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Light in the Darkness · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Walk around New York City today and you're surrounded by
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  Speaker 1: a feast for the senses. You might hear sidewalk conversations
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  Speaker 1: or a subway car rumbling underfoot. You might also smell
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  Speaker 1: peanuts roasting on the stand on the corner, and you'll
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  Speaker 1: definitely see massive buildings reaching towards the sky overhead. Oh
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  Speaker 1: and cars, lots of cars, spewing exhaust into the air
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  Speaker 1: and honking at all hours while the eats clog up.
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  Speaker 1: New York City today can feel almost clustrophobic with everything
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  Speaker 1: going on around us. But it wasn't always like this.
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  Speaker 1: Once upon a time, it looked a lot different. Eighteen
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of New York was just becoming the hustling, bustling
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  Speaker 1: metropolis it is today. The streets were packed with horse
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  Speaker 1: drawn carriages and pedestrians. Stores lined the avenues, selling all
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  Speaker 1: kinds of goods before long chain coffee shops and fast
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  Speaker 1: food places took over. But even though the city was
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  Speaker 1: growing and evolving, it still faced the same problem as
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  Speaker 1: every city in America. The weather. Summers were blisteringly hot,
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  Speaker 1: and winters in New York were especially hard to face.
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  Speaker 1: Feet of snow would bring everything to a halt, but
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  Speaker 1: New Yorkers didn't let flurries and blizzards slow them down.
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  Speaker 1: If anything, they got faster. In January of eighteen thirty,
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  Speaker 1: the bitter cold had led to inches of snow coating
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  Speaker 1: the ground, trees, and storefronts. Over the following days, that
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  Speaker 1: blanket of white would get crushed and compacted until it
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  Speaker 1: was hard and flatten to walk on, but most of
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  Speaker 1: the time people would use another means of transportation to
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  Speaker 1: get around. That month, Scottish politician James Stewart came to
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  Speaker 1: visit and saw firsthand how the locals dealt with the snow.
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  Speaker 1: The New York Carnival began and the beautiful, light looking
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  Speaker 1: slaves made their appearance. He wrote, he watched as people
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  Speaker 1: strapped horses to their slaves and took to the streets,
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  Speaker 1: zooming through Manhattan, and I quote at the rate of
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  Speaker 1: ten or twelve miles an hour. You see, until the
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  Speaker 1: end of the nineteenth century, men, women and children took
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  Speaker 1: advantage of the otherwise harsh conditions, making the best of them.
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  Speaker 1: These carnivals lasted for hours, but most people ventured out
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  Speaker 1: between three and five PM. During those times, thousands of
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  Speaker 1: Manhattan residents would steer their slaves through the city. Central
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  Speaker 1: Park was one of the most popular locations, and people
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  Speaker 1: used whatever they had available to dash through the snow.
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  Speaker 1: There were even public slaves like buses that would pull
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  Speaker 1: groups of people all at a time. But eventually New
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  Speaker 1: York realized that the carnivals needed a little friendly competition.
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  Speaker 1: In the late eighteen hundreds, the city's streets were transformed
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  Speaker 1: into racetracks for sleigh races. Small models called cutters would
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  Speaker 1: fly through the upper avenues with the wind whipping the
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  Speaker 1: faces of the people handling them. But despite the dangerous
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  Speaker 1: speeds achieved by racers, the press called these contests something
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  Speaker 1: deceptively calm, trotting races, which doesn't sound fast or furious.
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  Speaker 1: In December of eighteen sixty nine, dozens of racers set
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  Speaker 1: out to prove themselves after a major snowstorm. An article
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  Speaker 1: in the New York Herald described them as and I quote,
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  Speaker 1: Roman chariots spitting flakes of snow in their wake as
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  Speaker 1: they careened across Harlem. Local businesses also got in on
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  Speaker 1: the action. McGowan's Pass Tavern on one hundred and fourth
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  Speaker 1: Street held a yearly race for anyone who wanted to participate.
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  Speaker 1: Winners were given a bottle of champagne every year until
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  Speaker 1: the tavern was torn down in nineteen fifteen. Unfortunately, as
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  Speaker 1: New York continued to expand and formalized throughout the nineteenth century,
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  Speaker 1: both the carnivals and the sleigh races faded out of fashion.
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  Speaker 1: These events had helped city dwellers past the dreary winter
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  Speaker 1: months with ease. After all, it was hard to stay
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  Speaker 1: sad when every fresh snow meant another chance to beat
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  Speaker 1: your neighbor to the finish line. The advent of the automobile, though,
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  Speaker 1: brought all of that to an end, because it was
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  Speaker 1: hard to navigate a sleigh through Boston around all of
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  Speaker 1: those cars. Today, tourists and couples can take a horse
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  Speaker 1: drawn carriage ride on demand, enjoying a scenic trot through
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  Speaker 1: Central Park, but little do they know that over one
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  Speaker 1: hundred years before, that peaceful outing might have looked and
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  Speaker 1: sounded very different with a lot more snow and a
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  Speaker 1: lot less traffic. Lighthouses are contradictory places for lost ships.
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  Speaker 1: They signal the safety a home shore at the same
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  Speaker 1: time they warn of dangers hidden beneath the seas. Their
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  Speaker 1: symbols of civilization on a deserted sea. And yet, for
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  Speaker 1: the lighthouse keepers on the remote Flannin Isles off of Scotland,
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  Speaker 1: their job kept them far away from the rest of society.
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  Speaker 1: That kind of isolation was hard to get used to.
