Hello everybody and welcome to the Paranormal Minds of JST.
My name is Tommy and I am joined by my co-host Josh and Shane.
Today we are going to be talking about the mystery of the Flannan Isles Lighthouse.
In 1900 the lighthouse was being manned by two people and then a backup essentially.
They were all on the islands. The men's names were James Ducat, Thomas Marshall, and Donald MacArthur.
They had a rotating fourth man who pretty much spent time on the shore.
Around December 18th of 1900, well it was actually the 15th of December, a steamer coming from Pennsylvania
noted that the lighthouse light was not working in bad weather.
They took note of it. When they got to the nearest port they showed them like hey you know we noted that this lighthouse light wasn't working and was bad foggy weather.
That was on the 18th, so like three days later.
Well when they went to go look at it, it was a bunch of bad weather so they couldn't go look at it.
They had to wait until the 20th. Well they were going to go on the 20th. They waited until the 26th, my bad.
When they got there, just a couple of people went on shore and they found that they couldn't find anybody.
They found that the flag staff had no flag.
All the usual provision boxes had been left on the landing stage for restocking and more ominous.
None of the lighthouse keepers were there to welcome them ashore.
They attempted to reach them by blowing the ship's whistle, firing a flare, but it was unsuccessful.
They sent the relief keeper, who was Joseph Moore, to on shore to see if he can't find them, you know, see what happened.
They found the entrance gate to the compound and the main door both closed.
The beds unmade and the clock stopped.
Returning to the landing stage with his grim news, he then went back to the lighthouse with one of the second mates from the ship.
Further search revealed that the lamps had been cleaned and refilled.
A set of oil skins was found, suggesting that one of the keepers had left the lighthouse without them.
There was no sign of any of the keepers neither inside the lighthouse nor anywhere on the island.
They scoured the place, topping down and couldn't find anything, so they just up and vanished.
There is a speculation, but some people say it's false.
There was a journal said to have been found and in it they believe that Marshall said that on the 12th of December that there were severe winds,
the likes of which have never been seen or he has never seen in 20 years.
He also is said to have reported that Duquesne had been very quiet and Donald MacArthur had been crying.
MacArthur was a veteran mariner with a reputation of brawling and thus it would be strange for him to be crying in response to a storm.
Log entries on the 13th of December were said to have stated that the storm was still raging and that all three men had been praying.
This was also puzzling as the three men were experienced lighthouse keepers who knew they were in a secure structure.
As far as they know they just up and vanished.
They were sick of that job, that's all it was.
I'd have got up and left too.
Now you know what it really is, I see here that Duquesne and MacArthur were both married with children, that's why they took off.
They just got tired of the kids.
Yeah, fuck those kids.
They kind of had four of them, man, I can't imagine.
Geez.
He's competing with me over here.
I don't know, some people are saying they believe that they were trying to load something with a crane.
All three of them just fell into water and drowned.
Yeah, because it wasn't supposed to be bad storms not too long before the other people showed up.
Yeah, like six days before, they had to change their plans to go out there because of storms.
And there's no log like we did this this day, we put fuel in this day like nothing.
I think they found a log but I don't think anybody said anything about it.
Because apparently this journal and this log book, okay, so it was their log book but people were like,
oh, there's just a bunch of unusual log book entries that say all of this.
So and apparently that's been determined like those are made up, they're just fictional.
But it doesn't say anything else like what was in the log book.
The journal was fictional. Is that what you were saying?
Essentially, yeah, it was fictional. Some people say it was log book, some people say a journal.
But according to this, it's the log book.
I blame Shane.
Yep, I can't turn down sexy lighthouse men.
I understand, I understand completely.
And reason, 4,397, why we haven't started this.
I don't know, I could have been aliens.
Look, it was aliens in the last one, we can't go around that route this time.
Yeah.
Listen to alien mermaids if I remember.
See, look, they're everywhere, man.
I'm starting to notice a pattern here with your sea bound antics.
Look, I think you just want mermaid aliens to be real.
Deny that I might want that.
I mean, you could go the Christopher Columbus route just gets you a manatee.
Oh, man.
God.
Lay on me baby.
I'm thinking like the mermaid's in hook, okay.
But anyways, I don't know.
I mean, there's there's a what if it was pirates?
Maybe but when they have taken what goods were there?
