The Running Light

A Hurtville Horror Story by Scott Farmer

Long before the White River was tamed by concrete and turned into Table Rock Lake, it ran wild and mean through the Missouri Ozarks—cutting through limestone, sweeping away entire hillsides when it swelled. In those days, settlers didn’t just battle the wilderness—they tried to command it.

One of the first was Elijah Wren.

He was tall, solemn, and obsessive. The kind of man who could carve a homestead from bedrock and make fire with wet bark. He founded Hurtville with two dozen families and a dream of building a clean, God-fearing town on the river’s edge. Folks respected him. Some feared him. All followed him.

Until the flood.

It happened in spring, when the river ran thick with rain fall and ghosts. Elijah had gone out alone to check on the ferry post upriver. The next morning, only his horse came back—wild-eyed and soaked in blood.

It took days to find him.

He was lodged in a sycamore root wad, half-drowned, caught like a snared animal beneath the tangled arms of the old tree. The flood had pinned him there, and in the madness of rising waters, something else found him—a nest of water moccasins.

The venom took its time.
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They say Elijah was bitten seven times, and by the time rescuers pulled him out, he was whispering in a language no one recognized. Eyes milk-white. Skin cold, but still alive.

He came back changed.

He wouldn’t speak during the day, but at night, he’d walk barefoot through town with a lantern, muttering and twitching. Said the river had shown him something “underneath.” That it was alive. Watching. Waiting. He nailed shut the windows of his house and painted symbols on the doors in river mud. Then, one night, he vanished.

The townspeople thought he’d finally walked into the river to die. They held a service. Said prayers. Moved on.

But the light came back.

People began seeing it: a single lantern bobbing along the riverbank at night. No footsteps. No sound. Just a flickering orange glow, moving too fast, too smoothly—darting through the trees, across water, even over rock.

They called it The Running Light.

Some say it's Elijah’s spirit, still cursed and mad from the snake venom, dragging his shattered soul across the land he tried to tame. Others say it’s not him at all anymore—that the venom, the flood, and the river itself changed him, made him into something else. Something not dead, but not human.

The light is always seen just ahead of you. If you try to follow it, you’ll never catch it—but you’ll hear breathing. Splashing. Whispering. Your lantern might go out. Your compass might spin. And if you chase it long enough, you’ll find yourself right back at the root wad where Elijah went mad. Only now, it’s dry… and something is waiting inside.

Some believe The Running Light doesn’t lead you astray by accident—it calls to you. Especially if your blood’s running hot, if your heart’s thumping. That’s when it draws near, flickering just out of reach, leading you deeper into the woods, or worse… to the water’s edge.

And if you get too close,
they say you’ll see him at last--
his skin still rotting, eyes white and blood shot, and dozens of black snakes slithering in and out of his mouth, carrying pieces of your name between their fangs.

So if you’re camping near Table Rock and you see a lantern moving too fast down by the trees--
Don’t follow.
Don’t look back.
And whatever you do…

Don’t listen when it says your name.

Some lights guide you home.
Others drag you back to where the madness began.