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Selects: The Flannen Isles Mystery · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josham. For this week's select I've
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: chosen our episode on the Flann and Isle Mystery from
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: November twenty twenty one. This is one of those rare
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: instances of a missing person's unsolved mystery disappearance case where
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: the people weren't murdered. Well, I almost certainly weren't murdered.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: That is one theory, but it's a lesser theory and
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: isn't that refreshing. Hope you enjoy this one even if
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: you've heard it before. I can attest it's still good again. Enjoy.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: there's Charles W Chuck Bryant over there, and Jerry's out
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: here too, So since the gang's all here, the three
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: of us alone on a deserted eye Stuff you should know?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Can I mention a couple of things here?
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I think you should.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: I want to pre apologize to our Scottish listeners, whom
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: we love. We toured in Scotland, had a great time,
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: one of our best live shows in the beautiful city
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: of Edinburgh. Yes, wonderful people love the Scots, but we
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: are going to butcher some of these names, and I apologize.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: That's yeah, we're sorry.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: And what was the other thing?
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: Oh, the other thing was it's impossible to talk about
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: the Flannon Isles Lighthouse Mystery and research it without almost
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: always thinking about the movie The Lighthouse.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and actually it comes up a lot in the
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: research too.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I think one reason is because it's clear that, oh,
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: what's the guy's name he made it.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: I can't think of his name, William Akers. It's not
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: William Aker's well, flinnin day Viggers.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: It's an Eggers, right, Yeah, I'm Robert, I think Robert.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, okay, Robert Eggers, Okay, yes.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: He clearly did his research. And you know, I remember
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: when that movie came out. I spoke on the show
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: that I wrote a movie, a period movie about a
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: lighthouse and a murder that takes place, and then the
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: movie The Lighthouse came out, and I was like, so
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: much for that. But I did a lot of research
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: at the time, and it was clear that Eggers did
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: a lot of research because it was a very accurate film,
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: especially when you read and research the flann And Isles
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Lighthouse Mystery you're.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Like, Oh, yeah, that's like from the movie. And that's
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: like from the movie.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Apparently they mentioned it in the movie. I didn't go
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: back and watch it again, but I saw something really
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: that they may they make a reference to the mystery
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: in the movie.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Oh cool, that's awesome, I thought so too.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I can't wait for that Viking movie to
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: come out.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: Me too.
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  Speaker 3: And this made me want to see the lighthouse again,
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: which I didn't think I wanted to do, but now
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: I do.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Same.
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  Speaker 1: Here, so we are talking about one particular lighthouse called
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the flann And Isles Lighthouse, and it was located on
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: one island in the Flannin Isles called Island More. That's
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: not exactly like Chuck was saying, the Scottish pronunciation scott Gaelic,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: but it's close enough and it actually means in English.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: I guess the More island, right, Okay, So anyway, that's
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: where this lighthouse is and it's situated. It's still there today.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: It's automated, though it went automated in nineteen seventy one,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: but it sits Its light is about seventy five feet
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: atop the cliff, which is the highest point of island.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: More and that cliff is two hundred feet above sea
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: level and it's a pretty good place for a lighthouse
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: because this area of Scotland is kind of treacherous for ships.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Yes, and it's important how high this one was. It
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: figures into the story.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: I'm not just showing off with stats here.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is treacherous. It's a windy area.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: There are big winds in Scotland, especially out there on
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: those islands. I think it is close And this is
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: kind of funny the name of it, But isn't it
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: nearby supposedly the windiest place?
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Is it the windiest place in the UK? And what's
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: the name of it?
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: The Butt of Lewis. Come on, I'm serious, but it
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  Speaker 1: makes sense.
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  Speaker 2: Twelve years old.
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  Speaker 1: Lewis is a nearby island which is inhabited in the region,
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  Speaker 1: which is pretty rare I think, But this part of it,
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  Speaker 1: one end of the island, is called the Butt of
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  Speaker 1: Lewis Island and it's the windiest part.
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  Speaker 2: The Butt of Lewis is the windiest island right.
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  Speaker 1: So the area that these flann And Isles are in
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  Speaker 1: so Island More is in the Flannin Isles. The flann
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  Speaker 1: And Isles are part of the larger island chain on
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  Speaker 1: the northwest of Scotland called the Outer Hebrides, and to
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: the west of them, you can just keep going and
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: going and going, and then you'll finally reach North America.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: They're pretty remote, they're pretty isolated. They are indeed windy,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: and like we were saying, the seeds are kind of
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: rough around there. I think that's kind of putting it mildly. Plus,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: the islands themselves are often very rocky and jagged and
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: so it's treacherous. So of course you'd want to put
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: a lighthouse there.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, the winds blow strong from the butt of Lewis.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: But the lighthouse that was built there finally on Island
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: More wasn't installed until eighteen ninety nine, which is kind
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: of late considering that Scotland had something called the Northern
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Lighthouse Board that they organized in seventeen eighty six to
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: basically oversee and standardize lighthouse keeping in that country.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so they were headquartered there in Edinburgh. And here's
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: how it worked at the time. And this checks out
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: according to my research. When I was writing my movie
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: and the movie The Lighthouse, Oh and Xicot they were staff.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: You had your principal lightkeeper called the principal keeper, and
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: then usually depending on you know, where the lighthouse was,
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: how busy it was, how big it was, and as
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: far as needed personnel for operation, you had one or
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  Speaker 3: two assistants, and they were all ranked as you know,
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  Speaker 3: you weren't just like, oh, I'll be the first keeper
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  Speaker 3: this week, like you earned that spot. Yeah, it was
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: a promotion. And then you were assigned to these stations
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: by the board. Just like in the movie. You don't
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  Speaker 3: stay there forever. You kind of rotate and you go
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  Speaker 3: there for a little while, and you may get stationed
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  Speaker 3: with someone you've never worked with before, and you have
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: to get to know that person very intimately over the
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: course of you know, a short period of time, or
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  Speaker 3: it's somebody you have worked with before and you're old
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  Speaker 3: friends with maybe or old enemies, yeah, exactly, or old enemies.
