Some lighthouses have a bad reputation. The Tévennec lighthouse at the tip of Brittany is one of them, with a hint of horror that would make it the ideal location for a horror movie!

Very soon after it was commissioned in 1875, the Tévennec lighthouse gained a very bad reputation. Was it a cursed lighthouse, a place haunted by the ghosts of screaming shipwrecked men, or a veritable hell on earth for the lighthouse keepers, who were all said to have gone mad or died as a result?  Rumours about France's most cursed lighthouse are still very much part of Breton folklore.

Located on the Raz de Sein, a strait 8km wide with violent currents that make it a dangerous place to sail, the Tévennec lighthouse has been the subject of many rumours since it was built.

Everything is said to have degenerated when the lighthouse was commissioned.

The Ponts et Chaussées administration originally assigned only one keeper to the lighthouse, as it was difficult for them to classify the lighthouse among its congeners. It is neither really a 'Hell' (lighthouse on the open sea), nor completely a 'Purgatory' (lighthouse on an island) and it is certainly not a 'Paradise' (lighthouse on the coast).

As it doesn't really fit into the standards of these three types of lighthouse, it was decided - quite arbitrarily, in fact administratively - that a single keeper would be assigned to it all year round, as for the 'Paradises', on the sole criterion that the lighthouse's lantern was... small! This was despite the fact that the Tévennec lighthouse is located in the heart of a remote area that is difficult to access, and that it would undoubtedly have benefited more from having at least two keepers on duty all year round.

When it was built, strange stories began to emerge. The builders would hear sinister howls that they eventually translated as: "Kers cuit! Kers cuit! Ama ma ma flag!" a Breton phrase meaning "Go away! Go away! This is where I belong!

The first keeper, Henri Porsmoguer, only lasted five months before resigning. He was said to have lost his mind under the howling that could be heard in the lighthouse on stormy days. It was the Breton folklorist Anatole le Braz, in his work "Le Gardien du Feu" (The Fire Keeper), who is said to have recorded his testimony, and to have woven around it the tragic story of a shipwrecked man who found refuge on the rock a few years before the lighthouse was built. The violent currents prevented anyone from coming to his aid, and he agonised for four days and three nights before dying, alone on the rock.

Since then, he has haunted the island on stormy days, screaming whenever the waves get too rough.

Charles le Goffic then published the dark legend of the cursed Tévennec lighthouse in his series entitled "Les Phares"(Lighthouses). It tells the story of a failed exorcism, of a lighthouse keeper who went mad when he thought he saw his father being gouged by a blade, of lighthouse keepers who died mysteriously or decided to take their own lives, and of others who attacked their own families in a fit of dementia. 

The rumours were backed up by a serious writer, a leading member of the Académie Française, and no one questioned the veracity of the terrible stories that now make Tévennec the most cursed lighthouse in France, which the keepers flee at all costs.

The lighthouse had such a bad reputation that it was the first in France to be automated in 1910, since no one wanted to go in it anymore.

From then on, the lighthouse no longer needed a keeper, but it lost none of its sinister reputation, which to this day still has old sailors talking, still convinced that something fishy is going on on the island.

It wasn't until the late 1990s that historian Jean-Christophe Fichou brought to light the reality behind the sordid stories heard about Tévennec. According to the Quimper archives, none of the keepers went mad and none died mysteriously. The only keeper to have died in the lighthouse was an alcoholic in poor health.

In addition, the howling so characteristic of Tévennec can be explained by the presence of an underwater grotto that runs right through the islet and which, when the waves rush in and the air comes out, produces sinister hooting sounds that are very similar to cries.

A Tévennec story, then, far less frightening than at first sight, but one that, if you believe in ghosts, can leave you sceptical.