Stories of mysterious lights suddenly illuminating the nocturnal darkness of unfrequented spots have long been current throughout the world. In the ‘Odyssey,’ when Athene was mystically present as Odysseus and Telemachus were moving the weapons out of the hall (xix. 21-50), Telemachus exclaims, ‘Father, surely a great marvel is this I behold! Meseemeth that the walls of the hall, and the fair spaces between the pillars, and the beams of pine, and the columns that run aloft, are bright as it were with flaming fire. Verily some god is within of them that hold the wide heaven.’ Odysseus answers, ‘Lo, this is the wont of the gods that possess Olympus.’ In Theocritus, when Hera sends the snakes to attack the infant Heracles, a mysterious flame shines forth. The same phenomenon occurs in the Sagas of Burut Njas, when Gunnar sings within his tomb. The brilliance of the light which attends the presence of the supernatural is indeed widely diffused, and, as Mr. Andrew Lang writes,[129] ‘Philosophers may dispute whether any objective fact lies at the bottom of this belief, or whether a savage superstition has survived into Greek epic and idyll and into modern ghost stories.’
Although science has years ago explained many such phosphoric appearances as governed by certain atmospheric laws, superstitious fancy has not only attributed to them supernatural causes, but associated them with all kinds of weird and romantic tales. According to one popular notion, strange lights of this kind are the spirits of persons who, for some reason, cannot remain quiet. Thus a spectre known as the ‘Lady and the Lantern,’ has long been said to haunt the beach at St. Ives, Cornwall, in stormy weather. The story goes that a lady and her child had been saved from a wreck, but the child was swept away and drowned, and she is supposed to be hunting for its body. Similar tales are told elsewhere, but the object of search is not always the same. A light, for instance, hovers about a stone on the Cornish coast, locally designated ‘Madge Figg’s Chair,’ which is supposed to be the ghost of a wrecked lady whom Madge stripped of her jewels. In Scotland the appearance of a spectral ‘lady of the golden casket’ was attended by a phantom light, and it is also related how the ghost of a murdered woman is seen by her lover at sea, approaching in the shape of a bright light, which assumes the human form as it draws nearer. She finally calls him, and he springs into her arms, and disappears in a flash of fire.[130]
There is the popular legend of the ‘Radiant Boy’—a strange boy with a shining face, who has been seen in certain Lincolnshire houses and elsewhere. This ghost was described to Mr. Baring-Gould[131] by a Yorkshire farmer, who, as he was riding one night to Thirsk, suddenly saw pass by him a ‘radiant boy’ on a white horse. To quote his own words, ‘there was no sound of footfall as the boy drew nigh. He was first aware of the approach of the mysterious rider by seeing the shadow of himself and his horse flung before him on the high road. Thinking there might be a carriage with lamps, he was not alarmed till, by the shortening of the shadow, he knew that the light must be near him, and then he was surprised to hear no sound. He thereupon turned in his saddle, and at the same moment the “radiant boy” passed him. He was a child of about eleven, with a fresh bright face. “Had he any clothes on? and if so, what were they like?” I asked. But the old man could not tell. His astonishment was so great that he took no notice of particulars. The boy rode on till he came to a gate which led into a field; he stooped as if to open the gate, rode through, and all was instantly dark.’
At the commencement of the present century the little village of Black Heddon, near Stamfordham, in Northumberland, was greatly disturbed by an apparition known as ‘Silky,’ from the nature of her dress. She suddenly appeared to benighted travellers, breaking forth upon them in dazzling splendour, in the darkest and most lonely parts of the road. This spirit exercised a marvellous power over the brute creation, and once, it is said, waylaid a waggon bringing coals to a farm near Black Heddon, and fixed the team upon a bridge, since called, after her, ‘Silky’s Brig.’ Do what he could, the driver could not make the horses move a step, and there they would have stayed all night had not another farm servant come up with some mountain ash about him. It was generally supposed that Silky, who suddenly disappeared, was the troubled phantom of some person who had died miserable because she owned treasure, and was overtaken by death before she had disclosed its hiding-place.
An old barn situated near Birchen Tower, Hollinwood, which was noted for the apparition of Madame Beswick on dark and wintry nights, at times, it is said, appears to be on fire, a red glare of glowing heat being observable through the loopholes and crevices of the building. Sometimes the sight is so threatening that the neighbours will raise an alarm that the barn is in flames. But when the premises are searched, everything is in order, and nothing found wrong.[132] And a Welsh romance tells how, after Howel Sele slew his cousin Glendower, and buried him in ‘a broad and blasted oak, scorched by the lightning’s vivid glare,’
Pale lights on Cader’s rocks were seen,
And midnight voices heard to moan.
Such phantom lights are not confined to land, and most of the tales of spectre ships speak of their being seen by the affrighted crews. In the ‘Salem Spectre Ship’ we are told how
The night grew thick, but a phantom light
Around her path was shed.
They are generally dreaded as foreboding a catastrophe, and have given rise to a host of curious stories. A light is said to hover about in Sennen Cove, which is thought to be an ill-omened apparition; and a Welsh story speaks of a ghost, the ‘Cyhyraeth,’ that appears on the beach, in a light, with groanings and cries.[133] Flames are reported to issue from the Eider River, and from several lakes in Germany. Where ships have been wrecked, blue lights are supposed to faintly glimmer, occasionally accompanied by the spirits of wrecked or injured persons. A notable instance is told of Sable Island,[134] where, with the leaping flames, is seen the ‘Lady of Copeland’ wrecked and murdered by pirates from the Amelie transport. She has one finger missing on her hand.
Sometimes weird lights flickering in solitary places are thought to be the unhappy spirits of wicked persons who have no rest in the grave. Milton refers to this fancy in his ‘Paradise Lost’ (ix. 634):