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  Speaker 3: So aside from these two to three people as principles
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  Speaker 3: and assistants, you had what was called the occasional keeper,
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  Speaker 3: and this is someone who actually lived nearby, either an
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  Speaker 3: inhabited island resident or if it was uninhabited, if it
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  Speaker 3: was at least close enough to where they could get
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  Speaker 3: there easily and they would help out during the day,
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: but they would go home at night and sleep and
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: stuff in their own betty bye.
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  Speaker 1: And that was the standard. But for a place like
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Island More, where the Flann and Isle's Lighthouse was located,
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  Speaker 1: if you were an occasional, you were there for two weeks.
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  Speaker 1: That's how hard it was to get to the island
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  Speaker 1: and how hard it was to get off of the island.
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  Speaker 1: So the purpose of the occasional was to give two
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  Speaker 1: weeks rest off to one of the other two or
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  Speaker 1: three people who were permanently temporarily stationed there for much
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: longer than.
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  Speaker 3: You, right, And then those cases, the keeper the occasional
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: does not go home and sleep right.
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  Speaker 1: So one of the things that stuck out to meet
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Chuck was that, you know, when you think about lighthouse keeping, like, yes,
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  Speaker 1: the person has to live there, and it's a lot
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  Speaker 1: of work and they have to attend to the light
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  Speaker 1: and everything. But I think lighthouse keepers are very frequently
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: portray is weirdos. Yeah, just complete alcoholics who can't do
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  Speaker 1: anything else but live by themselves, almost like they're placed
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  Speaker 1: there because there's nothing else for them to contribute to society.
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  Speaker 1: So they're kind of cast off for ostracized. That's not
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  Speaker 1: the case, at least not in Scotland. That was not
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  Speaker 1: the case. Like, if you were a lighthouse keeper, that
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  Speaker 1: was a very very important job. You took it very
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  Speaker 1: very seriously, so much so that there was a study
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  Speaker 1: that found between eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred, fifty years,
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  Speaker 1: there were only fifteen recorded instances of a lighthouse keeper
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  Speaker 1: falling asleep at their post, which was about as bad
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  Speaker 1: as it gets as a lighthouse keeper.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I mean that's not to say there weren't drunks and
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  Speaker 3: myths andthropes here and there. Maybe those are the fifteen.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, But I did a little more further math, Chuck,
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  Speaker 1: if I may be so indulged as to share it.
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  Speaker 2: I saw that. I thought that was pretty funny.
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  Speaker 1: So get this. Let's say you have about one hundred
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  Speaker 1: and fifty lighthouses in operation between eighteen fifty and nineteen hundred,
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  Speaker 1: and if you calculate that number of lighthouses times the
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  Speaker 1: number of nights that occurred over that fifty years in Scotland,
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  Speaker 1: you have what we'll call two point seventy five million
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  Speaker 1: lighthouse nights. Out of those two point seventy five million
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  Speaker 1: lighthouse nights in Scotland over those fifty years, only fifteen
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  Speaker 1: of those nights found a lighthouse keeper asleep on duty.
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  Speaker 1: That's how seriously they took it.
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  Speaker 2: Did you account for leap years?
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  Speaker 1: Oh, Chuck, I just really wanted to drive that home. Man.
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  Speaker 1: I really thought that was an important point and it
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  Speaker 1: didn't come across with fifteen instances of fifty years.
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  Speaker 3: Who cares, no, I mean it's a big deal because
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  Speaker 3: you know, the purpose of a lighthouse I guess we
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: have not really said, is to light the way around
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  Speaker 3: rocky shores and islands. Boats don't run into them.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, unless you've been living under a rocky shore, you
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  Speaker 1: know that it's.
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  Speaker 2: A very important job. Though.
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  Speaker 3: I love lighthouses. We've talked about him quite a few
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: times on the show, Big Big Fan. Every time I
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: am near a lighthouse, I will do my best to
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: climb that thing if it's allowed.
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  Speaker 1: So who'd done it? In your lighthouse mystery?
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Who did do it? It was a good story.
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  Speaker 1: Actually, well, then maybe you should hang on to it
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: in case somebody comes along, because it's not like The
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Lighthouse is the only lighthouse movie you ever made.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: The briefest synopsis is it's two sisters who are tending
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: the lighthouse because it was their family job and their
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: parents died there. So it's these two sort of like
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  Speaker 3: a like maybe a twenty year old and a sixteen
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: year old out there alone in this island. And then
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: these two men wash ashore one day in a shipwreck,
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: and they tell the awful story of their ship going down,
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: and it turns out that the real story as they
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: were prisoners aboard a ship being transferred and they escaped
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: their shackles and murdered everyone aboard. Wow, and then there
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: was a shipwreck. So they were bad guys who got
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: washed ashore.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's a bit like a reverse dead calm.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: Sort of, and they charmed the girls. But there is
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  Speaker 3: I guess I didn't know the name was an occasional keeper.
