Have you ever watched something on TV and got that vague uneasy feeling that it is something you have seen before or it just jiggles your memories? Well with all the new shows on like ghost hunters and paranormal....I'm bound to encounter that what with the haunted farm and stuff. Well this happened over a year ago when I was watching TV, not a paranormal show...I hardly ever watch those but I did happen to catch a bit of an advertisement for one in which they mentioned "ghost lights". When I caught a glimpse of the segment, it sure reminded me of something. Something buried deep in my memories and I sort of just shook it off.
Then about six months ago, I was chatting with my niece who is in her thirties and as often happens ....talk turned to family, funny memories, and the farm. My older daughter was there too and just happened to mentioned that she wanted to take a "ghost tour" in St. Charles, MO. That's a town about 35 minutes from us and it has these tours in the old down town section which are taken (at night of course). We had been throwing around this idea (just for fun mind you) for quite some time.
Then my niece mentioned the "ghost lights". It seems that she has some pretty clear and distinctive memories of the farm. She lived in a trailor on the farm for several years when she was quite small. The trailor was about fifty to a hundred yards from the farm house itself. As she told the story she remembers of the ghost lights I began to realize that she was talking about exactly what I had viewed and found disturbingly familiar on the TV segment. Those glowing lights several feet in the air and moving (usually directly toward me).
She related to us, how as a small child of about 4-6 she can remember at dusk being afraid to walk the fifty yards or so to Grandma's house (the home I grew up in) because she had to watch down the lane for the ghost lights and make sure she had plenty of time to make it to the house before they could travel down the lane toward the house. She vividly described the lights usually in pairs or groups of three to five lights. Possibly ten-twenty feet in the air, but she can't be sure as they were in the distance. But when she would enter the yard at dusk or a bit later in the summer she could see them up the lane and they frequently started moving toward her and the farm house as she made her way quickly across the yard. She had actually read mention of "ghost lights" in a book about Missouri ghosts and made the connection.
I can't say I have a clear memory of the lights which seems a little odd but what she described are exactly like the lights on the TV segment that cause me such pause when I caught a glimpse of them. Perhaps her story could be explained away as her memory "fitting" what she had read but how exactly do you explain my nagging dejavu when I saw the segment and then the fact that her stories so closely match my vague memories. The ghost lights unlike the little man in the attic caused us a bit of fear but no one was ever hurt by them. Small children can be easily scared by what they do not understand especially at dusk in that twilight time when the light of day becomes the darkness of night.
Originally Posted at Ginger's Journey MARCH 2008
