Did Albany Light seek Louisiana’s missing?

In the 1970s, I wrote for a Hammond newspaper called The Daily Sun, along with the weekly Denham Springs and Livingston Parish News. The columns I wrote then dealt with simple community news. However, my editors both knew I wanted to write feature articles and that I loved mysteries.

One day—after school—Nicholas R. Murray phoned me from his office in Hammond, asking about missing people in the Albany area. He had heard an urban legend that missing women and children in Livingston Parish had vanished in a mysterious cloud locals called “The Albany Light.”

“I thought that would make a great story for Halloween,” the editor said, asking, “Can you check it out?”

I called folks all over Holden, Albany, and Springfield, each call ending with a recommendation for another. However, most stories were hearsay. Many had seen the mysterious apparition but had no evidence of it devouring children.

A few weeks later, a friend old enough to drive offered to take me to witness the legend firsthand. If I remember correctly, Dale Hoover drove, and classmates Richard “Pep” Peplow, Richard Hellmers, and Charles “Buddy” Sullivan joined us.

That night, on an old dirt logging road behind the Goodwin Ballpark, we saw the infamous Albany Light up close and personal.

According to ritual, we were to park in a specific spot, kill the automobile’s engine, and flash the headlights three times. The legend said a spooky glowing cloud would emerge from the surrounding woods within a half hour.

After an hour of telling tales and scaring each other with Buddy’s flashlight, nothing had happened.

“I’ve had enough,” Pep said. “Let’s head into Hammond, catch a movie, or cruise Town and Country Plaza.”

“I hear you can park outside Junior’s and see over the fence into the Joy Theater,” another friend suggested.

“I don’t know about that,” Dale said, “But I’m getting hungry. Let’s get out of here.”

Dale attempted to crank the car, but the ignition just clicked.

After a gasp, we laughed, climbed out of the car, and popped the hood. “Probably just the battery,” Dale said as Buddy’s flashlight lit the cables.

As Dale and Pep fiddled with the connectors, we continued laughing and joking, not initially noticing the flashlight was no longer needed. Another light source had illuminated the car’s engine.

Turning, we saw a white-greenish glow filling the width of the dirt road. Like a scene from Gilligan’s Island, our troop bumped into each other, trying to close the hood and get back into the car.

When we opened the car doors, the Albany Light vanished, and Dale cranked the car. Halfway to Hammond, Dale admitted to faking car trouble, but no one could explain the light we saw.

Over the years, some of us revisited the site, experimenting with car lights reflecting from road signs on the main highway and considering pranksters or swamp gas. Still, we never found a definitive explanation.

Eventually, as teenagers “going parking” made the light Albany’s answer to submarine races, the landowner trenched the road, preventing further investigation.

In time, I learned of similar lights reported statewide. The experience of my “investigative team” was one of many, as Louisiana has “Albany Lights” in rural areas across the state.

The French phrase “feu follet” (foo fow-lay) translates to “marsh fire” or “crazy fire.” The phrase comes from the Acadians exiled in the mid-1700s when the British ordered thousands of Acadian families to leave their homes in North American British colonies for refusing to transition from Catholicism to Protestantism.

These “Cajuns” have long told stories of black nights in Louisiana and mysterious glowing orbs floating across swamps and forests, some basketball-sized, others as big as cars. The Cajun witnesses of the phenomenon called the lights “swamp fairies” or the “feu follet.”

Over the decades, storytellers have attributed the feu follet to ghosts, goblins, and other supernatural phenomena until modern science began to debunk the tales.

Science today suggests that glowing lights floating over marshy ground result from burning natural gases like methane. This “swamp gas” is emitted by organic decomposition, primarily decaying animal carcasses, that catch fire in the air.

Regardless of the science that perhaps provides a logical explanation for this phenomenon, people across Louisiana continue to repeat the stories chronicled by their Cajun ancestors. As long as narrators can find campfires and sightings still occur, the mystery of the feu follet lives on.

However, there is one part of the legend I can debunk once and for all. Although Louisiana does have hundreds of missing women and children, serious matters covered often in this column, I’m satisfied none succumbed to the Albany Light.

Happy Halloween, everyone.