Dear Reader:
Isn’t there something exciting about an unexplained sighting of anything… especially when it is something ordinary being something or somewhere un-ordinary.
As I am writing this post… Monday afternoon… I am hoping the Sunday afternoon phenomenon will repeat itself… think it depends on who is winning in the skies… sun or clouds… they seem to battle it out daily. The sun won Sunday afternoon and that inadvertently produced the strange light.
“A strange light” … suddenly I was back in my classroom the first year I taught in Summerville and Halloween was approaching quickly… by then the students knew my love of stories… so when I asked the classes to write down the most famous ” true” Summerville ghost story-I read the same story title repeatedly… The Story of the Summerville Lights.
A few years ago… Channel Two did a special series on popular ghost stories in the Lowcountry. For Summerville… it was The Summerville Lights.
The main idea behind the original story was the daily ritual of a night conductor’s wife who showed up at midnight at the same spot along the railroad tracks in Summerville waving her lantern- the train would stop and then arm in arm the conductor and wife would walk home waving their lantern.
One night the train never appeared and later the news broke that the train had derailed and the night conductor killed… actually by decapitation… terrible news to break to his wife. Yet she never stopped showing up at midnight waving her lantern until her own death.
As time passed …the legend of the waving light spread and grew-it was told and repeated that if you traveled down the road late at night… the sounds of crickets and frogs -breezes and leaves would stop- if a motorist flashed their car lights… then a small ball of light resembling a lantern would start moving from side to side-if one walked towards it… it would give chase and your car would not start.
Today it is ” Lights Out” for this Summerville legend as new streets, shops and housing developments have swallowed up any remnants of the forests, woods and dirt roads that gave life to the legend many many years ago.
… and , unfortunately, the moving light that spread across my den door window covered by sheers, did not light up my den again. But was so glad I did get the title picture light shining behind my side garden Sunday afternoon… and as I followed its direction I was expecting to see a car with perhaps a side mirror where the sun’s rays were bouncing off it… instead the only thing in the right direction was … a ladder! Mystery… unsolved… the best kind.
So until tomorrow…
Today is my favorite day/Winnie the Pooh
