November 11, 2021 • 49 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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. 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 aisle, stuff you
(00:25):
should know? Can I mention a couple of things here?
I think you should. I want to pre apologize to
our Scottish listeners, whom we love. We we toured in Scotland,
had a great time, one of our best live shows
in the beautiful city of Edinburgh. Yes, wonderful. People love
(00:47):
the Scots. But we are going to butcher some of
these names. And I apologize that. Yeah, we're sorry. Uh
and what was the other thing? Oh? The other thing
was it's impossible to talk about the Flannon Aisles Lighthouse
mystery and research it without almost always thinking about the
movie The Lighthouse. Uh. Yeah, and actually it comes up
(01:11):
a lot in the research too. Yeah. I think one
reason is because it's clear that, oh, what's the guy's
name he made it? I can't think of his name.
It's not William Ker's. Well, it's definitely not Dave Aggers.
It's an Egger's right. Yeah, I'm pretty Robert, I think
Robert Kay, Robert Aggers, Okay, yes, uh, he clearly did
(01:32):
his research. Uh. 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. Um.
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. Especially when
(01:53):
you read and research the Flannin Isisles Lighthouse mystery, You're like, oh, yeah,
that's like from the movie, and that's like from the movie.
Apparently they mentioned it in the movie. I didn't go
back and watch it again, but I saw something really
that they make a reference to the mystery in the movie.
That's awesome, I thought so too. Yeah, man, I can't
wait for that Viking movie to come out. Me too.
(02:13):
And this made me want to see The Lighthouse again,
which I didn't think I wanted to do, but now
I do the same. Here. So, um, we are talking
about one particular lighthouse called the Flannin Isles lighthouse, and
it was located on one island in the Flanning Isles
called Island More. Uh, that's not exactly like Chuck was
saying the Scottish pronunciation scott Gaelic um, but it's close
(02:38):
enough and it actually means in English. I guess the
More island right, Okay, So anyway, that's where this lighthouse
is and and it's situated. It's still there today. It's
automated though it went automated in but um, it's it's
it's light is about seventy five ft atop the cliff,
(02:59):
which is the high point of Island More. And that
cliff is two hundred feet above sea level. And it's
a pretty good place for a lighthouse because this area
of Scotland is kind of treacherous for ships. Yes, and
it's important how high this one was. It figures into
the story. I'm not just showing off with stats here. Yeah,
(03:23):
it is. It is treacherous. It's a windy area. Uh,
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. Is it the windiest place
in the UK. And what's the name of it, The
Butt of Lewis. Come on, I'm serious, but it makes
(03:49):
Lewis is a nearby island, um, which is inhabited in
the region, which is pretty rare, I think, um. But this,
this part of it, one end of the island is
called the Butt of Lewis Island and it's the windiest part.
The Butt of Lewis is the windiest island right, So
that the the area that these Flanning Aisles are in,
(04:11):
so Island more is in the Flannon Aisles. The Flannin
Aisles are part of the larger um island chain on
the northwest of Scotland called the Outer Hebrides, and UM
to the west of them, you can just keep going
and going and going and then you'll finally reach North America. Um.
They're pretty remote, they're pretty isolated. They are indeed windy,
and like we're saying, the seeds are are kind of
(04:33):
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. Well, yeah, the winds blow strong
from the butt of Lewis. But the the lighthouse that
was built there finally on Island more Um, wasn't installed
until eighteen nine UM, which is kind of late considering
(04:56):
that Scotland had something called the Northern Lighthouse Board that
they organized in sevent six to basically oversee and standardized
lighthouse keeping in that country. Yeah. So they were headquartered
there in Edinburgh. And here 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. Uh.
(05:19):
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 far as needed uh personnel for operation, you
had one or two assistants. Uh. 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.
(05:42):
It was a promotion, uh, and then you were assigned
to these stations by the board. Just like in the movie.
You don't you don't stay there forever. You kind of
rotate and you go 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 some money you have worked with
(06:03):
before and your old friends with maybe for old enemies, yeah, exactly,
wor old enemies. So aside from these two to three
people as principles and assistance, you had what's called the
occasional keeper. And this is someone who actually lived nearby UH,
either an inhabited island resident or if it was uninhabited,
(06:23):
if it was at least close enough, they could get
there easily and they would help out UH during the day,
but they would go home at night and sleep and
stuff in their own betty by And that was the standard.
But for a place like Um Island more where the
flann And Isles Lighthouse was located. UM, if you were
an occasional, you were there for two weeks. That's how
hard it was to get to the island and how
(06:45):
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 three people.
Who were permanently stay temporarily stationed there for much longer
than you. Right, then those cases, the keeper the occasional
does not go home and sleep right. So, Um, the
(07:06):
one of the things that 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
um portrayed as weirdos, just complete alcoholics who like can't
(07:28):
can't do anything else but live by themselves. That almost
like their place there because there's there's nothing else for
them to contribute to society, so they're kind of cast
off for ostra sized. That's not the case, at least
not in Scotland. That was not the case. Like if
you were a lighthousekeeper, that was a very very important job.
You took it very very seriously. Um, so much so
(07:52):
that there was a study that found between eighteen fifty
and nineteen hundred fifty years there were only fifteen records
did instances of lighthouse keeper falling asleep at their post,
which was about as bad as it gets as a lighthousekeeper. Yeah.
I mean that's not to say they weren't drunks and
miths and thropes here and there. Maybe those are the
(08:13):
fifteen yes, But I did a little more further math, Chuck,
if I may be sewing indulged as to share it,
I saw that. I thought that was pretty funny. So
so get this. Let's say you have about a 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,
(08:38):
you have what we'll call two point seven five million
lighthouse nights. Out of those two point seven five million
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. Did you account for
(08:58):
leap years? Oh, Chuck, I just really wanted to drive
that home. Man. I really thought that was an important point,
and it didn't get come across with fifteen instances fifty years.
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
(09:21):
rocky shores and islands so boats don't run into them. Yeah,
unless you've been living under a rocky shore, you know
that it's a very important job. Though. I love lighthouses.
We've talked about them quite a few times on this show,
Big Big fan. Every time I am near a lighthouse,
I will do my best to climb that thing if
it's allowed. So, who who done it? In your lighthouse mystery? Uh?
(09:46):
Who did do it? It was a good story. Actually, well,
then maybe you should hang onto it in case somebody
comes along, because it's not like The Lighthouse is the
only lighthouse movie ever made. Yeah, the briefest synopsis is
it's too sisters who are attending the lighthouse because it
was their family job and their parents died there. So
(10:06):
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 and a shipwreck and they tell the
awful story of their their ship going down, and it
turns out that the real story is that they were
prisoners aboard a ship being transferred and they escaped their
(10:29):
shackles and murdered everyone aboard, and then there was a shipwreck,
so they were bad guys who got washed ashore. It's
a bit like a reverse dead Calm 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
(10:49):
course of the movie where they're exposed ending in a
game of cat and mouse one night, and I remember,
actually it was okay. I mean so I did it
as a as an experiment because all I've ever written
is comedy, and I thought, hey, maybe I'll write a
serious thriller. And uh, it could be better if a
really good thriller writer got ahold of it, I think.
(11:11):
But where 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 your comedy shines through still. Oh, I don't know,
I'll have to dust that thing off. You should man,
it sounds like a good one. Thank you so um
(11:31):
this lighthouse back to the Flanton Isles lighthouse on Island More. Um,
Like we said that most of the Outer Hebrides are uninhabited.
I think we said that, didn't we I don't know,
but you just said it. Then. I think there's seventy
islands and 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. Um. The only people,
(11:53):
the only beings that live there, Um, what you would
recognize as a genuine normal being as opposed to say, paranormal,
which we'll get into, are 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
(12:15):
then leave before nightfall. That's that's kind of how Island
More is viewed. It seemed kind of as a place
where maybe gods or ghosts or just something other worldly
lives on Island More, according to the locals. According to
Lower written about the locals, I've never spoken to an
Outer hebridean Yeah, and I think the other thing we
(12:37):
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 St.
