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.

The Old Town Hall Bell Tower—The Keeper Of Some Of Summerville’s Most Controversial And Precious Stories

Summerville was a growing town in 1892. With the ensuing growth, time, if not necessity, called for a new town hall to be built. A corner plot was chosen where the streets of West Richardson and S. Main Street intersected. The cost to build it was set at $6,250.

The planned four story building would wisely face the town's main square, an idyllic vantage point. The first floor would house a high-end grocery store called the "Tea Pot". The second floor would contain the municipal offices. On the third floor, a multi-purpose room/auditorium space would be available for special town events such as dances, plays, parties and operas. The fourth story would shelter the structures massive bell, but as history would have it, it would shelter more than just the bell. It became the keeper for some of Summerville’s most controversial and precious stories.

Children were forbidden to go up into the town hall belfry for obvious safety reasons, not to leave unmentioned the easy temptation presented to an impetuous youth to playfully ring the bell. Although, stories tell of savvy youngsters secretly trudging their way up through the humid darkness of the steep, creaky belfry stairs, navigating a hatchway, and then a catwalk to get to the top. Being the tallest building on Hutchinson Square, the view the belfry offered was often the prize. Imagine the thrill one would experience at seeing from above President Roosevelt and his entourage ride by on Main Street as they made their way to the Pine Forest Inn.

Now, visualize the chaos a person could unleash on the town with an unauthorized ringing of the bell. There was a $200 fine for anyone foolish enough to do it. A popular story tells of a physician named Louis Miles ignoring the law and ringing the bell to announce the birth of his daughter to a confused crowd that gathered below. He happily paid the fine not once, but twice for the same reason.

View of Summerville from the old town hall bell tower in its early years

During World War II, civilians were stationed in the Town Hall bell tower as lookouts. Their task was to watch the skies for enemy aircraft and when spotted, sound the alarm. Silhouettes of enemy aircraft were pinned on the interior walls to assist the lookouts in making proper identifications. One night, the town had a scare when out of the darkened skies a plane buzzed the tower. Combined with several other suspicious incidents that night, officials were convinced the town was under attack, but fortunately, it was all a false alarm. It turned out an impulsive local boy on a training flight just couldn't resist the urge to be playful. Maybe, he heard one of the town's unattached pretty girls was on duty that night.

Young ladies, who were on duty in the bell tower, would use the opportunity to do some boy spotting. Young military men were all over the town during the war. The young ladies would use their vantage point in the high bell tower to keep an eye out for a potential date. When a group of interesting prospects were spotted, the young lady would toss a note wrapped around a stone with the date, time, and place of the next American Legion party along with her name to the boy of her choosing with hopes of meeting at the party.

There is an interesting story told by one of those young ladies who was doing "spotter duty" on the date of April 4, 1945. It is an Area 51 type story, except the flying object was identified in this case, but no formal proof has been found to verify the flying object's existence. For one, the wreckage of the B-24 Liberator bomber was buried by the military in the Summerville field where it crashed. Second, the local paper carried no report of the crash. And third, based on their records, the Air Force Historical Studies Office claims no such crash occurred on that date in Summerville and no flight of a B-24 over Summerville existed on that date, as the story is told. Needless to say, everything that has to do with the military during war time becomes classified information. Still, the young lady on duty that fateful afternoon, who I shall leave unnamed, a school full of young children, and the school's faculty would say otherwise, and not to leave unmentioned as additional possible potential witnesses, the ten flyboys who were seen parachuting from the bomber moments before it crashed. It was seen coming in from the east. So, if the story is true, somewhere buried in a Summerville field west of the town hall is the wreckage of a B-24 bomber, but likely hidden below property that has been developed upon by now. The story is called The Phantom Flight over Summerville by Bruce Orr.

School commencements were held in the Old Town Hall on Hutchinson Square. At such an event one evening, in the middle of the ceremony, an announcement was made for the attendees to leave the building in an orderly and quiet manner. Later, it was reported some of the town's officials in attendance had felt an ominous swaying. The upper floors were declared unsafe for public gatherings, in part, due to the weight of the bell in the fourth floor bell tower. This event led to the town hall and its bell tower to be condemned. Thus, the keeper's book of stories closed with the words, The End.

I am sure there are more stories to be remembered and told. If you have a story or know of one, please leave its telling in the article's comments.

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