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  Speaker 3: There's a guy that lives one guy that lives on
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: the island that helps them out that is sort of
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: suspicious of the guys, and it sort of plays out
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: over the course of the movie where they're exposed ending
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: in a game of cat and mouse. One night nice
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: and I actually remember how it actually it was, Okay,
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: I mean I did it as an experiment because all
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: I've ever written is comedy, and I thought, hey, maybe
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: I'll write a serious thriller and it could be better
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: if a really good thriller writer got a hold of it,
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: I think.
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  Speaker 1: But were there's still like little jokes peppered as a sides,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: like one of the sisters is running from the murderer
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: and says to herself, I left the mainland for this,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: like you're he shines through Still.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. I'll have to dust that thing off.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: You should, man, it sounds like a good one, thank you.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: So this lighthouse back to the flann And Isles lighthouse
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: on island more like we said that most of the
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Outer Hebrides are uninhabited. I think we said that, didn't we?
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Uh, I don't know, but you just said it then.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I think there's seventy islands in the Outer Hebrides and
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: only fifteen of them are populated, and Island More is
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: definitely not one of them. The only remote, it is
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: extremely remote. The only people, the only beings that live
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: there what you would recognize as a genuine normal being
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: as opposed to say paranormal, which we'll get into, are
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: the lighthouse keepers and some sheep. Even the people whose sheep.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Those are don't live on the island or even stay
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: there overnight. They go out a few times a year
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: check on the sheep, and then leave before nightfall. That's
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: kind of how Island Moore is viewed. It seemed kind
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: of as a place where maybe gods or ghosts or
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: just something otherworldly lives on island more according to the locals.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: According to lore written about the locals, I've never spoken
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: to an outer Hebridian. Yeah.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: And I think the other thing we need to mention too,
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: because I believe it comes up later in one of
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: the supernatural explanations for what is to come here with
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: this mystery is the name Saint Flannin comes from the
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: fact that Island Moore was the site of a chapel
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: in the seventh century built by a traveling Irish monk
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: who eventually became Saint Flannin.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: And that's going to come up. Just put a pin
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: in that.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: It's a big time pin. Hang on to it, Okay?
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Is that a good setup? Should we take a break?
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: I think so, man, all right, we'll come back with
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: more spooky lighthouse mystery stuff right up to this, all.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Right, So we should probably mention the steamship actor or
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: arched actor. I've seen it both ways, but that kind
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: of kicks off the story for us, don't you think.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, we haven't mentioned the major players either yet,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: have we.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: No? No, I guess we could go either way. We
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: can mention one or the other.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: First, all right, let's mention the players, because these are
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: the actual keepers of that lighthouse. You had the principal keeper,
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: James Ducatt, You had the second assistant.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Wouldn't he be the first assistant though?
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: No, Donald MacArthur, We'll get into that.
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Okay, Thomas Marshall was the second assistant, and then Donald
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: MacArthur was the occasional right.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: Here's my bit. So he was filling in for a
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: guy named William Ross. William Ross was the first assistant keeper,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: which meant that since Donald MacArthur was filling in for him,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Donald MacArthur was the first assistant keeper, even though he
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: was an occasional keeper.
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: Okay, that makes sense. And William Ross was on sick
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: leave and just judging from the movie The Lighthouse and
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: all this research, like you must have had to been
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: really sick to get taken off the island.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, but I think yes, that's what I thought too,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: But doing research for this, I found that these guys
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: had all of them had a rotating two weeks off.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: So at any given point over a stretch of two weeks,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: one of those men, James Ducott, Thomas Marshall or William
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Ross would not be on the island because they rotated
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: two week shore leave basically. So I yeah, I was
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: of the impression that if you went and tended a lighthouse,
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: they dropped you off, left you with some food and
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: said see you never.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: But that's not the case.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: No, No, I think they were well taken care of.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I get the impression of the Northern Lighthouse Board was
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: pretty good at its job and really cared about these
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: people and looked after them. I didn't see anything to
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: deny that.
