St. Louis Light (5)

From: face@eisa.com
To: obiwan@ghosts.org
Subject: Reader Submission
Date: Tuesday, March 05, 2002 2:02 AM
yourname: CK Hambleton

I was raised on an acreage 3 miles north of St. Louis, Saskatchewan along rural route #2 (5 mi from the light by car, 2 mi as the crow flies). As you may suspect, I have had a number of experiences with the "ghost" light and have a number of opinions as well. When people ask me about the light I try my best to remain objective, and I like to think that my accounts of this thing are fairly tidy....

I have witnessed the light around 50 times. As a curious youngster, I often begged to be driven down the highway and up the grid road to see the light - living in the area as a young boy, it seemed that the light was an omnipresent reality, and a part of the landscape. Our property stetched back from the highway west to the CNR easement, and a bit beyond. I remember the first time I saw the light - the tracks were still there, and it would have been around '81 - and my parents, being new to the area, actually thought that there was a train coming. So, yes, it does look a lot like an old train.

The light, over the years, has performed rather predictably. The other accounts posted here are rather accurate, especially Prof. Matheson's (I happened to have studied american lit under Prof. Matheson 15 years after first seeing the light!!)

By far the most unusual (and unexplainable) experience I ever had in the area was about a mile south of the viewing "crossroads" area where most congregate to see this thing. My father, knowing the area roughly, and the leaseholders, decided that we needed to drive the truck south through various fields and gates to get a closer look at the light.

We came upon a level farm road crossing of the tracks a mile south of the crossroads where we stopped the truck, and my father applied the hand brake (ignition off). All I really remember is my parents getting out of the truck to take in the unusually bright glow over the hoizon and to the south. As the light got to its brightest, the truck suddenly, and rather slowly, rolled back off the tracks and came to a sudden halt again.

What I remember most about the experience (I was 7) is how truly frightened my parents were, which, as a child, is always alarming. We returned to the normal viewing area to see the light had advanced and was quite close (closer to the crossroads than normal).

This is a tale which I am always hesitant to weave around those who I have respect for (and for whom I value friendship in!) but it is absolutely true.

Other notes:

A very good neighbour and loyal friend of my father's told him one time that she had a "near miss" encounter with the light, that she described as almost like being run over by a car at night (minus the noise).

Some of the "car didn't start" accounts, or actual visions of human ghosts may be chalked up as fuelled by booze - the light used to be quite a party locale.

A local old lady who lives nearest the light has, on warm summer nights, reportedly heard sounds of babies crying and other human comotion from up on the hill where the tracks were. Again, possibly parties, and coyotes.

Proof, Suspicions, Theories....

Its not the damn car lights. Period.
Its not the grain elavator on Hoey Hill 20 km to the south (its now gone too - guess what still shines north of St. Louis?)
Apparently most of the scientific data collected has pertained to the possibility of gasses or flurorecsents in the soil or plants. But really nothing solid has turned up.

My opinion: I know that there exists an underground river or aquifer of huge proportions in this exact spot. When our house was built in the 70's they had to excavate on a built up area as they hit water under 8 feet of land. After watering lawns, greenhouses all night the well at our farm recovered higher than its inital volume and with great speed. My best guess is that there could be a sort of static charge or energy given off through the flow of moving water underground.

Yet, this still seems unsatisfactory to me, given a couple of things: The light only shines towards the north. Where else in nature do we see this kind of behaviour from a light source.

I know exactly where the light exists (emanates from, in the human point of view) because of an experiment my father undertook. He drove south of the vieing area at night to the next grid road that crossed the tracks (just south of where our property crossed the tracks) While he did this, he left a group of friends at the ordinary viewpoint. He turned the truck to face north and shone the headlights down the rail line. Those at the other end witnessed the "ghost light" superimposed, or in-between them and our truck!

This puts the light very near or on our old property. No one has ever, to my knowledge, caught up to or walked to the light.

Anecdotes....

The one thing I find most interesting about most experiences at the light is the strange or creepy sense that most get out there after seeing it, or by knowing that its looming. possibly, as prof Matheson argues, there is a human construct at work here; we want to be a part of the narrative, so we indulge in getting downright "spooked".

Yet there is energy out there. I remember being older, say 13, and riding my mountain bike along our trails my father cut through the woods on our 80 acre plot. One evening, as I lost track of time, I found myself out at sunset and stopped to take a drink from my water bottle.

Without really stopping to think about the light I got a trully "skin crawling" sensation and rode back to the house in a hurry. Maybe it was all those years of growing up near a ghost and all the stories, but it was quite a strange sensation to say the least.

To conclude, I will share an interesting comment that I think trancends all scientific or otherwise rational explanation offered up for the light. It was included in a homespun story about the light in a local newspaper a few years ago that I happened to see on a visit back there, and comes from an older local woman. Refering to the sweeping curve the tracks used to take after crossing the St Louis bridge and heading north (just before the "light" ) she said that "that train went around those curves so many times over the years that I think maybe it just wore a groove in something".

What "that something" is, or what the "groove" constitutes is left up to the interested witness. I just thought that a statement as mysterious as hers really encapsulated the strangeness of the light itself.

Cheers.

The Ghostlight Page

www.ghosts.org home