Experts Find the Real Reason Behind 'Ghosts' Roaming in This South Carolina Town

People tend to mistake a lot of natural phenomena as some paranormal activity. Recently, the residents of the town of Summerville in South Carolina reportedly spotted mysterious lights and light trails, stated Smithsonian Magazine. Some of those visual anomalies appeared to be hovering over old railroad tracks, giving people an impression of ghostly activities. According to an old legend, it was believed to be the ghost of a woman haunting the railroads with a lantern, searching for her husband who got decapitated.

However, science explained these anomalies. SusanHough, a seismologist associated with the United States Geological Survey, explained how the floating orbs of light could be the aftereffects of earthquakes in the region. Hough published her idea in the Seismological Research Letters. She studied the seismological data and old records related to the phenomena called "Summerville Light," and tried to look into a destructive earthquake in Charleston that happened in 1886.

She also came across a Halloween-themes USGS newsletter on occult science and learned about how the idea of the ghostly lights was first introduced in the town. "That sparked an idea in the back of my mind, working on Charleston, that I had never really even thought too much about," Hough said in a statement from the Seismological Society of America. "What about those ghost stories from Summerville?"

She also observed that most of the so-called ghostly sightings coincided with periods of seismic activity in the region. "People said their cars would shakе violently. Well, that’s an earthquake," Hough told Science. "They heard noises upstairs, whispers. Or doors would swing. Seismic events we may not perceive as earthquakes fit some of these accounts. Glowing orbs would hang in the air along a former railroad track. Well, that makes you think earthquake lights." Despite linking up the anomalies with seismic activities, scientists still do not have a clear idea about the reason behind their occurrence. Some experts have proposed that the minerals in the Earth get deformed due to seismic activities and create an electrical charge.

The electrical charge ends up coming in contact with the air molecules and they start to glow. A second theory suggested that the release of gases like radon or methane during earthquakes could have ignited sparks on the surface after coming in contact with static electricity. "Historically, when rail companies replaced tracks, they didn’t always haul the old track away. So, you’ve got heaps of steel out there. Sparks might be part of the story," Hough mentioned to Science. "And maybe the railroads are important for another reason. They may naturally follow fault lines that have carved corridors through the landscape."

"When you start looking around, it turns out there’s any number of ghosts wandering around railroad tracks with lanterns looking for severed heads," Hough additionally shared with Jonah Chester at the Post and Courier. Hough's study could help fellow researchers identify the seismic zones around the world that might have gone unnoticed so far. "Earthquakes are an appealing explanation for these ghost stories," Will Levandowski, a geophysicist with the consulting company Tetra Tech who was not involved in the study, said, according to The New York Times.