AlleyOop

Working on a poster style design. Applied text to design. It shows up fine with a stroke, but... I want to apply an outer glow to the text and omit the stroke. Text that is not connected to the artistic design looks great -- the other text near design layers appears as if it's in a fog, like it would if it's behind a 50% white layer. I have triple checked the layering and opacity. Text is out front of every other layer and 100%. Any ideas?? AlleyOop