Summerville is actually home to a clutch or more of ghost stories. But perhaps no one thing has made a bigger bump locally than The Light Road. It’s scary enough for repeating tomorrow.
First reported decades ago the scene was an old rail tram road north of town that was used for hauling logs. For years, people from scared-to-death teens to startled adults have reported seeing an unexplained floating light along this thoroughfare. A lot of those teens of course, went out to that once dirt road to “study scientific phenomena!” Adults went out to prove all accounts wrong.
Many tales have been told about this road. One says that the railroad engineer’s wife used to meet him at the end of the line and light the way home with a lantern. One night she learned that he was killed in an accident. She could never quite accept his death and for a time continued to wait nightly at the end of the railroad line. She finally concluded her vigil by leaving him a note saying “John, when you come home, bring the lantern.” John’s ghost was said to bring the lantern home every night, hence the light that was observed along this swampy region. Another more macabre version, says the engineer’s head was severed in the fatal accident and his wife’s sprit goes out nightly with the lantern looking for the head.
Theories about the origin of the light are as varied as the light legends themselves. Some say it was swamp gas, disturbed when Interstate 26 was under construction. Others insist it was headlights from oncoming cars, briefly flashing in the night while traveling Highways 176 and 17-A.
One account describes a gleaming globe passing over a car with the battery subsequently going dead. The occupants were stranded for four hours. The mechanic who fixed that car declared it wasn’t the first one to have motor trouble on that same spot. The light, in this instance, was pictured as an orange glow about the size of a golf ball, about 200 yards in front of the car. The light changed to a bluish tint and seemed to grow larger.
Another published description was by a teenager who brought her father and her church group friends several times to see the light in action. They got out of their cars and “saw a red light appear, swinging back and forth, just above the tree line. Other times when we came out, we saw it change color from blue-green to reddish orange and change size from a golf ball to the size of a softball. It would come toward you and then cross to the other side of the street.”
All of this is absolute drivel, of course. Nobly really believes this nonsense. Why, that once remote area is along bustling Sheep Island Road, and is now thickly populated with homes and apartments. Any lingering “kinetic energy” has long since dispersed.
But, there are people out here who tell me they will go out there again, look warily out their windows tomorrow night, watching for a creepy light slithering through the trees, and they’ll wonder if just ... maybe ... .
Barbara Hill is a local historian and former reporter for the Summerville Journal Scene.
