"Have you ever heard the saying that when a candle is burning and the flame turns suddenly blue, that means there is a ghost nearby?"

Blue Flame Apparition

Our first encounter with a “spirit” was in the summer of 1984. We were only nineteen and twenty years old On Fridays after work we would meet up with friends and “match” joints before going home. On one particular Friday, we met a couple friends at Pfeiffer Cemetery, a local cemetery set well off the road where kids would hang out.

Before I begin the story of our encounter, let me tell you that we had not even smoked anything when we met our spirit, so, no we weren’t stoned or imagining things.

Dale and I met our friends around 5:30 pm at the cemetery. We were sitting on the backs of our cars, only our group of four at the cemetery. We had only been there about 5 minutes when I looked across the cemetery and saw what looked like a a small blue flame hovering over a grave. The base of the flame was seem to hover just above the ground I got my husbands attention and pointed it out to him I commented on it to the guys and the general response was “What the hell is that?”.

As we walked closer to the flame, we noticed the bottom of the flame was about 4-5 inches off the ground and it rose about 12-15 inches. When we were within about six foot of the flame it suddenly disappeared and in its place was a cloud of smoke. This was no ordinary cloud of smoke though. It was more like a mist and it took on the shape of a woman, a woman who began to move across the cemetery. We stood frozen there for what could have only been seconds but seemed so much longer. Then, all of a sudden the guys took off running for the cars, leaving me behind. Before I could get to the cars, they had started their engines and were driving away. Dale finally stopped our car just barely long enough for me to get in.

We were all pretty frightened as nothing like this had ever happened to any of us before. We all saw the same thing, it was definitely a woman, no denying it.

Later that evening a friend stopped by and we told him about our ordeal. He went to the Public Library and researched old newspapers and found that a woman had been murdered there a few years earlier. Her decapitated body had been found near the place where we witnessed the blue flame and smoke apparition. Was it her ghost that we saw? We don’t know and never will.

This cemetery has been vandalized and desecrated so many times over the years that no one is allowed entrance without written approval. Please acknowledge and respect private and posted property at all times.

Legends and folklore...

CORPSE CANDLES

"Corpse Candles are very mysterious lights that are often seen in churchyards or graveyards.

They are sometimes also called Dead Man Candles, Jack O`lanterns and Fetch lights.

The Candles are supposed to presage death. The size of the candle will indicate the age of the victim.

The candle lights may be red, blue or white. They can appear near the Earth or up in the air."

"If a candle flame burns blue, it is an omen of death in the offing."

A candle that burns dim or blue is thought to mean the presence of a ghost. Kind of a ghost calling card.
But skeptics are soon to say that the reason for the blue flame is due to extraordinary emission of sulfurous or nitrous particles in close quarters.

The following stories and folklore had similarities to April's Blue Flame anomaly experience:

The Blue Light of Bachelor's Grove Chicago, Ill

The Blue Light Ghost Sugar Grove, Ohio

THE BLUE LIGHT Heath, Texas

Blue Light Lady, Fort Hays, Kansas

Jim Potts
Wyandotte, OK USA - Sunday, January 27, 2002

"It was 1969, my senior year in high school. I was driving East of Quapaw, Oklahoma on a road that many of the residents of the area had traveled, "The Spooklight Road". The early fall of the year when everyone had just started school again and...of course our favorite sport "parking". (Oh yeah, no booze and no dope) Spooklight road had to be the darkest place in the world when I was growing up.

I had pulled up 4 or 5 car lengths behind a pickup truck with two people in it. I was alone and was supposed to meet the young lady of my dreams once again. I had seen the spooklight many times but this time it appeared and came flying down the road at us very fast. When it got to the front of the pickup it appeared to go inside the truck. The inside of the cab lit up with a glow that reminded me of an old blue neon light on a foggy night. The passenger side door of the truck opened and a blonde haired girl bolted from it and out in the ditch. She turned and was screaming as the driver bailed out his side of the truck and ran around the back of the truck in front of me. I left my headlights off, got out of the car and ran over to the girl. She was hysterical and crying holding her face with her hands. He asked me if I saw it, and I said I did. They were from Missouri and said they had been out there and seen the light many times and nothing like that had ever happened. I had seen the light before, but never before had I seen it enter a vehicle. He said it got really cold in the truck before he got out. After he got out of the truck the light appeared to all of us about a half a mile down the road in front of us."

Holly Anderson
Hamilton, ON Canada

"It was a rainy fall morning in 1992 and I had just driven to school. I went to park on top outdoor level of the parking garage of the hospital next to the university. It was pouring rain, so I thought I sit for a moment to see if the rain would let up and let me run into the hospital lobby. After a moment I saw a blue-white ball of light the size of a very large grapefruit float gently into view on the opposite side of the windshield. I was frozen with fear as it was only about 4 feet from my face. It hovered there for a moment, seemingly unaffected by the force of the driving rain, before it appeared to be blown by a gentle breeze upward and to the right and out of my viewing range. I sat there frozen, wondering what I had just witnessed - a ball of light that seemed as light as a feather, completely unaffected by the driving rain outside. The parking lot was empty, so I was the only one to see it...I've mostly kept this story to myself for the fear that people would likely think I was crazy to have had such an experience. I was awake and alert at the time so there is no question in my mind that I really did see the thing."

