Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 45 - Histories Mysteries: The Lighthouse

Episode Date: March 30, 2020

Patreon - http://www.patreon.com/chilluminatipod Huge thanks to Podcorn for sponsoring this episode. Explore sponsorship opportunities and start monetizing your podcast by signing up here: https://podcorn.com/podcasters/ Ad Break Music by Dean Cutty: https://deancutsforth.bandcamp.com/ BUY OUR MERCH - http://theyetee.com/collections/chilluminati Soundcloud - @chilluminatipodcast Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - http://www.youtube.com/user/ThatOneLaserClown Art Commissioned by - http://www.mollyheadycarroll.com Theme - Matt Proft Video - http://www.twitter.com/digitalmuppet

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and start monetizing your podcast, you can do so by signing up at the link description below. Now, on to the show. And they are fantastic. Hello, hello, hello, everybody and welcome. Hello, hello, hello, everybody, and welcome, welcome to the Chiluminati Podcast, episode 44. I, as always, am one of your hosts, Mike Martin, joined by my two co-hosts, Alex Fasciani

and Jesse Cox. How's it going, boys? Yo, I am alive still. You are alive and in better spirits, it seems. I feel better. I do. I, you know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a tenuous, it's a tenuous relationship I have with my body, but me and that dude are going to figure it out together.

We're going to get through it together. Yeah. Alex had me hold my breath for 10 seconds and now I'm falling apart. I am literally dying. You're good. You couldn't do it. Now you're dead. I'm sure it does, but I like just kind of woke up.

My body's still like, what is going on, dude? And I held my breath for 10 seconds. Now I'm like, all that phlegm, it's got to go someplace. So I'm falling apart over here. Keep it tight. I've been coughing and stuff. Don't die because people are really excited for this episode, Jesse. So this is the episode.

This is the episode. I'm not going to die. I'll be fine. All right. That's all that matters. We just need you to entertain the masses. That's very close. You never know to to our weekly episode goal.

You never know. It's true. We're approaching 4K. We're trying to we're trying to hit weekly at 5K guaranteed. So yeah, knocking on that 5K door, guaranteed, guaranteed. So if you're out there today and you're sitting at the end of this episode later and you're thinking to yourself, man, I want to just listen to a little bit more chilluminati right now.

That would be great. Go ahead and head over to patreon.com slash chilluminati pod, right? Is that it? You got it. I did it right. I said the real, the real. You chilled it right. You did it all good, dude.

You did a great job. I love that. Head on over there. Sign up at the $15 level or higher. You get that mini. So fresh, fresh off the off the off the off the off the. What is it? Even what is it?

What? What? Out of the oven. Piping hot. Fresh off the grill. Fresh out of the style. Fresh out of the. You know, like kind of poorly made 90s, Quiznos, the good quiz.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Fairly hot. Acceptable food offers on a treadmill of heat. Yeah. The middle of the meat is still a little cold, but there's yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right. But that's good.

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Wow. That was great. Great job. The question now though, for those who are here listening, Jesse's already warming up his fingers, which kind of scares me a little bit. I'm not quite sure. He said. Why?

It's been two years since we've been doing this podcast and not a single one. Have you helmed? It is the first time. What the hell have you brought us today? Well, okay. I saw and loved the movie, the lighthouse, right? Yeah. It is a wonderful film.

It is weird. It is so strange. I don't know how to describe it. Because there are sexy mermaids. I mean, there is a lot of mermaid vagine. Yes. That's true. I wouldn't necessarily call the mermaid sexy all the time.

Yeah. True. There's something. All right. It is a bizarre film. It is not for everyone. It is weird, but incredibly well acted. Oh, God.

Yeah. Fast. It's a fascinating movie. But that film, the underlying premise is something that is based off of fact. And there are many stories that inspired the movie. And I wanted to tell you one of them today because it is fascinating. It is real. There is no real answer.

And I love stories in history that are like this stories that are, you know, unanswerable, possibly terrible, possibly paranormal, but no one truly knows. And so I can tell you it and not hate myself for it because it isn't like, and at the end aliens came. We call a just the episode of history's mystery. You could do that. You could do that. It's kicking around in my head.

I didn't even want to say it. I was so embarrassed, but I'm glad you did because that's what I was thinking. Okay. Shall we begin, gentlemen? All right. Let's go. I'm so ready. All right.

Lighthouses are by their very nature creepy. They are built upon death. In a way, they share similarities with hospitals, right? Much like hospitals or sanatoriums, they too are linked with death. They capture sort of the darker side of your imagination. But just like hospitals, they are built to prevent death and disaster, but no one builds a lighthouse or hospital before deaths. Something always occurs that you then build them to prevent more death from happening.

Right. There should be a lighthouse here because all these dead guys, all these sailors died at sea. So we should walk in the beach like that's the hundredth one today. Maybe we should do something about it. The difference between a lighthouse and a hospital obviously is that lights, lighthouses are solitary, isolated. They are alone among the waves on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere and the ocean is

still a place we really, truly do not understand. According to this day, we don't really understand the ocean. We can barely get so deep, right? We can. It is a mystery to us. That is why it's so fascinating with all the Cthulhu myths and all that stuff, like what is down there? What terrible things lurk beneath the waves?

Well, a lot of UFO sightings out in the ocean of things coming out from the water and back in. If there's that technology, the depths of the ocean is a great place to hide from us. Yeah. And of course, that also brings up who in their right mind would want to live on an isolated island for a long period of time, especially right now me, as long as I have a fishing pole, which I can't imagine that I wouldn't have at that point. I would be all good, my guys.

Imagine social distancing, but it's maybe two or three men on an island 24 seven. You're working nonstop. No internet, no food ordering, just work waves and maybe hard tack, right? Or like lobster. So whatever. Like an actual question, I was going to say, I imagine like all they really eat is seafood then they catch a lot of what they eat. I'm assuming.

