Jaxlore: Folklore, Urban Legends, and Regionalisms

6. The Ghost Light of Greenbriar Road
St. Johns



Bill Delaney

Before the McMansions and A-rated schools, northern St. Johns County was a quiet, rural backwater. In those days, the old dirt-paved Greenbriar Road was known as the “Ghost Light Road,” as it provided nighttime visitors with a singularly disconcerting experience: a lone spectral headlight that appeared to approach cars before vanishing into the perfect dark.

The Ghost Light appeared from at least the 1970s into the early ‘oos, and is one entry the writer can personally vouch for. Like Annie Lytle School, the Ghost Light Road was once a popular legend-tripping destination, and I was one of those trippers. Between 1997 and 2001, I witnessed the light on several occasions, with different people and at least a few times without intoxicants involved.

Like any good apparition, the Ghost Light had an accompanying tale. The version I heard recounted a young motorcyclist whose father had warned him about speeding on the dirt road. One fateful day, the motorcyclist’s brother strung a rope across Greenbriar. This prank merely would have unseated the cocky rider had he heeded his father’s admonition, but, unfortunately, he gunned the engine and lost his head. Thereafter, his ghost shined his headlamp down Greenbriar in a nightly vigil.

 
Origin of the “Ghost Light?” Katie Delaney

While the story is apocryphal, the light was a real phenomenon attested by numerous witnesses. The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office received so many reports that they investigated the light in 1987, but they came to no firm conclusion about the cause. Researchers’ best guess is that the lights were optical illusions caused by a banked curve on Florida 210 near the Greenbriar intersection. According to the theory, the angle made headlights on westbound 210 appear to be coming up Greenbriar – at enough distance that two lights looked like one – before they abruptly disappeared as the vehicles passed through the intersection. This explanation gains support from the fact that the light hasn’t been seen since the intersection was reconfigured for safety in 2001.  Or, so as not to kill a good story, perhaps the ghost found the safety features satisfying and finally crossed over.


Katie Delaney

 
Today, Greenbriar Road has been paved. Cookie-cutter subdivisions have replaced the open fields and woods. The Ghost Light still occasionally appears in books on Florida ghosts and curiosities,  but otherwise it shines only in the memories of legend-trippers past.