This tiny SC community has the 5th highest ghost sightings in the US, survey shows. Here’s why

Here’s how the story goes.

A preacher went out into the night looking for his missing daughter. He was struck and killed by a train, but he never left.

He walks along Parkers Ferry Road in Jacksonboro, South Carolina and if you flash your headlights three times (some say five) you will see his lantern in the distance and hear the train passing by.

It is a tale handed down generation to generation, drawing people from near and far and adding to the mystique of Jacksonboro, which was ranked 5th in the nation for most ghost sightings by Risk Strategies.

The Pennsylvania-based surety bond agency surveyed 1,000 car owners and then analyzed GhostsofAmerica.com to find America’s most haunted roads.

Risk Strategies found nearly 60% of car owners have experienced paranormal activity while driving and afterwards 47% said they heard similar stories from the same area.

The story of the preacher and the lantern is said to have taken place in Colleton County and is known as Jacksonboro Light.

Jacksonboro, population just over 200, is a blip on Highway 17 from Charleston to Beaufort along the Edisto River. It has a couple of gas stations, restaurants like the Ace Basin Fish Camp, the Post Office and the requisite Dollar General. Get outside that strip and you find true country, moss-draped live oaks and not much more, including the spot the preacher is said to inhabit.

Jacksonboro dates to the 1730s and includes the ruins of Pon Pon Chapel, which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

For a brief few months in 1782, when the British controlled Charleston — known then as Charles Town — during the Revolutionary War, it was the provisional capital of South Carolina. The Legislature met in the Masonic Lodge and a tavern, both no longer there.

But the preacher’s story endures.

When Ward Jolles was a broadcast major at the University of South Carolina, he set out to discover whether the eerily appearing light could be explained. He and a production crew filmed their exploits four years ago as part of Jolle’s Weird Things with Wade series.

It was the first show. As a high school student in Orangeburg, Jolles had been to the light many times. He’s now a reporter for WAVE in Louisville.

“I’d say it happened more often than not,” he said via Facebook messenger. “I can remember a couple times where I waited around and didn’t see anything but usually if you wait long enough you’ll see/hear it.”

The crew went out on two consecutive nights and saw the light both times. In between, Jolle interviewed a paranormal investigator who looked at the footage.

“That is pretty cool,” he said and mentioned it could be some sort of residual energy.

On the second night, Jolles believed he could explain the light as coming from a car turning into a road.

Debunked, he said.

Many people reached out through the years to say they saw it. No debunking.

One said on the Gamecock Student Television YouTube channel, “Man it’s real I’ve had it on top of my hood when I was a kid.”

Another said, “I have witnessed the light many times, sometimes really frightening as the light never behaves the same way each time. Sometimes it was stationary, but many times it would chase the car even passing and returning at high speed.”

He said he’d been out there with a car full of screaming people fleeing from the light at 80 mph and it passed them.

Another said he thought it was swamp gas.

“Sometimes I think back on that story and wonder if maybe we didn’t completely debunk the myth,” Jolle said.

He’d like to go back and try it again.

“I grew up going to visit the light and used to swear there was some truth to it,” he said.