Spectral Lights at Bow Bridge

Beneath the shadowed arches of Bow Bridge in North Devon’s Hartland, where the moor’s wild breath meets the Bristol Channel’s restless tides, spectral lights weave a haunting tale born of a mother’s unending grief. In 1692, a storm claimed three brothers, their loss etching sorrow into their mother Agnes Babb, whose nightly lantern-lit vigils by the bridge birthed ethereal globes, white with ultramarine bases, glowing softly above the stream, rising 20 to 30 feet before fading. From the 1700s to a vivid 1965 sighting, these lights, beautiful and mysterious, dance in Hartland’s lore, a radiant echo of a widow’s love, forever seeking her lost sons in the darkness.