Texana
Seeing the Light
The mysterious Anson light has been spooking college kids for years. Is it a ghostly emanation—or something more mundane?
On a clear, moonless September night, when summer was just giving way to fall, I found myself barreling west down a deserted stretch of U.S. 180 with the mayor of Anson, looking for a ghost. "You'll need to slow down," Tom Isbell said as he pointed into the blackness. "The cemetery should be just ahead on our left." I eased off the gas and squinted to make out the tombstones, but Isbell saw them first. "There it is," he said. "The dirt road will be on the far side. That's where we'll turn off." We were on the trail of the fabled Anson light.
We bounced along the dirt road at about ten miles an hour as our headlights danced across the tombstones to our left. On our right I could see the lights of the town, and the emptiness ahead reminded me of The Blair Witch Project. "The crossroads is coming up," I said after about a mile. "When we get there," Isbell replied, "we'll turn the car around in the middle of the intersection." But I knew the drill: As I approached the intersection—the other dirt road leading to darkness in either direction—I swung the car wide to the right and circled back, parking smack-dab in the middle. We were now facing the way we had come, looking past 180 into dense mesquite that seemed to stretch to the horizon. I turned off the lights, then killed the engine. The mayor and I sat in absolute darkness, not saying a word, and then, as the legend dictates, I flashed the headlights three times. Almost immediately a faint glimmer appeared in front of us, as if a phantom train had come around an invisible bend miles away. "There it is," I whispered. The white light grew more intense, moving slightly from side to side, and I sat stock-still with my hand frozen on the ignition. The mayor nodded: "That's it."
I had met Tom Isbell that afternoon, and we had spent the daylight hours talking about the economic prospects for Anson, a town of 2,800 residents. As we stood across from the courthouse, we discussed the opening of the new public library and garden and the success of a new jewelry store on the square. Most of the other businesses were boarded up, some looking as if they needed just one gust of wind to finish them off. An abandoned store called Heidenheimer's sported a banner that proclaimed "Going Out of Business Sale." When I asked how long it had been closed, Isbell said just over a year.
"The good news is that ten thousand cars drive through Anson every day," he said. "The trick is getting them to stop." He has thought about opening a transportation museum, and I mentioned that Marfa has been able to cash in on its own mysterious lights. "For a long time people were embarrassed by the Anson light," he said. "Anson has stories to tell, but for some reason we just don't tell them. Did you know that the hero from Américo Paredes' With His Pistol in His Hand, Gregorio Cortez, is buried here? People don't know that because we don't advertise it."
I told Isbell that I had first learned about the Anson light during the early nineties, when I was a student at the University of North Texas, in Denton. I had met a music major named Carl who had grown up in Abilene, which is about 25 miles south of Anson. One night he told me and my roommate, Daryl, an irresistible story: On a deserted country road, just down from an old cemetery, an unexplained light would appear after midnight. The tale didn't sound too far-fetched. My wife had attended Abilene Christian University, and she told me that the Anson light was one of the first stories she had heard there. In fact, students from all three of Abilene's colleges—ACU, Hardin-Simmons, and McMurry—had been going out to the cemetery for as long as anyone could remember. Carl explained the ritual that Isbell would later confirm: Drive to the crossroads, turn your car around, kill the engine, flash your lights three times. "This is the god's-honest truth," he kept insisting. "I am not making this up." If you were lucky, he said, a white light no bigger than a tiny dot would appear on the horizon. It would seem to be miles away, but it would grow to the size of a basketball as it came closer and drifted from left to right, then disappear before returning again. Did the light have an explanation? I asked. Absolutely, Carl said. A long time ago a young boy went camping by himself, and his mother gave him a lantern. She told him that if he needed help, all he had to do was flash the lantern three times and she would come to him. The boy never returned, so his mother—who just happens to be buried in the cemetery—rises from the dead with a lantern each time she sees the headlights.
At that point Daryl and I were ready to hit the road, but then Carl leaned in close and lowered his voice to a whisper. Though he had seen the light countless times, he said, a recent experience had persuaded him never to go back. He had driven out there by himself (of course), and this time the light had come closer than ever. In a panic he decided to make a break for it, so he turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. He tried a second time. Again, nothing. Finally, just as the light was upon him, the engine turned over and he sped off, heading directly toward it. It shot straight up in the air and vanished. Before we could accuse Carl of lying, he nodded and said, "That's a true story." Even more enticing were the words that followed: "And if you don't believe me, you can go see for yourself."
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