Glowing owls and evil lights
Joseph Bexfield was a wherryman, working on the Norfolk waterways. One summer evening, in August 1809, Joseph moored his wherry—a traditional cargo boat with sails—at Thurlton Staithe on the River Yare and walked across the marshes to a pub called the White Horse Inn. Joseph was just settling down to a hot rum when he remembered that he’d left a package behind on his boat. What was worse was that it was something that his wife had asked him to buy in Norwich. He would have to go back and fetch it.
‘Don’t go, Joe,’ begged the other boatmen. ‘It’s dark and the lantern men are about.’
But Joseph must have been a loving husband, or afraid of his wife, because he insisted on retracing his steps back to the mooring. His body was found floating downstream the next day. The boatmen knew what had happened. Joseph had met the lantern men, mysterious cloaked figures who haunt lonely marshland, carrying flickering lanterns. On dark nights, the light looks welcoming but you must never follow it because it will lead you to certain death.
I first came across this legend when I was researching a book, which was subsequently called The Lantern Men. I soon found out that there are many myths and legends about mysterious lights appearing on marshland at night. One version links them to a wicked blacksmith called Jack who tricks the devil and so escapes hell but can never be allowed into heaven. Jack is condemned to walk the earth forever, carrying a single coal from hell inside a pumpkin. The tradition of putting lighted candles into pumpkins at Halloween, also known as jack o’ lanterns, probably comes from this fable.
Jack is not the only creature abroad at night. Sometimes the blacksmith is called Will and, in English folklore, marsh lights are often called will o’ the wisps, wisp meaning a bundle of twigs tied together to make a torch. There are some regional variations, hobby lanterns in the north and pixie lights in Devon and Cornwall, where hapless travelers are said to be ‘pixie led’.
These legends exist all around the world. In Scandinavia the lights are said to be the souls of unbaptized children. In America they are spook lights or ghost lights. In Louisiana, a feu follet (from the French for fool’s fire) is a soul sent back from the dead, usually hell-bent on vengeance. In South America they are called liz mala, evil lights, or la candileja. Chir batti (ghost lights) is the name given to strange dancing lights seen on the Banni grasslands in India. In Australia min min lights are often reported glowing in the outback.
All these tales have one message in common: do not follow these spooky, ghostly, foolish lights. If you do, if you leave the path, then yours will be the fate of poor Joseph Bexfield. It’s true that in some legends (luces del dinaro in Mexico, for example) the lights are said to lead to buried treasure. But would you trust any riches found in this way? Especially when, as in the Irish version, you are required to take a dead man’s hand with you to help in your quest.
There is, of course, a scientific explanation for this phenomenon. Dead matter trapped in the mud releases methane which mixes with phosphines to create a blue light, or phosphorescence. Whilst researching The Lantern Men, I visited a nature reserve on the Norfolk coast and was told that birds sometimes eat phosphorescent plants which cause them to glow in the dark. From this comes another wonderful Norfolk legend, that of the glowing owls. These luminous creatures can either be a portent of death or of good fortune. You take your pick.
So the spectral lanterns might well be rotting vegetation and the ghostly messenger of death just a bird who has eaten phosphorescent fungi. But why do these legends arise and why do they so often involve marshes and swamps. I feel that it must be connected to the ancient belief that marshland is in itself somehow sacred; an in-between place, neither land nor sea, neither life nor death. Archaeologists think that prehistoric people saw marshland as a bridge to the afterlife, which is why they sometimes buried their dead there, the so-called bog bodies. We might not share this superstition but there is something disconcerting about land that shifts beneath your feet, about ground that could swallow you up in an instant. It’s no wonder that we created legends to enforce the message: do not stray off the path, do not follow the lure of the unknown.
So, if you set out to explore Norfolk—or any wonderful and mysterious place—keep to the tracks and don’t take any unnecessary risks. And, if you visit Thurlton Staithe on the Broads, you can see the grave of Joseph Bexfield, the man who was more afraid of his wife then he was of the lantern men.
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