This article contains minor spoilers for No One Lives Under the Lighthouse and major spoilers for “The Fog Horn” by Ray Bradbury.
It’s cold on the sea tonight. In the endless darkness, the rocky shore kicks up salty froth that stings your eyes and makes you shiver. You thought you could handle this job. It sounded easy enough. Just flip the light on, sound the horn. Wait. Repeat. But no, no, it’s much more than that. You haven’t heard from your family or friends in months. Nobody comes out here — not on purpose, anyway. The only people you can hope to see are lost stragglers showing up as a last resort. They’ll be gone by daybreak whether you like it or not. You feel sick. Not that it matters. If you stick it out, it’s a few more dollars in your pocket. If you die, they’ll just replace you just like you replaced the last guy who was here. Who was he again? It’s been so long you don’t remember. You stare out onto what you think could be the horizon, but the darkness is so alive that it obscures anything familiar. The light continues swinging. The foghorn shakes the floor. And is that … hang on … what is that swimming towards you in the water?
Such is the horror of the lighthouse, the archaic structures that still linger on our modern coastlines, but only as spirits. Modern navigation systems and work safety standards have rendered lighthouses functionally useless, no longer necessary for sailors to make it back to shore alive. But something about them compels the human mind, something about them that leaves room for the unknown. Compiled with this enigmatic allure are the instances of real-life sorrow that surround them. The Smalls Lighthouse Tragedy of 1801 is especially chilling: a two-man crew endured unimaginable hardship after one died, leaving the survivor to grapple with the horror of watching the wind move his companion’s corpse in a way that made it seem as though his dead friend was waving.
The most notorious tragedy involving a lighthouse, however, is the 1900 disappearance of three lighthouse keepers on Flannan Isles — off the coast of Scotland — who vanished without a trace in the darkness of December. All investigators found were their belongings, frozen in time, and all of the clocks were hauntingly stopped.
“I visited Flannan Islands when the relief was made so lately as 7th December,” said Superintendent Robert Muirhead in his official 1901 report, “and have the melancholy recollection that I was the last person to shake hands with them and bid them adieu.”
Whatever it is, the isolation that lighthouses embody is a driving force of why they continue to make us so uncomfortable, even decades after their widespread retirement. The idea of being sequestered in an unforgiving, desolate, crumbling structure sounds more like a biblical punishment than a once-common job necessary for protecting the lives of seafarers around the world. Even if there are no beasts or Lovecraftian sea monsters prowling the grounds, nothing is scarier than the human mind. When all there is to hear is the sound of the sharp winds, the ringing in your ears will do the talking.
Even if you manage to escape the psychological effects of your lonely outpost, you still have very little protection against the elements. Take No One Lives Under the Lighthouse, a 2020 horror game that has you play as a lighthouse keeper on a stormy, rocky isle in the middle of some cold, forgotten sea. There’s no music and no dialogue, just the sounds of your footsteps on the wilting grass, the freezing ocean that swirls in a dark soup and the occasional bone-chilling roars of a beast you can’t see.
You must continue your mundane tasks, walking slowly, lighting lamps, trying to retain some decorum while something offscreen stains the island with grotesque ink splatters. Your windows swarm with fleets of loud, buzzing moths. Something’s rustling under the canoe you took to get here, which soon mysteriously disappears. Spirits of the ancient townspeople lurk around rocky ruins, suggesting that whatever curse has been brought upon this lighthouse has not left it and has instead been entrusted to you.
Midway through the game, a chase sequence halts the monotony of your slow, sad world. The first-person camera changes for the first time, now tinged with a sickly blue hue, and zooms out to show a little man — you! Monstrous spider legs stretch out from all ends of the screen, and after you manage to escape its hairy claws, it’s now apparent that you’re not alone on this island. You’re nothing more than a blip in a raging storm, and if you disappeared, it’s likely no one would notice. The only thing separating you and this threat is your flesh and the fog, both thin veils that feel useless against the wrath of something otherworldly.
And it’s ironic; the fact that you’re not alone makes you feel more alone, because the only person that can bear witness to and solve this problem is you. The decision to have this scene occur from the monster’s perspective shows how tiny your character really is in comparison to the world, and how futile any of your efforts will be in comparison to this beast — a creature who predates the lighthouse and is less than pleased that you, a mortal man, has the audacity to march upon its grounds. Even though you spend every waking hour trying to save others, the truth is clear: No one is coming to save you.
And since no one is coming to save you, they’ve likely already forgotten you. You, the nameless, faceless shadow in that sinister tower. Whatever story you have, it’s yours to forever keep. You better be prepared to die with it. At least, that’s what the lighthouse keepers in Ray Bradbury’s 1951 short story “The Fog Horn” have to wrestle with. In just seven pages, Bradbury recounts the tale of two men on a lighthouse who realize their foghorn summons a sea monster who is the last of its kind.
The monster, desperately roaring out for the lighthouse to join it, does not understand why it can’t. In a fit of rage, the monster decimates the lighthouse, and then pauses when it realizes the weight of what it’s done: It’s just destroyed the only thing left in this world that could mimic its sound. Now it is truly irreversibly alone. It begins to cry, bellowing wails of regret that shake the earth, before retreating back to the bottom of the sea to live out the rest of its days in darkness, knowing that there is no creature left on earth that will call out to it.
This tale from Bradbury is deeply haunting in such a subtle manner. On the surface, the horror of the plot is the fact that there’s a big monster in the sea that we have come to occupy as our own. It’s a beast that these two scrawny humans are very ill-equipped to protect themselves against, plain and simple. But in reality, the real root of why it’s such an uncomfortable read is because it addresses a universal fear: the fear of being forgotten. In this story, it’s a fear that extends to the dreadful sea monster, a creature who we usually would never consider to be capable of feeling such emotion. And yet by the story’s end, we’ve seen it maintain a sense of hope; we’ve seen it grieve; and with one final cry, we’ve seen it disappear below the bubbles, never to return. It is on a path to the bottom of the sea, where it knows it will die alone as if it never even existed.
It’s incredibly similar to the psychological heaviness suffered by real-life lighthouse keepers, which I believe was a purposeful choice by Bradbury to magnify the truth about this desolate, thankless job. The men on Flannan Isles died a mysterious death known only to them, just like this monster will die carrying the last memories of its kind. It’s the tension of a question unanswered. A life unceremoniously extinguished.
One of the men observes: “‘That’s life for you’ … ‘Someone always waiting for someone who never comes home.’”
Perhaps that’s the heart of why lighthouses still send a shiver down our spines, why we haven’t taken them down despite their defunct nature. They are both grievers and gravestones — living, breathing vessels of the lives lost in their wake.
But even as the lights have dimmed, and eventually ceased altogether, I can still see their searchlights, hear their mournful horns.
Don’t forget us, they beg.
Don’t forget the lonely nights, the sacrifices, the blood we spilled to power a light so that someone could make it home.
Even if it meant we didn’t.
Daily Arts Writer Isabella Casagranda can be reached at ijcasa@umich.edu.