Well, they have stuff delivered, you know, they there are every time they switch out a guy. Yeah. They have food delivered. They eat things that are pickled, probably pickles, right? They eat things that are canned. And then what they would do is they would have, uh, you know, salted meats or something like that.

But most of the time, I would imagine when they could see food, right? They would just go out and try to find a little lobster, get a little, you should probably have some traps out. Honestly, that's what I would do. Right. Yeah. I was in, it was, if I was in that situation right now, as long as I had an electrical outlet, I'd be good.

Well, the updated thing is that most lighthouses are automated now. So there are very few actual lighthouse keepers, but, uh, if you travel back with me to 1900, this is a story about life's housekeepers. So you know, it will come as no surprise to you. There are many, many stories about the possible hauntings or terrible things that happen at lighthouses. We literally had it in my town. This is one of them.

Yeah. Oh really? Yeah. So in San Pedro, there's the point firm in lighthouse and I don't even know like the veracity of any of the claims, but like when I was a kid, I just heard from Scuttlebutt like, Oh, you'd see people up in the windows of the lighthouse and people still lived in the house. Cause it was like in the middle of a park.

Like it was like a pretty, like, like the lighthouse was pretty close to a lot of houses and stuff. And there was a family that lived there. But like you said, like at the time that the light was auto, right? Because it's a lot of work. It's dangerous. One lighthouse work is you are not only managing the lighthouse. You are upkeeping the island.

You are making sure it runs 24 seven and there's only three of you, maybe four. And it is a job where one person has to always be off duty and always like in case something terrible happens, has to stay back to report back to people what happened because there's no connection with anyone. So you had to, one person always had to be the guy who like didn't do anything. So at any point in time, there's two people always doing something on the island and they swap out. And so come with me, if you will, back to 1900, I know it seems long ago, but it is not

that long. Airplanes were invented in 1903. Plastic was 1905. It's not like the Stone Age. It's the dawn of the second industrial revolution. It's the lead up to World War one. I don't think Titanic or 1917, if you want to know like visually what this time was. I mean, my great grandmother was going to be born in 11 years and she's still alive

today. Yeah. This is, it's not that long ago. Sure, it is generationally long, but on a timeline, not that long ago. In December of 1900, a boat called the Hesperus set sail for the island of Eileenmore, spelled E-I-L-E-A-N. So I think that's Eileen, Eileenmore, one of seven small islands of the Flannan Isles off the coast of Northwest Scotland.

And we are talking like off the coast. We're north of Scotland is where we're referring to. That's a harsh place. Yes. Yeah. There's not a lot growing out that way. And it was the site of a relatively new, built the year before lighthouse that would serve as an important link for guiding transatlantic ships towards the harbor at Leith Scotland

or Leith Scotland. On December 15th, a American ship ship named the Actor noted that the lighthouse was not operation. The Actor like, I'm an actor. Maybe it's the Arctor, A-R-C-H-T-O-R, Arctor. Yeah, maybe. The Arctor. It still sounds great.

I'm acting. I am the Arctor. Yeah. Captain James Harvey was tasked with delivering a relief lighthouse keeper, Joseph Moore, as part of the regular rotation, because everyone knew being a lighthouse keeper sucked. It was a tough job. And they rotated people out every, you know, six to nine weeks. So they would head out there, swap supplies and check to see what was going on with the

lighthouse. This journey, however, was delayed a few days because of bad weather. So when the ship finally set out to Eileen Moore, it was clear nothing was wrong. But when they got there, something was up. None of the normal preparations were made at the landing dock. A signal flag was missing from the flagstaff, and none of the keepers were anywhere in sight. Harvey blew the ship's horn, sent off a flare trying to attract attention, nothing. No responses, nothing.

And so they're like, okay, clearly something's up. There was no, the lighthouse wasn't working. There was no one there. This is a problem. Joseph Moore, who was the replacement keeper, rode ashore and climbed these steps up to the lighthouse. According to his reports, he said that he felt a sense of foreboding dread, this all-encompassing dread that sort of washed over him like a terrible force hung over the island.

Everything was filling his very veins with terror. Because you see, Eileen Moore was a very peculiar place. Although completely uninhabited, it, like the rest of Flannan Islands, was pretty interesting to the locals. It was named after St. Flannan, a 6th century Irish bishop who later became a saint. He had built a chapel on the island, and for centuries, shepherds would, you know, sort of roam over the island with their sheep, graze, and then get the hell out by nightfall because they were fearful of the spirits that haunted this remote spot.

I'm pretty sure it's Ireland that I'm thinking of, but I'm imagining the last Jedi right now is what I'm... Yeah, kind of the same similar vision in my head, yeah. And so the shepherds would go over there, they'd let the sheep graze, and they'd get out by nightfall, because the reason, apparently, this church was built there is because this island was possibly a cursed place, possibly home of, oh my goodness, what are they called? Los Beardons? Los Beardons?

Which are basically... Why dudes with improv groups? They're basically northern pygmies, or fairies, right? Are we talking about, like, a real race of pygmies, like the jungle pygmies? Are we talking about... I don't know that this is real. I don't know that it's real. I just know that that's what this area is known for.

Okay. It would be like one of those things where if you were sailing by in, let's say, the olden days, if it was like 1520, you'd be like, watch out for the Los Beardons, right? They'll get you. Like that kind of thing. Boogieman-type thing. Yeah. Yes, absolutely.

And so this area was known for having all sorts of weird, cryptic, strange things associated with it, and no one wanted to stay there after dark. It was just known, do not stay there after dark, that place is bad. So of course, they built a church there, and then they built a lighthouse because that's how things work. Humanity. Right. So Joseph Moore goes to the island, and oh, oh, oh, how can I forget this little tidbit?

