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.
1998: . New Information: I was recently contacted by a web page visitor named Steve Hale who writes: I have visited the spook light many times in my life and most recently in July of this year (1998), when I saw the light plainly and for an extended period of time." Many people consider the spook light to actually be in Oklahoma, but Steve raised an interesting point. " The spook light is really in Oklahoma," he writes, "but can only be seen from the east. Why this is, no one knows. Another mystery to ponder. I should also point out that the museum is no longer there, so knowing where to turn onto Spooklight Road can be tricky, unless you know what one it is. "Also, before going out there last summer, I was told about patrols in the area by the Ottawa County Sheriff's Office and how we would not be able to park. However, we spent an hour on the road and did not see any law enforcement personnel." Steve also provided some updated directions to the site, which appear at the end of the text. New Information: I was also contacted by a website visitor named Jason Patterson of Oklahoma, who has visited the location of the spooklight several times. He had some new information to pass along about visiting the site. Jason writes: "Although only a couple of people mentioned it, we were also given a possible reason for the name Devil's Promenade, which was actually a separate location that the Spooklight proper, as it is further down the road. According to a few local enthusiasts of the area, Devil's Promenade was originally a rickety wooden bridge which connected Spooklight Road to the road back to the highway (If I remember correctly). It was said that anyone who walked back and forth across the bridge five times (or seven or three depending on who you ask) very slowly and asking for the Devil to appear, he would either answer three questions, grant three wishes or of course, kill you. Again this depends on the version you hear. The original bridge was torn down and replaced with a modern concrete one and no other phenomenon has been associated with that area, thus the story behind the name itself has fallen into obscurity." The Devil's Promenade is located in southwest Missouri, near the former village of Hornet and about twelve miles southwest of Joplin. The area can be reached by taking interstate 44 west from Joplin. Just before the Oklahoma border, take the next to last Missouri exit onto Star Route 43, south away from I-44. The Devil's Promenade Road crosses this road after about four miles. There was once an abandoned spook light museum at the site. The badly paved road is the location of the light sightings and parking along this road in the late night hours can almost always result in a good view of the Spook Light. If you drive west on Spooklight Road, it turns south about a mile from the end. It ends at an intersection with the paved road leading to the Devil's Promenade. If you turn right on this road, it leads you to the town of Quapaw, Oklahoma and across the new concrete bridge at Devil's Promenade. Just below the bridge is now a picnic area and park. Just up the hill, and on the left from the bridge is the Quapaw Indian Pow-wow grounds, where legend has it that the spook light was first seen by Indians at an annual gathering. Thanks to Dale Kaczmarek, Steve Hale and Jason Patterson for their information. Copyright 1999 by Troy Taylor (http://www.prairieghosts.com/devprom.html)
1997: Bob Davis: However, on my most recent visit (December, 1997), I did not see any spooklight manifestations and this phenomena still remains a mystery for me. But for all you curiosity seekers out there, who live close to this are of the country, I will provide you with very good directions to the site so you can witness this strange occurrence first hand.west of Joplin, Missouri; on Interstate I-44, (exit 4 - Seneca exit). Take highway 43 south approximately 6 miles and you'll come to 43 and BB. Make a right, go about 1.2 miles to the second gravel road (E-50) road and make a left. Anywhere along this road it is safe and okay to park. The first gravel road you will come to, on the left, is also known for Spooklight appearances, but whichever road you choose, I hope you observe something. HAPPY SPOOKLIGHT HUNTING! I-44 E EXIT 4 Joplin Hwy 71@ E-50 Rd. 1/2 mile X Stop Iris Rd Sign Dead End South. (http://www.beyondboundaries.org/bdavis/bdSPOOKLGHT.htm)
The light. Until about 5 years ago (1994 -ed.) the light was visible EVERY night withoutfail. In the past 5 years it has become somewhat erratic, sometimes not visible for a night or two, sometimes as much as a week at a time. Copyright JoAnne Scarpellini 1999 Claros10@aol.com (http://www.hailey.clara.net/1_articl/joplinsc.htm)
1986: In 1986 a new theory was developed. Using the original refraction theory Partain, of Tulsa, said the sitings are inversely proportional to the sunspot cycle. When the cycle is low radiation is allowed to enter the atmosphere and energize gases to form balls of lightning. Other theories include swamp gas, subatomic particles, an unknown but luminous property of the tripoli mined in the area, gas or electromagnetic energy from underground lead and zinc deposits, and more recently, tectonic strain theory. (Leon Martin, of Global Book Mart, told me that a rift was 300 miles East of the area and could not possibly be the cause of the light.) None of the theories would have been consistent enough to last in one place for centuries. All the reasoning thus far would only prove that there should be several lights and not just one. My friend thinks it's a portal into another dimension. After studying the string theory, she might be closer to the truth than anyone so far. The string theory suggests that we would be able to interact with more senses within a black hole. Move over Albert, I think we're on to something. The End (http://www.rmaonline.net/cat/newsletter/joplin2.html)
