Real experience · adapted into the novel
Spirit Lights
Experienced by WB
This experience happened when I was quite young. I was at home and we had a bunch of people over celebrating my dad’s birthday. As the party was picking up, I decided to go to my room, as I was the only kid at the party and was feeling a little bored after helping my mother serve snacks to their guest. I have a dart board on one side of my bedroom that I always try to get a bull’s eye in before I go to sleep. I walked into the room and up to the dart board. I pulled the darts out and walked to the other side of my bed, which was placed eight feet away from the dart board. I was about to turn around to the board, when all of a sudden, all around me appeared what looked like ashes and sparks flying. They were flying around me body in a spiral fashion. I almost fainted with fear. I ran out of my room and said a prayer in the hallway before turning around and re-entering my bedroom, with my heart still beating hard. I picked up my phone to call my brother, who lived with his girl friend. I have always talked to him about anything and everything. It was 6:22 pm when this happened. I was not asleep so it couldn’t be a dream or nightmare. While talking to my brother, who first laughed at me when I told him why I was calling, they reappeared. This time only a few ashes and sparks. I paused to say a prayer again in my head, and they disappeared after a few moments. From then on I referred to these ashes as spirit lights. My brother figured I must be hallucinating. I had no other explanation so I assumed he was correct. To understand what I actually saw, imagine you are sitting around a bonfire and someone throws a log on it. The way the sparks look as they rise up from the fire is exactly what the ashes and sparks looked like in my room. And I had seen them a few more times since, once a few months later and twice a year later.
This real experience was later adapted into The Group of Seven and the Old Mill Ghost, where it is told through a fictional character and setting as William’s experience.