Those who visited the island were fond of some pretty strange religious superstitions. One of them was people would go on like treks to the church there because a saint built it. Right. It's like a super old church kind of thing. Yeah. And one of the things they would do is they would circle the church on their knees. They would get down on their knees and like knee walk around the church. This was one of the things that it was known for.

In 1900? Yes. This is a thing. It was known people would go to these islands and knee walk around it. It's creepy. See nowadays, you'd be like, wow, what a cult. Back then, maybe you just, I mean, what else do you have to do? It's not that.

That still seems weird. That still seems weird. The whole aura of the islands was considered to be undefinable, something that was just like Joseph said, it got to your core. There was some dread over the islands. So as Joseph climbed the stairs, he felt this entire dread wash over him, and he noticed when he got to the lighthouse that something was immediately wrong. The gate and the door while firmly shut were unlocked.

Inside the kitchen, on the table, it still had plates of meat, potatoes and pickles. Two of the three coats belonging to the Keepers Marshall, Ducat and MacArthur were missing. Like wait, like supplies were still there or like dinner was on the table? Dinner was on the table. Oh, okay. Dinner was just on the table. There were, you know, the table still had the plates of food for the men were all there. On the hangers, two of the three coats were missing, but one was still there.

And nearby, there was an overturned chair and the creepiest thing of all, the clock in the lighthouse had completely stopped. Oh no. Oh God, that sucks. Hold on. Like they don't know how long it's broken, I'm assuming. So is that a thing, is that a thing where like that clock is like, it's like a major coincidence that clock was stopped or is it the type of clock where you need to like regularly

it is, it's actually, it's like a clock clock. So it's not like a stopwatch where you have to keep doing it every so often. It is a clock and you know how clocks, they can go, but you have to tune them for time like, oh, it's off by five minutes or whatever. Yeah. It's that kind of clock. It's not just going to stop, right? But you, you know, we'd have to adjust the time every so often.

I was thinking like, what if it like broke and they've never, they haven't know what time it is for like however long they've been out there. Great question. They'll probably come into play in a minute. So this brought up a lot of questions for more who was a lighthouse keeper. He knew the rules and regulations. He had a lot of like, what is, what is happening right now? Because firstly, you simply do not leave your house without a coat because it's wet on

an island and it's the middle of December. So one person just didn't use a coat and it blew his mind. He couldn't figure out what that meant. One coat was missing only. No, two coats were missing. One coat was still there. Okay. So three people are missing and three people are missing.

Right. Yeah. Secondly, why would all three leave? It is totally forbidden to have three men working at any given time. Even in a terrible tragedy, one person must stay behind to report in because they don't have any communications. There isn't anything that they can say to anyone or telegraph to anyone. They're on a small island.

It's remote. Someone must stay behind at all times. So even if two people die, one person must report in what happens. That's like the whole point. Yeah. Yes. That's the thing that would trip me out sitting there is knowing like, if I fucking fell down a hole and broke my leg, no one would know anything about it for like two months.

Right. Yeah. And so he knew that whatever happened must have been a hurry. Right. There was a flipped over chair. The men were clearly rushed by something, but if it was a terrible tragedy, where was the evidence? He continued to search the island and he found nothing.

He reported back to Harvey on the Hesperus and Harvey ordered an island wide search and they still found nothing. Harvey then sent a telegraph back to the Northern lighthouse board headquarters in Ennebaro and it said this and I would love one of you to read this message. I got it. Got it. Okay. A dreadful accident has happened at Flannins.

The three keepers, Duckett, Marshall and the occasional, have disappeared from the island. On our arrival there this afternoon, no sign of life was to be seen on the island. Fired a rocket, but as no response was made, managed to land more, who went up to the station but found no keepers there. The clocks were stopped and other signs indicated that the accident must have happened about a week ago. Poor fellows, they must have been blown over the cliffs or drowned trying to secure a crane or something like that.

Night coming on, we could not wait to make something as to their fate. I have left more McDonald's, Buoymaster and two Siemens. That's right, Siemen on the island to keep the hype burning until you make arrangements. Will not return to Obann until I hear from you. I have repeated this wire to Moorhead in case you are not at home. I will remain at the telegraph office tonight until it closes if you wish to wire me. I love the fact that he sent it. He's like, I sent it to your home.

If you're not home, I'll just stay here for a while. That's what communication was 120 years ago. Yeah. I guess I'll just wait here for you. I'll be here. But he left people there. Oh no. Are they going to be missing too?

They're going to be missing people there to make sure that it was still running. Because again, this was a major shipping lane now because people could travel with steam boats and things like that through the Northern Atlantic. People were using this to go through to Scotland. For example, the Arc Tour was an American ship from Philadelphia. So it is widely used and the reason the lighthouse was built is so they could keep using it. It's like get back in there, turn this thing on, make sure it happens. It's basically a castle.

Like it's a hearty building. Yeah. Yes. It is a very hearty building built. I think like 150 feet above sea level and it's rocky cliffs. There's pictures of it. It's still there to this day. You can see it.

Do people still run it? It is. I think it's still run but electrical, automated. That's crazy. Within days, Robert Muirhead or Muirhead, whatever his name is, Robert Muirhead, the board superintendent who recruited and knew all three of the missing men personally, headed to the island to lead a full investigation and this, my friends, is where things get wild. Once again, the investigation found no evidence.

Nothing was there that explained what happened. The only thing they had to go off of was the lighthouse log book which provided confounding details. On December 12th, Thomas Marshall, the second assistant, wrote of severe wins, the likes of which he had never seen in his 20 years as a mariner. He noticed that James Ducott, the main keeper, was keeping very quiet into himself and the third assistant, William MacArthur, the guy who transfers from the mainland all the time, had been crying.