1981: Missouri Spooklight by Bob Davis While some young lovers, might like to use the "missouri Spooklight", as an excuse to park, on a secluded country road near Neosho, Missouri, there are others who are seeking answers to this strange orb of light that appears on this lonely county road, southwest of Joplin, Missouri. The Spooklight has been observed on E-50 county road (well marked, and also known as spooklight road) and the road to the south, as well, for over eighty years and has generated more questions than answers.long forgotten TV news magazine called "Real People" (circa 1981) did a report on the spooklight, which is sometimes also called the Hornet light. The camera crew video taped this strange manifestation as it danced and darted in front of their cameras. While I was in Joplin, I stopped at the Tropical lounge and hotel and met a Jack McGurik, (whose Mom owns the business), and the were all very receptive to my inquiries about the spooklight. Both Jack and his mom, Sandy, have seen this strange phenomenon. "Sure! I've seen it three or four times in the past twenty years", Jack told me, and then began by telling me this strange story of how one night he was parked out on spooklight road. He said there were several cars and a camper parked close by. The light appeared and started moving towards the parked vehicles and it was about the size of a basketball. It hit the top of the camper, then split into three or four balls of light, bounced around on the ground for a short time, then went out. Jack has seen it pulsate in its brightness from a dim candle glow orange to the brightness of a bluish white star, as it seems to move with a timid awareness in a seemingly predictable path along the road. Just after dark until the wee hours are good viewing times and inclement weather doesn't seem to be a factor in its appearance. Some people have said that between 10 pm and midnight are the best viewing times but most of the time, after dark, you will find cars parked along spooklight road, with their lights out, waiting for the big event to happen.years ago, I found two articles at the Neosho library on the spooklight. One article written by Martha Churchwell (staff writer for a local newspaper) called it the "illusive hornet light" and she said in the article that the National Geographic Society, the Bureau of Standards, and the Army Corps of Engineers plus many other groups have been out there to investigate this phenomenon. A psychic was shown a photograph taken of the spooklight and she felt that it was some type of doorway to another dimension. It has also been explained as swamp gas, reflections of car lights from a far off in the distance interstate, but the truth still remains a mystery.sixteen years ago, there was a museum that was located close to the spooklight road intersection that sold souvenirs and spook dust, but has long since closed. Midge Surbrugg, A Globe staff writer, told in a story about the spooklight, that the residents of the area were split into two categories: the believers and the disbelievers. The disbelievers have also reported seeing the spooklight on many occasions.a past visit, several years ago, I interviewed an elderly gentleman, just up the road from E-50 (spooklight road), and he admitted seeing this strange manifestation on numerous occasions. (http://www.beyondboundaries.org/bdavis/bdSPOOKLGHT.htm)
1980: During the 1980s, Ralph and Josie Bilke lived on the north side of E 50, one-eighth mile back from the road. Twice, after having bulldozer work done in back of the house, Ralph saw "a big green glow out over the trees." Another night, after they turned out the lights, Josie says, "We thought someone had pulled up in our drive. It was the Spooklight, and it just lit up our bedroom. It was right on our porch, and then it went out." One morning an hour before daylight, as Ralph drank a cup of coffee, he saw at the front window "two big red-it looked like eyes - within ten feet of the house." The lights to the north and south of the Bilkes' house contradict the idea that you must stare westward down a road to view the Spooklight. And as a child, when Ralph visited his grandfather just north of E 40, they'd sit on the front porch and watch the Spooklight in the pasture across the road. They were looking east. All the accounts I've heard leave me longing to see the Spooklight moving toward me, dancing in the woods or zipping over my head. And I wonder: are the far-away Spooklights and the close-up personal ones completely different phenomena? What did I see that November night? Something explainable, such as car headlights miles away, or a hesitant Spooklight that kept its distance? Not that I want the Hornet Spooklight explained. It's better to have that capricious glow remain everyone's mystery, promising delight, amusement and a few chills to generations to come. Suzanne Wilson lives near Joplin and has a long acquaintance with the Hornet Spooklight. (http://www.conservation.state.mo.us/conmag/1997/01/2.html)
1980: 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. (http://www.ionet.net/~paroales/Ghost.htm)
