Lucas Bay Lights - urban legend or true ghost story?

Legend holds that on Gilbert Road in Horry County observers can bear witness to the phenomenon known as the Lucas Bay Lights, with common versions usually attributing the sightings to a Civil War-era mother searching for her infant who was lost in a flood.

“There are lots of versions of it,” said Horry County Museum Director Walter Hill. “Typically, it goes along with ‘there’s a child who was lost and the mother is looking for the child so you see these lights.’ I haven’t seen the lights, I can’t tell you if that’s true or not. I know that’s been a lore for a very long time, that it’s been associated with that particular part of the county.”

Conway-based paranormal investigators of Phasma Paranormal, co-founder Kelly Brosky said she and her husband have investigated the area where Gilbert Road turns to dirt. She believes that most of the sightings can be explained away, citing vehicles and ATVs, but that doesn’t mean the area is void of paranormal occurrences.

Brosky said her team captured an “odd light” on video when there were no other vehicles in the area and she also says she has communicated with spirits along the road.

“We believe that they are the spirits of a family, at least a man, a woman and a small child, that probably farmed near the area where the road currently is,” she said. “It was not historical records, but what they told us, if I remember correctly, we asked them why they were there and the answer we got was ‘farm’ and ‘cow.’ I do remember there was distinctly three voices, male, female and child.”

Hill said that historically the area would have been settled by small-scale farmers.

“The families that would have been there would have definitely been farming families,” he said. “Who those families were, I don’t know.”

Hill said despite searching the museum’s records, he couldn’t find evidence of a particular woman who lost a child in the area.

“That part of the county has been inhabited since colonial times, so there’s definitely been people there, so there definitely could be somebody who could be connected to that story,” he said. “But historically, we don’t have that as a record. We don’t know that there was an actual person who lost a child there.”

As for the Civil War-era ghost-mother?

“’I can’t put true history behind this story,” he said. “It sounds like somebody saw something and tried to explain it away, and then somebody else fabricated a very interesting and exciting and entertaining story to go behind it that would intrigue people into the mystique behind it. And what were they actually seeing? I know people go out there and they see lights.

“I don’t think that everybody who sees it is lying about it, they just might not know what they’re seeing, and we don’t know what they’re seeing,” Hill added. “So where do these tales come from? I guess it can come from human imagination mixed with an unexpected experience and an unexplained experience, so we come up with a really interesting interpretation of it.”

Brosky also said there’s no evidence of the Civil War tale.

“There are certainly spirits on this road, although they are likely not the woman whose baby drowned while she was evading the Union Army as many have come to think,” she said. “We have captured some interesting voices, although we can not say for sure why those particular spirits are on the road or even if they have any connections to the road. I believe the phenomenon being reported out there has a lot more to do with urban legends and a lot less to do with the paranormal.”

If you decide to explore the area yourself, Brosky has some advice.

“Please exercise caution,” she said. “It’s very dark and there tends to be a lot of living people back there.”

This story was originally published October 30, 2016 at 9:31 AM with the headline "Lucas Bay Lights - urban legend or true ghost story?."