Flannin comes from the fact that Island More was the
side of a chapel in the seventh century built by
a traveling Irish monk who eventually became St. Flannin, And
(12:58):
that's going to come up. Just put a in that.
It's a big time pin hang on to it. Okay?
Is that a good setup? Should we take a break?
I think so? Man, all right, we'll come back with
more spooky lighthouse mystery stuff right after this. Alright, so
(13:39):
we should probably mention the steamship actor or archter Arcter.
I've seen it both ways, but that kind of kicks
off the story for us, don't you think. Yeah, well,
we haven't mentioned the major players either yet, have we. No? No,
I guess we could go either way. We can mention
one or the other. All right, let's mention the players
(14:01):
because these are the actual keepers of that lighthouse. You
had the principal keeper, James Ducatt, you had the second assistant.
Wouldn't he be the first assistant though no, Donald mccarthur.
We'll get into that, okay. Thomas Marshall was the second
assistant and then Donald mccarth MacArthur was the occasional right,
(14:22):
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 McArthur was the first assistant keeper even though he
was an occasional keeper. Okay, that makes sense. And William
Ross was unsickly and just judging from the movie The
Lighthouse and and all this research, like you must have
(14:44):
had to been really sick to get taken off the island. 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
(15:06):
Ross would not be on the island because they rotated
two weeks shorely basically. So I yeah, I was over
the impression that if you went and tended a lighthouse,
they dropped you off left you with some food and
said see you never. But that's not the case. No, No,
I think I think they were well taken care of.
(15:27):
I get the impression 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 to
to deny that. Yeah, well, it's a brutal and important job,
so surely that they were taken care of, at least
to a certain degree. 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
(15:50):
that was it. That was the only people on the island.
And this, by the way, this is December of nineteen hundred, right, Yeah,
so this thing is brand new. Yeah, A built it
in that was scheduled to take two years. It took
four years. The construction was started in and what they
built was at the time a state of the art lighthouse.
(16:12):
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
like get materials up the cliff to build the lighthouse. Yeah,
so it's finally in operation. And then now comes to
the Actor, which is what you mentioned earlier. Not a
C T O R, but the Actor a H T
(16:36):
E R. Yeah. It was a transatlantic steamship from Philadelphia
to Leith, which is a port for Edinburgh. That's right.
So they were out there was about say, sailing around,
but I guess they were steaming around and they waited
out a storm for a few days and then, uh,
this part got confusing to me. So the actor was
(16:57):
was passing by Flannon Aisles. It by on December 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 Flannon Isle's lighthouse like that was.
It was a very strange thing to see and it
was very noteworthy. UM. They ran into some weather on
(17:20):
their way to Leaf 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 the Northern Lighthouse Board didn't catch wind of it
until the official relief supply ship UM showed up a
few days later and the actors observation that the light
was out wouldn't come into play until an investigation was
(17:42):
launched later on. Right, So that relief ship was the
Hesperus H S P E r U S. And that
arrived on December, which was Boxing day after Christmas. And
what these ships brought as they usually brought either supplies
(18:02):
or uh fresh dudes or both. And in this case,
I think they had supplies and a fresh lighthousekeeper. And
it was captained by uh Captain Harvey, and they were like,
all right, something's going on here. This lights out, the
flag's not flying. Let me toot on the horn a
few times. Dude, nobody comes out there. All right, well,
(18:25):
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 your little, uh, your
little rail car system going. It had a little cable
a little cable pulled railroad system that was operated by
a steam engine in a shack. And so when the
chip pulls up, they would toot the horn and the
(18:46):
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. Yeah, there's just no way
to move that stuff otherwise now you'd have to do it.
So nobody came out, no one gets that steam chat going,
and uh, they're like, all right, something's going on. We're
(19:08):
gonna have to to go on land and figure this out. 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 um lighthouse
keeper just knew it was customed to come down and
greet the relief ship. You're still dying to see someone else,
pretty much, I think, you know. Yeah, So that like
(19:29):
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 sickly for way over two weeks by the side,
because I believe the relief ship was um five days
(19:50):
late because of weather, so he must have really been
laid up, and they sent another relieving keeper, Joseph Moore
um 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 a
hundred and sixty of them, and he just knew right
(20:12):
away that something was way off. 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. Yes, so he says, I
think we have a problem. And then that's when basically
(20:34):
everyone on board said, all right, we gotta 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 gotta get up there and start
operating this lighthouse because it's been down and we need
to get that thing cranked up again. Yes, so they
(20:56):
so the first for the first time, possibly since December
five teeth. The lighthouse was lit again with by these
relief guys who took over and kind of settled in
and we're like, all right, this is our job now. Um.
But that follow up search, it's weird. Like we'll talk
about some of the legends and layers that were added
to it over the years, But to me, the thing
(21:19):
that was like so weird about the follow up search
was that everything was in place 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, they were like like, I think everything was
just kind of askew. It's way more eerie to me
that like everything was exactly how it should have been.
(21:41):
Is just the three human beings that were supposed to
be there were missing. But that's what what m. Joseph
Moore found and the others found when they searched a
lot more thoroughly. Yeah, the door to the keeper's house
was closed, the gate was closed. The in the kitchen
everything was also bit and span. Everything was all cleaned
up that it was clear that someone had done some
(22:03):
cooking in the grate, but not anytime soon there were
ashes in there. The beds were made, uh, the clocks
had all stopped because no one was there to wind them, obviously,
And everything was fine except like you said that there
was no one around that there was a full uh
fountain of paraffin oil. It was all like the light
was ready to be burned, the lamp that for nel
(22:26):
lens was cleaned up and ready to go. The blinds
were drawn, their records were all filled out, you know,
all the way up until Saturday, I think the morning
of December, right, and 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
(22:46):
were missing out of the three guys, and so that's
sort of the only thing out of the ordinary at
this point. Yeah, yeah, that was basically the only trace
of the missing men. Like like, had those oil skins
still been there, you would you would have taken the
lighthouse and in the the the area as like having
(23:08):
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 have been men there that
were no longer there anymore. Right. Uh. And then there
were a couple of pieces of literature that kind of
confused things after the fact, right Yeah, that really kind
of made this, like, to a lot of people, like
a much bigger mystery. I think some people came along
(23:29):
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. I feel excuse
the pun or the stupid metaphor um when you're researching this,
(23:49):
because so much of it is just regurgitated as fact
because it has been part of the story for a
hundred years. That it was actually thanked to the thanks
to the efforts of a journalist named Mike Dash, who
if you are at all interested in nonfiction writing, especially
non fiction history writing, go check out Mike Dash's website.
(24:11):
He's probably the best in the business. But yes, he's
just amazing. Um. But he uh, 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 to it later on. This was added to it
later on. This is not true that kind of stuff.
So hats off to Mike Dash for demystifying a lot
(24:34):
of it true but also making it not as fun
because it's decidedly creepier with these newspaper stories as they
were written. Um. 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
(24:55):
pretty creepy. Uh. The log entries, uh in the fake
log entries were by second well not buy a second assistant, Marshall,
but this is how they wrote it, uh, and wrote
on December twelve, they saw severe winds the likes of
which I've never seen before in twenty years, and wrote,
and these are these are people that have seen some
of the worst storms you could imagine out there on
these outer islands, and pretty unshakable guys, I would think,
(25:19):
and he said he wrote in the next two days
that the storm continued. It was so unbearable that Ducat,
the principal keeper, uh was uh struck mute by the storm.
