Jack-Ma-Lantern

In 1935, when the Great Depression was ravaging the country, the federal government formed the Works Progress Administration (later named the Work Project Administration) to combat the devastating effects of the depression on the nation. The largest and most successful project was the Tennessee Valley Authority, which, through the construction of hydroelectric dams, modernized the region and created desperately needed jobs. One of the administration’s lesser-known projects was the Federal Writers Project. This project employed thousands of out-of-work teachers, researchers, librarians and historians who went about recording American oral histories and folklore. One of the better-known works of the Federal Writers Projects is Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, which was compiled from over two thousand interviews with formerly enslaved people.

Field workers employed by the federally subsidized Virginia Writers Project captured all manner of Virginia folklore through interviews with residents, stretching from the Cumberland Gap to Hampton Roads and as far north as Winchester. In one of these interviews, which was conducted by Laura Virginia Hale on June 29, 1942, Front Royal resident Catherine Newman shared legends of "jack-ma-lanterns":

I used to know a lot of that stuff you axin’ [sic] about, but I reckon I done forgot most of it, or jist [sic] can’t rek’lect [sic] it offhand. I remember how the ol’ folks used to tell ’bout jack-ma-lanterns (My informant insisted that the middle syllable was “ma.”) that ‘ud [sic] lead you off at night. You know, back in those days, there wasn’t lights ever’where to guide a body like ’tis today. If you started out to go somewhere at night, you’d try to spot a light in some neighbor’s house and foller [sic] that. On real dark, foggy nights, one of them jack-ma-lanterns would appear in front of someone trav’lin’ along a lonely road or path, a-lookin’ jist lak [sic] a light way off in somebody’s winder [sic] so as to make the person foller [sic] it. Then it’d lead him off into the thickets or swamps somewhere. Why, I’ve heard of folks bein’ lost all night follerin’ [sic] one of them jack-ma-lanterns. So, if a body had to go somewhere at night and didn’ want to be led off by a jack-ma-lantern, he’d turn his pockets wrong side out. That’d keep ’em away, they said.  

So, what the heck is a jack-ma-lantern?

I ask this question and explore the possibility that jack-ma-lanterns may have been manifestations of the mysterious "ghost lights" phenomenon in my book Haunted Shenandoah Valley. The most famous ghost lights are found at Brown Mountain, North Carolina and Marfa, Texas, but perhaps the mysterious lights were once more widespread.

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