SUPERNATURAL - The Lighthouse - page 115

Man . In the film, which is set (but not filmed) in the Hebrides, a policeman (played by
EdwardWoodward)searching foramissinggirlontheislandfindsthatakindofCeltic
paganismispractisedbytheinhabitants.Attheendofthefilm,Woodward'spoliceman
is sacrificed, along with animals, in a giant wicker man, as an offering to the Gods due
to a crop failure. 9
The reputation of the Flannan Isles as a haunt of spirits is mentioned in connection
with the story of John Morison, who was marooned on Eilean Mor in the seventeenth
century.ThefirehehadlithadgoneoutandwithnomeansofrelightingitMorisonwas
starting to get worried, as he was sure to perish without heat. He was then confronted
by a man who told him there was fire on an altar in the chapel. Morison was able to use
this to keep his fire going until help came to get him off the island. 10
One of the main points made in this account 11 is that a supernatural race of small ab-
original people were believed to inhabit the islands west of Lewis. An early traveller
named Donald Munro had seen some of the bones of this race of pigmy-type people
being dug out of the earth, including a skull. It states that there was much dislike and
even hatred between the early Christians of the Isles and these people.
The story of this race of small people could have its origins in the Scottish 'Kelpie'
waterspritesthatweresaidtoinhabitstretchesofsea,riversandlochs.OnetypeofKel-
pie were called the Blue Men of the Minch, or Storm Kelpies, and were said to occupy
the sea between Lewis and the mainland of Scotland looking for sailors to drown and
boats in distress to sink. 12 Mention is also made of the hostility between the pigmies
andChristiansresultinginthehangingofStFrangusontopofahill.Anaccountisalso
givenofalocal woman,wholivedonGreatBernera (asmall islandbetween Lewis and
the Flannan Islands) who had spent a night with the little people when she was four
years old. The little people had looked after her and played music all night before re-
turning her safe and sound to her home. Further on it states that the human offerings
were ferried out to Eilean Mor and that this practice was stopped with the coming of
Christianity, and simultaneous with the arrival of Christianity was the disappearance of
thelittlemen.TheaccountthensaysthatthedisappearanceoftheFlannanIslandslight-
keepers is an extension of an extraordinary age-old ritual of sacrifice, whereby the men
were taken from Long Island near Callernish and taken over to the Island of the Dead,
Eilean Mor, where they were installed in a tower, similar to those once used for human
sacrifice, and taken by the Gods. It gives an example of one on the opposite coast at
Dun Carloway. The parallel is that the lighthousemen went over to the Flannan Isles
and were installed in a tower (the lighthouse itself) and then disappeared. 13
Yet another accoun t 14 discusses the lightkeepers' disappearance as being due to their
presence on the island as offending 'Sky Folk'. Eilean Mor is described as being an an-
cient haunted place and also a place where bodies said to be 'unholy' were taken for