1979: Sterling Barnett had a surprise encounter with the light around 1979, when he was a teenager living on the Missouri side of State Line Road. "My dad was always on me to get my chores done before it got dark, and I would put it off," says Sterling. In the barn one evening, he suddenly had light to work by and assumed his father had arrived with a flashlight. "But I turned around, and there it was, big as life, right there in the door. It gave me quite a start. I was probably about 15 feet from it. It illuminated enough that I could see pretty good. It stayed there for 15 or 20 seconds, and then it went out." He thought, "Holy smoke!" The Barnett farm is in an area where people saw the Spooklight in horse and buggy days, before some of the present roads were cut through. . Suzanne Wilson lives near Joplin and has a long acquaintance with the Hornet Spooklight. (http://www.conservation.state.mo.us/conmag/1997/01/2.html)
1970s: During World War II, the Army Corps of Engineers even had people down here looking." John W. Northrip, ( he died of cancer in 1999 : http://materialsscience.smsu.edu/fct/memthrip.htm) a professor of physics and astronomy at Southwest Missouri State University (www.smsu.edu) , doesn't believe it -- not at all. Over three years in the early 1970s, Northrip and some of his students employed lasers, walkie-talkies and other gadgets to unravel the mystery. It was not long after the Apollo moon landing, Northrip recalls, and everyone's head seemed to be tilted toward the heavens in those days, looking for strange stuff. Where 50 people might show up on a given night to see Spooklight now, 400 would show up then. Northrip was among them. He says his investigators proved that rising heat from surrounding hills was carrying light from a nearby highway and giving it its Spooklight appearance, making it dance and hover. He simply discounts stories that Spooklight existed 100 years ago, "I come from the Ozarks," Northrip says, "so I'm used to the idea that where there is a phenomenon like this, that stories have a tendency to grow like this." Maybe it's the Ozark romantic in him, but Northrip doesn't denounce all of the Spooklight legend. "For those who have had it come up and had it sit right on the fender of their car," he says, chuckling, "I don't know. There is no scientific explanation for that kind of thing."" (http://www.senecamo.com/the_spook_light.htm)
1967: 1968 Dell paperback book, Mysterious Fires and Lights, (MFAL), by Vincent H. Gaddis: . ( Bob Stroebel 'Bike Bob" article: http://users1.ee.net/pmason/spook_light.html) [QD516.G2 at LOC]
1950: In "Tri-State Spooklight," a booklet published in the mid-1950s, Juanita Kay reported, "Many settlers camped here on our property overnight when they used to travel by wagon. After investigating the place where they had seen campfires the night before, my mother and father became aware of the light because they found no ashes where the fiery lights had appeared. This was back in the 1800s.". Her sister Rita Livingston, rural Riverton, Kan., relates another adventure around 1950. After watching without success, she and her husband Robert discovered their car had a flat tire. "My husband took the tire off," she says, "and here comes the Spooklight, right up the road. It was about the height of the top of the car, coming like a big orange ball of fire. It was scary, spinning like a ball, revolving. The light came on up, went over the top of the car and on down the road behind us." Until it closed in 1962, the general store in Hornet was a jumping-off place for Spooklighters. Proprietors Olivia Buzzard and her late husband O. W. "Bud" Buzzard gave out directions and sold the "Tri-State Spooklight" booklet. "We sent books everywhere, California, Chicago," Olivia recalls. "I've been on the bus down in Florida, and people have said to me, 'Oh, you live at the Hornet Spooklight' when they found out where I live." During World War II, she and her husband took Camp Crowder soldiers to see the Spooklight. This book not available at Library of Congress.
In the 1950s, word went around that the light had moved south to E 50 road, currently considered "Spooklight Road," even though sightings continue on E 40. For years, successive proprietors Arthur "Spooky" Meadows and Garland "Spooky" Middleton ran a small Spooklight museum/pinball parlor on the Missouri side of State Line Road with soft drinks, a view down E 50 and a telescope that cost a quarter to use. On weekends, parked cars lined the road. L. J. Perkins of Carl Junction can laugh now about her Spooklight outing with out-of-town visitors: "It was a great experience, one I never believed would happen. We saw it off in the distance, and we thought, well, that's it. And then this light just kept getting closer and kind of danced in front of us. That was when I got kind of paranoid. We wanted to get away from it. It kept bouncing along beside us and on us and over us, circled around us. My husband took a dirt road, and the car was never quite the same; we damaged the oil pan getting away." Aside from such human mishaps, I've heard no stories of the light harming anyone. Most local residents seem to coexist easily with the phenomenon. "I grew up with it and saw it a thousand times," says Charles Dawes, whose family lived on E 40 Road. "I never paid much attention to it." Yet many visitors have watched for it in vain, and a couple living near the Spooklight area on State Line for 37 years have never seen it. . Suzanne Wilson lives near Joplin and has a long acquaintance with the Hornet Spooklight. (http://www.conservation.state.mo.us/conmag/1997/01/2.html)
