Will-o'-the-Wisp: Ghost Light

 

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Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: Will-o’-the-Wisp: Ghost Light

A will-o’-the-wisp is a type of ghost light, which is a flickering or moving light visible in the wilderness on dark nights, without any obvious source. Will-o’-the-wisps specifically refer to lights glowing over marshes or bogs. Sometimes people get the urge to chase after these lights—possibly to an unexpected death by drowning. 

But guess what—unlike some of the other paranormal topics discussed on this blog, ghost lights are actually real. So what the heck are they? Let’s look at some theories:

Sometimes the Earth just makes lights

Let’s get reality out of the way first. There are different explanations for ghost lights, depending on where they are, including bioluminescence (living things glow), chemiluminescence (chemicals glow), piezoelectricity (earthquakes glow), and reflections of human-made lights. (Some people add ball lightning, but that’s a weird topic all by itself.) A will-o’-the-wisp, which glows over marshes or bogs, is probably common gasses which ignite easily from natural causes and can move with the wind. So that’s very cool! But folklore’s got some fun stuff to say too:

Putting the “ghost” in ghost light

In some traditions, ghost lights are death omens: if a light is seen, someone is going to die. Multiple lights? Prepare for a mass funeral. Sometimes the person who sees the light is doomed, and sometimes it could be anyone who will be in the area in the near future. Closely related and somehow even more creepy are you’re-going-to-find-a-dead-body omens: for example, a ghost light might mark a hidden burial, or appear on a beach right before a drowned sailor washes up there.

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some ghostly writing prompts, such as:

Bring out your dead. Death omens are common in folklore, as are supernatural signs that point to the undiscovered body of a murder victim. But a flame marking a place where a dead body will arrive in the near future is super creepy. What on earth would someone do with that information? Call the coroner to be on standby? Tell the police to stake out the place in case a murderer shows up with a corpse? Have paramedics hang out in case some random guy has a heart attack? The question is the same as always when dealing with death omens: can the future be changed? Is the purpose of the omen to give some supernatural forewarning that only serves to panic people who can’t do anything about it, or is it meant to be a last-ditch effort to save someone’s life? Sounds like a horror story in the making.

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