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's a brutal and important job, so surely
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: that they were taking care of at least to a
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: certain degree.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: But the upshot of all this is that there were
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: three men on the island, three dudes working that lighthouse,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and aside from some sheep, that was it, that was
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: the only people on the island. And this, by the way,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: this is December of nineteen hundred, right.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so this thing is brand new.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they built it in eighteen ninety nine. That was
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: scheduled to take two years. It took four years. The
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: construction was started in eighteen ninety five, and what they
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: built was at the time a state of the art lighthouse.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: But it took so long. It took twice as long
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: as they anticipated because the cliffs and the island itself
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: was so treacherous. That's how long it took just to
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: get materials up the cliff to build the lighthouse.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: So it's finally in operation, and then now comes the actor,
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: which is what you mentioned earlier, not act R, but
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: the actor, aht er.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It was a Transatlantic steamship from Philadelphia to Leith,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: which is a port for Edinburgh.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: So they were out there. I was about to say
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: sailing around, but I guess they were steaming around and
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: they waited out of storm for a few days. And
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: then this part got confusing to me.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: So the actor was passing by flann And Isles. It
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: passed by on December fifteenth, and the actor noticed that
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the light was out, not that they couldn't see the
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: light because of weather or anything like that. Like the
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: light was straight up, not lit on the lighthouse on
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: flann and Isle's lighthouse like that. It was a very
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: strange thing to see and it was very noteworthy. They
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: ran into some weather on their way to Leith and
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: had to wait it out for a few days, and
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: when they finally made it into port, I guess they
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: passed the information along, but the Northern Lighthouse Board didn't
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: catch wing of it until the official relief supply ship
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: showed up a few days later, and the actor's observation
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: that the light was out wouldn't come into play until
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: an investigation was launched later on.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: Right, So that relief ship was the Hesperus hgsp r Us,
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: and that arrived on December twenty sixth, nineteen hundred, which
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: was Boxing day after Christmas.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: And what these.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Ships brought was they usually brought either supplies or fresh
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: dudes or both, and in this case I think they
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: had supplies and a fresh lighthouse keeper. And it was
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: captained by Captain Harvey, and they were like, all right,
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: something's going on here. This light's out, the flag's not flying.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: Let me toot on the horn a few times. Nobody
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: comes out. They're all right, well, let me send up
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: a flare they send up a flare. No one comes out,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: and what they're trying to do is say, hey, we're here,
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: get you little your little railcar system going. It had
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: a little cable a little cable pulled railroad system that
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: was operated by a steam engine and a shack, and
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: so when the hip pulls up, they would toot the
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: horn and the dudes would come down and they would
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: get that steam engine going and get that cable car
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: ready to transfer the goods onto this thing. So they
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: could you know, it's like hundreds of pounds of stuff
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: going up a really really steep cliff side.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's just no way to move that stuff. Otherwise, no,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: you'd have to do it.
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: So nobody came out, no one gets that steam shack going,
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: and they're like, all right, something's going on. We're gonna
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: have to go on land and figure this out.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And just the fact that they weren't greeted by
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: one or more of the guys from the lighthouse, which
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: is apparently custom, like even the most grizzled misanthrope lighthouse
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: keeper just knew it was to come down and greet
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the relief ship.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: You're still dying to see someone else. Pretty much, I think, so.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So that like the fact that no one showed
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: up and then no one responded to their signals. They
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: were like, something really weird is going on here. And
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: they had Joseph Moore who was the relieving keeper, which
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: makes me think that William Ross was really really sick
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: because he would have been on sick leave for way
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: over two weeks by this side, because I believe the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: relief ship was five days late because of weather, so
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: he must have really been laid up. And they sent
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: another relieving keeper, Joseph Moore instead, and Joseph Moore went
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: ashore and he was friends with these guys. He wasn't
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: some new dude or anything like that. So he was
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: genuinely concerned. And he went up the steps to the
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: lighthouse there's apparently one hundred and sixty of them, and
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: he just knew right away that something was way off.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: There was no sign of life, there was nobody around,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: there was the just nothing was going on. It was abandoned, basically,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: and he didn't have a very good feeling about it.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: So he runs back down to the boat to say,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: I think we have a problem here.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, so he says, I think we have a problem.
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: And then that's when basically everyone on board said, all right,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: we got to this is a situation now that we
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: all have to deal with. I think it was the
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: captain who went with more to search for other stuff,
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: and they said, in the meantime, you other guys, you
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: got to get up there and start operating this lighthouse
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: because it's been down and we need to get that
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: thing cranked up again.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, they so the first, for the first time, possibly
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: since December fifteenth, the lighthouse was lit again by these
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: relief guys who took over and kind of settled in
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: and were like, all right, this is our job now.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: But that follow up search, it's weird. Like we'll talk
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: about some of the legends and layers that were added
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: to it over the years. But to me, the thing
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: that was like so weird about the follow up search
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: was that everything was in place. Yeah, like it would
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: be way more like kind of middle of the road
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: to me, this mystery if there was like signs of
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: struggle or you know, there were like everything was just
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: kind of a skew. It's way more eerie to me
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: that like everything was exactly how it should have been.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: It's just the three human beings that were supposed to
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: be there were missing. But that's what Joseph Moore found
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and the others found when they searched a lot more thoroughly.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the door to the keeper's house was closed, the
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: gate was closed. In the kitchen, everything was all spick
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: and span. Everything was all cleaned up that it was
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: clear that someone had done some cooking in the grate,
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: but not anytime soon. There were ashes in there. The
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: beds were made, the clocks had all stopped because no
