Nova Scotia

A ghostly-looking glow in a Halifax cemetery has been attributed to a rare European glow worm according to a news item published in The Halifax Herald on December 12th 2009. Two biologists found 122 adult male beetles in traps at Holy Cross and Fort Massey cemeteries and a nearby Queen Street property.

Mr MacIvor was quoted in the news article as stating:

"I’ve looked in a lot of areas, and I’ve never seen one of these before," he said. "It completely surprised me. It may be in part because I didn’t look in the right places. They’re very cryptic in many ways, and unless you are looking for them in the right fashion, they may be right under your nose and you might not stumble across them."

He also explained a bit about where they might be sighted within the cemetery:

"Females are almost never seen because they hide in rock crevices, while the males wander along rock walls trying to find them. He said the stone walls and gravestones of the cemetery provide an ideal place for the males to perch and search."

Christopher Majka and Scott MacIvor’s findings have been published in a research paper in the international journal Zootaxa.

One wonders if this can help to explain some reports of glowing apparitions, spook lights or corpse lights?


Source:


"Biologists agleam with discovery" first published The Halifax Herald on December 12th 2009 By Ian Fairclough