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Out of all the stories I’ve written, the strange and mysterious blogs are by far the most popular. As I’ve said in the past, I love a good mystery and this week let’s investigate one that most people haven’t heard of. The reason is probably that it didn’t happen in the United States, and most of us simply look over these types of stories, but this one is spooky and good.
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The Eilean Mor Lighthouse is located off the coast of Scotland and is a small island part of the Hebrides, an archipelago chain that stretching for 130 miles off the northwest part of Scotland. The year is 1900, and the only people here are three lighthouse keepers. To say that these islands are remote is an understatement, but this location is a popular route for passing ships, and because of this, a lighthouse was built on the isle to warn ships of the hazardous rocky outcropping.
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This part of the world is usually cloaked in thick fog and rough seas, but on December 26, the water was calm, and the island was illuminated in sunlight. Captain James Harvey was sent to Eilean Mor to provide some much-needed supplies along with a new worker to swap out one of the keepers. Harvey accounted later that he had a bad feeling about this trip but couldn’t explain why. The path to the lighthouse is not easy to navigate, so this could account for some of the captain’s apprehension.
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Even though the replacement lighthouse keeper, James Moore, arrived six days late due to poor weather, the relief flag on the lighthouse had not been raised, but when the boat pulled up to the docks, no one was there to greet them. This in itself was very unusual simply because a ship provided the lighthouse crew something new, even if it was in the form of work unloading and re-provisioning the lighthouse. After about 5 minutes, the boat blew its horn, and the crew shot off a flair with still no response.
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The captain had a schedule to keep and sent James Moore up to the lighthouse to get everyone to help unload the boat. The path to the lighthouse was a little precarious, and you had to pay attention to your footing; otherwise, you could easily fall into the North Sea. Moore made it up with no problems and opened the unlocked lighthouse door and immediately knew something was wrong. The air was heavy with a damp chill; the fireplace hadn’t been lit for days. All the clocks had stopped, the beds were unused, and two of three keeper’s oil-skinned coats, essential during the winter months, were missing. An extensive search confirmed what Moore already suspected. All three men had vanished without a trace.
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James Ducat, 43, Donald MacArthur, 40, and Thomas Marshall, 28, were some of Eilean Mor’s first lighthouse keepers and at the time of their disappearance, the sole inhabitants of the island. In the seventh century, an Irish monk, St. Flannan, had built a chapel on Eilean Mor, and the ruins still stand there today. However, shortly after the structure’s completion, the Irish saint and his church members fled the island, claiming that magical beings were tormenting them. Tales of a mythical race of “little people” known to locals of surrounding islands as the Lusbirdan were still prevalent during the time of the disappearance. Shepherds who tended to the Eilean Mor’s only permanent residents, sheep, referred to the island as “the other country” and refused to spend the night there.
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Despite these stories, the Northern Lighthouse Board set about constructing a lighthouse on the island in 1895 to prevent ships from running aground on its rocky outcroppings. The disappearance happened just over one year after its completion on December 7, 1899.
A message was sent to Cosmopolitan Line Steamers from Captain Holman of the steamer Archtor, on December 15, 1900, reported that the Eilean Mor’s light was not shining. Due to more pressing matters, the CLS had failed to pass the information on to the Northern Lighthouse Board.
After discovering the missing crew, an investigation was launched by the Northern Lighthouse Board superintendent, Robert Muirhead. Investigators searching the island later found damage to the storm landing area of the lighthouse. It seemed that a box that contained mooring ropes had been washed away despite being firmly wedged into a crevice and then anchored to the rockface. Other items that were missing were lifebuoys, which Muirhead wrote in his report, “It was evident that the force of the sea pouring through the railings had, even at this great height (about 10 feet above sea level), torn the lifebuoy off the rope.”
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The conclusion which Muirhead came too was that the men had tried to stabilize the box of mooring ropes and been swept away by a rogue wave, but not everyone at the Northern Lighthouse Board was convinced. Why had none of the bodies washed ashore? Why had one of the men left without his coat in the middle of the bitter Outer Hebrides winter? And how could three experienced seamen all be taken unaware by an approaching wave?
This bizarre disappearance might have slipped into history, but a book was written in 1965 about the mystery, where the author had cited three magazine publications from that era. Allegedly the magazines got ahold of the lighthouse log’s final entries from Dec. 12-15, 1900. The document was written by Thomas Marshall and told of an otherworldly storm, so intense that all three keepers feared for their lives. MacArthur, by all accounts a tough guy, was crying and praying in the corner while Ducat, the senior keeper, reportedly sat silent and dazed throughout. The final entry reads, “Storm ended. Sea calm. God is over all.”
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These lighthouse log entries by many have been disputed as unreliable because the magazines were considered to be more tabloid than truth. It seems that these articles would have been the equivalent of a modern-day National Enquirer, but stories were still being told that were unbelievable. Many speculated that one keeper killed the other two before killing himself, but again where are the bodies?
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Even the rogue wave theory has trouble in being believed. The regulations of the lighthouse company stated that one person would remain in the lighthouse at all times. It was theorized that two keepers went to the landing to try and save the ropes and buoys during a storm. This means that a wave swept away one of the two members trying to save the box. The second keeper would have gone back to the lighthouse for help from the third person left to man the light. When they returned to the landing, then another rogue wave swept the other two away, never to be seen again.
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Other theories look to Eilean Mor’s mysterious history for answers, speculating that the men were captured by the Lusbirdan and taken to the land of the fairies. Others point to everything from alien abduction to ghost pirates to an attack by the Loch Ness monster. This strange story was even the subject of an episode of Dr. Who in 1977, which blamed a shape shifting alien.
Despite the out of this world explanations that have swirled around the Eilean Mor disappearance for more than a century, many lighthouse experts maintain that there is no mystery and never has been. In 2015, naturalist John Love revealed in his book, A Natural History of Lighthouses, that Thomas Marshall had previously been branded as negligent after equipment was swept away during a gale. Marshall probably asked the other two men to help secure the lines during the storm, and the three were pulled into the ocean by a single wave.
Either way, this is a fascinating story, and its fun to see what people can come up with to explain the mysterious disappearance. It seems that this is either a simple story looking to be turned into a mystery, or a mystery looking for a convenient story to attach itself too. In the end, the lighthouse at Eilean Mor is bound and determined to keep us asking what really happened?
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If you have any ideas, please pass them along, and you get bonus points for creativity. Thanks again for reading the Acorn Blog, and until next time, keep reading.