Hebron Spooklight Investigation 1998

The Maryland State Police had their hands full just before midnight on the clear but steamy night of July 16, 1952. Trooper Robert W. Burkhardt and a sergeant were on routine patrol a mile west of Hebron and had just turned onto Church Street Extended, a mile-long stretch of road lined by trees on both sides. Off in the distance, a circular yellow ball of light was observed slightly above the road and moving towards the car.

“It’s either an old car with one dim light or a wagon lantern that should be red, “the sergeant was quoted as saying in Mysterious Fires and Lights by Vincent Gaddis.

Whatever it was began to rapidly close on the vehicle, moving directly in the middle of the road. At the last possible moment, to avoid a collision, the trooper swerved off the road unto the shoulder and skidded to a rather abrupt stop. According to the two troopers, the light suddenly stopped and hovered in the glare of their headlights approximately twenty feet away. As they restarted the car and began to approach the object, it receded. And as they gained speed toward the light, the object matched the squad’s speed and kept the same distance. As the car reached a speed of forty miles per hour, the light inexplicably vanished!

Not wanting to risk ridicule, Burkhardt returned the following night with five other patrolmen and found the light was already there on Church Street waiting for them. They all exited their vehicles and attempted to surround the light, which abruptly winked out and then reappeared in a nearby field!

Several days afterwards, additional officers, including Edward H. Bracey, pursued the object for over a half-mile before the globe veered off the road as fifty miles per hour into a field.

It was just like a neon tube when you turn it out,” Burkhardt said. “It faded slowly into a reddish glow which finally went out.”

Lieutenant C.C. Serman, commander of the State Police Barracks in nearby Salisbury was also counted among the many witnesses to this bizarre phenomenon during the summer of 1952. He described it as “about the size of a wash basin, usually at the height of an automobile headlight and about the same intensity.”

Suddenly, it stopped as abruptly as it started even though older residents claimed it had been showing up periodically for half a century.

The Salisbury Daily Times featured a story, “Professor Believes Ghost Light is Gas”, in which a John Hopkins professor alleged the gas was being generated by decaying vegetable matter seeing to the surface and being moved b a gust of wind. The professor stated, “It seems to shame to have state police out there all night trying to catch a little bag of gas.”

The sightings apparently, according to some eyewitnesses, continued to occur off and on until after the road was blacktopped. The Wicomico County Road Division records the road being tarred and chipped in 1953, widened and rebuilt in 1958, and blacktopped in 1974. It may have been that dust from the old, original road was reflected in automobile headlights providing the “Ghost Light Road” illusion.

Another more far-fetched theory was offered that included a broken shard of glass being carried into a low-hanging branch by a possum or raccoon. As cars would approach, their headlights would reflect into the glass, but just to point before disappearing

Address: Church Street, Hebron, Maryland 021830

Directions: Highway 347 in Wicomico County in eastern Maryland, six miles northwest of Salisbury off US Hwy 50; light was seen on current Church Street.

Hauntings: Local legend provides some other paranormal explanation, including that years ago when the railroad was being built, a man with a lantern was killed there and the light is his lantern. There is also a tale of a gambling dispute that resulted in a murder in this wooded area and the ghost of the murdered gambler haunts the road. Another legend states a black man was hung in the woods and left to die and it’s his spirit that looks for the ‘light of justice’, and finally, a local man committed suicide by hanging himself in the nearby forest and his body was never found until many years later.

I visited the site many years ago with some friends from a local bulletin board service (BBS), Nu Atlantis, when those were quite popular. The road, properly called, Old Railroad Road runs exactly two miles from U.S. Route 50 until it bends off sharply to the left and intersects with Main Street. The sightings were most often encountered between Portermill Road exactly one mile south of Route 50 and Church Street Extended, which is another half-mile south. I found it very interesting that even though the light had been inactive since the mid-1970s, a high-voltage power station was a quarter-mile further south of the actual sightings. While this may not mean anything, it might explain a lot.

Equipment setup: Simple two-day radios, binoculars, 35mm SLR still camera, tripods, cassette recorders and flashlights.

Experiments performed: Our team was positioned facing Church Street ready for any lights to appear. We attempted to flash the car headlights in an attempt to coax the light out but to no effect. Peering down the darkened road with binoculars and the naked eye was the main experiments that we conducted but no light was ever visible.

Evidence collected: None, unfortunately!

The Ghost Research Society investigated the Hebron Spooklight in November 1998. Team members included: Dale Kaczmarek with help from Milford Webster, Brian Scott and Bill (?)

Conclusions: Since this light was seen so long ago in the 1950s and then a brief resurgence in the mid-1970s, we had hoped that this dormant light would resurface during our observations but to no avail.

Maybe some of the theories concerning the road being the cause of the light were true after it was blacktopped. However, one can only wonder what those many police officers saw. These are trained observers and not prone to flights of fancy or embellishing stories or perpetuating any legends that might abound on this road.

Some officers thought that they were about to be run off the road but an extremely bright light, which they initially thought was another errant car that was barreling down the road towards them. With all the eyewitnesses throughout the years, what was being seen along Church Street by hundreds of people?

Perhaps this light has been debunked; maybe not!