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#ghost-light โ€” Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ghost-light, aggregated by home.social.

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  1. You wake inside a cursed labyrinth. Light matches to survive; ghosts only hunt at night. Ghostlight (2025) by RobSmithDev for Amiga OCS is a tense proof-of-concept with full AMOS source included.

    ๐ŸŽ robsmith-dev.itch.io/ghostlight

    #homebrew #amiga #ocs #retro #game #ghostlight

  2. You wake inside a cursed labyrinth. Light matches to survive; ghosts only hunt at night. Ghostlight (2025) by RobSmithDev for Amiga OCS is a tense proof-of-concept with full AMOS source included.

    ๐ŸŽ robsmith-dev.itch.io/ghostlight

    #homebrew #amiga #ocs #retro #game #ghostlight

  3. RE: mastodon.social/@roymathur/116

    Stand by, #Whovians, for #CRRRRS #UK #SFFH #Podcast's revisit of #DoctorWho: #GhostLight. I'm really looking forward to it, as it's been about a month since #Battlefield. I'm also excited, with only a teeny bit of #OldWho remaining to cover, after so many years of this madness!

  4. RE: mastodon.social/@roymathur/116

    Stand by, #Whovians, for #CRRRRS #UK #SFFH #Podcast's revisit of #DoctorWho: #GhostLight. I'm really looking forward to it, as it's been about a month since #Battlefield. I'm also excited, with only a teeny bit of #OldWho remaining to cover, after so many years of this madness!

  5. RE: mastodon.social/@roymathur/116

    I'm still waiting for Vodafone's between "0800 and 1300" appointment, so I've had time to finish my shownotes for tonight's revisit of #DoctorWho: #GhostLight. Please get in touch, #Whovians. Say human words that I can include on tonight's #CRRRRS #podcast. Speak, damn you! Speak!

  6. RE: mastodon.social/@roymathur/116

    Sorry, I'm running late. I finished watching #DoctorWho: #GhostLight a minute ago and I'm writing the shownotes now. When will I learn not to post my podcast schedule in advance of uploading anything? Eh?

  7. RE: mastodon.social/@roymathur/116

    Stand by for a week of #CRRRRS #SFFH #Podacast-ing!

    1. #DoctorWho: #GhostLight scheduled to tape on Monday.

    2. The usual plethora of #geek micro-#reviews scheduled to tape on Tuesday.

    Both will be uploaded next week too, so catch up with the last one below. Speak soon!

  8. 2026-04-14 14:27 Mum took me for my first walk outside in the sun and the flowers yesterday, since a family flu outbreak last week. I was so #sick and the last to recover, and not able to do much more than vegetate and poke at #NetHack a bit, hence delays to taping. However, #CRRRRS #SFFH #Podcast shall return soon with a revisit of #DoctorWho: #GhostLight, as soon as I can talk without coughing my guts out.

  9. "Ghostlight, la chronique familiale douce-amรจre quโ€™il faut dรฉcouvrir dโ€™urgence" par Jean-Baptiste Morain (les Inrocks), je confirme โค๏ธ
    "Ghostlight nโ€™en fait jamais trop dans le coup de thรฉรขtre, laisse ses protagonistes exister, vivre, exprimer leur joie et leur douleur jusquโ€™au bout. Que celui ou celle qui ne verse pas une larme et ne rit jamais en voyant ce film sur lโ€™impossibilitรฉ du deuil passe son chemin."

    youtube.com/watch?v=5qhdl3_64S

    #GhostLight #cinemastodon

  10. My annual spring trip to Riverside Greenhouse outside McVeytown (Home of the McVeytown Ghost Light) has become akin to Christmas morning for this gardening Old Timer. #greenhouse #gardening #gardener #plants #spring #mcveytown #ghostlight #ghoststories #ghoststory #planting

  11. Just watched "Ghostlight." Can recommend.
    Didn't find out until after watching it, the actors that play the father, mother and daughter are father, mother and daughter in real life. They are a family. That must be why the chemistry worked so well. #movie #GhostLight

  12. Just watched "Ghostlight." Can recommend.
    Didn't find out until after watching it, the actors that play the father, mother and daughter are father, mother and daughter in real life. They are a family. That must be why the chemistry worked so well. #movie #GhostLight

  13. Sophie Okonedo, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Chloe Coleman Starring in โ€˜Mouse,โ€™ Next Film From โ€˜Ghostlightโ€™ Directors (EXCLUSIVE)
    #Variety #News #DavidHydePierce #Ghostlight #SophieOkonedo

    variety.com/2025/film/news/sop

  14. Sophie Okonedo, Katherine Mallen Kupferer, Chloe Coleman Starring in โ€˜Mouse,โ€™ Next Film From โ€˜Ghostlightโ€™ Directors (EXCLUSIVE)
    #Variety #News #DavidHydePierce #Ghostlight #SophieOkonedo

    variety.com/2025/film/news/sop

  15. New paper fails to connect Summerville spook light to earthquakes

    A new article by seismologist Susan Hough was published this week in Seismological Research Letters that attempts to connect the legend of the Summerville, South Carolina spook light to earthquake lights (EQLs) resulting from the faults around Charleston that caused the great 1886 quake. Since Hough is a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, her words carry credibility. News of her findings have been appearing in the media strongly suggesting that the mystery of the Summerville light is solved by this conclusion. It is not.

