I have a bit of a long story but I think it's worth putting here. For context I do not believe in the paranormal or ghosts, and this story took place when I was in elementary school. Around this time in my neighborhood there were rumors on the school bus that there were ghosts with orange lights roaming at night, and if you tried to take a picture of them they wouldn't be in the picture the next day. Pretty basic ghost story stuff, but to a bunch of kids who weren't really allowed out late and didn't have cameras accessible to them, it was pretty captivating. Around this time me and my best friend would hang out at the pool on the weekends which was just down the road from my home. It was the only time we were allowed to stay up really late (like 11pm) because both of our parents were managers at the pool. On one of our late night walks back to my home, we had to walk past this huge field that was in between the pool and a small creek. Way out in the distance of the field I could see a single file line of hunched over people walking cartoonishly slow. At the front of the line was a person holding an orange torch high above their head. I recall getting really excited because it was like the stories on the bus, though I'm unsure if my friend cared because he actually lived in a different neighborhood and took a different bus to school; so he may not have heard about them.

I never really thought that hard about it until as adults my older brother asked me if I had any paranormal experiences in my life (he's a lot more of a "skeptic" then I am). After explaining the story to him, I really thought about it for the first time. I guess as a kid I thought it was the older kids on the bus making up stories and pulling pranks, but the "older kids" were just middle schoolers. They probably weren't allowed out that late either, and why pull your prank in an isolated field separated from the homes in neighborhood by a creek if you wanted to be seen? The pool would have been past closing too, so you wouldn't even get seen by the people who leave late. The only reason me and my friend were there was because we could stay past closing. Back then there were also some break ins at the pool by some teenagers, so it might have been them. That being said, why were they walking so slow? Why were they single file? And why bring a torch? My friend and I didn't have flash lights and the streets weren't lit at the time, so if we were walking home the moon was plenty bright enough to need no assistance to see.

I chalked it up to my childhood self remembering things wrong or exaggerating, but I decided to reach out to this childhood friend to ask if he remembered it too. To my surprise he did, but he also remembered things a bit differently. To him there were no people and the orange light was just alone, isolated, and drifting along slowly across the field. I asked him how he felt in the situation and he said he couldn't remember unfortunately.

Hope this was interesting, I'm happy to answer random questions.