[Kalimac]

Definitely one of the best scenes in the trilogy. And Lush, don't be embarrassed, I had a nasty dream or two about the Dead Marshes as well when I first read about them (granted I was 10 years old and reading with a flashlight at two in the morning, so I was in a mood to be creeped out, but still).

The lights were probably the will o'the wisp, as Birdland said, at least that's what it sounded like while reading it. Gollum calls the lights "candles of corpses" but that could just be an expression showing how much fear the place is held in. And maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't Tolkien mention somewhere that the faces in the water aren't actually there for real? Something about the corpses simply being shadows, that the real bodies disappeared long ago.

And Gollum was probably trying to find some food down there, though to be fair all the book says is that "Sam thought he guessed" why Gollum was looking, which implies that Sam might be wrong about it. On the other hand, it's hard to picture Gollum spending all that time trying to get down there out of reverent curiosity; his two main obsessions seem to be the Precious and food (fisssh), and everything he does is aimed at securing one or the other.