Scotland's spooky unsolved mystery of the Eilean Mor lighthouse keepers who vanished

Sean Murphy & Alexander Smail
·3-min read
Eilean Mor lighthouse keepers
We will probably never know what happened to the lighthouse keepers on the tiny Scottish island -Credit:Contributed


One of Scotland's most fascinating mysteries that you might not have even heard of is the vanishing of the Eilean Mor lighthouse keepers.

For more than 120 years, historians have attempted to uncover how and why three workers at the lighthouse on the tiny Scottish island seemingly disappeared. To this day, people across Scotland are still trying to get to the bottom of it.

Journeying back in time to December 26, 1900, the mystery began when one Captain James Harvey made a bone-chilling discovery. The captain had journeyed to the uninhabited island in the Outer Hebrides to deliver supplies to the lighthouse keepers.

However, when Harvey arrived, there was nobody there to greet him. Before long, replacement keeper Joseph Moore was sent to investigate.

It was Moore that made the eerie discovery that the unlocked lighthouse had been totally abandoned. The three men who were supposed to be there had left without a trace.

A spine-tingling telegram was then sent to the Northern Lighthouse Board Headquarters in Edinburgh. It described a "dreadful accident" and reported that keepers Thomas Marshall, James Ducat, and Donald MacArthur had all "disappeared from the island".

The lighthouse on the remote Flannan Islands.
The lighthouse is situated in the Flannan Isles, a small island group in the Outer Hebrides -Credit:Marc Calhoun

The investigation

At this point, a proper investigation to locate the men was launched. A lighthouse log with entries hinting at a fierce storm and the keepers' declining mental wellbeing was soon uncovered.

The last entry in the log, dated December 15, noted the end of the storm and a calm sea. It concluded with the words "God is over all".

Robert Muirhead, who was in charge of the investigation, came to the conclusion that the men had been swept into the sea by a fierce wave while attending to a life buoy near the landing bay. Despite this, the strange circumstances surrounding their disappearance and the island's supposed cursed reputation led many to believe that something more sinister had happened.

The conspiracies

Ever since the lighthouse keepers' disappearance, there have been countless theories as to what could have happened. Among the most notable are that they were kidnapped by pirates, abducted by aliens, devoured by Eilean Mor's seabirds, or even killed by a gigantic sea monster.

Loch Ness Monster photo
There is something so unsettling about not knowing what happened on that fateful day -Credit:Peter Standing/CCBY-SA2.0

On the other hand, author John Love put forth a more grounded theory during a discussion in 2015 about the subject. Love, who wrote the book A Natural History Of Lighthouses, argued that there was no need to "invoke the sinister or the paranormal", and stated that the men were likely carried off into the ocean by strong currents.

Whatever happened to the three men that fateful day, it is unlikely we will ever know the true answer.

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