The Truth Is Out There: An Exclusive Guest Post From Emma Stonex, Author of The Lamplighters

What is it about an unsolved mystery that so captures the imagination? We live in a world where answers can be sought at the click of a button, the facts at our fingertips in seconds. When resolutions can’t be found, the space left behind permits us to believe in the unbelievable, to reach beyond what we deem to be possible. Human beings need to know. We crave explanation. Something in us can’t stop scratching the wound. But how important, really, is the truth?
I first came across the real-life Flannan Isles Mystery eight years ago. In December 1900, three lighthouse keepers disappeared without a trace from their remote island post in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. A ship on passage from America noticed the lantern was not lit. When a relief boat was sent to investigate, the crew found the lighthouse abandoned, the clocks stopped, and the beds unmade. It sounds like a fairy tale or a magic trick. How can three people vanish into thin air? To this day, the men have never been found and their fates never decided.
Immediately, I was hooked. Lighthouses, anyway, carry an air of ghostly mystique, and the sea with its changing moods and unplumbed depths offered the perfect setting. My challenge was in how to approach the mystery in a way that both satisfied readers and allowed the unknown to breathe. I knew I wanted to give a conclusion — the novel would be incomplete, in my view, without one — but was wary that to underscore this too hard would starve the riddle of oxygen. A mystery’s enduring fascination is that it encourages our powers of invention. The Lamplighters commits to an answer, but I hope it also invites readers to disagree. My truth is only one version.
Helen, the widow of one of the lighthouse keepers in the novel, has learned to live with uncertainty. Of this limbo she shares with two other women, she says: ‘Those three left us three behind and I’m interested in what’s left behind — in what we can make of it, if we still can.’ It’s been twenty years since her husband disappeared. In the beginning, she pursued the truth, but, as time passed, she’s grown weary of the chase. It’s become less important to have those answers than to gather the strength to forge on. To some extent, in The Lamplighters, what happened to the keepers plays second to the ways in which their wives must continue in their absence. ‘Closure’ is a turned page, but it can’t change or correct the past. Helen’s hope is in the present, to be able to raise light from the dark.
Even if we dig deep, we might not get to the truth. This is the question of life, after all. I have long been enthralled by the vastness of the unknown, our place in the universe, how the little mysteries of our lives slot into the greater scheme of things. As a child, I’d look up at the stars and wonder, what if? I still do. But some secrets are too big to hold. The point is to affect the smaller stuff; to do what we can for the better; to love the people we’re with, while we still have them. Today, the Flannan Isles Lighthouse shines strong, despite its tragic history. Its light beam reaches to help those in need, to offer reassurance and refuge on troubled seas. We talk about the truth as being ‘out there’, but, for me, it’s closer to home. It’s in our ability to accept ambiguity as part of the human experience and to carry on burning regardless.