There's no mention of like a lifeboat or anything or another type of boat from my understanding,
I guess they were just shipped over to them over to the island,
dropped off left there for however long that they were supposed to be there.
How long were they supposed to be there?
I think they had a rotation of a week, maybe two.
I saw I've heard this story before.
Shane, what do you think?
I'm sure I'm reading, pulling up a few different articles,
just trying to get a feel for these guys.
I don't know.
I see a picture of them.
They look like some tough dudes to be honest.
Like I don't, I guess a whole crew of pirates could have taken them,
but it would have been a struggle.
Yeah.
This one dude, Thomas Marshall is like eight foot tall.
I mean, I'm basing that on nothing except.
Just saw a picture and was like, yeah, he looks eight foot tall.
And they all have those very pronounced mustaches, just mustaches, no beards.
Well, it was 1900s, you know.
Yeah.
Were they the only three that went missing?
Yeah, so far.
I don't see anything else as far as people missing.
What if it's all just a tale to a story to tell?
That's a huge possibility.
You know, things like that become real after a while, you know.
Yeah.
So clocks, I see, you know, or I think you mentioned earlier about the clocks on the walls
not working.
Now this is before like batteries, right?
These would have been like wind up clocks.
Yeah, I'm guessing like, you know, like those old, I don't want to say grandfather,
but grandfather style.
All right.
Where you had to swing the pendulum every now and then, you know, keep it wind up.
I'm guessing that's what it is.
Okay.
So it could have just timed out like no one wound it in a few days.
Yeah, I don't know how long do they pendulum clocks so much?
How long do they normally last?
They have to be wound up every day, I think, don't they?
Or at least then I thought.
Yeah, I do not have any clock knowledge.
I felt you wound them and they lasted for 100 years.
I can't say nothing.
I used to think that too.
But I just, I really thought it was like, you know, you wind a clock once a day.
Most clocks are set to run every eight days.
Oh, so there's really no way to tell when it stopped though.
I mean, did it stop like the day before they got there?
Well, how if we can figure out rotations, maybe that'll give us some kind of idea,
you know, roughly, maybe the, maybe the fresh crew has to always rotate the clock, you know.
Okay.
So even if we can explain the clock though, the chairs in the kitchen were flipped upside down.
So why, so if they just didn't wind the clock, why would they flip their chairs upside down?
Yeah, that to me screams like either somebody came in that they didn't know was coming
or it was like, let me get the hell out of here.
Something's happening outside.
Now there was a mystery that happened.
It was in Canada.
I believe it was Canada where three guys went like, they went up through the woods
and they were supposed to take care of this house and do some hunting.
And they were supposed to take care of these foxes.
Well, after about like two weeks or so, like nobody heard from them,
went to go find them.
The food was prepared and stuff like that.
Like the food was moldy.
It was left out all the stuff.
The foxes were dead that they were supposed to take care of.
Just do that like pet foxes.
That means they were, they were gone for a while.
Yeah.
Like they, they died of starvation.
I think it was.
They found, I think it was two of the bodies or all three of them,
but all of them had blunt force trauma to the head or one did.
I heard it on one of those YouTube mystery channels.
One of the guys went batshit and saying or something and killed the other ones.
Maybe that's what happened.
Yeah, maybe.
So this says that December 15th was things were not right.
I'm assuming that's going to be the last log for these people.
They on the 26th, the crew and onshore relief keeper finally reached the lighthouse.
But that clashes with the 18th.
Maybe he didn't actually get on land.
The, the guy that found it three days after the 15th on the 18th.
I don't think he actually got off the boat.
From under like that was a ship that saw it on the 15th.
They were coming.
They were approaching by on their way and from Philadelphia to Leith.
Well, this is, yeah, this is the log on the 15th from the, from the streamer,
I guess, blasting the islands.
Yeah.
Yeah, we were right.
You're right.
Okay.
So I'm curious about the fact that the eight days, well, maybe the clock stopped on that day.
Spooky.
Maybe they pissed off a water spirit around Scotland.
There's a lot of spirits that deal with water in Gaelic war.
Maybe they did.
Is there any history on the actual islands where it was built?
Because for this to happen just one year after they built the lighthouse is also a little strange.
That is.
I didn't think about that.
Maybe there was something already on on the island that didn't want them there.
Maybe.
There's an each year.
Year change.
It's a literally translates to water horse.
It's a water spirit in Scotland.
