Pale lights that drift over the marshes after dark. Follow them and they lead you into deep water. Whistle at them and they come for you.
Across the Norfolk Broads and the Cambridgeshire fens, the people who worked the marshes talked about lights. They hung low over the reed beds and the dykes, they moved when nobody was carrying them, and they had a way of drifting just ahead of anyone trying to cross the marsh after dark. Elsewhere in England they are will-o'-the-wisps or jack-o'-lanterns. Here they are the Lantern Men.
The fen folk were clear about the rules. Never follow a light off the path, because the Lantern Men lead travellers into deep water and leave them there. Never whistle on the marsh at night, because whistling draws them in, and once a Lantern Man has a sound to follow it will not stop until it finds you. Anyone caught out in the open was told to throw themselves face down in the mud and hold their breath until the light had passed over.
Old marshmen were still telling the stories well into the twentieth century, long after the fens had been drained and the lights had grown rarer. Some blamed marsh gas. Others noticed that the lights only ever went where people were.
