The Summerville Light--A New Argument as the Reason for the Mysterious Lights

Former Sheep Island Road

This article is for all residents of Summerville who remember and experienced the famous Summerville Light of Sheep Island Road—locally dubbed Light Road. Over the years, I’ve written articles about this ghostly phenomenon, and it remains the most popular and beloved ghost story in Summerville’s history. I received over 16,000 responses from readers who recounted their personal experiences with the Light, and a few who were skeptics—though they were overwhelmingly in the minority.

Legend has it the Light is the glow of a lantern guiding the ghost of a woman searching for her decapitated husband along a stretch of railroad tracks that once ran near Sheep Island Road.

Several theories have been proposed as scientific explanations for the Light and its unsettling physical effects—terrorizing motorists by violently shaking cars or inexplicably cutting power to their vehicles. Theories range from swamp gas and ball lightning to headlights reflecting off various road signs.

On Monday morning, July 14, the United States Geological Survey had confirmed reports of an earthquake in the Summerville area. Data from the USGS confirmed that an earthquake of about 2.2 to 2.4 magnitude occurred just before 10 a.m., about a mile east-northeast of the town center of Summerville near Berlin G. Meyers Parkway in Dorchester County. It had a depth of between about 3 and 5 miles, though officials are still working to narrow down the exact measurements of the quake based on the data received from several tools. This is not uncommon occurrence.

At this point, you may be wondering what the Monday earthquake has to do with the Summerville Light. Surprisingly, it may have a connection with another famous Summerville event that occurred in 1886, The Great Charleston Earthquake. A seismologist has offered these natural events as a scientific explanation for the floating orb: a phenomenon called, earthquake lights. Susan Hough of the United States Geological Survey published her earthquake idea in a research article late last month in Seismological Research Letters.

An article in the Smithsonian Magazine explained it this way, "Earthquake lights are mysterious phenomena that have been observed around the world, but scientists still don’t have a clear idea of what causes them. Some have proposed that seismic activity deforms minerals in the Earth, creating an electrical charge that can lead air molecules to glow. Another theory is that they’re related to the release of gases like radon or methane, which can ignite when they're exposed to a spark of static electricity. Hough believes the railroad tracks, in particular, are the key to Summerville’s ghosts."

Hough said in an interview with Post and Courier, "Historically, when rail companies replaced tracks, they didn’t always haul the old track away. So, you’ve got heaps of steel out there. Sparks might be part of the story. That could explain why so many ghost stories—even beyond Summerville—involve lights over railways. When you start looking around, it turns out there's any number of ghosts wandering around railroad tracks with lanterns looking for severed heads. There’s kind of an epidemic of them."

There you have it—mystery solved. Or is it? What say you, Summerville residents of the Summerville Light era?

An Illustration

The unstoppable freight train called progress changed the landscape around the same I-26 real estate, quite possibly closing the chapter on the era of the Summerville Light. The Nexton I-26 connector was constructed. The overpass that once led to the dark, overgrown, 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 heading north, glance quickly to your right. You may catch a glimpse of the remaining tattered pavement. It briefly touches Sigma Drive before crossing Nexton Parkway, extending northward—parallel to the new Del Webb Community—then fading into obscurity.

It is gone, but not forgotten, as a growing Southern town 23 miles outside of Charleston reimagines itself, closing one chapter to open another.

Smithsonian Magazine article 

Visit Summerville

Is It True or Is It Not--The Phantom Flight Over Summerville

Former Sheep Island Road.

Most everyone loves a good mystery, and Summerville has its share of the unexplained. That is what drew hundreds if not thousands of young people to Sheep Island Road. The Summerville Light is by far the most revered of the area's eerie sagas whose nuances are deeply engrained into the persona of the town's Generation Xers and Millennials. Other well-known paranormal hotspots include the ruins of Colonial Fort Dorchester, the bell tower of St. George's Church, Guerin's Pharmacy, the E Doty Avenue house, the Quackenbush-List home, the Price House Cottage Bed and Breakfast, and Montreaux's Bar and Grill. However, there is one that ascends above all of these. The most controversial of the towns inexplicable takes you to the edge of the fifth dimension, the middle ground between light and shadow.