Folk Ward known in Ireland at Shevel Ostrich.
True.
In the Isle of Man, on the Isle of Man.
It usually takes the form of a horse and is similar to the Kelpie, but is far more vicious.
I mean, if we want to go that route, they were killed by a water horse.
It shows a picture if you go to the Wikipedia page or I'm standing up on two ways.
Is it part of the Lewis Isles?
Is that what that is?
Yeah.
West of the Isle of Lewis.
Named from St. Flannan.
He was an Irish preacher.
Maybe he did something.
He just tainted the whole land.
Hey, this this Flannan dude, his feast day, you know, the saints have their feast days.
His feast day is December 18th.
Really?
Yeah.
Hmm.
He was a cannibal.
That is, that is, that is weird.
Is that one of the conspiracies?
I think we might be on to something.
Cannibal group.
All I can say is that island's like dead in the middle of nowhere.
I didn't even look it up.
Like, you know how you think of a lighthouse just being,
uh, like close to like a shoreline or something?
You know, this sucker's like on an island in the middle of the ocean.
Oh, it's out there too.
What is that?
That's a good, that's that says, what 60 miles?
That is out there.
I mean, that that's far enough away.
I would say that what if there was bad weather?
Like just over that island and none of it hit the main land, you know?
Not a far stretch being that far apart.
Yeah.
I mean, you look at it, you can get bad weather down where you're at and we just
like, oh, it's nice and sunny up here.
You know, and in 1900, I don't think they had like the sophisticated weather that we had
or weather radar stuff that we have now.
So I wouldn't think so.
That could be the possibility, like hit by some crazy shit.
Well, that's no fun.
What, that they got hit by some like bad weather?
Yeah, just a storm.
I was hoping, you know, we'd uncover that they were ripped apart by the wildlife or something.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I kind of, I kind of like the cannibalistic priest idea.
I mean, famine, there was a lot of that going on, you know, you never know.
Well, how long, how long has the had the priest been dead?
Hey, let's see.
Saint Flannan.
Born.
I don't have a real, okay, died seventh to eighth century.
That's pretty vague.
Yeah, his ghost totally came back and ate him.
This is my island.
Oh shit, but he's from a place called Munster, kingdom of Munster.
I've never, I've never heard of that.
Where is this?
It's it's in Ireland, the bottom part of Ireland.
Oh, so it's not like, you know, monsters.
No, it's, it's like it's pronounced like the cheese.
Transylvania.
Like Moester cheese, it's Moester.
Like there's something called Munster cheese.
I've never heard of that.
You've never heard of that?
Google that.
That's a good cheese.
It's a good cheese.
Munster cheese.
Apparently I'm just under a rock.
I don't know how clocks work.
I don't know what kind of cheese is out there.
Okay, so Munster Ireland is pretty much, it makes up like bottom half of Ireland, essentially.
It's one of the presidents of Ireland in the south of Ireland.
Early Ireland, the kingdom of Munster was one of the kingdoms of Gaelic Ireland rule
by a king of over kings.
That makes no sense.
Following the Norman invasion of Ireland.
So, time to just slamming words together.
I apparently am.
I like that title though.
I'm the king of over kings.
What if one guy was just like, I'm sick of all of y'all.
And he just like kills both of them and kills himself or runs away.
I mean, that's the theory right there.
I don't know about the runner waypoint.
I mean, maybe he did.
Maybe he stowed a boat.
Maybe.
How long are they there for?
That's the only thing we haven't found.
I was about to ask the same thing because that would really, I mean,
if they were there for six months at a time, man, they could have went nuts and just,
you know, done all this themselves.
Yeah, right?
Right.
That would be a very likely story.
I love you guys, but I don't know about being trapped on an island with just rabbits
in a lighthouse with you guys for that long.
We'd have to be in the woods where we can just walk the fuck away from each other.
Right.
Sick of looking at y'all.
Fuck it. I'm going over here.
You know, we couldn't do that here.
This whole place is what, like 45 acres.
So I'm going to the other side.
Don't come over here.
I wanted to be over there.
Damn it.
I need to know how long they were supposed to be on there.
Not saying what the rotation was like if they were supposed to be there for like
a month or whatever.
I wonder why he wrote bad storms all of these days.
And then there wasn't actually supposed to be anything on them.
But like you said, and like we know, they wouldn't have known any different,
but especially being that far apart.
