Lights Out For A Summerville Legend--Extinguished By The Hand Of Progress

near Sigma Road

A half a century ago, when I-26 construction began along the outskirts of Summerville, a story emerged that the resulting roadwork coaxed a ghost from the disturbed ground. An overpass bridge was under construction to reconnect the severed stretch of road known as Sheep Island. It ran from N. Main Street to 176. Thus, began the era of the ghostly Legend of the Summerville Light. It is a story Washington Irving would have coveted.

Then, on July 28, 2015, I posted a photo of Sheep Island Road (locals call it Light Road) along with its infamous story on Facebook. The ensuing response was prodigious; irrefutably confirming the Legend of the Summerville Light was Summerville’s most famous and beloved ghost story. It profoundly captured the local’s imagination over the years, mainly the younger generations, driven by their impetuous nature to satisfy their insatiable curiosity to know. Some of those who responded were doubters, but overwhelmingly many were believers. If you would like to read some of the comments, click on this link: Summerville Light. You will find the responses quite interesting.

There are variations in its telling. The following is a popular version. The story tells of a woman whose husband was a night conductor for the Summerville railroad company. Every night around midnight, you could see her faithfully waiting by the tracks with a lantern. Upon seeing the lantern, the train would make a special stop to let her husband off, and the two would then walk home arm and arm. One night the train was late. When it finally arrived and came to a stop, the workers informed her of an accident. Her husband was decapitated. His head was never recovered. Although they buried his remains, she never accepted the fact that her husband was gone. So, she went to the tracks every midnight with her lantern and walked up and down, waiting for him. Out of courtesy and compassion, the train would stop to tell her of the accident, but as time passed, it became too painful to recount it, and the train no longer stopped. People began to think she was crazy, but she continued this nightly ritual until her death. Even after the train was gone and the tracks eventually removed, the belief remained she still walked with lantern in hand, waiting for the train and her husband’s return.

If you go to where the tracks once were on Sheep Island Road just before midnight, you can hear the usual sounds of the night, crickets chirping, tree frogs croaking, and the breeze blowing through the branches. Then, at midnight, the sounds suddenly cease for some odd reason, as if a presence has suddenly quieted them. Then you see it. Usually, it is far off, a light coming your way. If you stick around for it to get closer, it will chase you, and if you are in a car, everything suddenly shuts off. It has been the case for every person who has seen the mysterious light.

In the November 12, 1970 edition of the Evening Post, Sandra Baxley wrote in a first-person account, “Nothing can match the feeling of amazement when you see what you had not expected to see.”

She continued, “Directly in front of the car, at what might have been 200 yards, was an orangish light about the size of a golf ball. The darkness around it had a hypnotizing effect, and I moved my eyes to the right and the left. The color slowly changed to a bluish tint and may have become larger.”

Baxley said she was dumbfounded to learn only two out of her five friends had seen anything. Then, she said, the light reappeared. “This time, we all saw it.” She concluded, “We saw enough to make us keep our rain boots handy.”

Bruce Orr, a retired criminal investigator of Berkeley County and a researcher of legends and lore, has appeared on Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. He wrote about his own experience with the Summerville Light in his 2011 book Haunted Summerville, South Carolina.

After a scary first encounter with the light one night, he related the occurrence to his wife, who didn’t believe him. He needed witnesses. The following is his second account.

“Back home, the disbelief continued. That weekend, I took my wife’s brother, who was in the Navy, and a friend who was in the Coast Guard out to Sheep Island Road. Both did not believe my story. I did the same thing, just as Johnny told me, and once again, I deliberately did not turn around. Sure enough, the light came so close that it lit the interior of the car green. It was the size of a basketball and hung in midair. As I listened to two grown men whimper, I was glad the seats in my cruiser were vinyl and prayed they wouldn’t test their waterproof capabilities. The light stopped about a car’s length away and burst into hundreds of firefly-sized lights that dissipated. We all started breathing again and went home. I never doubted Johnny ever again, and those two never doubted me again.”

Concerning his two experiences, Bruce Orr said this, “I cannot say that what I encountered on Sheep Island Road in the mid-‘80s was the ghost of the conductor’s wife, but it is definitely something I cannot explain over twenty-five years later.”

Remnants of the road as seen from Sigma Road

At one time, Sheep Island Road was a favorite place for young men to take their dates to park for a little secluded romance, only to make a harrowing quick exit due to the intruding light.

In time, town officials blocked the road to travel and posted no trespassing signs. The picture I took in 2015 verified that fact. Isolated and dangerous, the local police patrolled it regularly. Only the foolhardy daredevil would consider venturing beyond the barricading dirt mound.

The original barricades

One of the original no trespassing signs

Subsequently, the unstoppable freight train called progress once again changed the landscape around the same I-26 real estate and quite possibly has closed the chapter on the Era of the Summerville Light. The Nexton I-26 connector was constructed. The overpass leading to the dark, overgrown, and wooded hollow is no longer there. Only remnants of the once haunted stretch of Sheep Island Road remain.

As you enter the Nexton Parkway exit off I-26 to go north, quickly look to your right, you may catch a glimpse of the remaining tattered pavement. It briefly touches Sigma Drive and then crosses Nexton Parkway extending northward parallel to the new Del Webb Community and on into obscurity.

There have been no recent reports of the Light. Perhaps, the old widow finally realized the futility of being stuck in the past and extinguished her lantern, possibly forced to do so due to the area’s changes. Additionally, the generation it fascinated has gotten older and moved on.

The Light, as with the North Main Street Arch, the Pine Forest Inn, the Arcade Theater, and the Summerville Railroad Station, is gone but not forgotten as a growing southern town 23 miles outside of Charleston re-imagines itself as it closes one chapter to open another.