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Facts and Myths

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The Original Finding (mid 80s) and the First Upload (2019)

In the mid 1980s, a teenager called Joseph came upon a box of cassette tapes in an abandoned office in Los Angeles. He took them home and gradually listened through them all. He later explained he did nothing with them until around 2000, when he digitised all his old tapes to MP3. That's when he threw out the original tape. He then did nothing further with them until he uploaded just one of the songs (LTL) to YouTube in Sept 2019. At that time, some 34 years after first finding it, he told the online community:

"I found it in a box of tapes, during my teens, mid 80s, in a cupboard, in an abandoned office in LA. I don't remember exactly what year or the address. It had something like 'Demo - Listen Today' written on it".

NOTE he said "something like". That could mean many similar phrases. The original evidence of this above quote is no longer on the web as it was lost when his video was set to private. A few oldies remember Joseph's words exactly as above. So that's literally all anybody knew about the tape's provenance in 2019 ... and that's all the light that Joseph can throw on his discovery. That vague recollection initiated all manner of speculation about the tape's origins, none of which has produced any factual leads about what the tape was doing in L.A. -- and probably never will until we can talk to its original owner who left it there! 

There is just NO POINT in conjecture about what the words on the tape said because we have NO CLEAR RECORD of what they actually were!

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Myth #2 - A Big #85 on the Tape
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There was never any "Big Number 85" written on the tape. Somewhere back in time, Joseph's factual statement of "finding it in the mid 80s" got distorted into him finding it in 1985; and into it being recorded in 1985; and into it being recorded as late as 1989. As both the original finder WTS and Janusz have attested above, there was never any "85" on the tape or the original YT video upload.

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Myth #3 - The Name of the Song

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• Even the song's popular name of Light the Lanterns was made up by its early fans, along with the other, now lesser-used suggestions of Illumination Night and Legacy. These tag lines stimulated a whole lot of false leads based on those assumptions. So to this day, no-one knows what the songwriter called it.

• Funnily, in their well-meaning efforts to represent the song's meaning, many of the YouTubers' subsequent LTL uploads have ditsy photos of electrically-lit Japanese lanterns, just like the Martha's Vineyard ones. But, as you will later learn, unfortunately all such images have been giving a false representation of what the song represents. See a quick summary of Why the Martha's Vineyard Grand Illumination Night Has Nothing to do With Light the Lanterns. For full understanding, see Page 4 - Decoding the Lyrics, [Section 3].
• So most internet conjecture about the tape up to this date is falsely made-up and has proven fruitless. But whatever its origins, the above image perfectly conveys the anonymous, mysterious beginnings of the LTL search. That's why I have used it on this site and on the tape face of my own 2025 song remaster ... not because it's real but because it is an icon of mystery.

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Myth #4 - Other Reputed Performances

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Over the years there have been a few random reports on the Reddit forums of the song being covered live by other artists. These are often hearsay and have never been backed up with any further evidence.

To my knowledge there are two other registered, recorded songs in the world called Light the Lanterns. There are a couple of other songs called Illumination Night, and a few called Legacy. But none of these have any lyrical or musical similarities to the version we are searching for.  And even if some other female singer has coverted it, it is highly unlikely that they would be the original artist and unaware of the search for her.

Odd people have said odd things like "my uncle said he once heard it on the radio while driving down the autobahn in Germany in the late 80s." I mean, seriously. What are we supposed to do with such a claim?

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Subsequent Public Search Efforts 2019-2025

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I've been consistently working on this project for some 5 years. Others were involved even before me, back when the Reddit, Discord and the Lostwave Forums Spreadsheets began investigating the song. Soon after its upload, it was called "The Third Most Mysterious Song on the Internet". But now that #1 and #2 have been solved, that promotes Light the Lanterns to The #1 Most Mysterious Song on the Internet! And it's certainly living up to its name!

There have been over 200,000 accumulated YouTube listens to it over its 6 years of anonymity. Now that's an unclaimed hit song!

In 2022 a false claim to ownership of the song was made against the most popular YouTube channel hosting a recording of the original LTL recording, which had amassed some 50,000 listens in just a few years, and it was taken down. But it's still up there on some 40 channels. People love it. Thousands want the singer found.

Years of Unproductive Dead Ends
In Dec 2023, a specific Subreddit was created for specific lovers and searchers for this song. Many many singers/bands have been suggested. But despite every guess, hunch, Google search, song-registry search, song-matching AI, email sent, letter written, no confirmed links have yet been found to identify the songwriter or the demo tape players. The search has clearly ground to a halt.

For most fans of the song, identifying the singer is the primary goal. For 6 years now the primary search methodology has been what I call the stab-and-hope mindset, arising from "it sounds like ... " or "has anyone checked out ...". But when faced with this veritable needle in a haystack, this method is nothing better than magnet on the end of broomstick, randomly stabbing into the vast haystack of 50 years of American popular music, hoping to hit one obscure independent artist. Many people imagine it's "early work" from some presently famous artist. The Lostwave Forums frequently contain posts such as:

• What about so and so? She has a voice like that. (But after comparing, you realise why some people should only ever sing in the shower).
• Has anybody contacted Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, Carole King? (Dear Linda, Is this your song from the 70s or 80s? Love Phoebe).
• It sounds like Jangle Pop, it's definitely Paisley Underground. They were LA, early 80s. (I suggested -- Well, if that's your belief, write 20 letters to its contemporary luminaries to find out. We never heard any more about it).
• Sounds a bit country. Could be from Nashville. (Maybe, but Nashville is famously short on lighthouses and shipwrecks).
• My uncle says he remembers hearing it in Germany in the 70s. (Ja, vee haff vays of lighting da lanterns).
• Just last week another claim surfaced about a new copy of the tape being found in a bookshop in Scotland! (Lol, imagine a Glaswegian cover version).
• I really hope this girl is found. (Well, so do 200,000 others. So how can you actually help?).

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My Latest Search Efforts -- The Bigger Picture

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The thing which, I think, makes LTL such a worthy project to solve -- more so than just finding its mystery singer -- is its maritime folk history, its catchy musicality, and its underlying sentiment. There's something in the lyrics and music which even makes some listeners cry.

For me, the singer's identity -- now either around 80 years old or passed on -- is only one part of this mystery song and its enigmatic backstory. I see it as a whole big jigsaw puzzle, coming together via the following threads:

• Interpretation of the lyrics;
• Establishing the period of the story;
• Establishing the location of the story;
• Establishing the period of recording;
• Establishing the location of recording;
• Establishing the relationship of the story's characters;
• Profiling the singer and her musical milieu;
• And of course, recognition of the singer's voice, and possibly the distinctive lead guitar and fretless bass work.

So Where to Now?
Priority number one in solving this puzzle requires moving away from the internet stab-and-hope methodology and focusing on the suggestive elements cryptically hidden within the lyrics. To learn how an anonymous 1980s cassette tape lines up perfectly with a pre-dawn, World War II maritime disaster, we have to decode a folk tale which originated on a foggy early morning offshore the Farallon Islands, Ca. in 1944.