What seemed strange about the last part was that MacArthur, the crying man, was known on the mainland for being a tough badass and a brawler. He was a seasoned mariner and had experienced many bad weather conditions. It made no sense that he would be the one who was crying. Crying like he would be upset or crying like scared. Crying like terrified, okay. Log entries for the 13th of December stated that the storm was still raging and all three men had been praying.

But again, that didn't make any sense. Why would all three men fear for their safety to the point of praying situated in a brand new lighthouse 150 feet above sea level where they should have been perfectly safe? Now, would this have been a hurricane and they just never have ever seen a hurricane before? Let me continue. Okay. Sorry. You'll love this.

Even more strange, this explains what you're talking about, based on ship reports and other information gathered, there were no reported storms in the area the 12th, 13th, and 14th of December. In fact, the weather was calm. The lighthouse can easily be seen near the Isle of Lewis on calm days and it was calm. You can see the lighthouse. It was confirmed the only storms that hit the island were on the 17th, which prevented the Hesperus from arriving on time.

So what time? When did the Hesperus arrive? After the 17th. It arrived a week later. So like the 26th or something like that? Good question. I would imagine it would be the 18th, 19th, or 20th, is when it would arrived. Okay.

I'm sure a lot of this is something that like, I'm just positing theories out here. Not saying it's what happened, but like if the clock broke, could their dates have been off? Absolutely. Yes. I mean, I mean, like, I mean, I can, but like full days, you would know the sun goes up and down, right? Sure.

Sure. Yeah, you would. Yeah. You know, it's not like it's 1823 and that you like it's 1900. They have like legit like bring the calendar with you. I could, I could get tricked like imagine I'm sitting there and then the clock goes out and I look at what time it is and I'm like, Oh, it's, it's a time that was three hours ago and then I go outside and I'm like, what?

And like that would fuck me up. But then after that, I would be like, Oh, the fucking clock has stopped. You know what I mean? Sure. Cause the clock probably doesn't say the date on it, right? No, that's like the next level clock design. So here's the last entry written December 15th. It only said this.

Storm ended. See calm. God is all over. Oh, I'm sorry. God is overall is what it said. God is overall. So they went through like a harrowing couple, like three days without a storm actually happening where they thought that they were being attacked by like the worst storm of all time.

Yes. And then came out the other side and then disappeared. So was there a storm anywhere? That's the great. That's the thing. But they said they had a storm, the 12th, 13th and 14th, a three day long storm. The 15th, they came out the other side. Like we made it.

God is overall. And then on the 17th, a real storm hit the area, but no loss to the Hesperus from coming out there. But you'll note, if you go back to the very beginning of the story, when the art tour passed by on December 15th, it noted the lighthouse was out. On what day? The 15th. The 15th.

The same 15th that the journal said storm ended. See calm. God is overall. So the day the storm ended, a ship came by and it was the weather was clear enough to see that the lighthouse wasn't on again. There was no storm in the area. So the day supposedly the storm ended when they're like, thank God, it's over. A ship passed by saw that there was no operational lighthouse.

So was there any sort of like rigging that was fucked up or any sort of like, like the stairs on the outside of the building were busted or anything? The only, the only thing that was misplaced, at least on initial inspection, was one of the signaling flags was missing. One single signaling flag was missing. That's like what you'd use to communicate with like a boat or something. Absolutely. And so perhaps the wind blew it off.

Perhaps it was lost in a storm. Perhaps it was lost some other way, but one flag was missing. That's the only thing they know is one flag was missing. So are there even any theories as to what the hell even happened? Oh, well, get ready. After reading the logs, Merhead turned his attention to the coat. Why would someone venture out without their coat in a winter storm? Yeah.

Especially since all three knew the rules, knew the regulations. One of them must have left his post when he knew it was wrong to do so. And his theory was that the last person there, MacArthur, the person who was standing behind in the building, he probably was panicked and ran out to go do something, right? So he left his coat and just went as fast as he could. That was his theory to go like do something real quick. Yes. And to back this up, what they discovered is that at the landing platform, below the landing

platform were ropes strewn about the rocks, which usually held a crate about 70 to 100 feet above the platform for supply transfers. Maybe the crate was dislodged and the keepers were attempting to save it, called MacArthur out of the house for help and he ran down to help him. And then all three were hit by a rogue wave. That is the best theory they could come up with. On a calm night? Exactly.

It still doesn't make sense. Like a rogue wave might have hit them and they possibly all got taken off together. So they're 150 feet above sea level? Yes. So does that mean like if they fell off the side of the lighthouse, there's like a plunge? Yes. Yeah. They would fall, they would die and that would be it.

Like they would be done. But nobody found anything? Well, this is another thing. Maybe one of you wants to read this. Sure I'll read it. This is the news article that was posted about the incident from the board. The board superintendent by Telegram posted this to the newspaper of what he thinks happened. Stranger fat lighthouse.

Three keepers disappear. Intimation has been received at the northern lighthouse board Edinburgh of the loss of the lighthouse staff at the Flannan Islands lighthouse. The station was established in December last year and was staffed by four men, three taking duty and the other having relief. When the board steamer yesterday went to the islands to land the relieving keeper, it was found that the three men last on duty had disappeared, leaving no trace behind. There are the principal keeper James Ducat and Thomas Marshall and Donald MacArthur.