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: one was there to whine them, obviously, And everything was
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: fine except like you said that there was no one
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: around that there was a full fountain of paraffine oil.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: It was all like the light was ready to be burned.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: The lamp that Frenelle lens was cleaned up and ready
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: to go. The blinds were drawn, the records were all
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: filled out, you know, all the way up until Saturday,
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: I think, the morning of December fifteenth, right, yep. And
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: so everything was great, except for there were two missing
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: sets of rain gear they're called oil skins, their coats
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: and their boots. Two of those were missing out of
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: the three guys, and so that's sort of the only
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: thing out of the ordinary at this point.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was basically the only trace of the
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: missing men. Like, had those oil skins still been there,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: you would have taken the lighthouse in the area as
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: like having been prepared for somebody else. They just hadn't
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: shown up yet. Like the missing oil skins were the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: only trace that those men were missing, that there had
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: been men there that were no longer there anymore.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Right, And then there were a couple of pieces of
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: literature that kind of confused things after the fact, right.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that really kind of made this, like to a
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: lot of people, like a much bigger mystery. I think
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: some people came along and weren't satisfied with how mysterious
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: it was on its own, and so added to it
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and added to it over the years through magazine articles
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: and newspaper reports and then later on like podcasts and stuff,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: and so you really have to be careful navigating these waters.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: I feel excuse the pun or the stupid metaphor when
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: you're researching this, because so much of it is just
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: regurgitated as fact because it has been part of the
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: story for one hundred years that it was actually thanked
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: to thanks to the efforts of a journalist named Mike Dash,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: who if you are at all interested in nonfiction writing,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: especially nonfiction history writing, go check out Mike Dash's website.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: He's probably the best in the business. Oh yeah, but yes,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: he's just amazing. But he he set his sights on
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: getting to the bottom of this, and he did some
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: stuff and basically finally definitively proved no. This was added
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: to it later on. This was added to it later on.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: This is not true that kind of stuff. So it
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: hats off to Mike Dash for demystifying a lot of it.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: True but also making it not as fun because it's
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: decidedly creepier with these newspaper stories as they were written.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: One of the newspaper stories talked about the log book
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: and this is completely fabricated, you know, like Mike Dash
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: exposed it as fabrication, but it's still pretty creepy. The
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: log entries in the fake log entries were by a
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: second well not by a second assistant, Marshall, but this
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: is how they wrote it, and wrote on December twelfth,
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: they saw severe winds the likes of which I've never
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: seen before in twenty years, and wrote, and these are
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: people that have seen some of the worst storms you
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: could imagine out there on these outer islands and pretty
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: unshakable guys, I would think, And he said he wrote
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: in the next few days that the storm continued. It
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: was so unbearable that Ducat, their principal keeper, was struck
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: mute by the storm, and that occasional keeper MacArthur, who
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: was supposedly a really tough guy, was recorded as weeping
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: uncontrollably for days because of how bad the storm was.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, it's good stuff.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: It is good stuff, but Mike Dash made mincemeat out
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: of it, and he's kind of my hero for it.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: One of the things that he basically just points out
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: is if this were an official logbook, if you were
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: a second assistant you put that in there, you would
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: you would basically get fired for that kind of thing,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Like that's not what a logbook is for, And you
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: certainly wouldn't put that your superior was weeping uncontrollably in
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the log book, Like that's just not what you would
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: put in a logbook for the for in the first case.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: And then secondly, he also said that somebody being quiet
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: because of a storm or whatever or their mood, like
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: it also kind of mentions their mood a lot too,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: that that would have no bearing on anything. In the
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: only way that that makes sense in relation to the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: story is after the fact, which he said obviously, that
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: means that these were written after the fact. And then
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: years later, after he'd first investigated it, he finally turned
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: up a copy of the magazine that this came out
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: in in like nineteen twenty one, and it was like
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: a like a pulp magazine called like True Confessions or
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: something like that. So he definitely deconstructed that for sure,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: to my great satisfaction. I love it.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of funny though, like the logbook was
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: basically like your diary.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: That's exactly right, he said, like logbooks were not diaries. No,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: he actually specifically said that, Yeah.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: That's funny.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: The other thing he uncovered or did he uncover the
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: poem or was that just.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I think that was a little more common knowledge. But yeah,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: he wrote about the poem being the poem too.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: So in nineteen twelve, there was a poem by Wilfred
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: Wilson Gibson who wrote a poem about this mystery where
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: he says there was an untouched meal on the table,
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: cold meat pickles and potatoes. The kitchen chair was knocked over.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: The only sign of life was the keeper's canary half
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: starving on his spurch Like, these are all the things
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: that you mentioned would have made this a different story.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: But everything was really just fine. I don't even think
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: the chair was turned over, right, I don't know. I
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: think the guy later on, well, we'll get to him.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The way that Mike Dash treated it is that
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: it's possible. Okay, I don't know if Mike Dash treated
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: it like that way. Mike Dash wrote about a later
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: guy who will talk about who treated it as facts, So.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, okay, I I don't.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: I think what the upshot of it is that in
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: doing like this research on primary resources, like what Joseph
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: Moore wrote, what Robert Muirhead who will talk about wrote,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: these people who were actually there when it happened or
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: right after it happened, that nobody mentioned anything like a
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: turn overchair, and based on what they did mention, it
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: seemed like they probably would have mentioned a turned overchair.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: They were so meticulous in the details.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: All right, Well, let's talk about some of the evidence
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: that was there, okay, because what we're really talking about is.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Was there.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: I mean, the kind of obvious thing you would think
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: about is was there some big storm that washed these
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: guys away forever? Like That's kind of the one reasonable explanation.
