In 1900, three lighthouse keepers sent to a remote Scottish island in the Outer Hebrides disappeared and were never seen again. The story of the crew of the Flannan Island Lighthouse has become a popular one, evoking all the clichés of a gothic mystery, and many different explanations have been offered, from the rather mundane to those that push the limits of reality (or even crossover).
On the night of December 15, 1900, the transatlantic steamer Archtor passed by Flannan Island and, as the lighthouse was dark, he realized that something was wrong. A few days later, the news was passed to the Northern Lighthouse Board and a team was quickly dispatched to investigate. The relief ship arrived on the island the day after Christmas, and Captain Jim Harvie signaled with the ship’s horn and fired a flare into the sky. He got no answer.
One of the lighthouse crew, Joseph Moore, who was on the trail when it was noticed that the light had gone out, was sent ashore to investigate. Moore later said that as soon as he landed on the island and stepped off the steep cliff leading to the lighthouse, he had a bad feeling.
When he reached the lighthouse, he saw that the lighthouse door was open and two of the three linoleum parka hanging from the entrance were missing. In the kitchen area, he found half-eaten food and an overturned chair suggesting someone had left in a hurry. Moore’s research found no other clues in the lighthouse.
After reporting his finds, the captain ordered the rest of the island to be searched immediately, but this search yielded no results. They only found signs that a major storm had recently hit the island.
Finding no trace of the missing men, Harvie sent a telegram to the mainland, which was relayed back to the Northern Lighthouse Board in Edinburgh: “A terrible accident appears to have taken place in Flannans. Three Watchmen, Ducat, Marshall and temporarily disappeared. When we got there in the afternoon, no signs of life were seen on the island. We fired a flare, and when there was no response, we were able to land Moore on the island, who had come to the station but could not find a guard there. The clocks had stopped and other signs suggest that the accident may have happened about a week ago.”
The mystery of the rangers who disappeared on Flannan Island has not been solved since 1900.“The poor guys must have flown off cliffs or drowned trying to secure a crane or something,” Harvie concluded.
The Flannan Island Lighthouse was built on an island long associated with oddities, a year before the keepers disappeared in 1899. The only regular inhabitants of the island were sheep, but even the brave sheepherders refused to stay on the island after dark for fear of the various ghosts and the like that lurked there. This supernatural connection has added layers of misinformation and complexity to the story of the lost lighthouse keepers, leading to speculation that the keepers were swallowed by a dark sea monster, carried by giant birds, or even abducted by aliens.
For fans of the events of the unexplained, more fantastic evidence comes from a logbook made between 12 and 15 December 1900, supposedly containing haunting and bizarre records. According to these records, one member of the lighthouse crew was reporting a storm greater than any they had ever witnessed, one unusually quiet, and the other, an experienced sailor, crying. The next record stated that all three men began to pray to God for help, even though they were at a safe and secure lighthouse. The final recording ended with the phrase, “God is above all,” that the storm was over and has surprised many since then.
Registry narratives may seem to complicate an extremely interesting and already strange phenomenon. The only problem here, however, was that this notebook was a fabrication.
Unfortunately, we will never know exactly what happened to the three lighthouse keepers, but there is no current evidence to suggest that it was anything supernatural. The most likely explanation is that the three men were lost at sea, as Captain Harvie predicted in his telegram. In fact, an investigation was conducted into the island by the Board’s inspector, Robert Muirhead, following the disappearances. From this investigation, he concluded that the two men had probably gone out to secure equipment stored near the western landing. When he did not return, the third man went to investigate and he too was swallowed by the sea.
Alternatively, it has been suggested that William MacArthur, one of the men known to be sullen to say the least, may have killed the other two men before killing himself, or that a fight broke out that caused the three of them to collide and fall off a cliff.
The popularity of the Flannan Island mystery inspired a movie called The Vanishing in 2018.
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