Ella Scott
It appears the case of the ‘Summerville Ghost’ that has terrorized a South Carolina town has been solved—and the scientist with the answers is imploring young ghostbusters to join her team.
US citizens have been complaining about a ghost haunting the railroad between Charleston and Summerville in South Carolina since the mid-20th century.
According to IFL Science, the location’s strangeness has attracted ghost hunters and paranormal enthusiasts over the years, with some claiming to have seen strange lights rushing towards them and even growing in size.
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Reports of the lights - described by many as small and spherical - follow residents’ claims that nearby spectres have been shaking cars, whispering in their houses, and generally causing havoc in the neighborhood since the 1950s.
But it appears Summerville may not be as haunted as it seems, according to Dr Susan Hough, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The specialist claims that the town is probably experiencing earthquakes with a shallow source.
And those lights? Well, they could be a luminous optical phenomenon known as ‘earthquake lights’.
Dr Hough told Science she’d read newspaper articles and books on the eerie town before heading over there to check it out for herself.
“I didn’t give it a lot of thought,” the seismologist admitted. “Then last October, a USGS newsletter ran a little feature on spooky science.
“That got me thinking again about the ghost stories. And some of the details just screamed earthquake phenomena.”
Dr Hough went on to say that these earthquakes are probably why people’s cars have been shaking and the cause of swinging doors and whispers in upstairs rooms.
“Seismic events we may not perceive as earthquakes fit some of these accounts,” she explained.
“And glowing orbs that would hang in the air along a former railroad track. Well, that makes you think earthquake lights.
Hough claimed this phenomenon has been happening ‘all over the place’, with lights being reported in Wilmington and elsewhere in the Carolinas.
“Maybe those ‘ghosts’ are illuminating shallow active faults. They’re impossible to study, because you can’t catch them in the act. But there are plausible theories that might explain them.”
One of these theories, taken from a study published by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI), is that earthquake lights are linked to the release of radon or methane gases.
This is because these particular gases can ignite when they’re exposed to oxygen, the expert confirmed.
"The gas release hypothesis involves two possible mechanisms," Hough explained to IFLScience.
"As an inert gas, radon will not ignite, but could potentially be associated with a glow discharge phenomenon, whereby electrons move to an excited state and then fall back to their ground orbital shell.”
Dr Hough also believes the abandoned railroad in the nearby woods may be causing the eerie lights, remarking that sparks ‘might be part of the story’.
Meanwhile, the ghostly noises that people have been complaining about could be ‘high-frequency energy from a shallow, nearby sauce’.
“Sound waves at frequencies of 20–200 Hz are within the audible range," Hough wrote in her study.
"Studies further suggest that infrasonic noise, that is, at frequencies lower than 20 Hz, may cause noticeable sensations.
“Felt foreshocks of the 1886 Charleston earthquake, for example, were sometimes reported as ‘detonations’.”
Now that the science expert has a solid theory, she plans to do some further field measurements.
"My hope is that ghost stories might provide a useful target for investigations, both to understand earthquake lights, and to identify shallow active faults in eastern North America.”
“I’ve reached out to Steve Jaume, an excellent seismologist at the College of Charleston,” she added.
“I said, ‘Hey, do you have any students who want to go out ghostbusting?’ We’ll see where it goes.”