And the occasional keeper MacArthur, who was supposedly a really
tough guy was recorded as weeping uncontrollably for days because
of how bad the storm was. Yeah, it's good stuff,
(25:41):
It is good stuff, but Mike Dash made mince meat
out of it, and he's kind of my hero for it.
One of the things that he basically just points out
is if if this were an official log book, 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 log book is for,
and you certainly wouldn't put that your superior was weeping
(26:03):
uncontrollably in the log book, Like that's just not what
you would put in a log book for the for
in the first case. And then secondly, he also said
that somebody being quiet um because of a storm or
whatever um or their mood, like it also kind of
mentions their mood a lot too, that that would have
no bearing on anything. And the only way that that
(26:24):
makes sense in relation to the story is after the fact,
which he said, obviously that means that those were written
after the fact. And then years later, after he'd first
investigated it, he he finally turned up a copy of
the magazine that this uh came out in in ne
and it was like a like a pulp magazine called
like True Confessions or something like that. So he definitely
(26:47):
he definitely deconstructed that for sure, to my great satisfaction.
I love it. Yeah, it's kind of funny though, like
the log book was basically like your diary. That's exactly right,
he said, like log books were not diaries. But he
actually specifically said that, Yeah, that's funny. The other thing
he uncovered or did he uncover the poem or was
that just I think that was a little more common knowledge.
(27:08):
But yeah, he wrote about the poem being the poem too. Okay.
So in nine twelve there was a poem by Wilfred
Wilson Gibson who wrote a poem about this mystery where, uh,
he says, there was an untouched meal on the table,
cold meat, pickles and potatoes. The kitchen chair was was
knocked over. The only sign of life was the keeper's
(27:29):
canary half starving on a spurch. Like these are all
the things 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, Uh the
I don't know. I think the guy later on Well,
we'll get to him. Yeah, the way that Mike Dash
treated it is um that it's possible. Okay, I don't
(27:52):
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 I don't. I don't.
I think with the upshot of it is that in
doing like this research on primary resources, like what what
Joseph Moore wrote, Um, what Robert Muirhead who will talk
(28:15):
about wrote, these people who were actually there when it
happened or right after it happened, Um, that nobody mentioned
anything like a turned over chair, And based on what
they did mention, it seemed like they probably would have
mentioned it turned over chair. They were so meticulous in
the details. All right, Well, let's talk about some of
the evidence that was there, because what we're really talking
(28:37):
about is was there I mean, the kind of obvious
thing you would think about is was there some big
storm that that watched 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. Uh.
For the you know, to to sort of support that
(28:58):
and to go against it, um, was a railway that
we talked about, and that had a crane, and the
crane was sort of you know, built to help unload
things off of this platform, off the cargo, uh 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. Uh So, if there was some
(29:20):
big storm and an evidence shows there probably was one, right,
but at least this crane seventy feet up wasn't damaged
and that canvas was still there, which is a little weird.
It is a little weird because even a little higher
up towards the top of the cliff. So this the
crane was at about seventy ft above sea level, right, Yeah,
(29:42):
a little higher up than that, at about a hundred
and ten ft above sea level. There was a box,
a big box that held a lot of like mooring
ropes and ropes for the crane and just some really
important stuff tackle and it had been busted open and
the contents like strewn all down the cliff face. There
was a buoy that was tied to the railing right
(30:04):
around the same place as that crate a 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
little piece of buoy was left attached to it. Uh.
And yet the crane was intact. And then even weirder,
the the iron railings around the crane um that you
(30:25):
would use as handrails, had just been completely twisted and
wrenched out of place. That's a heck of a storm.
It's an amazing storm. It's crazy to me that the
crane was left intacting, that the canvas was even on
it still, that was really weird. Um. There was a
two thousand pounds stone that was up on the cliff
that slid down. Uh. And then I believe the railway
(30:48):
tracks were even torn up from the concrete. And then
the grass at the top of the cliff, this is
two ft up at the very top, was ripped up
as far back as thirty feet from the edge. That's
uts 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 ft tall to even reach that grass. That's
(31:11):
a bad storm. It's a monster wave. But the storm
part that's that kind of confounds things big time. Uh.
And I think we should take another break and we'll
talk about how everything is just so confounded still to
this day, which is why this is a mystery. Right
after this, all right, we've got this mystery brewing. These
(31:58):
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 windsters came
along and just blew these guys the heck off this
island and they were never seen again. That's not entirely
out of the question because of the butt of Lewis.
That's right. Strong winds flow from the butt of Lewis.
As everyone knows. Um, and I'm twelve years old. Robert Muirhead,
(32:22):
he was a superintendent of lighthouses and he investigated this disappearance.
He knew all these guys, uh, some really really well,
but I think the occasional keeper he knew the least.
But he still knew pretty well. Um. He's the one
that did this investigation personally, uh, and went out there
wrote up this report. And I think he was the
(32:44):
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 christian it or whatever,
but he was one of the last, in fact, maybe
the last person to even see them alive. Right. 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 seven, when the last
relief ship, the previous release ship had come along, alright,
(33:08):
So his 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 towards
the island. And there's no way that these guys would
have blown completely across the whole face of the island
(33:28):
off the other side, because they know what to do.
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. They need to stop
drop and do not roll. You don't roll, please, don't roll.
Not in that case. Grab something heavy, yeah, anything, a sheep, whatever,
anything that will keep you from being blown off. But
(33:50):
that's just nuts. It shows you how windy it is
up there. That that was a possibility that mir Head
considered and was plausible enough that he had to at
least put it in the report as a possibility. That's right.
The one that he focused on that most people who
UM think in level headed ways kind of agree with
(34:14):
two is that Um, instead, a wave probably came along
and knocked these men off. Yeah, I mean this one.
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. Yeah, totally agree. So being
blown away by when sounds kind of nuts unless you
(34:35):
think about it, and in which case it's not super nuts.
In this instance, at least, there were more, UM slightly
nuttier explanations. And like the thing is, you can't fully
discount any one of these because the men's bodies were
never found, so there was never any conclusive proof of
what happened, even still to this day. UM and some
(34:59):
of the likelier, less likely scenarios seemed to always focus
on Donald MacArthur UM, who was supposedly a bit of
a hothead, quick to fist kind of dude. UM, not
necessarily the kind of occasional keeper you'd want to have
on rotation for two weeks with you. But that's that's
(35:20):
what a lot of these secondary theories kind of presupposed.
He would have been the Willem Dafoe, right, I guess? So, yeah,
I kind of imagine him as such. He had a
got the story from this, didn't he? I don't know.
I'm curious. I don't know. I'd have to watch it
again now that I know that. I hadn't even heard
of this story when I saw the lighthouse, so I, um,
(35:42):
I need to watch it again and see see what
I think. I'm gonna do some research on that. I
doubt if he like based it on this, but I
wouldn't be surprised if it triggered the idea or something.
All right, So he, uh, MacArthur was, like he said,
a tough guy, a hothead, and he of course there's
gonna expect relation that he started a fight and they
(36:02):
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 upance would be
and flung himself off the cliffs himself and sort of
a murder suicide situation. Yeah, again, it's plausible, like some
people can go nuts, like especially an extreme isolation kind
of thing, but there's just no evidence whatsoever of any
(36:24):
sort of fight. It's possible to fight started entirely outside,
but it just doesn't satisfy all of the evidence, right,
I don't think so. Like the the guy who's um
weather proof coats, We're still there was Donald MacArthur. So
why would he start a fight outside? And whether that
was bad enough that his his comrades would put on
(36:47):
their weather gear, right, or maybe when it comes to
fight and you don't want that raincoat on, I guess
maybe you found it restrictive. That's entirely possible too, But
that's again as far as like the secondary kind of
paran theories go, those make a lot more sense. The
other ones sister much more squarely in the realm of paranormal. Yeah,
(37:08):
you could say that 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 too even if it was real, let's just do
(37:28):
a thought experiment. Everyone knows that the Kelpies are not
seaside dwellers. They are inland at the locks. They're not
known to frequent the the seaside. They don't like that saltwater. No,
so the Kelpies probably did not kill these men and
cart them away. Uh, there's more supernatural they're right. Yeah.
