The Summerville Light, a long-standing ghost story in Summerville, South Carolina, tells of a widow searching for her decapitated railroad-worker husband with a lantern, her spectral glow still haunting the abandoned tracks. However, seismologist Susan Hough suggests that these ghostly sightings could be linked to seismic activity in the area. Summerville, the epicenter of the massive 1886 Charleston earthquake, remains geologically active, and historical reports describe unexplained lights and shaking vehicles—phenomena that align with earthquake lights, a rare luminous effect caused by seismic stress on minerals or gas emissions. Researchers have found that Summerville's geological conditions match those associated with earthquake lights, supporting the theory that the eerie glow is a natural occurrence rather than a supernatural one. Similar ghost stories tied to railroad tracks in other seismically active regions, like Maco, North Carolina, suggest that these legends may have origins in unnoticed low-level seismic events.