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: And so as far as evidence goes, most of it
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: is storm related. For the you know, to sort of
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: support that and to go against it, there was a
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: railway that we talked about and that had a crane,
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: and the crane was sort of, you know, built to
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: help unload things off of this platform, off the cargo container.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: And it was about seventy feet above sea level, and
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: it was fine. It was It even still had the
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: canvas wrapped around it. So if there was some big storm,
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: and evidence shows there probably was one, right mm hm,
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: but at least this crane seventy feet up wasn't damaged
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: and that canvas was still there, which is a little weird.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: It is a little weird because even a little higher
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: up toward the top of the cliff, So the crane
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: was at about seventy feet above sea level, right, yeah,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: a little higher up than that, at about one hundred
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and ten feet above sea level. There was a box,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: a big box that held a lot of like mooring
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: ropes and ropes for the crane and to some really
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: important stuff tackle, and it had been busted open and
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: the contents like strewn all down the cliff's face. There
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: was a booy that was tied to the railing right
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: around the same place as that crate, one hundred and
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: ten feet above sea level. It had been torn clean
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: away from the ropes that had lashed it to the railing.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: The ropes were still there, but the buoy, just a
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: little piece of booy was left attached to it, and
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: yet the crane was intact. And then even weirder, the
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: iron railings around on the crane that you would use
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: as handrails had just been completely twisted and wrenched out
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: of place.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: That's a heck of a storm.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: It's an amazing storm. It's crazy to me that the
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: crane was left intact and that the canvas was even
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: on it still.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: That was really weird.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: There was a two thousand pounds stone that was up
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: on the cliff that slid down, and then I believe
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: the railway tracks were even torn up from the concrete.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: And then the grass at the top of the cliff,
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: this is two hundred feet up at the very top,
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: was ripped up as far back as thirty feet from
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: the edge.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: That's nuts, Like, do you know how much force a
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: wave would have to have to tear up grass in
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: the first place, and then that thing would have to
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: be over two hundred feet tall to even reach that grass.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: That's a bad storm.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: It's a monster wave. But the storm part that kind
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: of confounds things big time. And I think we should
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: take another break and we'll talk about how everything's just
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: so confounded still to this day, which is why this
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: is a mystery.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: Right after this, all right, we've got this mystery brewing.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: These three men are missing. It's pretty clear that there
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: was a big storm that blew through there. So, like
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: I said earlier, the obvious explanation was these strong windsors
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: came along and just blew these guys the heck off
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: this island and they were never seen again.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: That's not entirely out of the question because of the
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: butt of Lewis.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: That's right, strong winds flow from the butt of Lewis.
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: As everyone knows, and I'm twelve years old. Robert Muirhead
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: he was a super tendant of lighthouses, and he investigated
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: this disappearance. He knew all these guys, some really really well.
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: But I think the occasional keeper he knew the lease,
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: but he still knew pretty well.
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: He's the one that did this investigation personally and went
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: out there, wrote up this report. And I think he
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: was the last person. He was out there, you know,
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: because it was a new lighthouse, I guess, sort of
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: finishing up, and I don't know if he christen it
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: or whatever, but he was one of the last, in fact,
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: maybe the last person even see them alive.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: He says in his report that he's probably the last
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: person to shake hands with these men and see them
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: alive when he shoved off on December seventh, when the
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: last relief ship, the previous release ship had come along all.
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: Right, So in his official report, he said, I don't
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: think it was a strong wind that literally blew them
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: off the island. It was blowing westerly that day, and
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: that means it would have blown them back inland toward
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: the island, and there's there's no way that these guys
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: would have blown completely across the whole face of the
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: island off the other side. Because they know what to do.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: They know to drop and get flat and hold on
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: and they probably would not have been blown all the
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: way off if it was westerly.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: They need to stop drop and do not.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: Roll yet, don't roll, please, don't roll. Not in that case,
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: I grab something heavy.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, anything, a sheep, whatever, anything that will keep you
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: from being blown off. But that's just nuts. It shows
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: you how windy it is up there. That was a
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: possibility that Merr had considered and was plausible enough that
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: he had to at least put it in the report
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: as a possibility.
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: The one that he focused on that most people who
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: think in level headed ways kind of agree with two
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: is that instead a wave probably came along and knocked
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: these men off.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this one.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: I'm an amateur when it comes to like figuring out
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: island Scottish Island mysteries and weather. This one makes a
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: lot of sense to me.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally agree. So being blown away by wind tuns
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: kind of nuts unless you think about it, in which
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: case it's not super nuts. In this instance, at least,
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: there were more slightly nuttier explanations. And like the thing is,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: you can't fully discount any one of these because the
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: men's bodies were never found, so there was never any
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: conclusive proof of what happened, even still to this day,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: and some of the likelier, less likely scenarios seem to
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: always focus on Donald MacArthur, who was supposedly a bit
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: of a hot head, quick to fists, kind of dude,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: not necessarily the kind of occasional keeper you'd want to
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: have on rotation for two weeks with you, But that's
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: what a lot of these secondary theories kind of presuppose.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: He would have been the Willem Dafoe, right, I.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: Guess so, yeah, I kind of imagined him as such.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: He had got the story from this, didn't he?
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: I'm curious that she did.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: I'd have to.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Watch it again now that I know that. I hadn't
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: even heard of this story when I saw the Lighthouse,
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: so I need to watch it again and see what
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna do some research on that.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: I doubt if he like based it on this, but
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't be surprised if it triggered the idea or
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: something gotcha.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: All right?
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: So he MacArthur was, like he said, a tough guy,
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: a hot head, and he of course there's gonna be
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: speculation that he started a fight and they all got
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: in a big fight and they all fell off the
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: cliff together. Or maybe he murdered these two guys and
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: then knew what his come uppance would be and flung
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: himself off the cliffs himself in sort of a murder
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: suicide situation.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, again, it's plausible, like some people can go nuts, like,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: especially in extreme isolation kind of thing. But there's just
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: no know evidence whatsoever of any sort of fight. It's
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: possible to fight started entirely outside, but it just doesn't
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: satisfy all of the evidence, right, I.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: Don't think so.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Like the guy whose weather proof coats were still there
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: was Donald MacArthur. So why would he start a fight outside?
