Hornet Light: Joplin/Hornet, Missouri The Hornet Ghost Light, also known as The Joplin Spooklight, the Tri-State Spooklight, the Neosho Spook Light, and the Devil's Jack-O-Lantern, is located in extreme southwest Missouri on the Oklahoma border. The closest towns are Joplin, MO and Quapaw, OK. Hornet is an abandoned village close to the location of the sightings. The light has been seen many times since the Civil War era along a rough gravel road outside of Joplin. (http://www.ghosts.org/ghostlights/hornet.html)
THE HORNET GHOST LIGHT By Paul A. Roales Updated April 1, 1998 STATE OF MISSOURI DIVISION OF RESOURCES AND DEVELOPMENT Jefferson City, Missouri News Release by Leslie Kennon
The above picture is of the Spook Light Museum and its owner "Spooky" Middleton is from OK Magazine for 10/28/79.
The Ozarks, thousands of sprawling acres of scenic beauty and packed full of Indian and colorful local legend, is reviving one of its oldest phenomena -the "ghost lights". For more than 50 years, especially since the coming of the auto age, tourists from all over the country have come to see them; national magazines have given space to the story; photographers have tried in vain to take pictures. And today the "ghost lights" are becoming a top tourist attraction in the area. No one can explain their origin. No one can give an accurate account of whence they came nor can any two people describe the lights in the same words. To each it is something different, a symbolism of something unknown, sometimes feared, always interesting. It is, to the tourists' way of thinking something unique which they cannot find anywhere else and which is well worth their time to visit. The "ghost lights," as they are called by local citizens, appear actually as one bright light, often dimming and then bouncing back over the rolling mountains as a great blaze of light. It is as though some giant ball player were taking his gigantic ball of light and tossing it in the air, sometimes catching it on the mountain which serves as his mitt, or sometimes missing it when it disappears. During World War 11 the U.S. Corps of Engineers spent weeks in the area with the latest scientific equipment. They tested caves, mineral deposits, highway routes, every possible logical explanation as to why the lights existed. They came away baffled. Of late, nationally known scientists have visited the area and as yet, they have not come up with the answer. Area residents come away with stories which would go well on Hallowe'en. As a Joplin police officer said, after relating a weird experience on the oft-traveled ghost light road, "It was the last time I've been there and It's the last time I'm going there". Legend has it that an old time miner carrying his lantern across the fields disappeared and that it is his lantern which still causes the light to shine. In a more logical sense, it is a definite tourist attraction of the area, a little extra in a tourist's trip to the Ozarks, the Shepherd of the Hills country or on to Central Missouri to the Lake of the Ozarks or other points. (End News Release)
The Offical Story (above) of the Hornet Ghost Light (above) is wrong on many counts.
First, photos of the lights are available...for example the postcard shown above and my photo below.
Second, the explanation for the lights is very simple. I arrived at the Spook Light Museum near Joplin, MO at 4:30 PM on April 4, 1980. It was closed and padlocked. I had driven from my home in Tulsa, OK to see for myself the Hornet Ghost Light famous in Fortean literature since it first appeared around 1886.
The best spot to view the light is 1/4 mile out on a dirt road due west from the Spook Light Museum. To get there coming from the West take the first Missouri exit off Interstate 44 then double back west along the south outer road to State Line Road (gravel) and take State Line Road 3.8 miles south to the Spook Light Museum.
January 2001 Update The page above has brought lots of emails since I posted it, every one disagreeing with me. One person even said that the topographic map was wrong and there was a hill between my observation point and Highway 66 which would prevent me from seeing the highway (perhaps the hill grew since I was there in 1980). But I will stick to my story. To make a couple points:
1) Yes the spook light was seen before there were cars, but very infrequently. Those sightings could easily be explained by cabin lights or campfires in the vicinity of the future towns of Commerce or Quapaw. And
2) In every photograph I have seen of the spook light it is in the same place (just left of center of the base of the "V' of trees down the road). Look at my color photo above, the postcard above, the photo (Plate 21) in the book "Earth Lights Revelation", etc. In every photo the light is in the same place...exactly where it can be explained by the cars on Highway 66 as I mention above.
If my explanation is wrong, why is the spook light in the same place in all the photos? This page accessed 1564 times since Sept. 26, 1999. I hope you have enjoyed my efforts. Feel free to email me with suggestions for improvements. RETURN TO MY HOMEPAGE HERE. You will find my email link there. You can also access my Rocket Mail, Erupting Volcanoes or Utah & Colorado Vacation Trip pages from there. (http://www.ionet.net/~paroales/Ghost.htm)
Spooklight by Suzanne J. Wilson illustrated by David Besenger
A nocturnal light with a 100-year history glows along the Missouri Oklahoma border. A gusty wind stirs tree branches along the country road where we wait this mild November night. We stand beside our cars, looking westward where the road takes a rising and falling course over the hills. "There! Is that it?" We can't believe our good fortune; not everyone who comes here sees this mysterious glow. It's above the place where the road disappears over the brow of a hill, maddeningly obscured by near and far trees. We are genuine adults in terms of years-myself, my husband Jim Mueller, who is a photographer, and Roger "Buck" Buchanan, a high school art teacher and accomplished amateur astronomer-and we're saying, "Wow! Oh, yeah! Whoaaaa!"
We're bobbing and weaving, seeking vantage points, looking through binoculars and a six-inch reflector telescope. What we watch for the next hour is a conglomeration of light that waxes and wanes, disappears and reappears. Full of surprises, it shimmers, or looks like a necklace of lights or shrinks to mere twinkles. Is its shape due to leaves in the way? And it's far away, but how far? The experience renders us somewhat inarticulate. Buck, looking through the telescope, says, "It's really, oh, it just fills, it's like a bright star that, it's not clear, oh, come here, there's four. Hello! Good grief!" This is exciting. This is just plain fun. We have seen the Hornet Spooklight. Or have we?
Our experience is only one way this light phenomenon has been seen. The Spooklight has a nomadic history that may go back over 100 years in an area on either side of the Missouri-Oklahoma line, about three miles west of Hornet, a small community south of Joplin. The nocturnal light glows in the distance or moves up the road toward you as fast as a person could walk. At closer ranges, people have seen it as round, spherical or diamond-shaped, the size of a lantern light or large as a washtub. You can see trees and bushes through it, says one observer. It may float past you, dance around or split and shoot off in different directions. This itinerant mystery is in the road, in a field, in the woods, at the window of a house. It's golden or red, or it appears as multiple lights in various combinations of yellow, orange, red, green and blue.
To wrestle with the Spooklight mystery, you need to know the lay of this land on the northern edge of the Ozarks. From Hornet, West Hymer Road runs west and ends at State Line Road. There, the Spooklight area of horse and buggy days is just to the south on the Missouri side, toward Warren Branch. If you jog north on State Line about .2 mile, you can turn west again where Oklahoma's E 40 Road begins. Or, if you jog south about .8 mile, you can go west on E 50 Road. Both of these east-west roads have been prime viewing spots. The hills in the region step down gradually from Hornet westward to Spring River in Oklahoma. (http://www.conservation.state.mo.us/conmag/1997/01/2.html)
Copyright (C) 2001 Dr. Sten Odenwald