The the island being named after St. Flannon and that
(37:51):
ruined chapel being there, and the idea that the um
the locals just kind of view that island is a
weird place. There was this one author, a supernatural like
Fortian type author um who came along and said, all right,
I've got it. Everybody ready for this. So the the
the locals think that this place is kind of inhabited
(38:13):
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 a tower on island more and the gods
(38:34):
mistook it as a sacrifice, so they took their sacrifice,
and that's what happened to the three men. It's I
think skipped over the best part of this whole thing, though.
It was an ancient race of tiny people. 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. How small were they?
(38:55):
Supposedly they found small bones that seemingly belonged to humans,
and so there was a race of tiny people who
supposedly lived there before. But are we talking like, are
they the size of a of a sea rat or
a like two or three feet tall person? And my
Scottish I don't know, all right, I was just curious
(39:15):
a sea rat. It was tiny. That's a very tiny,
tiny person pagan. But I think that's really interesting, the
idea that the gods mistook the lighthouse keepers as a
human sacrifice, that's what happened to him. I love that one.
It's like a big wicker man or something. Yes, exactly.
I think that's exactly the point that God was making. Alright,
(39:38):
So those those are obviously all bunk um. What probably
really happened is as follows, And I think this is
a pretty plausible. I think this is pretty plausible. Was
but even still, it's still astounding. If you step back
and look at it. Yeah, and well, and there's no
way to prove it. So it's it's kind of like
(39:58):
these mysteries where you just don't know, you know. So
here's what could have happened. Is that, uh, there was
bad weather reported, but it wasn't maybe that bad on um.
But let's say that that box uh is is looser, Well,
(40:18):
I gonna get loose. Let's say that box needs tending
to this holding all this stuff. It's an important box,
don't forget. It's an important box. And I think Marshall
had previously been fined what would be about twenty pounds
today 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
(40:38):
out there two like they left their quarters while uh,
the other dude, the occasional keeper MacArthur, is up there
in the lighthouse still and they're securing this box down
and then maybe this freak uh wave comes through, or
maybe they just get in trouble and then MacArthur needs
to really leave quickly, which would explain why they did
(41:01):
have their rain gear on and MacArthur didn't because MacArthur
had to leave really quickly to go down there and
help these guys. Yes, so like that, that definitely checks
all the boxes. That after that MacArthur was swept away
as well. But the thing is is, like that, that
supposes something really amazing, Chuck, that there was a freak
(41:23):
wave that the men just did not expect that carried
at least one of them away. 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. And two swift waves
(41:46):
over the course of a minute or two. Because the
idea is that the storm wasn't bad enough to just
sweep them all away. Yeah, and the act had to
be a rogue wave, right, and the steamer the actor
noted that there you because the actor passed by just
a few hours, a couple of hours probably after this
event happened, and they noted that it was calm but stormy,
(42:09):
which is the opposite of what you would think. You
would think it was not stormy which would draw the
men out to to make them, I mean stormy enough
that they needed to secure the box, but not so
stormy that they 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
(42:31):
men up. But in the whole, I mean, we did
an episode on rogue waves, and the idea is that
that it's a wave or was there a set of
rogue waves? I think, if I remember correctly, it was
a wave. But that's what I think. Maybe maybe there
was more I don't know, but yes, that that that's
how this That's the only way that could happen is
(42:51):
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 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 well, and
this does um lends some credence to the idea that
(43:16):
this thing was big enough to damage the turf, you know,
two feet above sea level and destroy that box and
washed that two thousand pounds stone down the cliff too, right, Yeah,
And there was also there's a there's a chance that
all that stuff that that just was evidence of a
terrible storm actually came after the men had been washed
(43:36):
away from the island several days later, when there was
a really bad storm. Okay, that makes sense. I didn't
think about that, didn't that weird? Did think that that
damage had happened after the after the fact, right? It?
Sure that makes sense because it's almost certain that they
that this event happened on December fifteenth. The last info
they had on the log slate was nine am December fifte,
(43:58):
like we said, so couldn't have happened earlier than that,
and it would have happened before dark on December fift
which would have happened about four pm, because otherwise they
would have lit the light that night and the steamer
actor would have seen the light in the lighthouse as
it passed by on December That's right. I think all
(44:21):
this gets really interesting in the nineteen fifties, when a
lighthouseman named Robert Aldibert, 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 it was like, I'm
gonna do some research and I'm gonna take a lot
of pictures and do keep a lot of records in
(44:43):
my diary. And uh he said that, you know, I've
I was in the lighthouse itself and got and so
that's how many feet above sea level they at, ye,
like two hundred close to three dred feet up and
got sa spray from some waves. So he's like, it's
very possible that a big wave could come through and
(45:04):
reach these heights. Yeah, he did test 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. It's pretty weird. I wonder
(45:26):
if he got fined for losing those ropes. I don't know,
maybe so if the if, the if, it's the Northern
White House Board. I know he definitely did well and
he what was his final ex because he's the one
that we mentioned earlier that said that, uh that the
one of the chairs was turned over in the kitchen,
right Like he kind of bought into that. Yeah, false narrative. Yeah,
(45:47):
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. So how that
comes in is he's basically like, all right, or dinner happens, um,
like there's bad weather going on. These two guys go
out there, uh in our in our see this doesn't
(46:08):
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, uh cookies back in there,
washing up and cleaning up, and that's where everything is
nice and tidy, 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. But
wouldn't that be wouldn't someone have to be in the
light too, isn't that four guys? No, that's why they
(46:32):
think that this happened in the afternoon of the because
they never went to light the light. They hadn't remember
the light was all set up and ready to be
it was daytime, yes, it was before. It was before sunset,
which would have been before four pm. All right, that's
the one part I didn't get. I get it now,
flight House shine at night. I never got that part
(46:53):
when I wrote my movie, everything takes place during the day, right,
I left the mainland for this. You got anything else?
Good stuff? No? I like a good mystery. You're good
at finding these, man. I love this one, so thank
you very much. Um. Yes, well, if you want to
know more about the Flann and Niles mystery, go read
Mike Dashes work on it. It's really interesting stuff. It's
(47:14):
pretty comprehensive too. Uh. And since I said it's pretty comprehensive, everybody,
that means it's time for a listener mail. I thought
this is really interesting. This is a follow up to
the Dingoes episode about Dingo is 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 the
(47:36):
topic for another show. While domesticated dogs bark throughout their lifetimes.
Wild adult dogs do not routinely bark. One popular theory
is that domesticated dogs were bred for tamenus, which, as
a result, selected for dogs that never reached full maturity.
The upshot of this is that our domesticated dogs are
(47:57):
trapped in a state of suspended adolescence. There more or
less trapped in puppyhood, an age where all dogs wild
and domestic, bark, play, lick, and most important of all,
don't kill, which is an important trait for the family
pet uh And sent an article from Tampa Bay dot
com Why Dogs, Why do dogs Bark? From I Love
(48:21):
the show? That is from Peter Vonnier v O n
I e er Bonnier. Yeah, either one of those will work,
depending on whether you're in France or not. Uh And.
Peter is a PhD in owl oncology research, also with
an interest in dog barking. Sounds like Peter just is
interested in stuff, which is our favorite kind of listening. Yes,
(48:42):
there is a diet in the world. Stuff you should
know a 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,
You surely can. Then you might get a response even up,
or you might end up on listener mail. Who knows, Yeah,
(49:03):
I try to answer these Why don't you roll the
dice and find out by sending your email to stuff
podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. 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 aisle, stuff you
(00:25):
should know? Can I mention a couple of things here?