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: And whether that was bad enough that his comrades would
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: put on their weather.
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: Gear, right, or maybe when it comes to fighting, you
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: don't want that raincoat on.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: I guess maybe you found it restrictive. That's entirely possible too,
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: But that's again as far as like these secondary kind
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: of paranoid theories go, those make a lot more sense.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: The other ones, sister, are much more squarely in the
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: realm of paranormal.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you could say that.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: The outer hebrides are home of the Kelpie, and the
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: Kelpie is a water spirit, a shape shifting water spirit
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: that drowns human victims. But there are two problems with this.
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: One that is not real, and two even if it
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: was real, let's just do a thought experiment. Everyone knows
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: that the Kelpies are not seaside dwellers. They are inland
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: at the locks.
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: Right, They're not known to frequent the seaside.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: No, they don't like that saltwater.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: No, so the Kelpies probably did not kill these men
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and cart them away.
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: There's more supernatural there.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, the island being named after Saint Flannin and
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: that ruined chapel being there, and the idea that the
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: locals just kind of view that island as a weird place.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: There was this one author, a supernatural like a Fortian
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: type author who came along and said, all right, I've
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: got it. Everybody ready for this. So the locals think
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: that this place is kind of inhabited by spirits. I'm
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: guessing that the pagans who used to live here sacrificed
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: people on this island, and that the gods came to
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: be used to a certain type of sacrifice, and that
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: with the Northern Lighthouse Board installed these three men in
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: a tower on island More.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: It awoke something and.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: The gods mistook it as a sacrifice, so they took
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: their sacrifice, and that's what happened to the three men.
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: I think he skipped over the best part of this
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: whole thing though, what it was an ancient race of
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: tiny people?
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Well so I can't tell if that guy made that
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: part up or if that is actually a local belief,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: but yeah, that was part of it too.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: How small were they?
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Supposedly they found small bones that seemingly belonged to humans,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: and so there was a race of tiny people who
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: supposedly lived there before.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: But are we talking like, are they the size of
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: a of a sea rat or a like two or
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: three feet tall person?
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Am I Scottish? I don't know, Uh huh, all right, I.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: Was just curious a sea rat. He was tiny.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: That's a very tiny, tiny person, pagan. But I think
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: that's really interesting that the idea that the gods mistook
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the lighthouse keepers as a human sacrifice, that's what happened
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: to him. I love that one.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: It's like a big wicker man or something.
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. I think that's exactly the point that I
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: was making.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: All right, so those are obviously all bunk. What probably
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: really happened is as follows. And I think this is
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: a pretty plausible. I think this is pretty plausible.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Was but even still it's still astounding if you step
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: back and look at it.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and there's no way to prove it. So
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: it's kind of like these mysteries where you just don't know,
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: you know. So here's what could have happened. Is that
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: there was bad weather reported, but it wasn't maybe that
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: bad on the fifteenth. But let's say that that box
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: is looser, well, I got to get loose. Let's say
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: that box needs tending to. That's holding all this stuff.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: Right, it's an important box. Don't forget it's an important box.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: And I think Marshall had previously been fined what would
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: be about twenty pounds a day for having lost some equipment,
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: so he may have been like really quick to like, hey,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: we got to secure that box. And so maybe Ducott
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: and Marshall went out there to like they left their
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: quarters while the other dude, the occasional keeper MacArthur, is
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: up there in the lighthouse still and they're securing this
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: box down and then maybe this freak wave comes through,
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: or maybe they just get in trouble, and then MacArthur
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: needs to really leave quickly, which would explain why they
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: did have their rain gear on and MacArthur didn't because
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: MacArthur had to leave really quickly to go down there
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: and help these guys.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: Yes, so like that definitely checks all the boxes that
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: after that MacArthur was swept away as well. But the
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: thing is is, like that supposes something really amazing, Chuck,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: that there was a freak wave that the men just
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: did not expect that carried at least one of them away.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: The second one who survived that wave ran back to
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: get help from MacArthur to help get the first guy
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: who went in, and a second freak wave washed those
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: two away, just cleaning the island of its human inhabitants
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: in two swift waves over the course of a minute
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: or two.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Because the idea is that the storm wasn't bad enough
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: to just sweep them all away.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the act had to be a rogue wave, right.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: And the steamer the actor noted that the area because
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: the actor passed by just a few hours, a couple
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: hours probably after this event, happened, and they noted that
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: it was calm but stormy, which is the opposite of
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: what you would think. You would think it was not
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: stormy which would draw the men out to make them
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, stormy enough that they needed to secure the box,
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: but not so stormy that they felt like it couldn't
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: go out. But calm really kind of makes it. The
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: idea of two freak waves really freaky, because that would
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: mean that those waves just came out of nowhere and
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: swallowed the men up.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: But in the whole I mean, we did an episode
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: on rogue waves, and the idea is that it's a wave, yeah,
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: or is there a set of rogue waves?
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I think if I remember correctly, it was a wave.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: But that's what I think. Maybe there is more. I
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: don't know, but yes, that's how this That's the only
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: way that could happen is because MacArthur wasn't wearing his
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: rain gear, which suggests that he ran out in a
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: hurry into bad weather, which means that one of them
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: would have had to have come and gotten him. He
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have been there with the other two, so it
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: could not have just been one freak wave. It would
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: have had to have been two successive freak waves that
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: cleared all three.
