PHANTOM LIGHTS: A BRITISH SURVEY

Mysterious lights have been with us much longer than UFOs or UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) and they feature in the traditions and folklore of every culture. In 1972, Mark A Hall listed 46 locations across the world that have such traditions, including examples from Iraq, New Guinea, Australia, China and many in the USA. My own Spooklights: A British Survey (with Granville Oldroyd, privately published, 1985) listed half a dozen examples from the British Isles. Since then my database has expanded to include some 50 further examples collected from newspapers and folklore archives. Here is a sampler: 1864-70: The Whitburn lights, Northumberland

In 1865 the British Admiralty set up a commission to investigate the source of “false lights” that lured ships to destruction on the treacherous rocks at Whitburn on the North Sea coast. In testimony submitted to a Board of Inquiry chaired by Rear Admiral Sir Richard Collinson, crewmen said they had been led towards the shore by a revolving white light or lights that they mistook for the lighthouse at the mouth of the Tyne. Coastguards and fishermen described seeing similar lights, sometimes in pairs, above the coastline for a period of 30 years. Sightings reached a peak in the winter of 186566 when 17 vessels came to grief in a five month period. The inquiry exonerated local fishermen after rumours suggested they had been deliberately igniting “false lights” to benefit from wrecks. After the loss of 20 further vessels in 1869, Trinity House built a new lighthouse, the first powered by electric current, on Souter Point to guide ships to safety (see FT266:40-42).

1800s-present: The Callart Light, Loch Leven, Scotland

Novelist and folklorist Andrew Lang wrote of “spectral lights” that haunt Loch Leven between the Ballachulish Hotel and Glencoe. One night in 1900, villagers turned out to “stare and wonder” as the lights “moved rapidly down the road to Callart, then climbed the hillside, then went down to the shore of the rock”. Some first-hand accounts of the Callart lights were collected for Paul Devereux’s book Earthlights Revelation published in 1989. Ghostly lights have also been seen above Loch Tay, Upper Loch Torridon and Loch Rannoch, where a ball of light follows a specific route, “skimming the surface of the water” before disappearing at the same spot.

1905-12: The White Light of Crom, Northern Ireland

In 1912, the Earl of Erne wrote to the London Daily Mail to describe a strange light that appeared frequently above Loch Erne near Crom Castle, Co. Fermanagh (below). He said: “The light has been seen at intervals several times within the last six or seven years… it is of a yellow colour, and in size and shape very much the same as a motor-car lamp. It travels at a considerable pace along the top of the water – sometimes against the wind, at other times with it. It lights up all objects within a certain radius and disappears as quickly as it appears.”

1923-26: The Burton Dassett ghost, Warwickshire

During the 1920s, the national press reported the appearance of a mysterious light “as bright as a motorcycle headlamp” that was seen frequently floating above the Burton Dassett Hills, a sandstone outcrop in the Cotswolds, 10 miles (16km) south of Warwick. Early in 1923, journalists from London and Birmingham joined groups of curious locals hunting for the light that it was claimed appeared regularly near Burton Dassett’s Norman church (above) and holy well. They were rewarded with spectacular sightings of a “well defined and spherical light” that appeared to rise from the ground, hover and moved in a strange zig-zag motion before it disappeared “in a flash”. The light reappeared in 1924, coinciding with an earthquake, but has been reported less frequently since then.

1880s and 1930: The Cammeringham Light, Lincolnshire

A mysterious yellow light, like a headlight on a motorcycle, haunts Middle Street, a stretch of limestone ridge that runs parallel to the Roman road of Ermine Street, north of Lincoln. Regional newspapers reported a flurry of observations early in 1930 that revived memories of earlier sightings “40 and 50 years ago”. Writing in Lincolnshire Life in 1974, GF Garner described his own family’s encounters with the “emanation, apparition, phantom – call it what you will” and added: “I do not know if the light still appears, or, if it does not, when it stopped appearing. Nor have I heard any rational explanation of this fantastic story.”

1938-39: The Pennine Light, North Yorkshire

Shortly before WWII, Yorkshire newspapers broke the story of a “ghost light” or “ghostly ray” that plagued motorists travelling along country roads in Coverdale. Salesman William Brown saw the light several times on the road between Coverham and West Scrafton. He described it as like “a brilliant beam of light” that appeared to come out of the road near the ruins of a mediæval chapel known as St Simon’s. The light was so dazzling that drivers thought it was the headlamp of an approaching car and they got in the habit of pulling into the side of the road to let it pass, but nothing appeared. After WWII similar phantom lights were seen again on the A684 further north, near the village of West Witton.

1950s-70s: The Longdendale Lights, Derbyshire/Cheshire

Since the 1960s, Mountain Rescue Teams have been called out to investigate sightings of mysterious ‘flares’ hovering above the crags of Bleaklow, at 2,060ft (628m) in the Peak District National Park. As teams approached the lights they vanished, leaving no sign of earthly cause. Early one summer night in 1970, Barbara Drabble, wife of the Peak Park warden, saw a strange blue light that illuminated the whole of the valley, “lighting up every single feature”, and left an icy sheen on her car. The following year a similar dazzling blue light was seen high on the mountain by staff and residents at Crowden Youth Hostel, who called in emergency services for a further fruitless search. The most common description in recent years has been a string or arc of coloured, pulsing lights that have been seen hovering above Bramah Edge and the Torside Reservoir. Local residents recall sightings earlier in the 20th century when the lights were known as “Devil’s Bonfires” (see FT107:39-42).