Hunter reports seeing strange light between Pine Apple and Oak Hill

"Pegues' Ghost" from "13 Alabama Ghosts & Jeffrey"

Deer season is now in full swing throughout Alabama, and lots of folks are visiting Wilcox County during this time of year to take advantage of the fine hunting opportunities that the county has to offer. One such hunter contacted me the other day to report something out of the ordinary that he saw while driving to his hunting camp late one night a week or so ago.

This gentleman, who asked not to be named, is in his sixties and is retired. He grew up in the Camden area, but moved away years ago to join the military. After getting out of the service, he took a job north of Birmingham and has lived in that part of the state ever since. He said he still loves to come home to Wilcox County, especially during deer season.

A little over a week ago, right before the cold snap we had last week, this man was driving alone, headed west on State Highway 10. It was around midnight, and he was just driving along, listening to the radio, when all of a sudden, somewhere between Pine Apple and Oak Hill, not far from Bear Creek, he saw an unusual light in the woods on the north side of the highway. He said that he first thought that it was a coon hunter’s headlamp or maybe someone with a flashlight.

The man in the truck said that he was the only person on the highway at that time of night, so he slowed down for a better look. That’s when he realized that it was no coon hunter or flashlight. The man went on to say that the strange light was “blueish-green,” “generally round-shaped” and seemed to float three or four feet off the ground.

The man said that he didn’t see anyone around the light and wondered if it might have been a swarm of fireflies or “swamp gas.” In all, he said that the unusual light was visible for probably less than two minutes, and that it eventually seemed to turn north before floating out of sight. A couple of days later, he contacted me wanting to know if anyone else had reported anything strange in that area.

I told him that his was the first such report that I had received, but I assured him that reports of strange lights were not uncommon. While I’ve never seen one myself, my own grandfather told stories of seeing a strange light moving through the woods when he was a boy, and I’ve even heard stories about ghostly balls of light in Dallas County and Monroe County. In fact, an entire chapter in Kathryn Tucker Windham’s iconic book, “13 Alabama Ghosts & Jeffrey,” describes the eerie ball of light at Old Cahawba that she calls “Pegues’ Ghost.”

I dug into the subject a little more deeply and learned that folklore is full of such reports of strange lights, and this phenomenon seems to happen all over the world. Sometimes called “corpse lights” or “will-o’-the-wisp,” people a long time ago believed they were caused by ghosts or spirits. However, some scientists believe these lights are caused by a mixture of gases given off by the decay of organic material, especially around swamps and marshes.

In the end, I’d like to hear from anyone out there in the reading audience who has seen these types of unusual lights, especially between Pine Apple and Oak Hill. Were you alone? What were you doing when you saw the light? When did it happen? Where did it happen? The more details you can provide, the better, so please let me hear from you.