The 4 Scottish Haunts in the Call the Midwife 2019 Christmas Special

2. The Vanished Lighthouse Keepers of Eilean Mor

In the Call the Midwife 2019 Christmas special, Nurse Val (Jennifer Kirby) and Nurse Lucille (Leonie Elliott), along with Dr Turner (Stephen McGann) and Fred Buckle (Cliff Parisi), are called to help the pregnant wife of a lightkeeper. In real life, the lighthouse is on Eilean Mor, one of the islands that are part of the Outer Hebrides’ Flannan Islands.

According to Historic UK, it’s named after an Irish bishop who later became a saint, St. Flannen, who built a chapel on the remote spot. Apparently, shepherds used to bring their sheep to graze on the island, but would never stay overnight because they feared “the spirits believed to haunt that remote spot.”

A lighthouse was eventually erected on the island’s highest point.

The Mystery Begins

On December 26, 1900, Captain James Harvey sailed for Eilean Mor with a replacement lightkeeper, Joseph Moore. Three men were supposed to be there.

However, as Historic UK put it:

Once at the lighthouse, Moore noticed something was immediately wrong; the door to the lighthouse was unlocked and in the entrance hall two of the three oil skinned coats were missing. Moore continued onto the kitchen area where he found half eaten food and an overturned chair, almost as if someone had jumped from their seat in a hurry. To add to this peculiar scene, the kitchen clock had also stopped.

What had happened to the men? Where did they go? Harvey and Moore couldn’t find them.

The Investigation

Robert Muirhead from the Northern Lighthouse Board Headquarters in Edinburgh came to investigate. He immediately noticed the last few days entries in the lighthouse’s logbook were odd, starting on December 12.

Thomas Marshall, the second assistant, had written about “severe winds” unlike he’d ever seen in 20 years and how James Ducat, the Principal Keeper, had been “very quiet,” and the third assistant, William McArthur, “had been crying.”

Muirhead found the comment about McArthur particularly perplexing because he knew the man, and that he was both a “seasoned mariner” and “known on the Scottish mainland as a tough brawler,” not a crybaby.

More entries about the severe weather lashing the island were recorded in the logbook on December 13 and 14 too. However, there had been calm weather, not storms, in the area on those days. Bad weather didn’t hit until December 17.

The last entry was on December 15. It was not only perplexing but chilling: “Storm ended, sea calm. God is over all.”

On the landing platform, Muirhead found only ropes that normally held a crate above the platform on a crane. The crate was gone.

Is that why all three men were gone, especially because it was against regulations for them all to leave their posts at the same time? And why had one left behind his oil-skinned coat, which was a must in the bitter cold Outer Hebrides December weather.

In his official report, Muirhead surmised that somehow the crate must have fallen and the men perished trying to retrieve it.

However, that didn’t satisfy many, who wondered why their bodies had never washed up then.

Haunting Winds

Since then, many have reported “strange voices in the wind, calling out the names of the three dead men.”

Some say “foreign invaders” took them, meaning either people of ill-repute from another country or perhaps even aliens from outer space. But no one has yet discovered what fate befell the three men.

Inspiration for a Movie?

The first thing I wondered when I learned about this story was, “Was The Lighthouse based on this incident?”

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Because the Robert Eggers film ends up so bizarre and ventures into some wild territory, I never suspected it might be inspired by a true story.

Apparently, it was, but not the vanished lightkeepers of Eilean Mor. Amazingly, there’s another story it’s based on, according to The Washington Post: “the 1801 tragedy of Smalls Lighthouse.”

But that’s a post for another time…

We’ve got two more Outer Hebrides haunts to jaunt to. Up next, the standing stones.