The Haunted Lighthouse of Tévennec

The 'haunted' lighthouse of Tévennec is a tiny white building which perched on a small, jagged rock. It often surrounded by crashing waves, which makes visiting extremely difficult and can house at most two lighthouse keepers living in austere conditions—earning the lighthouses the nickname “hell” from sailors and lighthouse keepers. The lighthouse was first lit in 1875 and legend has it that the first guard to occupy the island, Henri Guezennec, went completely mad. There have subsequently been 23 guards, but no one has dared to live there since 1910. The lighthouses dotting the uninhabited islands along the waterway and the rocks around Tevennec are notorious for taking the lives of sailors and the ocean conditions are so fierce that the original house built on the landmass was destroyed three times.

Based on local legend, the first lighthouse keeper, Henri Guezennec, was driven insane by ghostly voices demanding he leave. After the same fate befell Guezennec’s replacement, the government reclassified Tévennec as a two-man lighthouse, but the additional keeper doesn’t appear to have ended the strange happenings.

According to Le Télégramme, crucifixes were embedded into rocks on the island in an 1893 attempt to exorcise it, and in 1897 the French government began recruiting married couples to keep the lighthouse, in the hopes that companionship would ease the loneliness experienced on the isolated isle. Louis and Marie-Jacquette Quéméré lived on the island with their three children, a cow, and no documented encounters with ghosts. The lighthouse was automated in 1910, and Tévennec remained uninhabited until June 2015, when Marc Pointud, the explorer, who founded the National Society for Heritage, Lighthouses and Beacons, set out on his ambitious plan to inhabit the island for 60 days.

Sources:

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/frances-legendary-haunted-lighthouse-has-first-resident-since-1910

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3110767/Meet-man-spending-60-days-haunted-lighthouse-island-middle-sea.html

http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-ideas/weird-and-wacky/marc-pointud-will-spend-60-days-on-a-terrifying-french-lighthouse/news-story/7574f003cfccc4005c50dddbdd9982da

Pic Source:

http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/a977e1ccfcf528543764416585ef8f36