I think you should. I want to pre apologize to
our Scottish listeners, whom we love. We we toured in Scotland,
had a great time, one of our best live shows
in the beautiful city of Edinburgh. Yes, wonderful. People love
(00:47):
the Scots. But we are going to butcher some of
these names. And I apologize that. Yeah, we're sorry. Uh
and what was the other thing? Oh? The other thing
was it's impossible to talk about the Flannon Aisles Lighthouse
mystery and research it without almost always thinking about the
movie The Lighthouse. Uh. Yeah, and actually it comes up
(01:11):
a lot in the research too. Yeah. I think one
reason is because it's clear that, oh, what's the guy's
name he made it? I can't think of his name.
It's not William Ker's. Well, it's definitely not Dave Aggers.
It's an Egger's right. Yeah, I'm pretty Robert, I think
Robert Kay, Robert Aggers, Okay, yes, uh, he clearly did
(01:32):
his research. Uh. 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. Um.
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. Especially when
(01:53):
you read and research the Flannin Isisles Lighthouse mystery, You're like, oh, yeah,
that's like from the movie, and that's like from the movie.
Apparently they mentioned it in the movie. I didn't go
back and watch it again, but I saw something really
that they make a reference to the mystery in the movie.
That's awesome, I thought so too. Yeah, man, I can't
wait for that Viking movie to come out. Me too.
(02:13):
And this made me want to see The Lighthouse again,
which I didn't think I wanted to do, but now
I do the same. Here. So, um, we are talking
about one particular lighthouse called the Flannin Isles lighthouse, and
it was located on one island in the Flanning Isles
called Island More. Uh, that's not exactly like Chuck was
saying the Scottish pronunciation scott Gaelic um, but it's close
(02:38):
enough and it actually means in English. I guess the
More island right, Okay, So anyway, that's where this lighthouse
is and and it's situated. It's still there today. It's
automated though it went automated in but um, it's it's
it's light is about seventy five ft atop the cliff,
(02:59):
which is the high point of Island More. And that
cliff is two hundred feet above sea level. And it's
a pretty good place for a lighthouse because this area
of Scotland is kind of treacherous for ships. Yes, and
it's important how high this one was. It figures into
the story. I'm not just showing off with stats here. Yeah,
(03:23):
it is. It is treacherous. It's a windy area. Uh,
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. Is it the windiest place
in the UK. And what's the name of it, The
Butt of Lewis. Come on, I'm serious, but it makes
(03:49):
Lewis is a nearby island, um, which is inhabited in
the region, which is pretty rare, I think, um. But this,
this part of it, one end of the island is
called the Butt of Lewis Island and it's the windiest part.
The Butt of Lewis is the windiest island right, So
that the the area that these Flanning Aisles are in,
(04:11):
so Island more is in the Flannon Aisles. The Flannin
Aisles are part of the larger um island chain on
the northwest of Scotland called the Outer Hebrides, and UM
to the west of them, you can just keep going
and going and going and then you'll finally reach North America. Um.
They're pretty remote, they're pretty isolated. They are indeed windy,
and like we're saying, the seeds are are kind of
(04:33):
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. Well, yeah, the winds blow strong
from the butt of Lewis. But the the lighthouse that
was built there finally on Island more Um, wasn't installed
until eighteen nine UM, which is kind of late considering
(04:56):
that Scotland had something called the Northern Lighthouse Board that
they organized in sevent six to basically oversee and standardized
lighthouse keeping in that country. Yeah. So they were headquartered
there in Edinburgh. And here 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. Uh.
(05:19):
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 far as needed uh personnel for operation, you
had one or two assistants. Uh. 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.
(05:42):
It was a promotion, uh, and then you were assigned
to these stations by the board. Just like in the movie.
You don't you don't stay there forever. You kind of
rotate and you go 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 some money you have worked with
(06:03):
before and your old friends with maybe for old enemies, yeah, exactly,
wor old enemies. So aside from these two to three
people as principles and assistance, you had what's called the
occasional keeper. And this is someone who actually lived nearby UH,
either an inhabited island resident or if it was uninhabited,
(06:23):
if it was at least close enough, they could get
there easily and they would help out UH during the day,
but they would go home at night and sleep and
stuff in their own betty by And that was the standard.
But for a place like Um Island more where the
flann And Isles Lighthouse was located. UM, if you were
an occasional, you were there for two weeks. That's how
hard it was to get to the island and how
(06:45):
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 three people.
Who were permanently stay temporarily stationed there for much longer
than you. Right, then those cases, the keeper the occasional
does not go home and sleep right. So, Um, the
(07:06):
one of the things that 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
um portrayed as weirdos, just complete alcoholics who like can't
(07:28):
can't do anything else but live by themselves. That almost
like their place there because there's there's nothing else for
them to contribute to society, so they're kind of cast
off for ostra sized. That's not the case, at least
not in Scotland. That was not the case. Like if
you were a lighthousekeeper, that was a very very important job.
You took it very very seriously. Um, so much so
(07:52):
that there was a study that found between eighteen fifty
and nineteen hundred fifty years there were only fifteen records
did instances of lighthouse keeper falling asleep at their post,
which was about as bad as it gets as a lighthousekeeper. Yeah.
I mean that's not to say they weren't drunks and
miths and thropes here and there. Maybe those are the
(08:13):
fifteen yes, But I did a little more further math, Chuck,
if I may be sewing indulged as to share it,
I saw that. I thought that was pretty funny. So
so get this. Let's say you have about a 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,
(08:38):
you have what we'll call two point seven five million
lighthouse nights. Out of those two point seven five million
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. Did you account for
(08:58):
leap years? Oh, Chuck, I just really wanted to drive
that home. Man. I really thought that was an important point,
and it didn't get come across with fifteen instances fifty years.
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
(09:21):
rocky shores and islands so boats don't run into them. Yeah,
unless you've been living under a rocky shore, you know
that it's a very important job. Though. I love lighthouses.
We've talked about them quite a few times on this show,
Big Big fan. Every time I am near a lighthouse,
I will do my best to climb that thing if
it's allowed. So, who who done it? In your lighthouse mystery? Uh?
(09:46):
Who did do it? It was a good story. Actually, well,
then maybe you should hang onto it in case somebody
comes along, because it's not like The Lighthouse is the
only lighthouse movie ever made. Yeah, the briefest synopsis is
it's too sisters who are attending the lighthouse because it
was their family job and their parents died there. So
(10:06):
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 and a shipwreck and they tell the
awful story of their their ship going down, and it
turns out that the real story is that they were
prisoners aboard a ship being transferred and they escaped their
(10:29):
shackles and murdered everyone aboard, and then there was a shipwreck,
so they were bad guys who got washed ashore. It's
a bit like a reverse dead Calm 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
(10:49):
course of the movie where they're exposed ending in a
game of cat and mouse one night, and I remember,
actually it was okay. I mean so I did it
as a as an experiment because all I've ever written
is comedy, and I thought, hey, maybe I'll write a
serious thriller. And uh, it could be better if a
really good thriller writer got ahold of it, I think.
(11:11):
But where 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 your comedy shines through still. Oh, I don't know,
I'll have to dust that thing off. You should man,
it sounds like a good one. Thank you so um
(11:31):
this lighthouse back to the Flanton Isles lighthouse on Island More. Um,
Like we said that most of the Outer Hebrides are uninhabited.
I think we said that, didn't we I don't know,
but you just said it. Then. I think there's seventy
islands and 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. Um. The only people,
(11:53):
the only beings that live there, Um, what you would
recognize as a genuine normal being as opposed to say, paranormal,
which we'll get into, are 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
(12:15):
then leave before nightfall. That's that's kind of how Island
More is viewed. It seemed kind of as a place
where maybe gods or ghosts or just something other worldly
lives on Island More, according to the locals. According to
Lower written about the locals, I've never spoken to an
Outer hebridean Yeah, and I think the other thing we
(12:37):
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 St.
