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Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights?
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DOI：10.1785/0220240442.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Among the colorful local lore in the Charleston, South Carolina, area, are a number of ghost stories, shared not only over campfires, but also in published books. Among the most well-known stories is the tale of the Summerville Light. Local lore holds that a strange light sometimes seen in a remote area is a lantern carried by the ghost of a woman who once waited hours for her husband to return (DePoppe, 2023). Extant sources suggest the ghost stories began to circulate in the 1950s to 1960s. So pervasive was the lore that (Old) Sheep Island Road became known among local residents as Light Road, with a local stretch of road known today as Old Light Road. Reviewing the location where the lights appear as well as the nature of accounts, I suggest that many if not all of the anecdotal observations can be most readily attributed to natural phenomena, including earthquake lights from earthquakes that were too small to be felt. Accounts of lights near Summerville cluster in proximity to the generally accepted epicenter of the 1886 Charleston, South Carolina, earthquake, where foreshocks to the 1886 mainshock were apparently concentrated (see Dutton, 1890), and within a few kilometers of three M 3.5-4.4 earthquakes in 1959 and 1960.
Keywords:
SOUTH-CAROLINA
SEISMICITY
CHARLESTON
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