It was a warm summer night, in northern Manitoba.
On a road that would one day be called No. 660.
My Mother Anne, quite young then, was walking home from the town of Arran. It was pitch black, of course, and she was alone except for a deep, dark scary forest. But Manitobans, at least in those years, the late '30s and early '40s, were a tough lot, and it didn't scare her one bit.
But what would happen next is something she had never expected.
As she walked along, she felt something was behind her. She looked back, and sure enough, there was a light, high up, above the road.
She tried to ignore it, thinking maybe it was something natural.
But it got closer, and closer, and closer... And eventually, it passed her, and was in front of her, at a small distance, high up.
She stopped, and it stopped. She walked on, and it moved on. Maintaining its distance.
She yelled at it, to go away, and leave her alone! In Ukrainian, of course.
As if mysterious lights know how to speak Ukrainian! But it did appear to have intelligence, because it zoomed away, as if scared.
Then it returned. Backing up, as she walked home. And then, it was gone. Just as fast as it appeared.
Only then, could she breathe easy. She was safe, the light was gone.
She would tell her dad, our Gido, who dismissed it as something natural, and not to be afraid of. My Mom, who was a teen at the time, wasn't so sure.
What she saw was what she saw. It was like something out of a frightening children's fable. Peter Pan's Tinker Bell?
A week later, she was faced with the same dilemma.
She walked the same road, and, no light. She kept looking behind her, and, no light.
But as she turned her head, the light was right in front of her! Just yards (or meters) away!
This terrified her.
Again, the light would follow her every step, stay with her.
Not harming her, or doing anything of that sort, but it followed her.
And then she said, it did a little dance!
It danced away in front of her, playfully.
It seemed just as curious about her, as she was about it.
And then, just as fast, it disappeared into the forest. Gone.
This would go on, for the entire summer. The light would appear, and then, it would disappear.
But only late at night, when it was pitch black.
As my Mom, rest her soul, told the story to us in her Swan River home, she could not recall anyone else, who had experienced the same thing.
We tossed out ideas. Perhaps it was that phenomenon called "swamp gas," which emits orbs of light.
The area was a bit swampy, come to think of it.
But she insisted this light had intelligence, it reacted to her.
And there were no drones in those days, nothing even close.
Nor could it have been a balloon carrying a candle. This thing was moving around rather quickly.
Could it have been "alien-inspired" we thought? Something from another world, come to earth, to explore humanity.
We now know, that the Greys are interested in some blood lines - hence all the abduction stories.
But my Mom had no memory of such an abduction, she had a normal prairie upbringing.
Interestingly, Arran is not the only place in Manitoba where eerie lights have been seen.
According to the CBC, since the 1930s, stories have been told about the dancing lights at the end of a road along the railway line just east of Woodridge in southeast Manitoba.
A story very similar to the Arran lights.
Locals say the light is a lantern carried by the headless ghost of a man who was killed by a train many years ago.
Similar haunted stories are told about two islands in Manitoba, both known to local residents as Devil's Island.
One is located east of Camperville in the middle of Lake Winnipegosis and the other is in Lake Winnipeg, about six kilometers northeast of Albert Beach.
There are tales of people who have camped on the islands only to wake in a panic and leave in the night, chased away by eerie lights.
We decided to drive out and have a look at No. 660 for ourselves, with my then wife and young daughter in tow.
But we went during the day.
She took us first to the site of her school, Podolia. There was nothing there, not even a foundation, but a sign marked its past history.
My Mom remembered exactly on No. 660, where the light would appear, and disappear. It was a fresh memory for her.
We stopped, got out, looked around. There were nearby farms, but this section was still heavily forested.
For those interested, it was just north of Arran, a very small village. Only a few folks live there today, and none of them remember any lights.
Of course, we saw no aliens, ghosts, demons or anything of the like. And there was no cemetery in the immediate area.
Nothing to provide any clue of what happened half a century earlier.
Just that wonderful smell of Manitoba in spring, something I deeply miss.
We had no plans of waiting until the sun went down, so we got back in our vehicle, and drove off.
The mystery of the Arran Lights, would stay a secret.
And we may never know, what it was.
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