Flannin comes from the fact that Island More was the
side of a chapel in the seventh century built by
a traveling Irish monk who eventually became St. Flannin, And
(12:58):
that's going to come up. Just put a in that.
It's a big time pin hang on to it. Okay?
Is that a good setup? Should we take a break?
I think so? Man, all right, we'll come back with
more spooky lighthouse mystery stuff right after this. Alright, so
(13:39):
we should probably mention the steamship actor or archter Arcter.
I've seen it both ways, but that kind of kicks
off the story for us, don't you think. Yeah, well,
we haven't mentioned the major players either yet, have we. No? No,
I guess we could go either way. We can mention
one or the other. All right, let's mention the players
(14:01):
because these are the actual keepers of that lighthouse. You
had the principal keeper, James Ducatt, you had the second assistant.
Wouldn't he be the first assistant though no, Donald mccarthur.
We'll get into that, okay. Thomas Marshall was the second
assistant and then Donald mccarth MacArthur was the occasional right,
(14:22):
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 McArthur was the first assistant keeper even though he
was an occasional keeper. Okay, that makes sense. And William
Ross was unsickly and just judging from the movie The
Lighthouse and and all this research, like you must have
(14:44):
had to been really sick to get taken off the island. 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
(15:06):
Ross would not be on the island because they rotated
two weeks shorely basically. So I yeah, I was over
the impression that if you went and tended a lighthouse,
they dropped you off left you with some food and
said see you never. But that's not the case. No, No,
I think I think they were well taken care of.
(15:27):
I get the impression 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 to
to deny that. Yeah, well, it's a brutal and important job,
so surely that they were taken care of, at least
to a certain degree. 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
(15:50):
that was it. That was the only people on the island.
And this, by the way, this is December of nineteen hundred, right, Yeah,
so this thing is brand new. Yeah, A built it
in that was scheduled to take two years. It took
four years. The construction was started in and what they
built was at the time a state of the art lighthouse.
(16:12):
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
like get materials up the cliff to build the lighthouse. Yeah,
so it's finally in operation. And then now comes to
the Actor, which is what you mentioned earlier. Not a
C T O R, but the Actor a H T
(16:36):
E R. Yeah. It was a transatlantic steamship from Philadelphia
to Leith, which is a port for Edinburgh. That's right.
So they were out there was about say, sailing around,
but I guess they were steaming around and they waited
out a storm for a few days and then, uh,
this part got confusing to me. So the actor was
(16:57):
was passing by Flannon Aisles. It by on December 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 Flannon Isle's lighthouse like that was.
It was a very strange thing to see and it
was very noteworthy. UM. They ran into some weather on
(17:20):
their way to Leaf 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 the Northern Lighthouse Board didn't catch wind of it
until the official relief supply ship UM showed up a
few days later and the actors observation that the light
was out wouldn't come into play until an investigation was
(17:42):
launched later on. Right, So that relief ship was the
Hesperus H S P E r U S. And that
arrived on December, which was Boxing day after Christmas. And
what these ships brought as they usually brought either supplies
(18:02):
or uh fresh dudes or both. And in this case,
I think they had supplies and a fresh lighthousekeeper. And
it was captained by uh Captain Harvey, and they were like,
all right, something's going on here. This lights out, the
flag's not flying. Let me toot on the horn a
few times. Dude, nobody comes out there. All right, well,
(18:25):
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 your little, uh, your
little rail car system going. It had a little cable
a little cable pulled railroad system that was operated by
a steam engine in a shack. And so when the
chip pulls up, they would toot the horn and the
(18:46):
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. Yeah, there's just no way
to move that stuff otherwise now you'd have to do it.
So nobody came out, no one gets that steam chat going,
and uh, they're like, all right, something's going on. We're
(19:08):
gonna have to to go on land and figure this out. 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 um lighthouse
keeper just knew it was customed to come down and
greet the relief ship. You're still dying to see someone else,
pretty much, I think, you know. Yeah, So that like
(19:29):
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 sickly for way over two weeks by the side,
because I believe the relief ship was um five days
(19:50):
late because of weather, so he must have really been
laid up, and they sent another relieving keeper, Joseph Moore
um 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 a
hundred and sixty of them, and he just knew right
(20:12):
away that something was way off. 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. Yes, so he says, I
think we have a problem. And then that's when basically
(20:34):
everyone on board said, all right, we gotta 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 gotta get up there and start
operating this lighthouse because it's been down and we need
to get that thing cranked up again. Yes, so they
(20:56):
so the first for the first time, possibly since December
five teeth. The lighthouse was lit again with by these
relief guys who took over and kind of settled in
and we're like, all right, this is our job now. Um.
But that follow up search, it's weird. Like we'll talk
about some of the legends and layers that were added
to it over the years, But to me, the thing
(21:19):
that was like so weird about the follow up search
was that everything was in place 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, they were like like, I think everything was
just kind of askew. It's way more eerie to me
that like everything was exactly how it should have been.
(21:41):
Is just the three human beings that were supposed to
be there were missing. But that's what what m. Joseph
Moore found and the others found when they searched a
lot more thoroughly. Yeah, the door to the keeper's house
was closed, the gate was closed. The in the kitchen
everything was also bit and span. Everything was all cleaned
up that it was clear that someone had done some
(22:03):
cooking in the grate, but not anytime soon there were
ashes in there. The beds were made, uh, the clocks
had all stopped because no one was there to wind them, obviously,
And everything was fine except like you said that there
was no one around that there was a full uh
fountain of paraffin oil. It was all like the light
was ready to be burned, the lamp that for nel
(22:26):
lens was cleaned up and ready to go. The blinds
were drawn, their records were all filled out, you know,
all the way up until Saturday, I think the morning
of December, right, and 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
(22:46):
were missing out of the three guys, and so that's
sort of the only thing out of the ordinary at
this point. Yeah, yeah, that was basically the only trace
of the missing men. Like like, had those oil skins
still been there, you would you would have taken the
lighthouse and in the the the area as like having
(23:08):
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 have been men there that
were no longer there anymore. Right. Uh. And then there
were a couple of pieces of literature that kind of
confused things after the fact, right Yeah, that really kind
of made this, like, to a lot of people, like
a much bigger mystery. I think some people came along
(23:29):
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. I feel excuse
the pun or the stupid metaphor um when you're researching this,
(23:49):
because so much of it is just regurgitated as fact
because it has been part of the story for a
hundred years. That it was actually thanked to the thanks
to the efforts of a journalist named Mike Dash, who
if you are at all interested in nonfiction writing, especially
non fiction history writing, go check out Mike Dash's website.
(24:11):
He's probably the best in the business. But yes, he's
just amazing. Um. But he uh, 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 to it later on. This was added to it
later on. This is not true that kind of stuff.
So hats off to Mike Dash for demystifying a lot
(24:34):
of it true but also making it not as fun
because it's decidedly creepier with these newspaper stories as they
were written. Um. 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
(24:55):
pretty creepy. Uh. The log entries, uh in the fake
log entries were by second well not buy a second assistant, Marshall,
but this is how they wrote it, uh, and wrote
on December twelve, they saw severe winds the likes of
which I've never seen before in twenty years, and wrote,
and these are these are people that have seen some
of the worst storms you could imagine out there on
these outer islands, and pretty unshakable guys, I would think,
(25:19):
and he said he wrote in the next two days
that the storm continued. It was so unbearable that Ducat,
the principal keeper, uh was uh struck mute by the storm.
