[HN Gopher] Haunted Houses Have Nothing on Lighthouses
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Haunted Houses Have Nothing on Lighthouses
Author : CapitalistCartr
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-10-15 12:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| user3939382 wrote:
| I'm surprised the article doesn't mention the 2019 movie The
| Lighthouse. If you haven't seen it and find this article
| interesting, do yourself a favor and watch it.
| krapp wrote:
| Based on the mystery around the disappearances at the Flannan
| Isles lighthouse[0] I believe.
|
| [0]https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/70180/115-year-old-
| myste...
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| One of my all time favorites, Defoe is at his very best
| unclefishbits wrote:
| The (not AAA, just a dude made it) game "The Shore" is a
| Lovecraftian short walking simulator that has a lighthouse
| feature rather prominently. DO NOT WATCH THE TRAILER. But if you
| like lighthouses, Cosmic horror, body horror and can play a
| walking simulator, you might look at it. I would rec, but who am
| I?
| smackay wrote:
| I have a Scottish Werewolf in Scotland story and a ghost story
| associated with a lighthouse...
|
| When I lived up in Caithness myself and couple of others would go
| out ringing (banding) storm-petrels at night next to Noss
| Lighthouse, near Wick. We'd setup mist nets on the cliff-top and
| tapes played of birds calling at a colony. That would attract
| petrels passing at sea and they'd get caught in the nets. One
| night, in between checking the nets, we were sitting there when a
| loud and frightening snarl come out of the pitch black darkness,
| close-by. After nearly shitting our pants we grabbed torches and
| poles we used to erect the nets and searched the area. Nothing
| was found. It was a few months later we found out that one of the
| lighthouse keepers nearby kept a Great Dane, which he used to let
| out at night. We only found out this because the dog had attacked
| someone, in a pub of all places.
|
| Another supernatural experience at the same place. I was walking
| down the road to the lighthouse alone, again out catching storm-
| petrels. It's was deathly quiet and suddenly I could hear
| footsteps behind me. I stopped, they stopped. I'd start walking
| again and the footsteps would follow. This raised the hairs on my
| neck but a search with a torch revealed nothing. It's the closest
| thing I've come to a ghostly experience and at the time a little
| unsettling. It was only later I realised I was probably hearing
| my own footsteps echoing off the dry-stone wall that ran along
| side the road.
| rwilson4 wrote:
| For anyone else who had no idea what OP was doing with storm
| petrels: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_ringing
| soneil wrote:
| > hoisted up a distress flag (likely an inverted Union Jack)
|
| This really feels like a needlessly invented detail. There are
| accepted signals for distress, and you'd assume a lighthouse
| would be equipped for nautical signalling. Flying the union jack
| upside down is not one of them - it makes a very poor signal as
| it's easy to do accidentally and difficult to spot from a
| distance (or even up close, for all but the mostly keenly-eyed).
|
| Just say a distress flag. It's a ball and square for those that
| know, and it's perfectly descriptive of its function for those
| that don't. Inventing further detail is jarring for anyone who
| can mentally picture what the union jack would look like
| inverted.
| ZoF wrote:
| Inverted union jack(any flag really) is a longstanding distress
| signal. It really wasn't that jarring of an aside, given this
| is someone who researched on the topic we might assume in good
| faith they have a reason for adding the detail tbh. It's a
| weird quibble.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| > This really feels like a needlessly invented detail. There
| are accepted signals for distress, and you'd assume a
| lighthouse would be equipped for nautical signalling. Flying
| the union jack upside down is not one of them
|
| Flying a national flag inverted was indeed the more common way
| of signalling distress for centuries and was by far the most
| likely way a lighthouse would have done it around 1800.
|
| The Union Jack was only displayed in the top left of maritime
| flag at the time so it's somewhat easy to see when the flag is
| inverted.
| bombcar wrote:
| Some flags like the US one are easily identifiable upside
| down, but many nations have flags that are identical either
| way.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| yea because of this sentence TIL that a Union Jack is not
| actually symmetrical if you look closely
| soneil wrote:
| That wouldn't be the Union Jack then, but a blue ensign (or
| whatever variation of the blue ensign Trinity House use).
|
| It is an odd quibble as another commenter put it - I guess
| being well-researched is exactly what makes pieces like this
| interesting, so I was struck by how easily an errant detail
| distracted me from that - especially one that could so easily
| have been omitted.
| sharmin123 wrote:
| Are There Top Signs of a Cheating Lover? What To do Then?:
| https://www.hackerslist.co/are-there-top-signs-of-a-cheating...
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| The Southern Reach Trilogy (and movie Annihilation) made
| lighthouses seem very creepy and other worldly to me.
| unclefishbits wrote:
| Annihilation is one of the most underappreciated films in
| decades. That thing is so amazing. Garland's work is fantastic.
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