From: “Rod Duke” (rkduke@mae.uta.edu)
To: obiwan@ghosts.org
Subject: Ghost Light of Desdemona
Date: Monday, October 13, 2003 6:34 PM
To my knowlege this light has only been reported by two people, my older brother and his wife. It happened in the mid 70’s possibly about 1975 or 1976. My brother and his wife were living in an old farm house that had belonged to our grandmother but which now belonged to our parents since she died in 1972.
The house sat about 50 yards off of and on the west side of a north – south state highway that bisects the family farm. There was grazing land on the west side of the highway and cultivated land on the east side. The land slopes from east to west with the eastern most portion of the land being the crest of a small hill.
The family farm is several miles south of the almost ghost town of Desdemona. It was a farming town until oil was discovered under it in 1919 at which time it boomed into a metropolis that lasted as long as the oil. However some of the oil was still there and occasionally a wild cat oil company would sink another well looking for the elusive prize. The night that this happened there was an oil well being drilled on the neighbors property on the back side of the hill on the east end of the farm. The glow from the lights could be seen at night as the drilling company worked around the clock to complete i.e. birng in the well. This night my brother and his wife were awakened by something. Their bedroom was on the east side of the house and their bed was on the east wall facing the west wall. Then it happened again. There was a flash that lit up the wall of the bedroom. The light was coming through the window beside their bed and the flash would light up the wall. Their first thought was that something had happened to the drilling rig but when they looked out the window they could see the familar glow of the drilling rig. Nothing seemed unusual with the drilling operation. Then they saw another flash, it lasted only a second or two but they could tell that it was out in the middle of the cultivated field. Watching they saw it flash several more times, each time in a different location, as it meandered around in the field. There was no rhythm to it. It would just flash every couple of minutes and always in another location.
My brother being the adventurous sort, armed himself with his .357 Magnum, a flash light, and his obedient hunting dog, and started across the highway towards the field. The dog, a large black lab mix, whimpered and started back to the house. My brother called the dog but the dog that would have fought with almost anything and followed my brother almost anywhere, slinked off.
The light was still sporadically flashing and my brother went by himself after it. As he pursued the light always going towards its last location he could not see anything around the flash. If it was a person you would expect to be able to at least make out an outline when the light flashed but it appeared as a disembodied, floating orb that would briefly illuminate the area. He continued to pursue it and slowly the light moved off in a northerly direction crossing over into a neighbors grazing field. It flashed several times there but maybe because my brother didn’t clinb the four strand barbed wire fence after it, it finally stopped flashing. The neighbors grazing field was knee deep dry coastal bermuda grass, a highly flammable and combustable type of hay. If this was some type of static discharge then the hay should have ignited.
After several minutes without anymore flashing my brother headed back to the house.
The next day he went out in the field and although he could find only his tracks in the soft ground.
Again I will state that as far as I know he and his wife are the only ones who witnessed this.
This was not the only weird and unusual things that happened to them. Maybe I will have more time to write about these things later.
Rod Duke