A story of ghosts from South Carolina could have a very earthly explanation.
As of the 1950s, people in the Summerville area, SC, began to inform sightings of strange ball balls floating along a remote road near some old railways. The local tradition says that the mysterious illuminations, known as the Summerville light, are the brightness of a flashlight transported by a sad ghost.
But maybe Earthquakes are the source of this ghost lightAnd other ghostly legends too, geologist Susan Hough proposes on January 22 in Seismological research letters. The radon, methane or other gases that rise from the ground during earthquakes could have been lit by static electricity or sparks of changing rocks or trains that pass, which causes the vapors to be luminesce, suggests that Hough, of the geological service of The United States in Pasadena, California, California.
Located away from any tectonic plate limit, Summerville may seem an unlikely place for earthquakes. But in 1886, A tremor around magnitude 7 He devastated the nearby city of Charleston, killing 60 people. That event and hundreds of replicas During the following decades he revealed the pronounced seismic danger of the area.
The region is also rich in ghost stories, the most famous of which can be the Summerville Light Legend. The story generally says that one night, the wife of a railroad worker was waiting for some ways when he knew he was beheaded in an accident. From then on, and even after her death, the woman returns to the slopes every night, wearing a flashlight while looking for her husband’s head.
Curious if the light could be explained by a physical mechanism, Hough reviewed books, magazines and online sources for engraved sightings of the mysterious orbs and other supernatural statements in the area. He also studied the history of the area’s earthquake, focusing in 1890 to 1960, the period prior to the beginning of the sightings.
He discovered that only a few earthquakes were documented during that period of time. There was a magnitude 3.9 in 1907, and then in 1959, when the sightings began, a Magnitude 4.4, followed shortly after by a couple of smaller earthquakes in 1960. These earthquakes would probably have been accompanied by additional earthquakes, even smaller than it was not detected, says Hough. Despite its small size, he says, such tremors may have generated earthquake lights without anyone suspecting that an earthquake has occurred.
Other cases of supernatural activity reported in the area, such as cars that tremble violently, objects and doors that move spontaneously and the steps heard in the rooms above could also be explained by discreet earthquakes. Many of the reports seem to fit with the tremor that is known what happens in an II in the Modified Mercalli intensity Scale that scientists use to qualify earthquakes based on affected damage, says Hough. It is generally considered that the shaking is in the intensity of Mercalli II if it is weak and “solid only by a few people at rest, especially in the upper floors of the construction.”
Houch’s proposal is reasonable, says the scientist of the Yuji earthquake at the University of Shinshu in Matsumoto, Japan, but more geological data is needed to clarify which natural mechanism could be behind Summerville light. “Specifically, the data on the presence of an anaerobic environment that contains organic matter capable of generating methane, and the existence of granite mother rock that contains radio, which can produce radon” would be more useful, says Enomoto.
For Hough, one of the most intriguing implications of work is the possibility that similar ghost stories can be associated with a subtle seismic activity. “There are a lot of ghosts wandering through the rails in different places in the United States … carrying flashlights in search of cut heads,” says Hough. “Maybe they are illuminating shallow active failures.”
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