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- [00:00]
Lindsey
There are more ways than ever to listen to History Daily ad free. Listen with Wondry plus in the Wondery app as a member of Noiser plus at noiser.com or in Apple Podcasts. Or you can get all of History Daily plus other fantastic history podcasts@intohristory.com.
- [00:25]
John Henson
It's.
- [00:25]
Lindsey
St. Patrick's Day weekend, so on today's Saturday matinee, we're headed to Scotland. But that doesn't make any sense. And neither does the story we're exploring today the mysterious disappearance of the Ellen Moore lighthouse keepers. In 1900, three lighthouse keepers vanished without a trace from a brand new lighthouse off the Scottish coast. Speculation has been rife as to what happened to these three men, but we have an episode from the podcast Our Weird World to help us sort it out. I hope you enjoy While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow Our Weird World. We've put a link in the show notes to make it easy easy for you. History Daily is sponsored by Express Pros. Managing your workforce can be exhausting, and if you're tired of a costly and lengthy hiring process, simplify and speed up your recruitment with one connection the experts at Express Employment Professionals reduce time to hire, cut down on interviews and lower your recruitment costs. Visit ExpressPros.com today. Express is more efficient than hiring on your own. Check out ExpressPros.com to see how Express Employment professionals can take care of your hiring. History Daily is sponsored by Fast Growing Trees, the biggest online nursery in the US with thousands of different plants and over 2 million happy customers. One of the reasons is that Fast Growing Trees makes it so easy. Just yesterday, I ordered some shrubs for a fence line in our backyard. The website automatically set my growing region and gave me the option to filter for partial shade only so I could easily make an informed selection. Then, just days later, my plant arrived, packed well and in perfect condition for planting this weekend. And if I need help, I can get support from trained plant experts on call to help me plan our landscape, choose the right plants and learn how to care for them. This spring they have the best deals for your yard, up to half off on selected plants and other deals, and History Daily listeners get 15% off their first purchase when using the code HistoryDaily at checkout. That's an additional 15% off at FastGrowingTrees.com using the code HistoryDaily at checkout. FastGrowingTrees.com code History Daily Now's the perfect time to plant. Use Code History Daily to save Today offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply.
- [03:00]
John Henson
Welcome to our weird World. I am your host, John Henson, and a little bit different today. First of all, thank you to Lindsey and all the fine folks over at History Daily for inviting me to share today's story with you guys on your feed. Just a really great community that they have built over there and I'm really honored to be a part of it and to be able to share a story with you guys today. A little bit about Me I am based in Charlotte, North Carolina. I have been doing this podcast since around the Pandemic. This was a classic pandemic project and been going for over 250 episodes now. My format a little bit different than History Daily episodes every Monday, but again, in kind of a similar fashion, I'm trying to find forgotten strange, weird stories from history that have been overlooked and forgotten. I touch on a variety of topics as well, from the paranormal to serial killers. A lot of serial killers. We even have a month dedicated to serial killers. I call it Serial Killer September because I like alliteration and so all kinds of stuff. I've I have a very fast paced style about me, so if that's your thing, hopefully you'll enjoy this episode. But we're kind of around St. Patrick's Day and so while I don't have a necessarily specific story about St. Patrick's Day, our story does come from Scotland and some Irish influence here. So kind of tangential, maybe somewhat adjacent. I think it works. But I'm telling you the story today of the Ellen Moore Lighthouse mystery. Kind of a mix. Maybe there's some true crime involved, maybe there's some paranormal involved. It's a mystery, we don't know. So let's dive into it right now. Story time, story time, story time, story time. So a little bit of background. Sometime in the 6th century, Irish Bishop Saint Flannan built a chapel for the shepherds who regularly brought their sheep to graze on Ellen Moor, an uninhabited part of the Flannan Isles in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. These chain of very rocky islands, I think on the north or maybe just straight eastern side of Scotland. Although the shepherds often used the chapel, none of them actually ever spent the night on the island because there was this common fear of spirits that allegedly haunted the area. Now fast forward several centuries to the late 1800s when the Northern Lighthouse Board of Scotland commissioned a lighthouse for the island and then lit it for the first time on December 7, 1899. Over a year later, on December 26, 1900, the Hesperus A small transport ship, was traveling to the brand new lighthouse after several reports came in that it wasn't working properly. As Captain James Harvey reached the landing platform, he was surprised that no one came out of the lighthouse to greet them as was customary, even after blowing his horn and shooting a warning flare. Still no one came out of the lighthouse even though it was supposed to be fully staffed. Joseph Moore, who was with Captain Harvey and was preparing to be a replacement lighthouse keeper, got out of the ship, got onto the dinghy or the lifeboat or whatever they have, and rowed himself to shore, ascended the stairs up the rocky outcropping of the island that led to the lighthouse and walks up, tries to figure out what's going on. He soon realized that the door was unlocked and that two of the three oil skinned coats belonging to the other inhabitants of the house were missing. Moore then walked into the kitchen and found half eaten food and an overturned chair as if someone like was in the middle of lunch or dinner, but then hurriedly left the room. After searching the entire lighthouse and not finding anyone like this place is absolutely abandoned. Which is weird because it's an island. Where are they going to go, right? So Moore goes back down to the ship to Captain Harvey to report everything that he found. The crew, then on the rest of the boat decided to go back and search the entire island, but no sign of anyone was ever found.
- [07:54]
Lindsey
History Daily is sponsored by Indeed. Bill Gates published a book back in 1999 titled Business at the Speed of Thought. 25 years later and the speed of business has only increased and that includes hiring. You can't sit around waiting for paper resumes to filter in anymore. You need to find quality candidates right now. Because opportunity waits for no one. Which is why when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. How fast is Indeed in the minute? I've been talking to you. 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed data worldwide. Plus with Indeed sponsored jobs. There are no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts, and you only pay for results. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. Get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com OnThisDay just go to Indeed.com OnThisDay right now and support the show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com on this day, terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [09:01]
John Henson
Mom, I need to lay low for a few days.
- [09:02]
Unknown
Lay low? What's going on?
- [09:04]
John Henson
I Only paid for this Hyundai Tucson. Christopher Allen Lynch. Deal's so right, it almost feels wrong. Get the car or SUV you want at the Hyundai Getaway Sales Event. Get 0.99% APR for 60 months or 7500 EV bonus on the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Visit your local Hyundai dealer today. Offers end March 31. Call 562-314-4603 for details. After returning to the Hesperus, Harvey sent a telegram to mainland Scotland and left all four of his crewmen on the island to maintain the lighthouse until more help could arrive. A few days later, Robert Muirhead, the board superintendent of lighthouse keepers, investigated the lighthouse for himself. All right, he gets this report. He's like, oh, yeah, that's not right. Terrible accent. Get used to it. So he goes to the lighthouse, he goes to Ellen Moore himself to investigate. First thing he looks at is the keeper's log, and inside it he found a series of very unusual entries beginning on December 12th. It started with second assistant Thomas Marshall noting severe winds and that the principal keeper, James Ducat, had been very quiet. He also noted that third assistant William MacArthur had been crying, which was especially strange since MacArthur was a known brawler and an experienced mariner. So, like, this is like the toughest of the tough dudes, right? Like, why would he be crying in a lighthouse unless there's something crazy going on? Maybe it's these very nondescript, anonymous spirits that have long haunted this island. We don't know. The next Day's log for December 13 noted that a storm had been raging for several days and it was still going on, and that the men had been praying throughout the night. Again, Muirhead, the superintendent who's investigating, he found that very strange because the Ellen Moore Lighthouse was only a year old. It was state of the art for whatever state of the art was in 1900 and stood 150ft above sea level. So, like, even if the waves were fierce and the. And the ocean was angry and all that, like, they were protected from all that. So maybe the gusty winds could have freaked them out a little bit. But again, these are like hardened sailors and bar fighters. Like, these are tough dudes. And so it would. It would take a lot for them to get spooked and scared. Now, to make this keepers log even stranger, there weren't actually any reported storms in the area at the time. The only storm noted in meteorological reports from other logs around Scotland occurred on December 17, two days after the final entry in the eland in the Ellen Moore lighthouse log, which claimed Quote, storm ended, sea calm, God is over all. So Muirhead, the investigator, he's really confused by this. He also wondered why all three lighthouse keepers had left their post despite clear rules prohibiting them from doing so, and why one of them had gone out in the middle of winter without a coat. Because, remember, two or a couple of those oilskin coats were missing. After investigating the other landing platform on the island. So there were at least two. So the first one is where the Hesperus landed, but there was apparently another one, I guess, maybe on the other side, on the opposite side. They investigated that landing platform, and Muirhead noted several ropes that were normally held in a crate above the platform were instead strewn all over the rocks below. He also noticed that the railings were bent. The iron railway that transported goods from ships up to the lighthouse, to make it easy for him, that had been ripped out of the concrete and a rock, a boulder really weighing more than one ton, had been misplaced or displaced. In his final report, Muirhead really didn't know what had happened, but he surmised that the crate holding these ropes had broken and that the three lighthouse keepers had gone down to retrieve the ropes, had been hit by a massive wave, and just had all been swept out to sea. And that's great. That logic tracks. You know, I'm generally on board with that. But despite that theory, and this is why people have kind of blown this up, none of the bodies ever washed ashore. Critics were also confused by the one keeper who left his coat and how all three of these men, who were allegedly very experienced mariners, could have all been caught by surprise by a wave, especially since all reports from nearby islands noted very calm seas during those days. You know, between, you know, December, I guess it would have been like, 13th when the last keeper's log at Eleanor was done. And then the storm on December 17th. Right. So it's four days of calm seas. Couldn't have possibly happened. So instead, people who probably had way too much time on their hands and not enough real problems in their life began believing a variety of obviously very plausible theories. You guys, here were some of them. They were captured by foreign invaders. They had arranged for a ship to come and take them away so they could fake their own deaths and start new lives. A sea monster had attacked them because, you know, Loch Ness monster is not just for Loch Ness. They had been abducted by aliens or a ghost ship. The phantom of the seven hunters had arrived on the island and killed them.
