Date: Thu, 11 Mar 1999 16:08:28 -0500
From: Ashley Ford (aford@ufl.edu)
To: obiwan@ghosts.org
Subject: ghost light story

Dear ObiWan,

I’ve been enjoying your website, and I would like to include a story for your “Ghost Light” section. This is actually the first ghost story I ever remember hearing — my mother told it to me when I was about eight years old.

As some time has passed since that telling (grin), I unfortunately don’t remeber the exact location of the setting. It’s somewhere near Gainesville, FL (Mom’s hometown), and I THINK it may have been old Williston Road out beyond the city limits in the late 50’s-early 60’s. For the sake of the narrative, I’ll pretend that’s it. 😉 Here goes:

Back before the encroachment of urban sprawl and its artificial lights, the country roads in central Florida could get VERY dark on moonless nights. It was on one such night that a man was driving home rather late. It was warm, and he had his driver-side window down, his left arm resting along the ledge as he drove. After a few miles, he saw a single light coming toward him, close to the dividing line in the middle of the road. As dark as it was, he couldn’t actually see the vehicle, but he assumed it was a motorcycle. It wasn’t. It was actually a semi-truck whose driver was either drunk or asleep at the wheel — its left headlight was burned out, so all the man saw was the right headlight as the truck barrelled down the middle of the road and plowed into him. The man was killed instantly. The arm that he’d had resting in the window was severed and flung into the woods, and one of his headlights was knocked clear of the wreckage. Later, officials at the scene of the crash searched and searched for the arm and the headlight, but neither was ever recovered.

That’s the background. Now, if you drive out to that lonely stretch of road on moonless nights and park your car over on the shoulder and wait, eventually you’ll see a light. My mom says this is true — a date took her out there once as a prank. They saw a light way off in the distance, and gradually it got closer and closer until is seemed to touch their windshield and vanish. They say that it’s the accident victim out with the headlight that the police never found, searching for his missing arm.

That story gave me the heebie-jeebies as a kid. For YEARS I would get creeped out whenever I saw a car with a burnt-out headlight. Hope you enjoyed it. 🙂

-Ashley

2 Replies to “Florida Ghost Light”

  1. I saw this light in Williston in 1964 with 2 of best friends Dennis Parrish and Jimmy McMillian. It freaked me out too. My parents were living in Lake Worth at the time. Its great to see someone else has seen this light. My son and I plan on going to Williston soon as he can t wait to witness this strange event.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *