EPISODE 22: LIMINAL LIGHTHOUSES

By all intents and purposes, a lighthouse should represent hope. They light the way to safety, and present a safe harbour. But they also are reaped in solitude and often lie at the edge of danger. Even that though, could bring hope.

So what is it about lighthouses, then, that makes them such macabre places?  Lighthouses occupy the liminal spaces between land and the sea.

The rest often in the harshest of environments where humans shouldn’t really exist, and where normal rules of society do not prevail. There is no sense of start and stop in a lighthouse, just an endless rotation of light.

They are places of life and death, on the borders of tragedy and safety.  They are small confined spaces on the edge of the vast expanse of ocean. 

It takes a special kind of person to exist in this unearthly realm and it is the strangeness of this sliver of society that seems to offer such possibilities for intrigue and invention and an endless fascination with the darker side of the human psyche.  Lighthouse keeping is not a job for the faint-hearted. 

It requires long periods of loneliness, endurance and stress to keep the lamp burning and ships safe in conditions of extreme weather, dangerous hazards and geographic isolation.  It is no wonder that in reality some lighthouse keepers did not cope and went a bit mad. 

SHOW NOTES:

The Smalls Lighthouse

Seguin Island Lighthouse

Clipperton Island Lighthouse

The St. Augustine Lighthouse

The Pittee Children

The Man

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