And the occasional keeper MacArthur, who was supposedly a really
tough guy was recorded as weeping uncontrollably for days because
of how bad the storm was. Yeah, it's good stuff,
(25:41):
It is good stuff, but Mike Dash made mince meat
out of it, and he's kind of my hero for it.
One of the things that he basically just points out
is if if this were an official log book, 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 log book is for,
and you certainly wouldn't put that your superior was weeping
(26:03):
uncontrollably in the log book, Like that's just not what
you would put in a log book for the for
in the first case. And then secondly, he also said
that somebody being quiet um because of a storm or
whatever um or their mood, like it also kind of
mentions their mood a lot too, that that would have
no bearing on anything. And the only way that that
(26:24):
makes sense in relation to the story is after the fact,
which he said, obviously that means that those were written
after the fact. And then years later, after he'd first
investigated it, he he finally turned up a copy of
the magazine that this uh came out in in ne
and it was like a like a pulp magazine called
like True Confessions or something like that. So he definitely
(26:47):
he definitely deconstructed that for sure, to my great satisfaction.
I love it. Yeah, it's kind of funny though, like
the log book was basically like your diary. That's exactly right,
he said, like log books were not diaries. But he
actually specifically said that, Yeah, that's funny. The other thing
he uncovered or did he uncover the poem or was
that just I think that was a little more common knowledge.
(27:08):
But yeah, he wrote about the poem being the poem too. Okay.
So in nine twelve there was a poem by Wilfred
Wilson Gibson who wrote a poem about this mystery where, uh,
he says, there was an untouched meal on the table,
cold meat, pickles and potatoes. The kitchen chair was was
knocked over. The only sign of life was the keeper's
(27:29):
canary half starving on a spurch. Like these are all
the things 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, Uh the
I don't know. I think the guy later on Well,
we'll get to him. Yeah, the way that Mike Dash
treated it is um that it's possible. Okay, I don't
(27:52):
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 I don't. I don't.
I think with the upshot of it is that in
doing like this research on primary resources, like what what
Joseph Moore wrote, Um, what Robert Muirhead who will talk
(28:15):
about wrote, these people who were actually there when it
happened or right after it happened, Um, that nobody mentioned
anything like a turned over chair, And based on what
they did mention, it seemed like they probably would have
mentioned it turned over chair. They were so meticulous in
the details. All right, Well, let's talk about some of
the evidence that was there, because what we're really talking
(28:37):
about is was there I mean, the kind of obvious
thing you would think about is was there some big
storm that that watched 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. Uh.
For the you know, to to sort of support that
(28:58):
and to go against it, um, was a railway that
we talked about, and that had a crane, and the
crane was sort of you know, built to help unload
things off of this platform, off the cargo, uh 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. Uh So, if there was some
(29:20):
big storm and an evidence shows there probably was one, right,
but at least this crane seventy feet up wasn't damaged
and that canvas was still there, which is a little weird.
It is a little weird because even a little higher
up towards the top of the cliff. So this the
crane was at about seventy ft above sea level, right, Yeah,
(29:42):
a little higher up than that, at about a hundred
and ten ft above sea level. There was a box,
a big box that held a lot of like mooring
ropes and ropes for the crane and just some really
important stuff tackle and it had been busted open and
the contents like strewn all down the cliff face. There
was a buoy that was tied to the railing right
(30:04):
around the same place as that crate a 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
little piece of buoy was left attached to it. Uh.
And yet the crane was intact. And then even weirder,
the the iron railings around the crane um that you
(30:25):
would use as handrails, had just been completely twisted and
wrenched out of place. That's a heck of a storm.
It's an amazing storm. It's crazy to me that the
crane was left intacting, that the canvas was even on
it still, that was really weird. Um. There was a
two thousand pounds stone that was up on the cliff
that slid down. Uh. And then I believe the railway
(30:48):
tracks were even torn up from the concrete. And then
the grass at the top of the cliff, this is
two ft up at the very top, was ripped up
as far back as thirty feet from the edge. That's
uts 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 ft tall to even reach that grass. That's
(31:11):
a bad storm. It's a monster wave. But the storm
part that's that kind of confounds things big time. Uh.
And I think we should take another break and we'll
talk about how everything is just so confounded still to
this day, which is why this is a mystery. Right
after this, all right, we've got this mystery brewing. These
(31:58):
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 windsters came
along and just blew these guys the heck off this
island and they were never seen again. That's not entirely
out of the question because of the butt of Lewis.
That's right. Strong winds flow from the butt of Lewis.
As everyone knows. Um, and I'm twelve years old. Robert Muirhead,
(32:22):
he was a superintendent of lighthouses and he investigated this disappearance.
He knew all these guys, uh, some really really well,
but I think the occasional keeper he knew the least.
But he still knew pretty well. Um. He's the one
that did this investigation personally, uh, and went out there
wrote up this report. And I think he was the
(32:44):
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 christian it or whatever,
but he was one of the last, in fact, maybe
the last person to even see them alive. Right. 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 seven, when the last
relief ship, the previous release ship had come along, alright,
(33:08):
So his 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 towards
the island. And there's no way that these guys would
have blown completely across the whole face of the island
(33:28):
off the other side, because they know what to do.
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. They need to stop
drop and do not roll. You don't roll, please, don't roll.
Not in that case. Grab something heavy, yeah, anything, a sheep, whatever,
anything that will keep you from being blown off. But
(33:50):
that's just nuts. It shows you how windy it is
up there. That that was a possibility that mir Head
considered and was plausible enough that he had to at
least put it in the report as a possibility. That's right.
The one that he focused on that most people who
UM think in level headed ways kind of agree with
(34:14):
two is that Um, instead, a wave probably came along
and knocked these men off. Yeah, I mean this one.
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. Yeah, totally agree. So being
blown away by when sounds kind of nuts unless you
(34:35):
think about it, and in which case it's not super nuts.
In this instance, at least, there were more, UM slightly
nuttier explanations. And like the thing is, you can't fully
discount any one of these because the men's bodies were
never found, so there was never any conclusive proof of
what happened, even still to this day. UM and some
(34:59):
of the likelier, less likely scenarios seemed to always focus
on Donald MacArthur UM, who was supposedly a bit of
a hothead, quick to fist kind of dude. UM, not
necessarily the kind of occasional keeper you'd want to have
on rotation for two weeks with you. But that's that's
(35:20):
what a lot of these secondary theories kind of presupposed.
He would have been the Willem Dafoe, right, I guess? So, yeah,
I kind of imagine him as such. He had a
got the story from this, didn't he? I don't know.
I'm curious. I don't know. I'd have to watch it
again now that I know that. I hadn't even heard
of this story when I saw the lighthouse, so I, um,
(35:42):
I need to watch it again and see see what
I think. I'm gonna do some research on that. I
doubt if he like based it on this, but I
wouldn't be surprised if it triggered the idea or something.
All right, So he, uh, MacArthur was, like he said,
a tough guy, a hothead, and he of course there's
gonna expect relation that he started a fight and they
(36:02):
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 upance would be
and flung himself off the cliffs himself and sort of
a murder suicide situation. Yeah, again, it's plausible, like some
people can go nuts, like especially an extreme isolation kind
of thing, but there's just no evidence whatsoever of any
(36:24):
sort of fight. It's possible to fight started entirely outside,
but it just doesn't satisfy all of the evidence, right,
I don't think so. Like the the guy who's um
weather proof coats, We're still there was Donald MacArthur. So
why would he start a fight outside? And whether that
was bad enough that his his comrades would put on
(36:47):
their weather gear, right, or maybe when it comes to
fight and you don't want that raincoat on, I guess
maybe you found it restrictive. That's entirely possible too, But
that's again as far as like the secondary kind of
paran theories go, those make a lot more sense. The
other ones sister much more squarely in the realm of paranormal. Yeah,
(37:08):
you could say that 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 too even if it was real, let's just do
(37:28):
a thought experiment. Everyone knows that the Kelpies are not
seaside dwellers. They are inland at the locks. They're not
known to frequent the the seaside. They don't like that saltwater. No,
so the Kelpies probably did not kill these men and
cart them away. Uh, there's more supernatural they're right. Yeah.