In the 1950's, amateur sleuth and retired Army captain Bob Loftin tackled the mystery. He attributed it to the refraction of car lights as the light passed through layers of air of differing density or temperature. (Not refraction again.) The light appeared for decades before the invention of the automobile. (http://www.rmaonline.net/cat/newsletter/joplin2.html)
1946: In 1946 the Army Corps of Engineers supposedly studied the Hornet Light and could not find a cause for it. They called it a "mysterious light of unknown origin." (http://www.ghosts.org/ghostlights/hornet.html) 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. (End News Release) (http://www.ionet.net/~paroales/Ghost.htm) In 1946, the US Army Corps of Engineers from Crap Crowder(sic! They meant Camp Crowder) surveyed the area and tested caves, mineral deposits, highway routes, and every possible explanation. (They left baffled.) (http://www.rmaonline.net/cat/newsletter/joplin2.html)
1945: Dr. George W. Ward, formerly with the Bureau of Standards, Washington, DC, and later associated with the Midwest Research Institute, made an investigation in 1945. He wrote that he observed a glow over the hills, followed by the appearance of a greenish-yellow sphere of light about five feet in diameter. This sphere advanced toward the doctor and his companions. One of the men, a publicity director for the institute, said he had seen all he cared to see. As the light approached and enveloped the witnesses, he quickly locked himself in their automobile. (http://users1.ee.net/pmason/spook_light.html)
1944: Karen Allen Morgan, Joplin, says her older sister Rita took her and their brother to that same road around 1944. Their outings required a cooler of pop and some popcorn, as there was usually a wait. Karen sat on the car fender and saw the light top a hill to the west, travel down through a valley and then uphill toward her. "I can remember probably three occasions when it actually came right by us," she says. "I would be terrified at that point and would dive into the window of the car. It was a goldish-red glow when it was close, and translucent." . Suzanne Wilson lives near Joplin and has a long acquaintance with the Hornet Spooklight. (http://www.conservation.state.mo.us/conmag/1997/01/2.html)
1942: In 1942, a group of students from the University of Michigan reportedly spent two weeks camping in the area and studying the light. They even shot at it with high powered rifles as part of their experiment. (They left baffled) (http://www.rmaonline.net/cat/newsletter/joplin2.html)
1939: My father-in-law, Byron Mueller, laughs about his partial view of the light on E 40 Road, the place to see it around 1939. A friend had persuaded Byron to go on a double date and arranged a blind date for him. The night turned out to be too cool for anyone to ride in the roadster's rumble seat, and Byron's date turned out to be rather plump. With four people squashed into the seat inside the car, Byron could barely see down the road, but he glimpsed the approach of a washtub-sized light (http://www.conservation.state.mo.us/conmag/1997/01/2.html)
1910: Ralph Bilke says his grandfather, Lloyd "Dutch" Bilke, told him of encountering the Spooklight around 1910. It was so bright, his grandfather told him, "I could count the buttons on your granny's dress." Oral tradition says the light was seen as early as the mid-1880s.. Suzanne Wilson lives near Joplin and has a long acquaintance with the Hornet Spooklight. (http://www.conservation.state.mo.us/conmag/1997/01/2.html)
ca 1866: Four earthquakes took place here in the early 1800's that had a devastating effect on this part of the state. It is possible that the lights starting appearing around the time of the earthquakes in 1811-12 and didn't get reported until the population in the area grew around the time of the Civil War. Other "experts" claim they have the mystery solved however. They claim the light is caused by automobiles driving on the highway about five miles east of the Promenade. They say the highway is on a direct line with the gravel road but at a slightly lower elevation. When it is pointed out that a high ridge separates the Promenade from the highway the "experts" explain how refraction causes light to bend and creates the eerie effect. Let's take this theory and just think of the basics of the story one more time.... If the light started to be reported in 1866, wouldn't that sort of rule out the idea that it could be caused by automobiles? Sometimes the arguments of the skeptics become so incredible that it is easier to believe in a supernatural answer to the mystery they are attempting to solve than in the ridiculous answers they are proposing! The Hornet Spook Light is one of America's greatest mysteries. No one has an answer as to why this light appears here.... only that it does and it will probably continue to do so for many years to come. For more information on the Hornet Spook Light, contact Ghost Research Society founder Dale Kaczmarek. His website is accessible via the "Haunted Links" section of "Ghosts of the Prairie". Dale has conducted extensive investigations of the area and is probably the foremost authority on the subject. Copyright 1999 by Troy Taylor (http://www.prairieghosts.com/devprom.html)
The light has been recorded since the early 1800's, and was known before that by the Quapaw Indians in the area. It has no religious or ritual significance to the Indians. It is in no way mystical or spiritual. it cannot be invoked or "called up", or brought nearer by any human means. It's been tried. It is simply a totally anomalous light. Copyright JoAnne Scarpellini 1999 Claros10@aol.com (http://www.hailey.clara.net/1_articl/joplinsc.htm)
Copyright (C) 2001
Dr. Sten Odenwald