Your True Tales
June 2003 – Page 19

Tarboro, NC Spooklight
by James

I am informing you of a spooklight that I and others witnessed for two years while growing up. At the age of 16, I and at least 10 others decided to go out to this area of isolated railroad track that a dirt road cut across. One of us had heard tell of a strange light that would appear and float above the tracks about 300 to 400 yards down from the road. Having nothing to do and being curious teens, we piled into two cars and went to this supposed haunted site. 

The first couple of nights we saw some unknown lights above and far down the tracks, but nothing scary as was told to us by others. On our third visit I took along my telescope to get a better view of the light. We waited for the sun to go down and parked the car directly over the tracks for a straight on view down the tracks where the light usually made its appearance. Around 8 p.m. (late Sept., 1980), the light appeared down the tracks at the usual spot as seen before. Like before, it shown white and moved from left to right and quickly faded until not seen. The second time it appeared a few minutes later, I was ready with the telescope trained on the site. What I saw was distinctly a car with its side lights crossing the tracks, over another road about 400 to 500 yards down from our observation site. The crossing of the car gave its lights as an appearance of swaying from left to right as earlier noted. 

I told the other four guys what I saw and they were disappointed, to say the least. One of my friends observed the next light through my telescope and concurred with what I had told everyone earlier. 

Well, after another 30 minutes we were about ready to leave when another light appeared over the tracks. This one was different. It was closer to us (200 to 300 yards down the track) and was larger and was orange in color, not star-like and white as the earlier car lights! I quickly remounted the telescope to have a closer look at this thing. I saw that it was indeed middle way between our road and the road that the cars crossed over earlier. I could see the road down the tracks and this orange light was between us and this road! The light also was suspended two to three feet above the tracks over the stream bed. I saw what appeared to be an orange light that was a perfect globe shape about three feet across. What was unusual was that it did not seem to shine out or cast shadows from its light source upon the tracks or grass and trees on either side! 

My telescope view was great, and no sooner had I told the guys that this was no car light that I noticed that the light was starting to move up the tracks towards us, keeping its same height above the railroad tracks. A few of the guys said I was trying to scare them, but then they to noticed it was getting larger to their naked eyes also. I grabbed my telescope and we all piled in Brian's '60s Volkswagen to leave as quick as his car would take us. Brian started the car, but we no sooner moved two feet when his headlights dimmed and the car shut off! 

I looked out the back side window and saw the orange light was still moving up the tracks toward us. We were about to panic when the car restarted and we finally got off those tracks and headed away from the tracks. The car sputtered a couple more times as we tried to distance ourselves from the railroad track. Robbie and I looked back one last time and saw that the light now was right over the tracks that Brian's car rested over no more than 30 seconds ago! 

I'm telling you as God is my witness that this light was not a car, train, flashlight, will'o-the-wisp or railroad flare or any natural light I've seen or ever seen since. We later trekked out to the site and walked to the exact location that this unusual light appeared (near the stream bed/RR bridge). Nothing unusual was seen other than a few old RR flares that were days old and located 5 o 8 feet off on both sides of the tracks. If someone had somehow faked that light, he or she would have had to walked down those tracks in pitch black and then run back up the tracks at us at least at 30 mph without stumbling! Lastly, I like to report the weather that night was around 60 degrees, slight breeze, cloudless night with no moon that I can recall. Needless to say, we never went back there at night or told anyone about what happened that night, except to our families. The RR track that this light appeared above is on Raccon Branch Road, off of Howard Ave. Extension, 2 miles south of Tarboro, North Carolina.

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