Apparitions: Stories Behind the Stories--The Light on the Ceiling

Have you ever wondered where an author gets his or her idea for a story? The stories in  Apparitions: Twisted Tales and Yarns by Jimmy L. Capps and Linda Capps Fisher are based on family yarns of strange happenings, dreams, nightmares, personal experiences, or solely based on imagination. 

Over the next few weeks, I plan on sharing the stories behind the stories in Apparitions. ~ Linda

“The Light on the Ceiling” by Jimmy Capps

(excerpt)

We were staying the night at Pap and Granny Whittier’s. It was cold outside, and a bunch of the old folks had gathered up at Pap’s house; they did that back then. We were all sitting around the wood stove as they told stories, each trying to out-lie the other. After “hoop snakes” and “baby stealing panthers” had their run, the subject of the “ghost light” came up.

I remember at the time, I wasn’t eager to hear about any ghost light, but what could I do but listen? I couldn’t change the channel, and I was too scared to go into another room.

As they explained it, the ghost light showed itself the night before someone in the family was to die.

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We grew up hearing stories about our Grandpa Whittle seeing a bright light before deaths in the families. In this story, Jimmy captures the feeling that we had as kids hearing the about the spooky light. It was one of the stories Grandpa told that scared us, but we begged him to tell us..

Sometimes the light was on the ceiling, but I remember one story when Grandpa and my uncle were coon hunting and the light shined down on Grandpa. The light scared my uncle because, although he’d never seen it, he knew about the light. “I thought Poppie was going to die!” he told us. He asked Grandpa to move, but as my uncle told it, the light moved with Grandpa.

Grandpa wasn’t scared, just sad. He knew there were be a death in the family.

Jimmy weaves a fictional story on the basis of a “ghost light” written in the style our Grandpa and uncles spun the yarns of our youth. The story is told in two parts: Jakes’s story and Sis’s story.

Read “The Light on the Ceiling” in Apparitions, available in Kindle and print versions on Amazon.