    Unfortunately, my read of it is that this paper shows that Hough didnโ€™t know much about the wider scale of reports of either earth lights (spook or ghost lights) or earthquake lights (luminous phenomenon associated with seismic events). As part of the release of the paper, Hough says that the idea came to her after reading a Halloween-week USGS newsletter with links to โ€œspooky scienceโ€ studies and that it sparked an idea she hadnโ€™t thought much about โ€“ connecting the ghost stories of Summerville to EQLs.

    To make a convincing case, the Summerville story would have to be sufficiently unique to other spook light stories and temporally tied to earthquake lights to suggest this cause. Houghโ€™s paper, Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights?, fails to make that case.

    The Summerville spook light

    Charleston, SC has a lot of ghost stories. The Summerville light is included in common and widespread lore related to a ghost walking the railroad track with a lantern. Associated strange events near Summerville noted by Hough include car engines stopping, frost appearing on windows, audible whispers or voices, strange fingerprints found later on cars, visible apparitions, and cars that โ€œviolently shookโ€. The latter is considered by Hough to be evidence of small shallow, localized quakes.

    The paper goes on to talk about a nearby โ€œhaunted houseโ€ and weakly ties apparition sightings to hallucinogenic gases released (as with Delphi) along faults. This is an unconvincing stretch โ€“ the two locations are not comparable. Gases arenโ€™t causing people to hallucinate ghosts.

    The earthquake history of the Charleston/Summerville area is obvious, but it is not possible to correlate seismic activity with sightings of the Summerville light because of the lack of recording of small quakes at this time and the inability to cite all reports of the light. Perhaps this can change, maybe a result of this paper โ€“ an exciting possibility.

    Hough then moves to the similar story of the Maco light of North Carolina. I cannot follow the connection that can be made to seismic activity and this spook light location. Kaczmarek (2003) noted that the Maco light sightings stopped after the tracks were removed. Iโ€™m not sure if this is true but maybe the rails are more of a key to the spook light mystery than faults.

    Spook lights not by de-fault

    It is a mistake to generally link earth (spook) lights to fault lines. The sheer number of earth light locations worldwide have not correlated well to fault areas. It may be possible that some are, and that the mechanism remains difficult to resolve, but earth lights are their own phenomenon separate from EQLs.

    Several years ago, I began a database to collect locations of earth lights. I let the work slide as it became overwhelming; I reached an incomplete list of 214 different locations of anomalous earth lights worldwide. These locations consisted of tales (usually multiple occurrences) of near-ground sightings of luminous phenomena. While some of these are dubious, faked, or one-off events, many of these locations became notable for their spook lights โ€“ Marfa, Min Min, Joplin, Brown Mountain. This list is biased toward US locations because of my sources (Kaczmarek, Gritzner and Palmer).

    I pulled up the database again to cross-check the details. Though I did not confirm all of their characteristics, 129 of 214 were explicitly called โ€œghost lightsโ€, โ€œspook lightsโ€, or were directly connected with a ghost legend. (Iโ€™m not sure about the rest because I havenโ€™t looked into the details enough, but I would bet that many more have associated ghost tales.) Such phenomenon accrue strong local folklore aspects and are thus reinforced over time.

    Out of the 129, 34 were associated directly with railroads. And, 31 were described with a distinctive โ€œswinging lanternโ€ movement that people connected to the action of someone walking along the tracks searching for something. (This may be a natural results of our visual capability in tracking light sources in the dark โ€“ UFOs are also said to move back and forth in response to our involuntary eye movements.)

    Paul Devereux is my favorite resource on earth lights. In his Earth Lights Revelation, he explains that earth lights may be conflated with UFOs, but they appear to be internally produced by the earth in several places where they can be regularly observed. They have been reported across much of human history to the point that they obviously exist, but the mechanism is unclear or has multiple sources. Those mechanisms include electrical phenomenon (including a variant akin to ball lightning), burning gases, and metal deposits (acting like a battery).

    Because of their unpredictability and association with haunted areas, earth lights exists on the edge of scientific awareness. This is similar to earthquake lights, which have different characteristics that set them apart from general earth/spook lights. EQLs appear as upward floating orbs, glows, curtains, or flashes. While it is possible that EQLs could be associated with faults, EQLs arenโ€™t associated with railroad tracks and ghost stories which are very much a subset of anomalous light stories.