The latter was an occasional keeper on duty in place of a sick member of the regular staff. It is very lucky. It is surmised that they were swept away during the storm of last week, either when attempting to save a crane or when trying to render assistance to some vessel in distress. The relieving keeper and three other men have been temporarily left on the island. No such incident incident has ever happened in the history of the lighthouse board and it is provident that it did not result in disaster to any passing vessel. The Flannan Isles are a group of seven Isles, 17 miles west of Lewis in the Hebrides or

the Hebrides. So again, the Hebrides? Hebrides. Oh, this is like very remote. Okay. Yes. This is incredibly remote. And so again, this theory they're putting out there is that these men didn't die on

the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th. They died on the 17th in that storm that happened. And everything that happened before that was just, you know, them on the lighthouse and everything was fine. And so the real storm is what must have killed them. But again, it goes back to their description of a massive three day storm that no one reports. No one reports having seen this storm. Nobody.

It did not exist yet. They lived it. During this time period, one of them started crying. One of them became like totally silent. Something bizarre had happened. This explanation, of course, left some members of the board totally unconvinced. For one, why had bodies never washed ashore? If they fell off the cliffs during the storm, logic dictates waves would have pushed them

back up the rocks towards the lighthouse or the surrounding islands. Bodies were never found. Why did they all leave the lighthouse? Being experienced, friends of the superintendent, and complete well skilled mariners, how could they have been taken unawares by a rogue wave, especially on a totally calm day? What made the mystery even more popular was in 1912 a ballad was written by poet Wilfred Gibson who believed the men were victim of some sort of foul play. This of course spawned way more speculation and analogies were drawn between the lighthouse

and the crew of the Mary Celeste. Great question. Analogies were drawn between the lighthouse and the crew of the Mary Celeste which happened 28 years before, a ship adrift in complete, seaworthy condition in the middle of the ocean with no one on board. Another great mystery. This is like the game we played. Yes.

Orang Medan. It's happened before. It's happened before? Yeah. I mean, it's a man of Medan is the one we're talking about. Oh, I was thinking the boat, have you played Return of the Oberdein? I have not. But you're talking about the game that looks like it's like a Mac game?

Yeah, like a Matrix, but it's about a boat that shows up with its entire crew missing and you're trying to figure out how it happened. And that's because that's happened often. It happens a lot. Where the boat or whatever it is that's found is in complete working order. Everything is fine, but everyone is missing and no one has a clue why. And so, of course, there are many parallels that people are connecting these analogies between the two.

Something must have happened. There must be something in the water again, going back to the fact that we truly do not understand the ocean for as much as we dominate land, we do not and we fear the ocean and it goes back to that. That freak. So, of course, you can imagine the lighthouse board found it very hard to staff the flan and aisles. It became one of those places where no one wanted to go and over the years, there have

been many theories about what happened. Has anything else? What was? No, because it became, people would not go there. Really? People did not want to be out there. So it was, you know, the people that were sent out there, everything was very, all right, we're going to be very strict.

We're going to have our rules. We're going to make sure everything's safe. And from that point on, it became some place that very people wanted to go, like very few actually want to be there. The people who did go there were all too respectful of everything going on. How many plates were on the table? Enough. It was the crew for three.

So they were all at dinner or setting up for dinner. I don't know. Dude, what the fuck? So then here's some theories. I think these are fascinating. This is just like the White House, by the way, like, yes, oh, absolutely. Oh, okay. Really?

I haven't seen it yet. So you, I mean, it's not. I mean, what actually happens in the Lighthouse is not, is definitely not going to be one of the theories here. But but holy shit, I mean, I understand how somebody could think about that movie and invent that movie from this just by reading a stories of actual events, especially this. There are other there are other lighthouses with incidents like this. This isn't this happens frequently.

This is lighthouses, but like it's like these events are like perfect, like creative writing practice. But like it gives you an end scenario with little clues and a timeframe for you to write a story in. And you can just fucking anything like it hints at like psychological. Yeah. Oh, that guy's quiet. The guy's like the guys guys in the corner guy runs out without a coat chair tipped over

storm when no storm missing like that's all and that's that's that's a garden for such good story. Sorry, Jesse, continue. But I can see it. I can see why the lighthouse was born. No, you're absolutely right. And lighthouses are notorious for driving people crazy. It is an actual thing.

Lighthouses, the isolation, the being in the middle of nowhere, the no contact with people that being in the same place with a few people, all of which imagine just to begin with the type of personality that's OK with going to work on an island with no human contact for months. No. The only things you see every day are ocean around you. And then if you're inside a spiraling tower up, yes, I would go nuts. There's many theories that the architecture in lighthouses, the way it's designed, the

way it looks is there's something haunting almost like otherworldly about the way that conical. Like if you look up the sort of like shell nature, oh, yeah, there's all sorts of weird lore behind lighthouses. Absolutely. I buy it completely. I mean, there doesn't even need to be a paranormal element for something weird to have happened. I mean, especially having seen the lighthouse, but just imagining, I'm sure that somebody's

talked about what if one guy went nuts and killed the rest of the guys. Something like that. In a house, it's happened. You know what I mean? In a house in a city, that's happened. Yeah. Well, so the very first theory, absolutely, is that word is the guy who was a tough dude who beat people up in the city and whatnot.

MacArthur was a volatile dude. He was always trying to get in fights. He was always angry at people. His whole personality was, was very aggro. And so it's possible that he killed the men himself and then maybe killed himself, hence why his coat was left behind, or perhaps one of the men died and a fight broke out and MacArthur killed one of the men and maybe the other guy dragged him over with him, right? There, there's a lot of people are saying maybe MacArthur was the cause of all of this

because he was the guy from the mainland who was there to replace the dude who was sick, right? And so who knows who knows what would have happened, but perhaps he's the cause of it. Another thing, another theory that I love is that maybe they all just went insane. Yeah. They all went crazy. And the reasoning behind it is first off, the storm makes no sense. The way they're describing the people acting makes no sense.

And lighthouse keepers did go crazy. And one of the reasons they went crazy is literally at the time, the light of the lighthouse sat and floated upon Mercury. Oh no. And so they would be around Mercury all the time and they would slowly poison themselves with Mercury. So if you go in there and you tend the light, you deal with Mercury? Yes.

