As they followed the lights with their eyes, they heard an odd sound effect in the wake of their course: dozens of running human feet and people talking to each other in Seneca. It was as if an invisible host of spirits had crossed the open field in the guise of the lights and let the sounds they’d made follow them after.
This strange story sounds particularly antique and European. In Iroquois folklore, the typical witch lights are not often associated with anything but witches, or mystery in general. In the Old World, phantom lights can be presumed to be anything, though most commonly they are thought to be fairies and spirits of the human dead. The fairy host often moves, too, with the sweep and sound of a phantom caravan. Maybe the continents weren’t that far apart, or else the supernatural is the same everywhere, and our accounts vary because we see only pieces of the picture.
The Ghosts of Niagara on the Lake
In July 2005, fifteen people on a Haunted History Ghost Walks tour stopped by a bend in the road in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. The broad green of a lakeside golf course curved around them. Down the slope to their right was the Niagara River; across it in clear sight was the famous Fort Niagara. Ahead of them to the north was the inland ocean, Lake Ontario, and above it, a sky of contrasts. The parting day was stretching peachy fingers into the graying clouds to the left. The air ahead of them was deep indigo. To the east it was already night.
This was Mississauga Point, a site with a dramatic, even mysterious past. Scott Jones, the young tour guide, waved his arm toward the lake across the curving green and told his group about old tunnels between the town and reconstructed Fort Mississauga. He motioned toward the heavy river once lined on both sides with prehistoric castles and helped them imagine historic and possibly ancient battles the site had witnessed. He waved again toward the lake as he mentioned the mystery lights in the sky and the UFO flaps of the 1970s, all above this very point charged by geology, legend, and history. He noticed them looking hard at something closer and along the ground. He turned and stared with them.
A hundred yards away, on and around the site of the old fort, was a flock of possibly a dozen hazy head-sized lights. Everyone saw them clearly. They were strange and eerie. What were they?
The tour group included thirteen young women and a big young fellow who’d been scornful the whole night. He’d laughed at stories about Niagara-on-the-Lake’s ghosts and tried to find natural explanations for all the reports and encounters. Even while studying the head-high, earthbound lights on the course, he kept at it. For sure it was just “a ship on the lake in the distance” with a high mast and a handful of blue lights on it, all moving independently. At first he’d been ready tocharge them. At last even he gave up and admitted wonder. They were clearly just above the surface of the land.
The humans could have stared until their eyes glazed over: the witch lights glowed and moved as long as anyone watched, though they were fainter as the group turned to leave. On the back of his sign-up sheet, Jones wrote a statement about the marvel. All his clients signed their names underneath.
Lady of the Blue Light
Two men went fishing in a little boat on the Niagara River well above and south of Niagara Falls. It was summer, and the river was calm. After hours of little luck, they moved on and passed under the Peace Bridge and into the broad mouth of northeastern Lake Erie. Their luck changed quickly. They caught one fish after another.
One fisherman was ready to pack it in. It was getting dark, and there was a different tone in the air. But the owner of the boat insisted on following their fortune. They headed out into the lake and caught more in that one hour than they had the rest of the day.
Then the fog came. Thick clouds pressed down on them, and they lost their bearings. They had no idea how close they were to the nearest shore or which direction it could have been. They couldn’t see any anything but the glowering, ever-darkening gray. Anxiety chilling every vein, they started the motor and headed the boat in a direction they thought was toward land. They couldn’t even be sure they were heading in a straight line. For hours, they wandered lost in the fog.
A stray wave splashed over the side, knocking the host’s spectacles from his eyes. He yelled for his friend to take the wheel while he fumbled for them. As if nothing could go right, even their voices were lost in the wake and fog. They had to shout to each other unless they were side by side. Then they saw the light.
It was a blue sphere that appeared to be static. It had to represent either a big still boat or a solid shore. It was faint, though, and a long way off. The boat owner found his glasses, took over the wheel, and floored the boat, heading to the sphere. It was two in the morning.
Around that time, a little girl woke up crying in a Buffalo home. She had had a dream she couldn’t remember and tried to convince her mother that her fatherneeded help. It was just a nightmare, she was told, and she fell back to sleep.
The boat hit something hard. Both men were pitched into the water. Other than being near a stony shoal, they had no idea where they were.
The blue light was above them, and bright enough to show in its glow someone standing on