If the story is true, somewhere in the marked area of the included map is buried the structural remains of a World War II B-24 Liberator Bomber. It is a proposed location based on descriptions found in a beguiling narrative recorded in the book, Haunted Summerville, South Carolina. The author, Bruce Orr, recounts the event as told by two main eyewitnesses, Betty Jo Waring, a spotter on duty in the Town Hall bell tower, and Bobby Anderson, a student in a local school. Other eyewitnesses include fellow students, school faculty, and a crowd of townspeople. The details are as follows:

"Betty Jo watched it come in from the east. She saw parachutes begin to open in the sky one by one. Ten in all opened as the plane began to make circles...and as it flew over, she recognized the large bomber. It was one of ours. The plane was a B-24 Liberator Bomber...The plane began to level out. In his classroom, Bobby Anderson was staring out the window...It barely cleared the store across the street before clipping the treetops...it sputtered along the trees and disappeared...Bobby and his classmates jumped to their feet, raced across the classroom and out the door. They gathered on the football field with the other students and watched the little white parachutes drifting in the April sky...The young boys raced around the teachers and down the path...The boys reached the smoking wreckage and began scavenging souvenirs from the crash site before the authorities arrived...The townspeople lined the road on foot, on horseback, in wagons, and in cars as they hurried to the burning plane...Eventually, the town authorities showed up and extinguished the flames. The military showed up and retrieved what it wanted. Then the bulldozers showed up and buried the rest."

The incident occurred on April 4, 1945.

As you glean the story's passages, you notice the usage of landmark identifiers, such as Town Hall, treetops, a store, a school, and a football field. Also, there would need to be a unpopulated space on the edge of town large enough to accommodate a crashing bomber. A bomber armed with eleven .50 caliber machine guns, carrying a payload of eight sixteen-hundred-pound bombs, weighing in at about fifty-five thousand pounds, and possessing a wingspan of 110 feet. The section of town containing all those characteristics likely puts the crash scene along South Main Street and east just beyond Sawmill Branch.

South Main Street and the school.

The football field.

The store.

Mysteriously, a comprehensive search revealed no Charleston newspapers reported the crash, and that includes newspapers everywhere. The Air Force Historical Studies Office, which maintains records, historical data, and archives, officially maintains the ditching of a B-24 Liberator Bomber never occurred on that date in Summerville, SC. Secrecy was a key element during World War II, and censorship did not want that information to be broadcasted. The war ended September 2, 1945--put it in the X-Files along with Area 51 and the Devil's Triangle. It seems more than just a bomber was buried on that fateful day.

There are a few unexplainable chinks in the telling. According to the story, no one was in the aircraft at impact. All occupants safely exited via parachutes, which included the pilot. I find that difficult to accept. It would mean the pilot, at a safe elevation for deploying a parachute, abandoned his aircraft over a civilian population to crash where ever it may. Any responsible pilot would not have permitted that to happen.

No one knows what the plane was doing and why it ended up flying over Summerville. Speculation was it had been patrolling the coast searching for Nazi U-Boat submarines, but that would have been an assignment for a fighter more so than a bomber. Also, why didn't the pilot ditch the failing aircraft into the ocean, unless he lost total command of the primary flight controls and couldn't do so, but that hypothesis can be quickly dismissed since the pilot was still capable of circling the town.

Despite the notable chinks in the story, the named eyewitnesses Betty Jo Waring and Bobby Anderson cannot be ignored, not to discount a whole school of students and school faculty. Consulting the crew and pilot would be futile, they would be obliged to take an oath of confidentiality. One thing is for sure, the bell in the town hall bell tower would have rung out, thus alerting the firefighters and townspeople of the catastrophe. It served as a fire alarm for the town, indicating by a predetermined sequence of rings what part of town was on fire to direct the volunteer firefighters to the correct location.

Many years have passed since April 4, 1945. Still, there is possibly somebody out there who knows the truth. The question: Who are you, and are you willing to come forward and shed some light on this Summerville mystery?

Otherwise, mystery sleuths, get out your magnetometers and ground-penetrating radar equipped drones, there is a deeply hidden secret needing to be unveiled. This could be a venture requiring the expertise of Josh Gates and Expedition Unknown. Without a doubt, "The Phantom Flight Over Summerville" would make a good Twilight Zone episode.

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.