Scientists Have an Unexpected Answer for the ‘Ghost Lanterns’ That Showed Up in South Carolina

Since the 1960s, “Summerville light” has haunted the narrow stretch of Sheep Island Road in Summerville, a small town just north of Charleston. Legend was it that a widow roamed the abandoned railroad track situated here, to search for her husband, a railroad worker who died in an accident. The haunting came in the form of glowing blobs of orange, green, and blue that floated in the air like lanterns. Recently, Susan Hough at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) realized that there could be an earthly explanation for this ghost.

She was poring through some archives to research some information about a 7.3-magnitude earthquake that struck Charleston in 1886. Her search took her to a bookstore where she came across “Haunted Summerville,” a collection of eerie tales related to their small town. It didn’t take her long to realize that the floating lanterns weren’t just ghosts, but rather a purely scientific thing. Bridging the gap between science and the supernatural, she published the findings in Seismological Research Letters.

Hough, who is a seismologist, attributed the rare glowing orbs to a phenomenon called “earthquake lights.” USGS defines “earthquake lights” as “Phenomena such as sheet lightning, balls of light, streamers, and steady glow, reported in association with earthquakes.” However, before the term came to Hough’s mind, the phenomenon wasn’t known as much in the scientific community. “I think most seismologists now accept that they’re real. But I don’t think there’s a really mature accepted theory to explain them,” she told Discover Magazine. "They have never been studied or confirmed systematically because virtually all of the data/observations are anecdotal, but lights during earthquakes have been reported for many years," she told Live Science.

But despite the ongoing debate, she believed the “Summerville light” was triggered somehow by the massive 1886 quake. To reaffirm her belief, she noticed that the glowing orbs appeared mostly near the area where the quake’s epicenter was located. Around this region, witnesses often reported strange noises, violent shaking, and whatnot. They said their cars shook violently when they saw the light, which “just screams earthquake,” as Hough described. The residents of creaky old buildings complained that they often heard a noise upstairs.

“People said their cars would shakе violently. Well, that’s an earthquake. They heard noises upstairs, whispers. Or doors would swing. Seismic events we may not perceive as earthquakes fit some of these accounts. And glowing orbs that would hang in the air along a former railroad track. Well, that makes you think earthquake lights,” Hough shared with Science.

While earthquake lights seem to be the most plausible explanation for these haunting lights, scientists don’t yet know what exactly causes them. One reason was provided by Yuji Enomoto, a Japanese seismologist at Shinshu University. In a paper published in the Atmosphere Journal in July 2024. Enomoto proposed that the “earthquake lights could result from the chemical interactions of gases, like radon and methane, released from underground.” On the other hand, John Ebel, a seismologist at Boston University attributed the cause to seismic activity occurring deep in the Earth that deforms the minerals and creates electric charge which produces this surreal nightglow. "Earthquake farts," Hough called it.

A logical understanding of these so-called “ghost lanterns” would enable scientists and geologists to gain a new perspective on America’s geology, especially that of this region. "Understanding earthquakes in central and eastern North America has been challenging because we have so little data to investigate earthquakes and active faults," Hough told Live Science. "This might be the most interesting implication of my little study, that friendly ghosts are illuminating shallow faults along which gases are released." But as for now, Summerville's ghost remains a mystery that lies beyond the reach of science.