    In short, it has been speculated by some researchers that earth lights may be associated with stressed rock along fault lines (3 such places appeared in my list), but they are not usually associated with earthquake events. If these earth lights appear with coincident earthquakes, that correlation would already have been made long ago. There are many more places that have earth/spook light legends that are not associated with fault lines than places that are.

    Interestingly, Hough admits in the paper that earthquake lights are a recognized natural phenomenon. This is a substantive admission since the USGS has always downplayed the idea of EQLs. To me, this shows that the scientific community is now recognizing that the research into EQLs is legitimate.

    The press release concludes that โ€œmaybe the friendly ghosts are illuminating fault zones in the eastโ€. Again, that is far too much of a reach from this paltry data set.

    Unsatisfactory conclusion with a glimmer of hope

    The conclusion reached by Hough is baffling. She writes:

    Although earthquake phenomena cannot explain every ghost story in every region, considering the lore of the Summerville Light, one is left with three plausible explanations: (1) there was no physical basis for the lore, beyond fanciful imaginations among a local population โ€œspookedโ€ by stories, (2) the legends are true, the ghost of a bereaved wife wandered along a stretch of an old trunk line with a lantern, searching for the head of her decapitated husband, or (3) accounts of apparently supernatural phenomena in and around Summerville can be explained by local earthquake activity starting around or before 1959, including small events that were not recognized as earthquakes.

    She favors the last one resulting from ignition of water-soluble gases emitted from faults, like radon or methane, that were then ignited by a spark of static electricity or rock movement. She said that the gases trapped in water droplets might also help explain why these tales of ghost lights seem to occur on dark and misty nights. High humidity is not conductive to static sparks, so this makes little sense.

    Left out of these possibilities are other obvious explanations for the stories of famous earth lights. These involve a combination of optical and atmospheric effects, local history and perceptions, social interest in the stories, legend tripping, etc. Speculatively linking the Summerville (and Maco) lights with EQLs in this paper feels misleading and overly simplistic, ignoring the influential social aspects at play with ghost legends and haunted places. And, it may be considered explaining one unknown with another.

    Finally, there are two exciting bits in this paper: First, a USGS scientist admits that EQLs are worth scientific attention, and second, it favorably presents the option that EQLs may occur in the seismically stressed area of Charleston, so monitoring and collection of reports of lights should be considered. Hough cites the Enomoto paper, which I also referenced in this recent piece, that provides examples of the stronger evidence emerging in support of EQLs. I am all for more research into this area.

    But as for the Summerville light being fault-related, this paper poorly supports that hypothesis. Spooky geology must include the wider, social component to be viable.

    References

    Devereux, Paul. (1990) Earth Lights Revelation.

    Gritzner, Charles F. (2019). North Carolina Ghost Lights and Legends.

    Hough, S. E. (2025). Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights? Seismol. Res. Lett. XX, 1โ€“7, doi: 10.1785/0220240442. https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/srl/article-abstract/doi/10.1785/0220240442/651455/Haunted-Summerville-Ghostly-Lights-or-Earthquake (Paywalled)

    Kaczmarek, Dale D. (2003) Illuminating the Darkness: The Mystery of Spooklights.

    Palmer, Sean B. (undated) Earth Lights: Spooklights and Ghost Lights. http://inamidst.com/lights/earth

    #earthLights #earthquakeLights #folklore #ghostLight #HauntedSummerville #legends #seismology #spookLight #spookyScience #Summervillle #SusanHough

    sharonahill.com/?p=9241

  16. โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ

    Art imitates life in this #dramacomedy starring real life family #KeithKupferer #KatherineMallenKupferer + #TaraMallen. #Film directed by #KellyOSullivan + #AlexThompson

    #Ghostlight (2024) - imdb.com/title/tt30321095/

  17. Scene 2 Seen Podcast: Dolly De Leon Discusses โ€˜Ghostlightโ€™, โ€˜Between The Templesโ€™ And The Difference Between Making Films In The Philippines And Hollywood
    #Podcast #BetweenTheTemples #DollydeLeon #Ghostlight #RubenOstlund #Scene2SeenPodcast

    deadline.com/2024/07/dolly-de-

  18. โ€˜Tuesdayโ€™, โ€˜Treasureโ€™, โ€˜I Used To Be Funnyโ€™ Lead Quiet Arthouse Weekend As Wider Market Rebounds: โ€œMaybe We Have To Get Mainstream Back On Its Feetโ€ First โ€“ Specialty Box Office
    #News #EvilDoesNotExist #Ghostlight #IUsedToBeFunny #RunLolaRun #SpecialtyBoxOffice #SummerSolstie #Treasure #Tuesday

    deadline.com/2024/06/indie-fil

  19. Kevin has been working feverishly to find #ghostlight stories from all over the world for this week's #episode and after some digging he's got them! From Brown Mountain to Hessdalen. From the Outback to Ireland. We've got some fun stuff to tell you about on the next #podcast!