Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Dec. 15th 1 p.m. Storm ended. Sea calm. God is over all.
These entries first came to prominence in a book written by an American writer named
Vincent Hayes Gaddis. Gaddis was born in 1913 in Ohio, USA. He died in February
1997. He had been a newspaper reporter and writer-editor for a radio station in Indiana
beforebecomingafeaturewriterforthe Elkhart Truth ,adailynewspaperinElkhart,In-
diana.HehadthengoneontoworkasapublicrelationswriterfortheStudebaker-Pack-
ardCorporation andMercedes-Benz Sales inSouthBend,Indiana.In1962heturnedto
full-timewritingandeventuallyhadanumberofbookspublished.Heisbest-knownfor
coining the term Bermuda Triangle in a cover piece for the Argosy journal in February
1964.
The genre that Gaddis specialised in was anomalous phenomena (phenomena for
which there is no explanation in a specific body of scientific knowledge) and he was
heavily influenced by Charles Hoy Fort, an earlier American writer who specialised in
anomalous phenomena. In 1965 Gaddis had a book published entitled Invisible Hori-
zons: True Mysteries of the Sea in which he related the loss of the three Flannan Isles
lightkeepers. In his book, Gaddis recounts the above logbook entries supposedly writ-
ten by Thomas Marshall and attributes the source for the logbook entries to an article
in an August 1929 pulp fiction magazine called Strange True Stories. The article had
been written by American pulp fiction writer Ernest Fallon, and he gave as his source
for the entries 'English Sources'. The use of 'English' is fairly telling as, although Fal-
lon was American and he probably would have used the word 'English' to cover Bri-
tain and Scotland, the matter was a purely Scottish affair with little English input. It
seems highly unlikely that any log entry of the type above would have been notified to,
or come into the possession of, anyone in England. Even cosidering the possibility that
therehadbeenadiarykeptbyThomasMarshallandthisdiaryhadbeenfoundandkept
by one of the party searching the Flannans Lighthouse, it is very unlikely that it would
have made its way to England without having come to prominence in Scotland first.
Furthermore, any Scottish source would never have described themselves as English.
In those days, a subordinate would not have written such comments about his super-
ior without the risk of a serious reprimand and it is extremely unlikely that he would
have written in the official logbook that his superior was 'irritable'. Neither did the
stormendat1p.m.on15Decemberandtheseabecome'calm'.Thewindandseawere
still building up at that point to reach just below storm force five hours later.
Once it became apparent that the lighthouse station was deserted, it would be logical
that the first thing Muirhead and Moore would have looked for would be an indication
of when the lightkeepers may have disappeared. The station log and the slate would
have been the most obvious place to look, as they were updated on a daily basis, and
so it proved to be with the weather and light times for the 14 and 15 December 1900
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