Terror in The Lighthouse
Horror Moments, Opera Edition
‘Horror Moments’ is a weekly series examining horror-inflected scenes and themes in unexpected places. The ‘moments’ are published weekly on Thursdays, and I share articles on the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more on Mondays. Catch up with the recent Kate Bush series here and the full back catalogue of horror moments (from Wallace & Gromit to Shakespeare) here. Don’t forget to subscribe!
Why are horror makers drawn to lighthouses, can you translate this terror to a horror opera, and what exactly happened to those real lighthouse men who disappeared from their posts in mysterious circumstances? We explore in this week’s horror moment.
When Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849 he left his final story ‘The Light-House’ unfinished. Set just off the coast of Norway, the tale unfolded in the form of diary entries written by one of the lighthouse keepers (who has a dog called Neptune!) Poe had got as far the third day when the protagonist starts to notice that the foundations of the lighthouse might be unstable — and then the story cuts off. We’ll never know exactly what ending he had in mind, it’s almost as tantalising as finding the last fragments of a real diary.
Genuine Mystery
Oddly enough, a bottle with a message from the nineteenth century was found in the walls of a Scottish lighthouse last November. It was 132 years old and was a record of the engineers who had installed a new type of light. Theirs was, thankfully, a happy tale but lighthouses keepers were not always so lucky.
In 1900 more than 50 years after Poe’s death, life mimicked art when a Scottish lighthouse crew on the Flannen Islands in the Outer Hebrides vanished without explanation. On 15th December, a steamer ship from America noted that the lighthouse was unexpectedly inoperative despite the poor weather conditions. When the ship arrived in Leith, the Northern Lighthouse Board sent a relief vessel to investigate, but the weather was so bad that it couldn’t get there until Boxing Day.
When the relief crew arrived, there was no sign of the three men who had been stationed there: James Ducat, Thomas Marshall and Donald McArthur. Everything was eerily silent. The investigators struggled to explain what had happened:
TELEGRAM FROM MASTER, LIGHTHOUSE TENDER,
"HESPERUS", REPORTING ACCIDENT AT FLANNAN ISLANDS LIGHTHOUSE26 December, 1900
A dreadful accident has happened at Flannans. The three Keepers, Ducat, 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 Moore, 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 Moore, MacDonald, Buoymaster and two Seamen on the island to keep the light burning until you make other arrangements…
Transcript from The Museum of Scottish Lighthouses here.
Stranger still, when a superintendent from the NLB board arrived, he was baffled that all three men had left the light unattended during whatever it was that had required their joint attention, breaking strict regulations.
Supernatural as well as natural explanations began to be put forward. It didn’t help that there was already a local legend about a ghost ship in the area. Furthermore, the extent of the damage to the west landing could, to a superstitious eye, look like the work of a sea monster. Rumours also circulated about the psychological state of the men in question and supposed log entries were said to have mentioned them going strangely quiet, crying, or erupting into violence for unclear reasons. Could three seasoned lighthouse keepers really have died simply because of a miscalculation? Could they have been in their right minds? In the 125 years since they went missing, we have come no closer to finding out the truth.
The Perfect Horror Setting?
The isolation of a lighthouse keeper’s work, stranded in a dangerous spot surrounded by jagged rocks and an unruly sea, has been rich imaginative fodder for horror makers ever since Poe. Robert Bloch, who wrote the novella upon which Psycho is based, had a go at finishing Poe’s story, and the 2018 film The Vanishing is based on the Flannan Islands case.
For a proper horror treatment of the theme, you can’t get much better than Robert Eggers’ 2019 masterpiece The Lighthouse. Set off the coast of Maine, this version builds on all the lighthouse mysteries that came before it in a far stranger, more allegorical way, weaving themes from Lovecraft and Greek mythology into an intense character study of two men (played by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) slowly going mad. Here, the wailing lighthouse itself is the ominous central presence that exerts a psychosexual gravitational pull on the two men, and the use of maritime jargon and folklore doesn’t so much set the scene as transcend it, taking on an abstracted philosophical quality like those moments in Moby Dick when part of a boat or a whale’s anatomy becomes a metaphor for a universal truth.
If nothing else watch the opening scene, a masterclass in menace and foreshadowing.
Opera at the Lighthouse
But this is horror moments opera edition and, guess what? When it comes to capturing the horror of the lighthouse, opera got there before these films. In 1980 Peter Maxwell Davies wrote both the music and the libretto for an opera called The Lighthouse. There are three singers on stage: a tenor, a baritone and a bass. We meet them first playing the three officers from the relief ship who describe how they discovered the empty island, but gradually we realise that they don’t seem to be telling the inquiry the full story. Their testimonies don’t align, and they seem uneasy about certain questions.
In the second half (subtitled ‘The Cry of the Beast’) the singers then switch roles and play the three lighthouse keepers: Arthur, Vlazes, and Sandy. We watch their interactions and bickering, each small tension amplified by the dramatic irony, our knowledge that something is going to bubble over, something is going to destroy these men.
The homoeroticism and sexual menace that Eggers laces through his film are found first in Davies’ version of the story. Likewise, it was he who first had the idea of playing up the mythological potential of the imagery hinted at in Poe’s original. One of the men starts to imagine that the foghorn is summoning a ‘Golden Calf,’ that idol of the Old Testament. In some productions, we are faced with the powerful gaze of the lighthouse, staring out at the audience and making a panopticon of the space. It feels here like a living entity or evil god with a maddening influence over the lonely men, something Eggers takes even further.
Lighthouse stories seem, since Poe, to have provided storytellers with the perfect setting to explore a whole set of horrors in one go: the terror of unknowable forces lurking in the sea, the claustrophobic sense of being trapped in an isolated place, the horror of lidless eyes and unknowable cosmic forces watching and controlling you, and of course the fear of what other people might do to you so far removed from civilised society.
What’s your favourite lighthouse story and have you seen or read any of the examples I cited today? I hope you’re enjoying this series of horror moments in opera, you can catch up with the series so far here. Next week we ask ‘mummy, why is that strange man dressed as a dog?’ Until then, happy nightmares everyone!
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When it comes to more fantastic examples, Ray Bradbury’s “The Foghorn” is obviously on the list, but for friends trying to get into “Doctor Who” but not knowing where to start, I recommend the Tom Baker episode “Horror of Fang Rock.” The supernatural elements are explained as science (specifically, a shape-shifting alien known as a Rutan), but in some ways that actually makes it even creepier.
The Flannan Islands case is chilling. I've tried to get my head around it before and it wouldn't surprise me if one or two of them got into difficulty in a storm, with enormous waves, and they were all washed out to sea. An awful way to die. But the isolation and the relentless bad weather and the cold, and the wind wailing like a voice does make me wonder about their mental states... All excellent fodder for horror.
I suppose because lighthouses are in liminal spaces, it gives them an instant sense of the uncanny. Maybe that's why the surreal Australian kids' TV series "Round the Twist" works so well.
As an aside, my dad's dream was to become a lighthouse keeper and study with the Open University at the same time. Unfortunately, Trinity House made all the lighthouses automatic, so he never got to realise his chunky arran jumper and isolation-induced madness dream.