Experts Think This Haunting Ghost Story Could Be the Result of a Strange Geologic Phenomenon
A new study from a seismologist from the U.S. Geological Survey may have solved the mystery.
The light is likely caused by a gaseous emission from the Earth itself, possibly as a result of earthquakes.
Nearly every town in America has its local legends—the scary stories told at sleepovers or around campfires that someone's friend or cousin always swears they totally saw for real one time.
In the town of Summerville, South Carolina, they have the tale of the 'Summerville Ghost.' The story involves a man who either worked for the railroad or simply walked along the tracks every day, depending on which version of the story you hear. (It's been told since the 1950s, so some details vary over time.)
One day, that man was struck by a train coming down the tracks that ran between Charleston and Summerville, and in some versions of the story, was even decapitated. But the Summerville Ghost isn't the spirit of the headless man who died on the tracks. Instead, it's supposedly the man's wife. As the blog South Carolina Haunted Houses summarizes:
'In life, the woman would meet her husband every night and the two of them walked back to their house by lamp light{...} Unable to process his death, she continued her ritual of waiting at the train tracks. It is said that her ghost emits a green light that hovers above the road. Some witnesses claimed the light followed them, while others admitted to an overwhelming feeling of sorrow and despair.'
Believable or not, there are thousands, maybe millions of these stories across the country and around the world. But what sets Summerville apart is that, according to seismologist Susan Hough, there might be some truth to this one.
As reported by IFLScience, Hough—who works at the US Geological Survey (USGS)—has developed a theory to explain not just the lights that define the sightings of the Summerville Ghost, but also the other supposed signs of hauntings that have been reported in the area 'such as cars shaking, doors slamming, and whispered voices being heard without a source.'
As you might have guessed, given that Hough is a seismologist for the USGS, the study she and her team recently published in Seismological Research Letters chalks the haunting up to a geological phenomenon—specifically, tremors and earthquakes.
Hough attributes the cars shaking to 'earthquakes with a shallow source,' while the whispered voices were likely 'high-frequency shaking noises resulting from tremors,' because 'sound waves at frequencies of 20–200 Hz are within the audible range.'
But what about the ghostly lights? That, Hough suggests, could have a few causes.
One possibility is a gaseous release from within the earth:
'The gas release hypothesis involves two possible mechanisms,' Hough explained to IFLScience. 'As an inert gas, radon will not ignite, but could potentially be associated with a glow discharge phenomenon, whereby electrons move to an excited state and then fall back to their ground orbital shell. This usually happens at low temperatures, close to the freezing point. [The study] Enomoto (2024) presents other ideas, involving gamma rays in the atmosphere, and radon or radon/methane gas release.'
Of course, there's also the possibility that it is an ignited gas, lit by sparks emitted from the train on the tracks. 'But the association could have a different explanation,' Hough notes, '…for example the tendency of railroads to follow corridors that were carved out by faults.'
Hough's study was motivated by more than just a desire to be the X-Files' Dana Scully of the geological world, of course:
'The study felt too frivolous for words when I started, but could actually help address a difficult and important problem: which of the many preexisting faults in the east (and elsewhere) are active? Are there more potential seismic zones than the small handful that have produced large earthquakes during the short historic record?'
'My hope,' she concludes, 'is that ghost stories might provide a useful target for investigations, both to understand earthquake lights, and to identify shallow active faults in eastern North America.'
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