That's what, that's what the light floats upon. Is that, is that like that mad hatter's kind of, yeah. I wonder if that's a thing. I wonder if there's like a paper on like lighthouse keepers going crazy because of Mercury. I guarantee there is. There has to be because it is, it was a well-known fact that lighthouse, most lighthouse keepers who were lighthouse keepers for a long period of time went loony, right? They would, and if you saw the lighthouse, one of the plot lines in the lighthouse is

they were just drink the fuel for the lighthouse. What? Whoa, what? Did you see them? You watched the movie. Yeah. When they would take the drums of like literal fuel, fuel for the lighthouse and then drink it in the movie.

Yeah. Do they do that? Is there, is there like actual context for that? Well, that's the thing is in the movie, it's just a movie. Well, in the movie, there's like Cthulhu elements and like, is it real? Is it not real? Right, right. Well, this, this, I mean, Mercury is along those lines, right?

If you're out there for a long time, imagine if you are out at sea for nine months and then the people coming to get you don't show up on time and you're out of supplies and you have nothing to drink and you're like, effort, I'm going to drink this moonshine shit we just made. It can mess you up and that they were stuck there through that storm on the 17th that occurred. So maybe they were just like, okay, and this is who knows who knows what could happen. But another theory is they possibly went insane because the writings make no sense. It seems insane to everyone that, you know, even during all this, why would the lighthouse

been out on the 15th? Why would it be out? How long were they there? At this point, again, they were not there that long. MacArthur had just come out there a few weeks before the lighthouse was only an operation for one year. Was it well known at the time that lighthouse workers tend to go crazy then? Or was that something that was kind of ignored or buried, I wonder?

I imagine because they were actively working with Mercury at the time, it probably wasn't known to everyone that it was bad. The only other, maybe it was like a setup, somebody did kill him, but he wrote those things to just seem like everybody went nuts or something. I mean, yeah, but if you look at where this lighthouse actually is, if you pull up a picture of Scotland. Yeah, yeah, no, it's the fucking nowhere. Like, what?

Where is he going to go? Yeah, where the fuck did he go? And if he killed himself, why even do it? I don't know. Then they could look into the went crazy sphere. Again, another theory is that they were taken by the Los Bearden, the Loose Bearden, which again are basically Northern Pygmies. They were said maybe to have been taken to the land of the fairies.

Who knows? Others say pirates did it. Pirates like all these other things, pirates are always included in the theories that, you know, the Mary Celeste or all these other ships. Were there pirates? Like how do you get a pirate onto a lighthouse? Why would there be pirates in the North Atlantic? Yeah, like the worst pirate location.

Why are they hitting a lighthouse? Although it was waters, I could see it. Although it was a main trade route. That's true. Sure. But why hit a lighthouse? Maybe they saw them do something. Maybe they witnessed something.

Maybe trying to turn off the lighthouse so that they could then make a shipwreck. Oh, pirate quietly. Oh, yeah. Sail, sail silently without light. So had the had the light been tended to the night of, was it ready to go? Because again, the only information we have is that the men said there was a crazy storm. Yeah. The 13th, 14th, the 12th, 13th, 14th, and on the 15th, it was a calm day.

And the ship from America passed by on the 15th and said there was no light. Reported no light. Reported no light. Like it, we're all pretty sure that that actually happened on the 15th. Yes. The ship would have known. We're sure the ship would have known there was no light on the 15th. Even if the men at the lighthouse didn't know what day it was, that doesn't matter because

the 15th, there was no light. So the, yeah, that's what I'm saying. So then disappearing or dying on the 17th is like an improbable. Because they would have at least during the 15th on the all clear day, yeah, got gone out and maintained the light. Which goes back to that last entry where he's saying God is over all that people are saying, well, maybe that's a cryptic message that like they've gone cuckoo crazy related to the church that was built on this island that is possibly curse.

That fucking reminds me of this like Edgar Allen Poe thing. Did you ever study Edgar Allen Poe? Sure. A little bit. The story that was like his last story, it's like kind of like a romantic thing. It's like not done, or maybe it is done. Like we talked about, I remember talking about in class, like maybe it is done and he's like a genius, but it's like the story is a log.

And I think this is probably from before 1900 because I'm pretty sure that he died before that. But I think I look at it right now, it's been a minute, but he has a story called the lighthouse. And in that story, it's like, yeah, he died in 1849. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So this is could not be inspired by that.

But basically he, it's like a guy showing up and he's like, you know what, this could be pretty cool. I'm going to hang out and like right with my dog in this lighthouse. And you know, I'm hearing some weird things in the walls, but that's probably just some dumb bullshit. And I'm just a little worried because this, it doesn't seem that sturdy. And then the next day he's like, oh, not too bad today. And then the next day he's like, yeah, you know, it's chill, but yeah, it's a weird place.

And then it's like next day, no entry. And that's this. And that's all there is of the story. Oh yeah. That is, so that is interesting if that's like done on purpose because that's kind of a cool way to end it. Yeah. Like I don't know if it's like a little funny story or what, but I always think about that

story, like when I think of the movie, the lighthouse and they aren't, I guess they aren't that connected, but like in terms of what happens. Yeah. But like this story that you just told, I am positive that whoever wrote this movie, the witch guy, I'm sure that I'm sure that that was inspired by this. I agree. Yeah. That's why it inspired me to be like, we got to talk about this.

That movie is super cool, by the way. If you haven't had a chance to go see it, like if you like movies, especially if you like the way movies are made and you, and you have like an understanding of the language of film over the years, the lighthouse is an amazing, amazing, amazing movie. Let me just, here's all I'll say, when I saw it, I saw it with three friends. One brought his girlfriend and the other was there with me to see it specifically just to see this movie. When we sat down, the theater attendant guy walked up specifically to us and said, are

you guys in the right theater? Cause this is like a really dark movie and we're like, what do you mean? He's like, it's dark. It is, it might be a little upsetting and we were like, no, we're definitely here to see this movie. He's like, okay. We're the only people in theater at the time. It's wild.

