The most recent experience of my own with the mysterious fox-fire
occurred a short time ago in a homeward drive with a companion from a
botanizing expedition about twelve miles distant. It was near ten
o'clock. The sky was overcast, only a stray star of the first
magnitude now and then peeping out from between the rifts of hazy
floating clouds. The new moon, "wi' th' auld moon i' her arm," had
sunk below the western hills, and so dark had it become that the road
ahead, at best but a faint suggestion, was occasionally lost for
minutes together in the deepened gloom of the overhanging trees, only
the keener nocturnal vision of the trusted horse affording the
slightest hope of keeping in the wheel-tracks.
In one of these dark passages we were suddenly surprised by a gleam of
light a few rods ahead to the left, and in a moment more we were
directly abreast of it. On many previous night-journeys I had been on
the lookout for some such surprise as this, as yet only rewarded by
the tiny sparkle of the glowworm in the grass. But here, at last, it
came in a shape that I could not have anticipated--an upright column
of phosphorescence, brilliant at the upper extremity, and more broken
below for a space of several feet. The brilliancy of the light may be
inferred from the following query and its answer:
"What is that light yonder?" I asked my companion.
"A lantern reflected in water," was his reply.
The mass of light shone verily like a lantern, and the present
interpretation was somewhat reminiscent of a previous flickering
lantern which we had seen, with its accompaniment of great magnified
moving shadows on barn and hay-stack, as it assisted in the tardy
chores of a whistling farmer lad.
But this light was of a greenish, ghostly hue, and perfectly
motionless, and had withal a certain weird, uncanny glare, which
belongs alone to fox-fire. It was impossible to locate its distance
from us. It might as easily be one rod as five. I concluded to
investigate its source, and, groping my way through the dewy bushes,
soon confronted it. It seemed to glow with added brilliancy as I
approached it, and as I stood face to face within a few inches of it
no vestige of material surface appeared to sustain it; it seemed
hanging motionless in mid-air. I reached out my hand, which
momentarily intervened like a black silhouette against the glow, with
which it soon came in contact. Upon further investigation, this proved
to be the contact of a mere prosaic fence-post, which, for some
mysterious reason, had been singled out for glorification among the
ten thousand others of its neighbors and transformed into a pillar of
fire. The post was about six inches in diameter, its summit an
unbroken mass of light, which extended in more or less broken patches
below for a distance of six feet, thus suggesting the effect of the
rippling elongated reflection of a lantern in water noticed by my
companion, and which would doubtless have been so accepted by the
average passing observer without further thought.
The most luminous upper portions were free from bark, the exposed
patches of wood below being equally brilliant. Clutching at the more
available part of the post, I was enabled to sink my fingers deep into
its decayed fibre, and succeeded in tearing off a long fragment. The
outer surface of this particular piece had been covered with bark and
not especially brilliant, but the cavity of yielding moist fibre thus
exposed, as well as the inner surface of the dislodged piece, poured
forth a perfect flood of greenish light, indicating that the damp
uncanny fire extended to the very core of the post, which was
saturated with the phosphorescent essence. I laid this and other
fragments in the back of the carriage, where its glare met our eyes
whenever we turned to look upon it.
Taking it beneath the lamp-light upon our return home, it resolved
itself into a very ordinary piece of yellowish rotten wood. In a more
shaded corner of the room it appeared as though white-washed, and upon
taking it into a closet or out into the night again its flame
gradually rekindled, as though feeding upon the darkness, until it
appeared precisely as when we found it.
By enclosing the specimen in a tin box with moist moss I was enabled
to prolong the effulgence until the next evening, but it had entirely
disappeared by the following night, at which time its original haunt,
the post, was also doubtless lost in the darkness. A week later I
again passed its neighborhood in the late hours without the slightest
hint of its presence.
This is the mysterious "fox-fire" or "ghost-fire" which has so imposed
upon the imaginations of credulous country folk the world over,
doubtless a conspicuous factor in many a harrowing tale in the
legendary or traditional lore of spooks and goblins.
I remember the breathless interest with which as a boy I listened to
the weird story, whose scene was located not far from my native town,
of a ghostly light that flickered about the eaves of a certain old
ruin of a house in the neighborhood, and also above the well close by
in the weedy waste of the former door-yard.
The light was seen by many for several consecutive nights. It fairly
glowed into a halo up from the wooden curb which surmounted the well,
where it was viewed at a safe distance with bated breath by a curious
crowd of villagers, not one of whom would have dared to steal up and
surprise the innocent spook in its haunt--doubtless a mass of fox-fire
which had found its brief, congenial home in the decaying boards
within the tottering well-curb. Of course the house was "haunted" for
evermore, and rustic tradition for a whole generation was rich in
fabulous tales of the "haunted well," and there was serious talk of
unearthing the nameless mystery which lay at the bottom of it.
A certain saw-mill was also tenanted by a similar luminous ghost one
night after a heavy rain, but the shape of the spook in this case was
so peculiar, and so exactly corresponded with the parallel cross-boxes
of the old broken water-wheel, that it was considered harmless.
But it is scarcely to be wondered at that a phenomenon so startling
and inexplicable to the rustic mind should be associated with the
supernatural. One's first experience with fox-fire, especially if he
chances upon a specimen of some size, is apt to be a memorable
incident.
My own first encounter dates back to the age of about eight years.