But well, I mean, supposedly like what was written down was fake is what they're saying.
But that doesn't mean anything because, you know, governments cover everything up.
Oh, hey, I found, I found the rotation.
Okay.
It was made up of four men, three stayed at the lighthouse for six week at a time.
So they were there six weeks at a time.
And one replacement would rotate with them one at a time for two weeks during that six week period.
Okay.
So.
So they'd see each other for basically, well, I don't know.
I guess you could see the same person for a while.
I had six weeks.
I mean, two weeks, I guess.
Maybe two weeks ain't bad.
Well, yeah.
And they just got there on December 7th.
So I mean, that, yeah, that doesn't seem long enough to do anything drastic.
Here's a proposal based on the psychology of the keepers.
I don't know how you have a psychology of dead people, but okay.
Allegedly, MacArthur was a volatile character.
This may have led to a fight breaking out near the cliff edge by the West landing and
caused all three men to fall to their deaths.
Another theory is that one of the men went insane, murdered the other two through their
bodies into the sea and then jumped in to his own death.
I don't know because of the, you know, the, like you said, the chairs being flipped over.
Yeah.
I mean, why fight inside the lighthouse and then just fight all the way out to the cliff and fall off?
Maybe a fight broke out.
One of the guys walked out, whoever chased them MacArthur apparently got into it.
One of the other guys tried to stop it and they all tumbled.
And the insane thing is, yeah, I'm ashamed on that.
I mean, that's too short of a period for people to like lose their minds.
And we're talking about like the 1900s.
So it's not like today where we have TV cell phones and all that stuff when we get bored very easily.
Like I feel like they would have took like books or news paper, whatever.
I mean, what about some kind of poisoning again?
You know, like, uh, like lead poisoning or something like that?
Like you kind of was with the Mary Celeste, you know, I don't know if the time differences.
I don't know what the time difference is between these two.
I mean, that's, that's not, uh, you know, improbable.
I mean, lead was in paint up until what the seventies.
Maybe they were, they were seeing ghosts.
Possibility.
Shane, I can only assume that you thought this man was eight foot tall because of his giant hand.
Why does his hand look this proportional?
That's why I sent that over.
Yeah. So MacArthur is the guy on the way to the left.
The first picture I saw cut out this dude on the end, right?
So this is MacArthur, Marshall and Ducat going from left to right.
This dude all the way to the right is someone named Superintendent Robert Merhead.
I think he did.
He did.
Now, now that I see him, look, yeah.
I still haven't seen no pictures.
What the hell?
Look at, look at discord.
Oh, what's in discord?
Oh, like his hand.
Something looks wrong with his hand.
His fingers are very straight.
He's not human, man.
He set him up.
Well, the guy next to him, his hand looks pretty big too.
Jesus.
That does look a little weird.
They all look weird.
Why is he leaning forward in his hat?
Like he's just like, I'm hungover.
He's smelling him.
He's going to eat him later.
That might be what happened.
Then he felt bad.
He was like, I ate my friends.
All right.
Mystery, mystery solved.
Where do we collect our medals?
Yeah, right?
Yeah, they would eat him.
He wasn't supposed to be there the whole time.
Yeah, I just were looking at all the wrong places.
Right?
Right.
Well, gents, I don't know what happened to him.
I do know that they ain't there no more.
They are not.
They did.
And like I said, it's probably just a elaborate story.
That's what I'm going with, elaborate story.
For all we know, they probably ate him.
For all we know, they probably did find the bodies.
And they were like, oh, we're going to bury him here
because they hated their wives and kids.
We had to be in so long ago, if the bodies washed up on shore,
even if it was a year later, would they have really been able
to recognize them or do anything to determine who they were?
Probably not.
I mean, the fact that a lot of fish and crabs.
All right.
I mean, there's a possibility of giant squids too in that area.
We looked that up in the last episode.
Yes, we did.
Reach up out the water and snatch them off the shore.
I don't know.
I feel like the water would be pretty shallow right there.
Probably.
But I mean, who's to say they didn't like fall in?
And if they did drown, you know, a giant squid was like,
oh, free meal.
Let me eat that.
I mean, there's a possibility.
Probably not.
They probably just like, oh, dead body.
We'll just bury him in an unmarked grave somewhere.
Didn't even throw salt on them to make sure they won't come back.
Right.
You definitely don't want them zombies coming back.
Right.