And so we leave, he leaves and then we watch the movie after we leave, when it's done, our one friend who brought his girlfriend, the two of them were like, I hated that movie. It sucked. My other friend and I, we were just like, yeah, I mean, it was all right. And when they left, we looked at each other and were like, I think I love this movie. It's that, it's that kind of movie. Some of your friends are going to hate it and some of you are going to be like, oh my God, that it's, it's very divisive and wild and crazy and not your normal film.

It's a movie like, I don't know how to describe it. It's like an art film, basically. It's like, it's like, it's like a movie, like a racer head or something like that. Like if you've ever seen a movie like that where it's like, you're not even You're not even sure, you're not even sure exactly what's happening all the time. And it's something that like, if you, if you went to breakfast with the person the next day who you saw it with, you could talk about it for like some time and like come up with some different theories about what it's a horror movie.

Right. Like loosely, loosely in that it's like fucked up because I was going to say, could you cause like an art horror movie I could think of was like Suspiria. Would it be like similar to that? Like could you compare it to that? It's less, it's less linear than that. It's, it's not like, it's not like they go crazy and one guy kills the other one. I mean, gotcha. Gotcha.

It's not, it's not so it is a movie that literally the ending is an analogy. And some would say a literal recreation of a famous painting slash story. Some of the last scene, like some of the image in the part where he's like, yaw, you're like, yes, the light, the light, yeah. The Willem Dafoe like, well, I know exactly what you were talking about. When that happened, I was like, what the hell? After it was over, I turned to the people with me. I was like, what was that scene about?

And they were like, what scene? Wait, what do you mean? I was like, did that not happen? Am I crazy? Oh, even I thought I was going crazy. I'm glad you talked about it because that scene sticks with me to this very day. Cause they don't know what it meant and the scene after it, where he's just like, it's like, there's, there's so much, the last 20 minutes, that movie up until

then it is like brilliant acting, brilliant. Everything Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, when they, the scene where he's like, hark is one of the best scenes in a movie period. It's so good. Such a different movie, probably like I, I saw, I bought it and like watched it at my house with Kelly, like completely blind, completely different movie than what you think it's going to be. But it's, but it's awesome.

Literally one of the character attributes Willem Dafoe has is he farts constantly. It's so funny. Oh yeah. It's so fucking relatable. It's so weird, but it's that kind of film that inspired this. And so just a few more things to wrap up really quickly. Some say it's Loch Ness, which I'm like, okay. The Loch Ness monster.

Yes. Yes. I mean, look, I'm always game and that's like, that doesn't even fucking make sense. It's a fresh one. Agreed. It's a lock. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. Well, one of the, one of the main theories about Loch Ness is that it isn't a lock. There's like an underground passage to the ocean or something. I see. And so who knows, but there's even a theory. This is my favorite one. Dr.

Who an episode from 1977 is about this and blames aliens. I could see it. I would, I would watch that. I bet you it's on that British streaming service. Um, I don't know why they would cause them to feel like there's a storm happening for three days before abducting them. Who knows? Well, it actually sounds similar to the, um, the car, the car.

No, no, the guys in the snow that everybody thinks it's animals. But like, it's kind of weird. Uh, the one that we did a long time ago, the pass. Yeah. Something passed. Oh, deal off pass. The deal off pass. Yeah.

Yeah. Like where they like before they, before they all got wiped out, it was like weird magneto storms, like messing up their heads and disorienting them. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing, this is the best part about all this, the one thing that is not a theory that there's no theory for anything Cthulhu E related. And it's perhaps because this took place before that.

And so no one thought about it at the time, but I think it's fascinating that there is no, Oh, well, this old God. Cause to me, based on the movie, the lighthouse, all that stuff, there's always that hint of like the oceans coming for you and there's something, but that's not no one's like, this is my theory. And it's that that's not a theory. Yeah. There's no, like, you killed a CEO.

Yes. There's no, there's no theory like that. Like I try and be coming for you. There's none of that. It is, most of it is, okay. It's, it's the board trying to be scientific and be like, look, these guys probably fell off or maybe one guy killed another guy or maybe there's a terrible accident and that's what most people believe, but none of the evidence, except

for the ropes, the ropes are the only evidence they found and they built the entire case of what happened off ropes. Everything else is complete. The clock makes no sense. The food, the coat. It is fucking dangerous that they're just like on the cliffs. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Oh yeah. Like that's, that's like crazy. I could totally see, but 150 feet. You'd have to be down everybody together down on a dock. Like if you are good at your job as a lighthouse person, you just know, like you can't let that go down. I guess, I guess if he went out there and saw that they were both about to be killed, he could maybe be convinced to go, but maybe, maybe he saw

the wave coming and he ran out as fast as he could, ignoring like maybe setting up dinner. He was sitting down. He saw the wave coming, knocked over the chair, ran out the door without his coat in the middle of winter again, insane. So he was like, I got to get down there, ran down to the dock to tell them what was up and then they all got taken out. Maybe that's what happened, but again, it doesn't explain the times of, it was

the 15th, the 15th was calm. A boat passed by on the 15th. It was like, everything was fine. It was a calm day. We were sailing and it was great. And still wouldn't be like, even if that's the case, I still wouldn't explain the, explain the insane shit they were writing about. Is it possible that the wind could have been so different up than down

like that? No way, right? Maybe they were still alive the 15th and maybe what happened was the lighthouse went out and they were busy trying to fix it. The 15th, which is why there's no log entry for the 15th or for the 16th. They're busy fixing it over the 16th and then the 17th, when there would have been a log entry, the storm started up and they were taken away. Maybe the only thing that people use as a, okay, let's get real and let's talk

about this is that this was a brand new lighthouse and no matter what experience these men had, weather conditions, location, training for all this, it would have been hard to do, right? It's a year old. This is a new area. Now people have said, yeah, but over a year at a lighthouse, going back and forth, you learn like 30 days, you can master certain things. Like you become a, you become a tune to things and you're like, all right,

man, and then it takes years and years and years to become like very good at it. But you can learn the basics of a thing in like 30 days, roughly. And so like if they're out there for six to nine weeks, they have to know the lighthouse, right? And like it was brand new. You don't know all the weather patterns because it was built a year before. And so you haven't seen all the weather for a whole year, but you're also in a lighthouse, you're in like a modern building.

