Post by Graveyardbride on Oct 26, 2017 10:15:26 GMT -5
The Chapel Hill Ghost Light
His name was Skip Adjent. According to the legend passed down for several decades, the young man was hit and killed by a train on the Chapel Hill railroad tracks in Tennessee. But this is just one variation of the tale behind the Chapel Hill Ghost Light, which is considered one of the state’s most haunted locations.
Skip Adjent inspired Chapel Hill resident John Rickman to compose the song “Chapel Hill Light”:
Many years ago along the railroad track one night,
A man was walking home and held a lantern for his light.
He never heard the whistle scream or the mighty engine pound,
He never even knew it, when the freight train ran him down.
The engineer ran back in time to see the poor man die,
But as he neared the tragic spot a light rose in the sky.
The lamp the man carried was never found that night.
Now the old folks say above the track,
His lantern shining bright.
And still his lantern hangs over the railroad, watching every freight train go by.
There’s a Ghost Light over the railroad shining in the Chapel Hill sky.
“[Skip] was killed and from that point on, the light was seen out here,” Rickman told News 2. “It goes across the tracks sometimes, sways back and forth. Sometimes it comes up and sometimes it goes back. And you’re looking for it, and then it falls over behind you some way, it goes behind you.”
Other stories explaining the Chapel Hill Ghost Light include a headless signalman, or brakeman, wandering the tracks with a lantern to guide his way. There is also a story of a passenger who took the train daily and died along the tracks, causing him to haunt the railroad in that location. Regardless of the story behind the “haunting,” several photos that claim to show the light have been snapped along the tracks.
Over the years, people have come from far and wide to spend the night along the tracks and even throw watch parties. “The crowds sometime would get so rowdy and some even brought guns to shoot at the light to see if they could bring it down,” Rickman said. “There was one person killed from Bedford County out on the railroad tracks. He was so enamored by the light that he came out here and got too close to the track and got hit by a train.”
As the town of Chapel Hill has expanded in recent years, there have been fewer reported sightings of the light; however, earlier this year, Southern Living Magazine named Chapel Hill one of the top haunted places in the country.
Sources: Josh Breslow, WKRN, October 26, 2017, and Haunted Tennessee.
