Give me a light that I might tread safely into the unknown.
Minnie Louise Haskins
Mysterious, Unexplained Lights have been observed and documented all over the world throughout the ages. Over the past 150 years, a disproportionate number of these spectral lights—usually blue balls or yellow spheres—have been reported in the United States. Alternately called ghost lights, spook lights, and earth lights, this supernatural phenomenon is formally known as ignis fatuus—“foolish fire”—probably in acknowledgment of the numerous unsuccessful attempts to capture, trap, or follow phantom lights.
From its aged mountains to its splendid shores, North Carolina boasts a multitude of ghost lights, including two of the world’s most famous and most investigated—the Maco Light and the Brown Mountain Lights. Less familiar but equally fascinating and mysterious is the Cove City Light in Jones County. For 125 years, this eerie, orange, glowing ball has terrified, bewildered, and delighted travelers and hunters in eastern North Carolina.
If one dark night you should drive south on NC 41 from the village of Cove City toward Trenton, the seat of Jones County, located seven and a half miles distant, chances are great that you will encounter the Cove City Light along what is one of the straightest stretches of road in the entire state. Approximately a mile and a half into the trip, NC 41 enters Jones County from Craven County and penetrates the Great Dover Swamp, a vast, forbidding wilderness laced with creeks and branches flowing into the Trent River. It is at or near the highway bridges over these waterways that the Cove City Light is most often observed.
A number of eyewitness accounts have provided a similar description of the Jones County spook light. It is a glowing sphere, usually bright orange in color, that varies in size from as large as thirty feet in diameter to as small as a basketball. One of its most commonly observed tendencies is to follow vehicles as they pass along NC 41. Some motorists have endured the chilling experience of witnessing the light pass right through their cars.
Many local folks have come face to face with the Cove City Light on multiple occasions. One such individual is Duke Humphrey, who became fascinated with the ghost light in the winter of 1960-61 while on a double date with another teenage couple. Driving along NC 41 late one evening, the high-schoolers noticed an ominous light coming at them. From a distance, Humphrey made an initial observation: “It looked like headlights. You could see a long way down that road, and the light started as an orange light coming right up the middle of the road. I had been out there twenty times, I guess, looking for the light and had seen nothing but cars. This looked like cars.” As the strange light drew closer, Humphrey was astonished that it was not a vehicle. “When it got to the point where the one light would always divide into two headlights, this one didn’t,” he noted. Instead, it turned out to be a solitary orange ball of light five feet in diameter. Traveling about three feet from the centerline of the highway, the ball flashed past Humphrey’s automobile and floated down the road toward Trenton. He described the sensation experienced by the occupants of his vehicle: “We could feel it when it passed. It shook the car the way it would if a tractor trailer had passed, and the interior of the car heated up.”
In the aftermath of that encounter, Humphrey gathered up three adventurous friends to go with him in pursuit of the light. Within a week, the heavily armed quartet was staked out in a car parked alongside NC 41 on a black winter’s night. Their fearless leader recounted what happened on that occasion: “We saw it coming. It started like the cars, one light shining in the distance. As soon as it got closer, we could tell it was the light, so we hopped out and opened fire. It veered off the road over a field, stayed there for a minute, and took off as if nothing had happened.”
Determined to bring the light down, the boys returned several weeks later. In addition to shotguns and rifles, their arsenal included a bow and arrows this time. Once again, the teenagers proved that the Cove City Light was truly a case of ignis fatuus. Humphrey later described the showdown this way: “This one was peculiar. Before, it had come down the road at a constant speed, never varying as it went past us. But this time, the speed was erratic. It seemed to almost stop and hover about 120 feet off the ground, almost over our heads.” In an attempt to bring it down, Humphrey shot an arrow, which passed right through the light. A second arrow did likewise. These were the same arrows that Humphrey, an excellent archer, had used to kill a deer at a hundred yards. His compatriots likewise discharged their weapons to no effect. Humphrey was baffled. “There were four people shooting at it with guns, and I was using a bow,” he recalled. “Nothing happened. It just drifted over our heads and then took off like always.”
The following day, Humphrey returned to retrieve his arrows. He found only one of them, located some two hundred yards down the road. When it left his bow the night before, it had been as good as new. When he recovered the arrow, the varnished hardwood shaft was scorched, as if it had been exposed to intense heat.
From the time this bizarre light was first observed in the nineteenth century, many scientific explanations have been put forward: tectonic faults in the earth’s crust; misinterpreted normal events such as auroras, fireflies, or swamp gas; man-made objects including vehicle lights and fireworks; deliberate hoaxes; alien craft; and secret government weapons from nearby military bases. None of these theories has proven satisfactory. But the belief that the spook light of Jones County is of supernatural origin has long held credence with local folks.
During hunting season long ago, bear hunters once sent their dogs into the swampy wilderness that borders what is now NC 41. Deep in the morass, the dogs gave chase to a mother bear and her cub. When the hunters came upon the cub, they killed it. The mother bear escaped into the swamp. Several days later, a lady and her infant were traveling in a buggy from Trenton to Cove City. At the moment the buggy crossed one of the bridges in the swamp, a large animal thought to be the she-bear lurched out of the woods, grabbed the child, and made off with it into the pocosin. The distraught mother sought assistance from the locals. A search party of hunters and woodsmen made its way into the often impenetrable wilderness. As daylight gave way to darkness, the overwrought woman joined the others carrying lanterns. After countless hours of roaming the accessible parts of the swamp without sign of the bear or the infant, the men called off the search. But the mother spent the rest of her life searching in vain for her baby. Her lantern, it is said, can still be seen along NC 41 on dark nights.
Now, before you scoff at that notion, be sure to observe the Watch For Bears signs as you travel NC 41 from Cove City to Trenton. Indeed, the wilderness along this lonely stretch is home to a healthy bear population. And one other thing. Local residents swear they can always hear the cry of a baby when the Cove City Light appears.