The the island being named after St. Flannon and that
(37:51):
ruined chapel being there, and the idea that the um
the locals just kind of view that island is a
weird place. There was this one author, a supernatural like
Fortian type author um who came along and said, all right,
I've got it. Everybody ready for this. So the the
the locals think that this place is kind of inhabited
(38:13):
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 a tower on island more and the gods
(38:34):
mistook it as a sacrifice, so they took their sacrifice,
and that's what happened to the three men. It's I
think skipped over the best part of this whole thing, though.
It was an ancient race of tiny people. 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. How small were they?
(38:55):
Supposedly they found small bones that seemingly belonged to humans,
and so there was a race of tiny people who
supposedly lived there before. But are we talking like, are
they the size of a of a sea rat or
a like two or three feet tall person? And my
Scottish I don't know, all right, I was just curious
(39:15):
a sea rat. It was tiny. That's a very tiny,
tiny person pagan. But I think that's really interesting, the
idea that the gods mistook the lighthouse keepers as a
human sacrifice, that's what happened to him. I love that one.
It's like a big wicker man or something. Yes, exactly.
I think that's exactly the point that God was making. Alright,
(39:38):
So those those are obviously all bunk um. What probably
really happened is as follows, And I think this is
a pretty plausible. I think this is pretty plausible. Was
but even still, it's still astounding. If you step back
and look at it. Yeah, and well, and there's no
way to prove it. So it's it's kind of like
(39:58):
these mysteries where you just don't know, you know. So
here's what could have happened. Is that, uh, there was
bad weather reported, but it wasn't maybe that bad on um.
But let's say that that box uh is is looser, Well,
(40:18):
I gonna get loose. Let's say that box needs tending
to this holding all this stuff. It's an important box,
don't forget. It's an important box. And I think Marshall
had previously been fined what would be about twenty pounds
today 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
(40:38):
out there two like they left their quarters while uh,
the other dude, the occasional keeper MacArthur, is up there
in the lighthouse still and they're securing this box down
and then maybe this freak uh wave comes through, or
maybe they just get in trouble and then MacArthur needs
to really leave quickly, which would explain why they did
(41:01):
have their rain gear on and MacArthur didn't because MacArthur
had to leave really quickly to go down there and
help these guys. Yes, so like that, that definitely checks
all the boxes. That after that MacArthur was swept away
as well. But the thing is is, like that, that
supposes something really amazing, Chuck, that there was a freak
(41:23):
wave that the men just did not expect that carried
at least one of them away. 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. And two swift waves
(41:46):
over the course of a minute or two. Because the
idea is that the storm wasn't bad enough to just
sweep them all away. Yeah, and the act had to
be a rogue wave, right, and the steamer the actor
noted that there you because the actor passed by just
a few hours, a couple of hours probably after this
event happened, and they noted that it was calm but stormy,
(42:09):
which is the opposite of what you would think. You
would think it was not stormy which would draw the
men out to to make them, I mean stormy enough
that they needed to secure the box, but not so
stormy that they 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
(42:31):
men up. But in the whole, I mean, we did
an episode on rogue waves, and the idea is that
that it's a wave or was there a set of
rogue waves? I think, if I remember correctly, it was
a wave. But that's what I think. Maybe maybe there
was more I don't know, but yes, that that that's
how this That's the only way that could happen is
(42:51):
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 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 well, and
this does um lends some credence to the idea that
(43:16):
this thing was big enough to damage the turf, you know,
two feet above sea level and destroy that box and
washed that two thousand pounds stone down the cliff too, right, Yeah,
And there was also there's a there's a chance that
all that stuff that that just was evidence of a
terrible storm actually came after the men had been washed
(43:36):
away from the island several days later, when there was
a really bad storm. Okay, that makes sense. I didn't
think about that, didn't that weird? Did think that that
damage had happened after the after the fact, right? It?
Sure that makes sense because it's almost certain that they
that this event happened on December fifteenth. The last info
they had on the log slate was nine am December fifte,
(43:58):
like we said, so couldn't have happened earlier than that,
and it would have happened before dark on December fift
which would have happened about four pm, because otherwise they
would have lit the light that night and the steamer
actor would have seen the light in the lighthouse as
it passed by on December That's right. I think all
(44:21):
this gets really interesting in the nineteen fifties, when a
lighthouseman named Robert Aldibert, 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 it was like, I'm
gonna do some research and I'm gonna take a lot
of pictures and do keep a lot of records in
(44:43):
my diary. And uh he said that, you know, I've
I was in the lighthouse itself and got and so
that's how many feet above sea level they at, ye,
like two hundred close to three dred feet up and
got sa spray from some waves. So he's like, it's
very possible that a big wave could come through and
(45:04):
reach these heights. Yeah, he did test 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. It's pretty weird. I wonder
(45:26):
if he got fined for losing those ropes. I don't know,
maybe so if the if, the if, it's the Northern
White House Board. I know he definitely did well and
he what was his final ex because he's the one
that we mentioned earlier that said that, uh that the
one of the chairs was turned over in the kitchen,
right Like he kind of bought into that. Yeah, false narrative. Yeah,
(45:47):
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. So how that
comes in is he's basically like, all right, or dinner happens, um,
like there's bad weather going on. These two guys go
out there, uh in our in our see this doesn't
(46:08):
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, uh cookies back in there,
washing up and cleaning up, and that's where everything is
nice and tidy, 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. But
wouldn't that be wouldn't someone have to be in the
light too, isn't that four guys? No, that's why they
(46:32):
think that this happened in the afternoon of the because
they never went to light the light. They hadn't remember
the light was all set up and ready to be
it was daytime, yes, it was before. It was before sunset,
which would have been before four pm. All right, that's
the one part I didn't get. I get it now,
flight House shine at night. I never got that part
(46:53):
when I wrote my movie, everything takes place during the day, right,
I left the mainland for this. You got anything else?
Good stuff? No? I like a good mystery. You're good
at finding these, man. I love this one, so thank
you very much. Um. Yes, well, if you want to
know more about the Flann and Niles mystery, go read
Mike Dashes work on it. It's really interesting stuff. It's
(47:14):
pretty comprehensive too. Uh. And since I said it's pretty comprehensive, everybody,
that means it's time for a listener mail. I thought
this is really interesting. This is a follow up to
the Dingoes episode about Dingo is 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 the
(47:36):
topic for another show. While domesticated dogs bark throughout their lifetimes.
Wild adult dogs do not routinely bark. One popular theory
is that domesticated dogs were bred for tamenus, which, as
a result, selected for dogs that never reached full maturity.
The upshot of this is that our domesticated dogs are
(47:57):
trapped in a state of suspended adolescence. There more or
less trapped in puppyhood, an age where all dogs wild
and domestic, bark, play, lick, and most important of all,
don't kill, which is an important trait for the family
pet uh And sent an article from Tampa Bay dot
com Why Dogs, Why do dogs Bark? From I Love
(48:21):
the show? That is from Peter Vonnier v O n
I e er Bonnier. Yeah, either one of those will work,
depending on whether you're in France or not. Uh And.
Peter is a PhD in owl oncology research, also with
an interest in dog barking. Sounds like Peter just is
interested in stuff, which is our favorite kind of listening. Yes,
(48:42):
there is a diet in the world. Stuff you should
know a 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,
You surely can. Then you might get a response even up,
or you might end up on listener mail. Who knows, Yeah,
(49:03):
I try to answer these Why don't you roll the
dice and find out by sending your email to stuff
podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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