that there was a freak wave that the men just
did not expect that carried at least one of them away.
(42:07):
The second one who survived that wave ran back to
get help from MacArthur to help get the first guy
who went in, and a second freak wave washed those
two away, just cleaning the island of its human inhabitants
in two swift waves over the course of a minute
or two.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Because the idea is that the storm wasn't bad enough
to just sweep them all away.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, and the act had to be a rogue wave, right.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
And the steamer the actor noted that the area because
the actor passed by just a few hours, a couple
hours probably after this event, happened, and they noted that
it was calm but stormy, which is the opposite of
what you would think. You would think it was not
stormy which would draw the men out to make them
I mean, stormy enough that they needed to secure the box,
(42:54):
but not so stormy that they felt like it couldn't
go out. But calm really kind of makes it. The
idea of two freak waves really freaky, because that would
mean that those waves just came out of nowhere and
swallowed the men up.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
But in the whole I mean, we did an episode
on rogue waves, and the idea is that it's a wave, yeah,
or is there a set of rogue waves?
Speaker 1 (43:18):
I think if I remember correctly, it was a wave.
But that's what I think. Maybe there is more. I
don't know, but yes, that's how this That's the only
way that could happen is because MacArthur wasn't wearing his
rain gear, which suggests that he ran out in a
hurry into bad weather, which means that one of them
would have had to have come and gotten him. He
(43:39):
wouldn't have been there with the other two, so it
could not have just been one freak wave. It would
have had to have been two successive freak waves that
cleared all three.
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Well, and this does lend some credence to the idea
that this thing was big enough to damage the turf,
you know, two hundred feet above sea level and destroy
that box and wash that two thousand pounds stone down
the cliff too.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Right, Yeah, And there was also there's a chance that
all that stuff that just was evidence of a terrible
storm actually came after the men had been washed away
from the island several days later, when there was a
really bad storm on December twentieth.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
Okay, that makes sense. I didn't think about that.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
Isn't that weird to think that that damage had happened after.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
The fact, right? And sure, that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Because it's almost certain that this event happened on December fifteenth.
The last info they had on the log slate was
nine am December fifteenth, like we said, so it couldn't
have happened earlier than that, and it would have happened
before dark on December fifteenth, which would have happened about
four pm, because otherwise they would have lit the light
(44:48):
that night and the steamer actor would have seen the
light in the lighthouse as it passed by on December fifteenth.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
I think all this gets really interesting nineteen fifties when
a lighthouseman named Robert Aldebert who worked there served as
principal keeper between fifty three and fifty seven. He lived there,
obviously had a little time on his hands, and was
really enthralled by this mystery and was like, I'm going
to do some research and I'm going to take a
lot of pictures and do keep a lot of records
(45:19):
in my diary. And he said that, you know, I
was in the lighthouse itself, and and so that's how
many feet above sea level.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
They got the top of that seventy five Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:32):
Like two hundreds close to three hundred feet up and
got sea spray from some waves. So he's like, it's
very possible that a big wave could come through and
reach these heights.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Yeah. He did tests where he took coils of rope
and put them on the top of the cliff and
they get washed away by some of those horrible waves.
So he basically said it was almost certainly a wave
that got these guys. That's not the craziest part. The
craziest part is it was two waves, almost like the
sea was waiting for all three of them and took
them all.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
It's pretty weird. I wonder if he got fine for
losing those ropes.
Speaker 1 (46:05):
I don't know. Maybe so if it's the Northern Lighthouse Board,
I know he definitely did well.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
And he what was his final exp because he's the one.
Speaker 3 (46:15):
That we mentioned earlier that said that that one of
the chairs was turned over in the kitchen, right, like
he kind of bought into that.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Yeah, false narrative.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah, but I wonder because this is a good you know,
forty years after that poem had been written, maybe it
was so woven into the story by then he just
presumed that it was true or not.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
So how that comes in is he's basically like, all right,
after dinner happens, like there's bad weather going on, these
two guys go out there and are see this doesn't
make sense to me, and I'll tell you why in
a second. But these two guys go out there to
secure this box or whatever, cookies back in there washing
(46:53):
up and cleaning up, and that's where everything's nice and tidy. Yeah,
and then all of a sudden they need help, and
so he turns the chair over because he just like
runs out of there real quick. Yeah, but wouldn't that
be wouldn't someone have to be in the light too,
isn't that four guys?
Speaker 1 (47:07):
No, that's why they think that this happened in the
afternoon of the fifteenth, because they never went to light
the light. They hadn't lived the light yet. Remember the
light was all set up and ready to.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Be lived for the easies. It was daytime, yes, it
was before.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
It was before sunset, which would have been before four pm.
Speaker 3 (47:24):
All right, that's the one part I didn't get. I
get it now. White House is China night yep, And
I forgot that part when I wrote my movie. Everything
takes place during the day.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Right, I left the mainland for this. You got anything else?
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Good stuff?
Speaker 1 (47:41):
No?
Speaker 2 (47:41):
I like a good mystery. You're good at finding.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
These, man. I love this one, so thank you very much. Yes, well,
if you want to know more about the flann And
Isles mystery, go read Mike Dash's work on it. It's
really interesting stuff. It's pretty comprehensive too. And since I
said it's pretty comprehensive, everybody, that means it's time for
listener mail.
Speaker 3 (48:01):
I thought this is really interesting. This is a follow
up to the Dingoes episode about dingoes not really barking much.
Hey guys, In response to the statement that dingoes don't bark,
you left out a very fun fact and perhaps a
topic for another show. While domesticated dogs bark throughout their lifetimes,
wild adult dogs do not routinely bark. One popular theory
(48:22):
is that domesticated dogs were bred for tameness, which, as
a result, selected for dogs that never reached full maturity.
The upshot of this is that our domesticated dogs are
trapped in a state of suspended adolescence. They are more
or less trapped in puppyhood, an age where all dogs
wild and domestic, bark, play, lick, and, most important of all,
(48:43):
don't kill, which is an important trait for the family
pet and send an article from Tampa Bay dot com
Whys why do dogs Bark? From nineteen ninety one Love
the show That is from of Vonnier vo n I E. R.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Bonier.
Speaker 1 (49:04):
Yeah, either one of those will work, depending on whether
you're in France or not.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
And Peter's a PhD an owl oncology.
Speaker 1 (49:11):
Research also with an interest in dog barking.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Sounds like Peter just is interested in stuff, which is
our favorite kind of listening.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Yes, there is a died in the wool Stuff you
Should Know listener. Thanks a lot, Peter. That was a
very interesting email and we appreciate it. Belated congratulations on
your PhD. If you want to get in touch with us,
like Peter did, you can send us an email, right, Chuck.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
You surely can. Then you might get a response even.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
Yeah, or you might end up on listener mail. Who knows? Yeah,
I try to answer these Why don't you roll the
dice and find out by sending your email to Stuff
podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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