Holiday mystery solved: How orbs of light hover above Decatur neighborhood
Editor’s note: “Dispatches” are occasional snapshots of people, places, scenes or moments from around Georgia that our reporters come across. They aim to be immersive and aren’t always tied to a news event.
High in the forest canopy, suspended above the road, colorful spheres illuminate the December night: blue, green, red, purple, golden-white. On winter nights they give the neighborhood a dreamy quality, like something from a storybook, as if the towering hardwoods held their own collection of stars and planets.
For years, as I drove by or through Parkwood on the western edge of Decatur, I wondered about these lights. My kids did, too. We couldn’t figure out how the lights got so high in the trees, perhaps 75 feet up, far above the range of a typical ladder. After some thought, I settled on a theory. The residents of Parkwood must have hired a tree service. I shared this explanation with the kids, and we got back to enjoying the lights.
Well, kids, I was wrong. The real story is much more interesting. It involves good neighbors, parachute cord, and a very large slingshot.
On Monday, a slow news day at the beginning of Christmas week, I finally got around to investigating the Parkwood lights. I called a friend who lives in the neighborhood, and he graciously referred me to Mary Rigger, who started the trend. She told me how it happened.
Back in 2014, there was tension in Parkwood over the question of whether to be annexed by the city of Decatur. Some residents wanted to join; others didn’t. Rigger thought of an activity that she hoped would bring unity back to Parkwood: Putting up giant balls of light.
She had seen lights like this at a friend’s place in Inman Park. An internet search led her to a neighborhood in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the spheres have proliferated. Rigger learned to make the spheres herself, using strings of lights and rolls of chicken wire. And she and her husband, Don, hosted annual parties to show their neighbors how it worked.
Now they could show me, too. It was a balmy afternoon, and the Riggers had one last orb to place in the canopy. Possibly their 24th.
“So which limb you want, baby?” Don said to Mary as we stood in their backyard, looking up at a tall white oak. He was holding a long metal pole attached to a gigantic slingshot.
This slingshot was the key to everything. In the early years, they used a lacrosse ball to propel the light-hanging lines up toward the limbs. It could only go so high. Then Mary went to a chainsaw store on Lawrenceville Highway and saw the powerful slingshot. It opened up new possibilities.
“You can do it, honey,” she said to Don.
He had a weight attached to an orange throw line. Fitting it into the slingshot, he pulled it back and fired. The weight and the line shot upward, curling over a limb high in the oak tree. A wonderful shot, thanks to years of practice.
“He’s so good,” Mary said.
She wore a blue apron that she called her Ball-Hanging Apron. It contained wire cutters, zip-ties and a torch lighter for melting the end of a piece of parachute cord so it wouldn’t unravel.
They had learned a lot through trial and error. Today she dropped the weight and the throw line by accident, but Don quickly fired up another one. Once they had the throw line up, they could attach a parachute cord, pull the parachute cord over the limb, and then use that as the permanent line to hoist up the ball of light, freeing up the throw line for the next orb.
Each light ball had its own extension cord. The balls could be roughly 18 inches to more than three feet in diameter. They kept a lot of extension cords. December’s electric bill would be a little higher than the yearly average.
Don pulled the parachute cord, hoisting the light ball upward. He tied the cord to a wooden railing, securing the sphere high in the tree.
“It’s a moment of wonder when you see ‘em at night,” Mary said. “And I love that.”
The wonder had spread to dozens of houses around Parkwood. One neighbor recently counted more than 250 light spheres. Outsiders had noticed. Mary said a group of ladies came through the neighborhood, some of them possibly intoxicated. They gazed up at the lights, saying things like, “How do they get ‘em up there?”
People left notes in the mailbox, too. Someone named Julie wrote in green marker and capital letters, saying she took the long way home to see the lights. “WITHOUT HYPERBOLE--Y’ALL KEPT MY SPIRIT ALIVE THIS HOLIDAY SEASON,” the note said. “I CANNOT EXPRESS HOW TRULY GRATEFUL I AM FOR THAT. IN A WORLD OF DRAGONS, Y’ALL ARE ABSOLUTE STARS.”
It was late Monday afternoon, and the Riggers had finished their work. I thanked them and took a walk through the neighborhood. The day was slipping away, the sky pale orange in the southwest. I saw a hanging orb in the shape of a snowman, holding a Falcons flag. I met Tom Ruiz, who had his own slingshot and 11 light spheres at his house. A family was out for a walk, including a baby and a dog. In a front yard, a boy and a man threw a football.
The balls of light were all around: high in trees, low in trees, on little stands, down in the grass. A steady line of cars cut through the neighborhood. Down in Parkwood Park, a stream gurgled. Up in the sky, smoky clouds floated near a slender crescent moon.
My favorite place to see the lights is the four-way stop on East Lake, on a hillside above the neighborhood. It was almost dark when I got there. The lights of Parkwood seemed to float near the treetops, calm and bright, a peaceful world between the earth and the sky.
Down on West Parkwood, a spectacular cluster of lights crossed over the road. It reminded me of The Starry Night, Vincent van Gogh’s masterpiece. Neighbors Bryan Bell and Tom De Winne had worked together to put up those lights. Bell stood outside and talked to me about the project. He remembered seeing someone drive by very slowly, with a child standing up through the sunroof, head thrown back, looking up at the lights.
It was probably a child who wrote another note for the Riggers. The note had a picture of a candy cane, a Christmas tree, a snowflake and a snowman. The letters were written in green and red, apparently with a crayon.
“thank you for lighting up are lives,” it said. “P.S. hope the Grinch doesn’t come to your house tonight”
About the Author
Thomas Lake is a senior reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated and The Guardian. He's a co-founder of The Lake Family Band. Please email thomas.lake@ajc.com if you'd like to share a story idea.