You know what I mean? You're not like in like Abe Lincoln's log cabin. Like this is like a rock built high enough that there shouldn't be 200 foot waves in the North Atlantic, but here we are. And no one to this day has a clue what happened to them. No one will ever know. Uh, again, logic states, they probably got caught up in a storm and died in some terrible way, but evidence suggests that we will never truly know.

That's crazy to me. And that is such a romantic story. It really nowadays it is. Yeah, it's such a, in my mind, it's almost cliche, right? I almost want them to have gone crazy. And it's like horrible to say now, but I almost want them to have gone insane and like just like gotten a fight and that's what happened. But like something is simple.

Yeah. I mean, I got to go with, I got to go with the wave, but like, how many waves are we talking one big wave? And they all just like a freak accident. Like a freak accident. Right. It doesn't make, it doesn't make sense again. No, I imagine calm equates to like a flat ocean.

Right. If they, usually if you're a sailor, you would say like rough seas today, or you know, there's, there's a strong wind or something calm means like glass to me anywhere near the water though. They have to have gone down like to the water, right? Oh, there's stairs that lead off the side and then there's like a crane where they get stuff off the ships and then carry it up to this, um, you know, it's like 150 some it's, it's off the water.

So it's exactly like the movie, the lighthouse. Yes. There are elements of that movie that are straight up, like from this, which is why I was like, we got to talk about this lighthouse. This is crazy. It's wild too, because even then it still doesn't explain the big guy crying, being written down. Like does it, even the most logical of explanation does not explain.

Absolutely. There's things in their details that don't add up. And again, why is the clock stopped? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, why is the clock stopped? And it's possible that, that maybe the clock stopped while they were trying to fix the lighthouse and maybe they didn't pay attention to that.

And they weren't worried. There's all these things that maybe it could have been this and maybe it could have been this, but there's no, the, the, the let everything stops again with a very, you would say like, Oh, it seems like they're at peace. You know, God is overall, but it's also cryptic as hell. Yeah. It's creepy. It's cryptic as hell where it's the last thing they wrote is God is overall,

which is something like almost culty and weird and, and very strange. Again, for an island chain named after a saint who built a church on a cursed island that is known for possibly having fairies or whatever. It's crazy. Fuck. It's a lot. Well, I'm like, I'm like wikipediaing it now. There's no, yeah.

That's why it's absolutely, it, it, it, people just accepted. Okay. They got washed overboard, but the evidence suggests there's something else going on, but no one knows. No one will ever know. And it's been 120 years. So no one really, truly cares. It's just sort of a history mystery.

Now I was like, okay, the kitchen utensils were clean. So they had to have finished, it had to have been after dinner. But before dishes were gone, the kitchen utensils were clean. So we've been for dinner, right? Well, no, wait, if the meat was still on the thing that they didn't need it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what I mean is they washed up.

The food was out, but it wasn't, it wasn't like hot food. You know what I mean? It was just food was out as if they, and so probably what, what, according to the, according to the, that guy Moore, he says that the, it looked like somebody had just done the dishes, like maybe after they ate and son putting away the food. And then like, you know, whatever caused everybody to sprint out to the dock or whatever must have happened. Sure.

Which is, I think probably that theory that, okay, two of the guys went out to handle, maybe there was winds or something and went out to go handle that, uh, box that was sort of floating in the air, uh, tied by the rope. And then MacArthur ran out there and he was like, guys, something's coming. And then they all got killed. Oh, there's actually a movie based off of this. Interesting. What is it called?

It's called the vanishing and it stars, uh, Gerard Butler. Oh, well, there you go. Fascinating. Don't watch it. Jesse, I hope we get more histories, mysteries from you in the future. I got plenty, dude. Dude, I think that you talked about the other day, uh, the like balloon or whatever. Yeah.

That's an interesting story. I, I didn't read too far into it because I didn't want to ruin it, but that's on my list. It's on my list of things to do. I get so, see, here's the thing. History is filled with fascinating things that happened that have no answers because people just accepted the first answer that made sense because it was like 1842.

So we don't want to worry about it. You just write a song about it instead. And then that's the true story now. And so every single thing that happens in history, there are all these other things that like, if we just look, it's, it's, it's why people to this day are like, who was Jack the Ripper really? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That kind of thing because did you hear they like maybe kind of solved it? I've heard that so many times over the decades. Yeah, they keep saying that all the time. Yeah. I, but I heard recently that there's like a new theory out that, that's like, that's like pretty good. I don't know. I, I haven't looked into it.

I, maybe I should. Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe we will at some point. That's always like, like Jack's represent other evergreen, like theory crackpot of serial killers, but. Yeah. Yes. Thank you so much for caring and taking us on this ride.

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You really did. That was a crazy story though. I got like, I just like went down to rabbit hole. That's all that happened there. Yeah. And that's sometimes that's all you need, but you can go check that out. And if there's all kinds of other tiers with little rewards, like add free listening and whatnot.

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