Flannan Isles Lighthouse located at the highest point of Eilean Mòr, one of the Flannan Isles in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland. And it is best known for the mysterious disappearance of the caretakers in 1900.
The first report of anything troubling in the Flannan Islands was on 15 December 1900 when the steamship Archtor, on a passage from Philadelphia to Leith, noted in its logbook that the light was not operational in bad weather conditions.
When the ship docked in Leith on December 18, 1900, the sighting was reported to the Northern Lighthouse Board. The auxiliary ship, the lighthouse tender Hesperus, was unable to depart from Breasclete, Lewis, as planned on 20 December due to bad weather; it did not reach the island until noon on December 26.
The lighthouse was manned by three men: Thomas Marshall, James Ducat, and Donald MacArthur, while a rotating fourth man spent time ashore.
On arrival, the crew and the relief keeper discovered that the flagstaff had no flag, that none of the usual provision boxes had been left on the landing stage to replenish supplies, and, even more ominously, that none of the lighthouse keepers were present to guide them ashore. to welcome.
Jim Harvie, the captain of the Hesperus, tried to reach them by blowing the ship’s whistle and firing a flare, but was unsuccessful.
A boat was launched and Joseph Moore, the assistant keeper, was put ashore alone. He found the entrance gate to the premises and the main door both closed, the beds unmade and the clock stopped.
With this grim news he returned to the landing stage and then headed back to the lighthouse with Hesperus’s second mate and a sailor. Further investigation revealed that the lamps had been cleaned and refilled. A set of oil bags were found, indicating that one of the keepers had left the lighthouse without them, which was surprising given the severity of the weather on the date of the last entry in the lighthouse log.
The only sign that something was wrong in the lighthouse was an overturned chair at the kitchen table. There was no sign of any of the keepers, either in the lighthouse or anywhere on the island.
Moore and three volunteer sailors stayed behind to attend the light and Hesperus returned to Lewis. Captain Harvie sent a telegram to the Northern Lighthouse Board on December 26, 1900, stating:
‘There’s been a terrible accident at the Flannans. The three guards, Ducat, Marshall and the Occasional have disappeared from the island… The clocks were stopped and other signs indicated that the accident must have happened about a week ago.’
On Eilean Mòr, the men searched every corner of the island for clues about the fate of the guards. They found that everything was intact on the eastern landing, but the western landing provided significant evidence of damage caused by recent storms.
A box 33 meters above sea level was broken and its contents scattered; iron railings had been bent, the iron railway line along the path was torn from the concrete and a boulder weighing more than a ton had been displaced. At the top of the cliff, more than 200 feet above sea level, the grass had been ripped away as much as 30 feet from the edge of the cliff.
The missing caregivers had kept their logbook until 9 a.m. on December 15. It was clear from the entries that the damage had occurred before their disappearance.
At the time, many in the newspapers offered various theories, about paranormal activities, ghost stories, pirate kidnappings and espionage cases, none of which provided any evidence to support their claims.
It became difficult for the Northern Lighthouse Board to hire new keepers due to widespread rumors of the mystery, when a dark shadow loomed over the tower of Flannan Isles.
Recent research by James Love revealed that Marshall was previously fined five shillings when his equipment was washed away during a huge storm. It is likely that, in an effort to avoid another fine, he and Ducat tried to secure their equipment during a storm and were swept away as a result.
It can be assumed that MacArthur’s fate, although he must stay behind to man the lighthouse, is the same. Love speculates that MacArthur probably tried to warn or help his colleagues, but was also swept away.
A further one proposal is based on the psychology of the caregivers. MacArthur was reportedly a volatile character; this may have led to a fight breaking out near the edge of the cliff at the West Landing, leaving all three men dead.
Another theory is that one of the men went insane (perhaps MacArthur, as evidenced by him leaving the lighthouse without his rain gear and his strange behavior documented in the logbook), killing the other two, throwing their bodies into the sea and then jumped to his own death.
Modern theories include those related to paranormal activities such as alien abduction
In 2018, the film “The Vanishing” was released about this strange mystery.