All under the stars, and beneath the green tree,
All over the sward, and along the cold lea,
A little blue flame a--fluttering came;
It came from the churchyard for you or for me.

I sit by the cradle, my baby's asleep,
And rocking the cradle, I wonder and weep.
O little blue light in the dead of the night,
O prithee, O prithee, no nearer to creep.

Sacred Text

By: Charles Edwin Price by laminx@AOL.com

The Blue Spirit

In southern California. A couple of years back I had an experience that shook me to the bone. I can't ever imagine ever getting use to becoming easy going about such ethereal beings visiting me as some people claim they have, as I get older I'm realizing events in my childhood that were strange but never did anything about(peculiar).

My encounter happened late one night in Marina Del Rey, CA. I had a small 1 bedroom apartment and spent a lot of time home on the computer or strumming the guitar. I have always believed in Jesus Christ as my Lord and felt that he is always present and closer whenever I call his name boy!, entities don't like that!) so it makes me wonder just how nice these beings pretend to be sometimes, like in some of your stories.

Anyway, I was lying in bed listening to some Eric Clapton through my head phones when I was abruptly shook, I can't recall. The being must not have liked the music for the shake was violent, this blue thing hovered about a foot from my face, no noise or wavering movements just a silent and still hover. Not a lovely experience at 2 in the morning and everything pitch black!

It seemed to be a royal bluish electric-like presence with a very defined outline and it meant business. It was very confusing for me at first, I had the feeling it was trying to show me something or tell me something, it waved it's bluish hand towards itself, I can't say it was angry or happy but definitely not inviting. The hand was very much a human hand but electric blue. I could not believe my eyes, a raw fear took over that I never felt before quickly followed by a cry for strength to our Lord Jesus Christ. This helped to get rid of fear and "it" was gone almost instantly, in a blink of the eye...gone. I can't tell you how fast I ran to my living room with all the lights clicking on along the way. Sitting on my couch as quiet as a church mouse thinking about what just happened to me and wondering if I had ever had an experience close to that so that I could dismiss what just happened somehow. No dice, this thing was real! I held my ground. It's my territory, "sorry pal" I thought "I just paid the rent so I'm staying". Since then, I sleep on my side, I don't like sleeping on my back if I can help it because I don't appreciate apparitions or blue beings if you will just popping up in front of my face like that, talk about a heart attack!

I wonder how many people go through stuff like this and never utter a word?

theshadowlands

From Berks the Bizarre, True Tales of Haunted Houses, Ghosts, Strange Occurrences, and Mysteries in Berks County, Pennsylvania by Charles J. Adams III

It was about nine o'clock at night when Darius Smith quit his hay making on a farm west of Leesport and began the long trek back to his Shoemakersville home.

He had just passed through Mohrsville when his attention was diverted by a strange sensation that seemed to embrace his entire being.

In an instant, there arose from a nearby meadow the faint image of a young woman.

What appeared to be a white gown draped from her spectral shoulders. Darius Smith's eyes were riveted to the improbable sight.

Was it his imagination, or was a blue flame slowly enveloping the pale figure?

Was it a mournful hymn or sobbing he heard emanating from the ashen apparition?

Was the wraith slowly ascending and circling over him?

Were those steely eyes gazing back at him, or vacant sockets where eyes ought to be?

Already stunned, Smith was paralyzed by fear as the phantom began to speak.

The Will-O'-The-Wisps, or fairy lights, are quiet and helpful. They appear in the misty Irish mountains to help searchers to locate someone lost in a ravine or drowned in a rocky pool. It's said that those who can see the lights have the gift of knowing when their closet of kin are in danger.

Why follow the church-path, why steal you this way?
Why halt in your journey, on threshold why stay?
With flicker and flare, why dance up the stair?
O I would! O I would! it were dawning of day.

All under the stars, and along the green lane,
Unslaked by the dew, and unquenched by the rain,
Of little flames blue to the churchyard steal two,
The soul of my baby! now from me is ta'an.

BLUE CAP

The Blue Cap is a ghost that haunts mines.

However, if this ghost is offered gifts it will help the miners.

He usually appears in the form of a blue colored flame and possesses great strength.

If he was badly treated he would bring disaster to the mine.

Paralumun

Blue Flame - Submitted by Rodney from Atlanta, GA, USA to Under the Bridge.

I consider myself a person of sound mind and body. I am 37 and I have served in the Military for over 17 years. I hold a College Degree (AS in science). My story starts when I was a little boy age 7 approximately. I was living in Atlanta in my parents home. Our neighborhood was very similar to the homes in the Brady Bunch reruns. My life growing as a black man was not bad. As I got older I seem to realize how blessed I was to have the safe upbringing I did during that time.