While walking through a wood at night I chanced upon what I supposed
to be a large glowworm in my path. I picked it up, only to find in my
hand a hard piece of dead twig.
A later experience, which, while quite startling for a moment, was
robbed of its full terrors by the reminiscence of the first. As in the
former case, I was returning home at night through a dark, damp wood.
I was skirting the border of a small runnel, when I was suddenly
brought to a breathless standstill, apparently confronted by the
glaring eyes of a panther, or perhaps a tiger; certainly no cat or fox
or owl was possessed of eyes of such dimensions or wide interspace as
those which glared at me from the dark shadow of yonder copse. But in
a moment my quickened pulse had subsided, and I calmly returned the
greenish phosphorescent gaze, observing that a singular accident had
re-enforced the first illusion by a wonderful semblance to ears and
outline of body, in keeping with the formidable eyes.
In a moment I was attacking the foe, my hands stroking his rough barky
forehead, and my fingers penetrating his eyes, which proved to be two
holes in the bark of a fallen log, the farther side of which disclosed
a brilliant, luminous patch which, as I invaded it with my hand,
proved to be bare, exposed wood. Taking hold of the loose bark, a
vigorous pull dislodged a great piece some three feet long, at the
same time liberating a glare of greenish light from the exposed
surface of the log, which was responded to in sympathy by the inner
surface of the slab of bark in my hands, in all representing about six
square feet of brilliant phosphorescence.
I carried a fragment home, and upon inspecting it by lamp-light, found
it white with thready mould, resembling the so-called "dry-rot" of
mouldy timber--doubtless the mother of some well-known fungus, or
"toadstool," which might have been discerned upon the log the
following day had I chanced thither.
Hawthorne in one of his books records a remarkable personal encounter
with this weird fox-fire, and one which cost him dearly. He was on a
journey by canal-boat, which had stopped _en route_ for a brief period
at midnight. During the interval he had stepped ashore, and was
decoyed into a neighboring wood by the bright glow, which proved to be
a fallen tree ablaze with phosphorescence.
In his surprise and interest he lost all account of time, and thus
missed his boat, and was obliged to "foot it" for miles on the
midnight tow-path, which he was enabled to do by the aid of a big
brand of the tree which he used as a flambeau.
Almost any damp wood, especially after a rain, is likely to disclose
its fox-fire, but it occasionally appears under circumstances where we
little expect it. A few weeks since, having occasion to go to my
refrigerator after dark, I noticed a brilliant glowing object upon the
floor beneath it, which I found upon inspection to be merely a piece
of damp bread. Can it be that the yeast fungus too may give off
effulgence with its carbonic acid at its whim? or was the light
traceable to the perceptible odor of lobster with which it had
evidently been previously in contact?
Dead fish are frequently thus luminous, and brilliant phosphorescence
is often an accompaniment of decomposition of both animal and
vegetable matter. A few decaying potatoes will often light up a corner
of a cellar which is dim by daylight, and an instance is on record of
a certain cellar full of these vegetables giving off such a flood of
light as to lead observers to suppose that the premises were on fire.
Many animals, and especially fishes and insects, possess luminous
properties. The familiar examples of the glowworm and fire-fly hardly
need be mentioned. Then there are the big lantern-flies, with their
luminous heads; and brilliant snapping beetles of the South, with
their two glowing headlights, so effectively employed as ornaments for
the hair and otherwise in the toilet of the Cuban belle. But the sea
is the home of luminous life. From the diminutive myriads of the
_noctiluca_, which sets the sea aflame, to the numerous larger finny
tribes, the ocean is peopled with animal life, which, though dwelling
in depths scarce reached by the faintest gleam from the sun, swim
about enveloped in their self-illumined halo.
While all these phenomena come under the general term of
phosphorescence, the inference of the presence of phosphorus is
incorrect; many substances without a trace of phosphorus in their
constitution emit light with equal brilliancy.
The well-known commercial article called "luminous paint" is an apt
example, which, while containing no trace of phosphorus, glows like
fox-fire at night, especially after having been exposed to the sun's
rays during the day, giving forth in the dark hours the light which it
has thus absorbed, and being thus of utility in its application to
clock faces and match-boxes.
Calcined lime and burnt oyster-shells, in combination with certain
acids, become luminous at night by the similar power of absorption and
transmission of light vibration which is supposed to be the secret of
much of the so-called phosphorescence.
But fox-fire is believed to be of a different nature, more chemical in
its character, and usually emanates from a fungus, either visible in
the form of mould or toadstool, or existing as an almost invisible
essence which saturates the decaying wood, a species known as
_Thelaphora cerulea_ being credited with most of the luminous
manifestations.
Fox-fire is occasionally put to a cruel utility by hunters in
association with the "salt-lick" for deer. Salt is scattered in a
selected spot, and a piece of fox-fire adjusted beyond it in direct
line of the aim of the rifle, which is securely fixed in place. The
sudden obscuration of the light is a sufficient signal for the
still-hunter, who has only to pull the trigger to secure the game,
even though the latter be entirely hid in the darkness.
The more common examples of fox-fire are small bits of decayed wood,
but most astonishing specimens have been observed. In addition to the
fine example mentioned by Hawthorne, there is an authentic record of a
single log twenty-four feet in length and a foot in diameter which was
one mass of brilliant phosphorescence.