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  Speaker 1: As you might imagine, the keepers quickly found that when
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  Speaker 1: something strange happened, there was no one they could tell,
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  Speaker 1: and when something went terribly horribly wrong, there was no
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  Speaker 1: one to hear them scream. On December twenty sixth of
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  Speaker 1: nineteen hundred, the crew of the small ship Hesperus approached
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  Speaker 1: the lighthouse on Alan Moore, the largest of the Flannin Isles.
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  Speaker 1: The ship had been delayed several days by a storm,
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  Speaker 1: but it had finally arrived to relieve the three lighthouse
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  Speaker 1: keepers stationed on the island. The crew was surprised when
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  Speaker 1: no one came out to greet them. The captain of
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  Speaker 1: the Hesperus blew his ship's whistle and even fired off
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  Speaker 1: a firecracker to alert the keepers, but James Duckett, Thomas Marshall,
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  Speaker 1: and Donald MacArthur were nowhere to be seen. Inside the lighthouse,
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  Speaker 1: it felt as if the three Missa keepers had only
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  Speaker 1: just stepped out. Their beds weren't made, and there was
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  Speaker 1: half eaten food left out in the kitchen. The door
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  Speaker 1: was unlocked and a chair was found overturned. The oil
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  Speaker 1: in the lamps was full, but the clock had stopped,
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  Speaker 1: and while two of their heavy oilskin raincoats were missing,
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  Speaker 1: the third was hanging right there by the door. The
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  Speaker 1: clues the relief team found inside didn't offer much more enlightenment.
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  Speaker 1: A box of supplies near the western boat landing had
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  Speaker 1: been smashed and its contents were strewn about the shore.
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  Speaker 1: Iron railings had been wrenched out of their concrete bases.
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  Speaker 1: Even a one ton boulder had moved to a new
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  Speaker 1: resting place. But most unusual were the last three entries
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  Speaker 1: the keepers had left in the log book. On December twelfth,
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  Speaker 1: fourteen days before the hespers had arrived, Keeper Thomas Marshall
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  Speaker 1: had recorded a storm. According to him, there were and
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  Speaker 1: I quote severe winds, the likes of which I have
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  Speaker 1: never seen before in twenty years. He also noted that
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  Speaker 1: keeper William MacArthur had been crying. This entry concerned the
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  Speaker 1: crew of the Hespers for two reasons. For one thing,
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  Speaker 1: William MacArthur had a reputation as a tough man who
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  Speaker 1: loved to fight. Crying was out of the ordinary for him.
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  Speaker 1: For another, according to reports from the nearby coast, the
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  Speaker 1: logbook was wrong. There was no storm on December twelfth
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  Speaker 1: of nineteen hundred. Thomas Marshall's entry the next day on
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  Speaker 1: December thirteenth noted that the storm was still raging and
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  Speaker 1: the three keepers had taken to praying for it to end. Finally,
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  Speaker 1: on December fifteenth, he wrote the last entry in the
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  Speaker 1: logbook storm ended. See calm God is over All. All
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  Speaker 1: of this left the Northern Lights Board, which managed the
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  Speaker 1: lighthouse there with a mystery. They had the pieces of
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  Speaker 1: the puzzle, but no clear solution. As news of the
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  Speaker 1: keeper's disappearance came to light, speculation ran rampant. Some people
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  Speaker 1: familiar with William MacArthur's quick temper wondered whether he suffered
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  Speaker 1: a violent outburst and murdered his two companions. Not wanting
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  Speaker 1: to face the consequences of what he had done, he
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  Speaker 1: somehow dumped the bodies in the sea and escaped or
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  Speaker 1: jumped into the waves himself. Believed that the sea wasn't
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  Speaker 1: to blame. They hadn't been taken by the natural world,
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  Speaker 1: but by something supernatural. Flann and Isle was named after
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  Speaker 1: Saint Flannin, a sixth century Irish bishop who built a
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  Speaker 1: church on the island, and according to legend, even Saint
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  Speaker 1: Flannin himself wouldn't stay there past nightfall due to the
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  Speaker 1: evil spirits that ran amok after sundown. Superstitious people thought
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  Speaker 1: that it must have been those dark forces that kidnapped
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  Speaker 1: the three lighthouse keepers. Without evidence, these speculations were hard
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  Speaker 1: to prove. It didn't help that investigators from the Northern
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  Speaker 1: Lighthouse Board were missing their biggest clue, the lighthouse keepers themselves.
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  Speaker 1: The three men's bodies had never been found. With the
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  Speaker 1: facts they had on hand, the board came to the
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  Speaker 1: following conclusion. During a storm on the island, strong winds
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  Speaker 1: or waves must have caused extreme damage to the western
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  Speaker 1: landy Duckett and Marshall had grabbed their oilskins and left
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  Speaker 1: to go secure their supplies when a freak wave dragged
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  Speaker 1: them into the sea. MacArthur grew worried and followed them,
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  Speaker 1: going against lighthouse board rules to keep one keeper in
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  Speaker 1: the lighthouse at all times. He must have been so
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  Speaker 1: panicked he left his coat behind. When he reached the landing,
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  Speaker 1: he too fell into the sea and was lost. We
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  Speaker 1: may never discover what really happened in December of nineteen
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  Speaker 1: hundred on that small isolated island. Searching for the answers
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  Speaker 1: is a bit like holding up a lantern in a cave.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes the brighter you shine the light, the deeper the
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  Speaker 1: shadows grow. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
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  Speaker 1: stay curious.