Well, one night at age 7 my family and I had returned home from the Fairgrounds. It was a normal quiet HOT Atlanta summer night. We all went to our rooms to go to sleep. My mother and Father fell right to sleep. My sister went to her room and went to sleep as well. My brother and I shared a room together. He tossed and turned but eventually fell asleep too. I could not go to sleep. In the middle of the night around 2am I got up out of my bed to go down stairs and get a drink of water. Although it was dark in our home there was usually enough light coming in the house from the street lamps so that you could see were you were going.

As I stepped into the hall-way and looked to my left to go down stairs I saw a blue flame sitting on the floor in the darkness down in our living room. I instantly thought that my brother have left a match lit. I turned on all the lights and went down the stairs and got closer and closer to this blue flame on the floor. The flame was about 1 inch high and had the color of a gas pilot from a gas stove. The only difference was that the flame was a solid radiant blue. I got right down on the floor face to face with the flame and looked at it ever so closely. I noticed that the flame moved just slightly from side to side. There was NOT any fuel source to flame. i.e. match stick, paper, lighter etc. IT WAS JUST SITTING ON THE FLOOR. I thought to myself that maybe this blue flame would burn down my parents home so I began to blow on it. And I mean blow very hard. The flame never once moved in reaction to my blowing. All I could do was stare at it.

The next thing I did was to get up, check on my gold fish I had won at the fairgrounds, get my drink of water and go back to bed. Before I went back into my bedroom I turned out all the lights and took one last look down the Hallway to see the Blue Flame still as bright as ever shining on the floor. I just need to know more than ever if anyone has ever seen the same thing or may know what it was that I saw.

Life is light and fire. This idea must have entered into the minds of primitive people. To this day in Yorkshire falling stars are supposed to be the souls coming down from above to newborn children and animating them, and when death ensues the flame of life passes out of the body. This is the conception that lies at the root of many folk-superstitions.

I knew a case in an adjoining parish, where there was a young man in a decline who had helped in the hay-harvest. He was dead before the next season. But I was assured that at haysel a flame was seen dancing about the meadow and running up to the hayrick; the haymakers had no doubt whatever that this was the spirit of the young man who had died in the previous year. In Wales the belief in corpse--lights is very prevalent. There it is a flame that comes from the churchyard to fetch the spirit of the dying man or woman. It is, in fact, the spirit of a relative come to call it.

It is called the Canwyll Gorph, or Corpse Candle; and the saying is that St David promised to Welshmen in his territory that none should die without the premonitory sign of a light travelling to his house from the churchyard to summon him. In the Cambrian Register for 1796 we read of--

A very commonly received opinion, that within the diocese of St David's, a short space before death, a light is seen proceeding from the house, and sometimes, as has been asserted, from the very bed where the sick person lies, and pursues its way to the church where he or she is to be interred, precisely in the same track in which the funeral is afterwards to follow.

In Devonshire it is supposed that this light is only seen when the moribund has children or relatives buried in the churchyard, and it is the souls of these that come to fetch their kinsman or kinswoman.

Irish Folklore

Saint \Saint\ (s[=a]nt), n. [F., fr. L. sanctus sacred, properly p. p. of sancire to render sacred by a religious act, to appoint as sacred; akin to sacer sacred. Cf. Sacred, Sanctity, Sanctum, Sanctus.] 1. A person sanctified; a holy or godly person; one eminent for piety and virtue; any true Christian, as being redeemed and consecrated to God.

Saint Elmo's fire, a luminous, flamelike appearance, sometimes seen in dark, tempestuous nights, at some prominent point on a ship, particularly at the masthead and the yardarms. It has also been observed on land, and is due to the discharge of electricity from elevated or pointed objects. A single flame is called a Helena, or a Corposant; a double, or twin, flame is called a Castor and Pollux, or a double Corposant. It takes its name from St. Elmo, the patron saint of sailors.

n : an electrical discharge accompanied by ionization of surrounding atmosphere [syn: corona discharge, corona, St. Elmo's fire, Saint Elmo's fire, Saint Elmo's light, Saint Ulmo's fire, Saint Ulmo's light, electric glow]

corposant(same as corona discharge)

corona current

The electrical current that is equivalent to the rate of charge transferred to the air from a pointed object (or array of objects) experiencing corona discharge . Ordinarily, the corona current form terrestrial objects at times of thunderstorm passage constitutes a transfer of negative charge from air to object.

corona discharge

A luminous, and often audible, electric discharge that is intermediate in nature between a spark discharge (with, usually, its single discharge channel) and a point discharge (with its diffuse, quiescent, and non-luminous character). It occurs from objects, especially pointed ones, when the electric field strength near their surfaces attains a value near 100,000 volts per m. Aircraft flying through active electrical storms often develop corona discharge streamers from antennas and propellers, and even from the entire fuselage and wing structure. So-called precipitation static results. It is seen also, during stormy weather, emanating from the yards and masts of ships at sea. ( See St. Elmo's fire )