- [14:43]
Unknown
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- [15:35]
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- [16:17]
John Henson
Since this incident, subsequent lighthouse keepers have reported hearing strange voices with the wind, oftentimes calling out the names of the three keepers who vanished from the lighthouse. Conversely, it was later discovered that the logbooks allegedly seen by Muirhead were completely fictitious and added to this story several years later. So remember all that time I just now wasted going through the various details of oh, the direct quote of, you know, storm is calm, God is over all, blah blah blah. You know, the one dude crying or that they were praying throughout the night. None of that was real. None of it. Some dork added it to the story several years later and then everybody like you probably just did believed it, didn't fact check it whatsoever and let this legend grow. Whether there were actually any entries mysterious or explainable in the Ellen Moore Lighthouse Logbook is actually unknown. We don't know for sure what their logbook actually said. Today, most people believe that kind of what happened was that one guy got washed out to sea and then the others heard the emergency happen. That would kind of explain why the half eaten food was left on the table and it looked like people rushed out. So maybe the rest of Them then rushed out to try to save the one guy who got swept out, and they all drowned trying to save him. Alternatively, they believe that maybe a fight broke out among all of them along the cliff edge, and then all three just beat each other up and fell off the side to their deaths. Or it was probably a sea monster. All done. All right. There you go. The Ellen Moore lighthouse mystery. Still. I mean, still technically a mystery, if only because people in subsequent years added to the story and made what really happened almost impossible to actually figure out now. But that story in the books, that's how I like to close story time. And I say that very specifically because the Ellen Moore lighthouse mystery is literally in the books. I get these stories, obviously, from a ton of research, but then I write books. I have a series called the 100 stories series. There are 10 editions of the lesser known history of humanity and then some other several spin offs with, like, paranormal serial killer editions. I do have two versions of the North Carolina history, just because that's where I'm based. And so if you prefer to also read your history instead of just consuming it audibly, I guess that would be the way to say it. But if you are. If you do, like, I have several books that I have published. They are. You can find them on my website. John Henson writes.com and this story is in the third edition of the 100 Stories Paranormal Edition. So the spin off of that. The other thing I like to do on my show is to kind of quickly recap with a segment called what did we learn? What did we Learn? Number one, Ellen Moore. This Rocky. A little island on the Hebrides of Scotland. And I killed those pronunciations. All right? Here's the thing about me that you guys don't know, but my. My crowd does. I don't. I don't do, like a ton of work on the finer details. All right? I feel like, Lindsay, the people over here at History daily, they really. They really put in the extra work. All right? I'm just here to tell you guys stories, all right? I make sure that the details of the stories are correct, but maybe if I mispronounce a place or a name, that'll slip through every now and then. And, you know, some people can't handle that. And that's okay. I get it. I'm not everybody's cup of tea. I'm not even my own cup of tea a lot of the time, you guys. All right? But it is what it is. Number two, three lighthouse keepers on this island mysteriously just disappeared and because people added to the story over time. It just. We don't know. We have no idea what actually happened. We don't know if there was actually anything in the keeper's log for the Eleanor Lighthouse. And so this story will likely forever remain a mystery. And then number three, people had some really dumb ideas about what happened. All right? Some people thought aliens abducted them. Some people thought a ghost ship came and killed them, because apparently there's just ghost ships sailing around Scotland. I didn't know that. Or again, I mean, look, you think it's a joke, but it's sea monsters, guys. Clearly. What did we learn? So that does it. Thank you so much for checking out this episode. I really do hope you enjoyed it. Hope you learned something new. If this is something that you're interested in, new episodes drop every Monday so you can listen to history daily first and then flip on over and check out whatever nonsense I'm ranting and screaming about after that. We're on all the major podcast platforms and you can check out john hensonwrites.com for all of the other information about me, the books that I've published, and anything else you want to know about me. If you're curious, I don't know why you would be, but hey, I'm flattered. So that's it. Thank you so much for listening. I like to tell my audience to keep telling all their friends about the show. Growing it through word of mouth. It's the best way to do it and to also keep it.
- [23:05]
Unknown
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- [23:35]
Lindsey
Com.