Haint Fiction · Stovall
The Porch Light Stayed On.
A porch light, a missing soldier, and the silence one veteran carried home.
About the story
Years after returning from Vietnam, Norris Boone drifts into Stovall, where the porch light across the road burns every night. Townspeople say Mrs. Samson keeps it lit for a son who never came home. When Norris finally crosses the road, the name on an old Army envelope forces him to confront a mission—and a choice—he has spent years trying to forget.
Where history meets fiction
During the Vietnam War, American military teams conducted covert reconnaissance missions across the border into Laos. Families of missing servicemen could be left with incomplete answers about where and how their loved ones disappeared.
Norris Boone, Mrs. Samson, Kyle Harrison, their encounter in Stovall, and the mission described in the story are fictional. The historical setting provides the ground beneath their imagined lives.