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: Well, and this does lend some credence to the idea
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: that this thing was big enough to damage the turf,
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: you know, two hundred feet above sea level and destroy
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: that box and wash that two thousand pounds stone down
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: the cliff too.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And there was also there's a chance that
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: all that stuff that just was evidence of a terrible
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: storm actually came after the men had been washed away
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: from the island several days later, when there was a
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: really bad storm on December twentieth.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, that makes sense. I didn't think about that.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Isn't that weird to think that that damage had happened after.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: The fact, right? And sure, that makes sense.
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: Because it's almost certain that this event happened on December fifteenth.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: The last info they had on the log slate was
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: nine am December fifteenth, like we said, so it couldn't
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: have happened earlier than that, and it would have happened
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: before dark on December fifteenth, which would have happened about
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: four pm, because otherwise they would have lit the light
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: that night and the steamer actor would have seen the
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: light in the lighthouse as it passed by on December fifteenth.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: I think all this gets really interesting nineteen fifties when
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: a lighthouseman named Robert Aldebert who worked there served as
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: principal keeper between fifty three and fifty seven. He lived there,
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: obviously had a little time on his hands, and was
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: really enthralled by this mystery and was like, I'm going
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: to do some research and I'm going to take a
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: lot of pictures and do keep a lot of records
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: in my diary. And he said that, you know, I
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: was in the lighthouse itself, and and so that's how
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: many feet above sea level.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: They got the top of that seventy five Yeah.
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: Like two hundreds close to three hundred feet up and
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: got sea spray from some waves. So he's like, it's
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: very possible that a big wave could come through and
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: reach these heights.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He did tests where he took coils of rope
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: and put them on the top of the cliff and
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: they get washed away by some of those horrible waves.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: So he basically said it was almost certainly a wave
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: that got these guys. That's not the craziest part. The
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: craziest part is it was two waves, almost like the
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: sea was waiting for all three of them and took
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: them all.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: It's pretty weird. I wonder if he got fine for
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: losing those ropes.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe so if it's the Northern Lighthouse Board,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: I know he definitely did well.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: And he what was his final exp because he's the one.
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: That we mentioned earlier that said that that one of
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: the chairs was turned over in the kitchen, right, like
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: he kind of bought into that.
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, false narrative.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I wonder because this is a good you know,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: forty years after that poem had been written, maybe it
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: was so woven into the story by then he just
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: presumed that it was true or not.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: So how that comes in is he's basically like, all right,
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: after dinner happens, like there's bad weather going on, these
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: two guys go out there and are see this doesn't
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: make sense to me, and I'll tell you why in
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: a second. But these two guys go out there to
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: secure this box or whatever, cookies back in there washing
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: up and cleaning up, and that's where everything's nice and tidy. Yeah,
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: and then all of a sudden they need help, and
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: so he turns the chair over because he just like
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: runs out of there real quick. Yeah, but wouldn't that
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: be wouldn't someone have to be in the light too,
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: isn't that four guys?
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: No, that's why they think that this happened in the
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: afternoon of the fifteenth, because they never went to light
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: the light. They hadn't lived the light yet. Remember the
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: light was all set up and ready to.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: Be lived for the easies. It was daytime, yes, it
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: was before.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: It was before sunset, which would have been before four pm.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: All right, that's the one part I didn't get. I
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: get it now. White House is China night yep, And
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: I forgot that part when I wrote my movie. Everything
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: takes place during the day.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: Right, I left the mainland for this. You got anything else?
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: Good stuff?
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: No?
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: I like a good mystery. You're good at finding.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: These, man. I love this one, so thank you very much. Yes, well,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: if you want to know more about the flann And
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Isles mystery, go read Mike Dash's work on it. It's
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: really interesting stuff. It's pretty comprehensive too. And since I
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: said it's pretty comprehensive, everybody, that means it's time for
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: listener mail.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: I thought this is really interesting. This is a follow
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: up to the Dingoes episode about dingoes not really barking much.
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: Hey guys, In response to the statement that dingoes don't bark,
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: you left out a very fun fact and perhaps a
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: topic for another show. While domesticated dogs bark throughout their lifetimes,
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: wild adult dogs do not routinely bark. One popular theory
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: is that domesticated dogs were bred for tameness, which, as
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: a result, selected for dogs that never reached full maturity.
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: The upshot of this is that our domesticated dogs are
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: trapped in a state of suspended adolescence. They are more
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: or less trapped in puppyhood, an age where all dogs
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: wild and domestic, bark, play, lick, and, most important of all,
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: don't kill, which is an important trait for the family
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: pet and send an article from Tampa Bay dot com
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: Whys why do dogs Bark? From nineteen ninety one Love
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: the show That is from of Vonnier vo n I E. R.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Bonier.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, either one of those will work, depending on whether
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: you're in France or not.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: And Peter's a PhD an owl oncology.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Research also with an interest in dog barking.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: Sounds like Peter just is interested in stuff, which is
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: our favorite kind of listening.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, there is a died in the wool Stuff you
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: Should Know listener. Thanks a lot, Peter. That was a
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: very interesting email and we appreciate it. Belated congratulations on
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: your PhD. If you want to get in touch with us,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: like Peter did, you can send us an email, right, Chuck.
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: You surely can. Then you might get a response even.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, or you might end up on listener mail. Who knows? Yeah,
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: I try to answer these Why don't you roll the
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: dice and find out by sending your email to Stuff
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite show else