Reader Submission: Light in the Woods
“In the summer of 1999, a group of us went on an overnight rafting trip down the Guadalupe River in the Big Bend area of Texas. We started out in the morning and made camp on a sandbar before sunset. At this point, I estimate that we were probably around 50 to 100 miles from any town.
The river guides prepared dinner, we ate, and then a girl and I retreated to the river with our chairs. By this time, it was pitch black. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. We sat talking, and I faced my chair upstream and she was faced downstream.
As we talked, I noticed a light, very faint, traveling toward us from upstream. It got closer and closer and I could see that it was on the opposite side of the river. When it was directly across from us, I could see that it was about the size of a tennis ball, pale yellow-green, and about 25 feet in the air.
There were tall trees on the opposite side of the river, and we could see the light as it passed behind some trees and in front of others. It kept going downstream and eventually got to a bend in the river where a pile of dead branches had washed up onshore.
When it got to the branches, we could hear a crunching sound like something heavy was walking there. It passed the branches and went down the river a few hundred feet, stopped, then started back toward us. It crunched on the branches on the way back then kept going the way it had come until it was out of sight. On the way out the next morning, I checked the opposite bank as we rafted past, but could not see any footprints. We never did figure out what it was.”
Have you seen something strange in the woods? Send it to ghostsghoul@gmail.com!
The light in Texas was a firefly. They are very large down there. Also, they cast a blueish-white light. The noises were wildlife. ie deer and javalina. The same scenario happend to me.
I’ve lived in Texas all my life and can tell you it was definitely not a firefly. I have never seen a firefly the size of a tennis ball. Firefly’s flicker on and off. This did not, it was illuminated from the time we saw it until it was out of sight. The light was yellow-green, not blueish-white. Fireflys do not travel in a straight line at a consistent speed, this did. The crunching sound was only heard when the light was above the dead trees/branches. We obviously did not encounter the same scenario.