Haunted by Creatures Yet to Go

Blue ghosts, skullcap, and other Appalachian insomnia remedies for our brightly-lit, dying world.

Blue ghost fireflies glowing at dusk. Credit: NPS Photo.

A quote attributed to the French Enlightenment-era philosopher Voltaire goes, “History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.” In other words, civilizations rise and fall based on the character and values of its people. Rough skinned, clogged-workers with a strong work ethic rise up, while the softened bourgeois, weakened by their comforts, are the ones reponsible for collapse. A memory of the quote strikes me like a bolt of lightning, interrupting my online search for silk eye masks I’m considering, “to help me sleep better.” It’s harder to sleep these days; more and more people seem to leave the lights on at night.

I’ve always had trouble sleeping with the presence of a light. Streetlights, candles and the moon stir my mind to the surface. One exception is the glow of Appalachia’s fireflies—specifically, the glow of the blue ghost firefly (Phausis reticulata). Blue ghosts are different from other fireflies. Rather than the syncopated blinking typical of other fireflies, blue ghosts simultaneously sync up with each other in the darkness, and suddenly illuminate by the hundreds or thousands, casting a vast, phantasmic light on the forest floor. It is as if this light breathes. In a way, they are the forest, breathing. They fade into darkness, and repeat this for a few hours at night, sparkling like stars in their quest to connect, reproduce, and bring more life to life.  

Blue ghosts appear for just a week or two on the cusp of spring and summer. They are especially active in North Carolina’s last old growth forest, where immense tulip poplars cast a welcoming canopy of shelter for the creatures below, like foxes and silverbells, cucumber trees, juneberries and rattlesnake plantain. Last summer, in this forest, we happened upon a soggy riverbank where we found a healthy stand of blue skullcap (Skutellaria lateriflora).

S. lateriflora.

When prepared as a medicine, skullcap does as its name implies; it puts a ‘lid’ or a ‘cap’ on the skull, or thoughts that run through our heads. Herbalists of Southern Appalachia often include skullcap in insomnia remedies, calling upon the plant to calm racing or looping thoughts that crop up at night. I wonder if the plant got its name from its function or its form, as its drooping calyx resembles a little hood.

I keep an amber bottle of this medicine from the forest by my bed for those late nights when the streetlights sliver through curtains and blinds. You can’t see it, but inside the bottle is also the glow of those blue ghosts, who sing to me, “we are the forest and the forest is healthy; everything is alright.”

The medicine does not always work. In the old growth forest, more tourists drive their cars with their noxious fumes to visit the blue ghosts, and more folks over-harvest medicinal plants. More of us doing more stupid things seem to mean less of them—that is, everybody, and everything else, with the exception of poison ivy and other temperamental spirits of the forest. See, poison ivy, or “Sister Ivy” as she’s more reverently named by friends in Appalachia, only shows up where forests have been disturbed by human activity. Where the skullcap and blue ghosts disappear, Sister Ivy grows. Be it the extinction or the boiling, itchy blisters of the vine’s oils left in its midst, my silk slippers and silk mask are not much of a help to me now. 

I understand the world was never certain or stable, but I really enjoyed the illusion while it lasted. Deep down I knew it wasn’t true, but a part of me believed in solid ground. Apocalypse etymologically comes from the Greek word to uncover, reveal, pull back, or disclose. In the coming years we’ll exume more stacks of Native children’s bones this nation of “justice” and “democracy” built itself upon.

Detail from In the Pasture by Julien Dupré, 1883.

The relative peace offered by sugar, salt, dinging blue-screened dopamine hits and other distractions can’t last much longer. It’s already fading. In the recent past, it was easier to hold fast to things—to friendships, relationships, jobs and dreams. Stable housing, honest news and healthcare seemed like a part of the kit we inherited and social security card-carrying Americans. I see very clearly now this is not the case. 

In the United States, food prices have gone up 23.5% since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.¹ Median rent has risen 21% since 2001, yet the median income for renters has increased just 2%.² Meanwhile, 41% of Americans have some kind of healthcare debt, with over half of Americans struggling to pay for healthcare.³ Low-income students cannot afford to attend 95% of universities.⁴ In other words, our food, our homes, our health, and our possibility of seeking out a formal education are all precarious. While all of this precarity has been a reality for many for a long while—namely, the “invisible majority” of people of color— it seems the shoddy ethical and economic infrastructure upon which this nation is built is cracking, felt by nearly everyone, everywhere.

It is no wonder we toss and turn in bed at night. They tell us everything is fine as long as the electricity is on, yet we’re drowning in the wrong kind of light.

I tried to put on Voltaire’s wooden clogs and live in the forest. I did it for a while. My skin is just too soft. Mold and sawdust and bitter cold winter mornings did me in. I am back living in cities now, where I am more comfortable. A small potion by my bedside reminds me of the forest, and the memory of a perfect, living light. It will run out eventually, and then I will go back. I hope I can replenish this medicine, if be the will of the skullcap and Sister Ivy. Until then, I hold to a vision of a future where blue ghosts mate at dusk and the forest will remain, breathing. 

1. https://cepr.net/since-the-pandemic-food-prices-have-risen-23-5-percent-people-the-nyt-interviews-have-seen-much-sharper-increases/

2. https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1225957874/housing-unaffordable-for-record-half-all-u-s-renters-study-finds

3. https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/americans-challenges-with-health-care-costs/

4. https://www.nasfaa.org/news-item/11623/Report_Low-Income_Students_Cannot_Afford_95_Percent_of_Colleges