A new documentary film, “Into the Light: An Exploration of the Spook Light Phenomena,” will be shown Thursday night at the Route 66 Movie Theatre in downtown Webb City, Missouri.
In case you haven’t heard of it, Spook Light is a mysterious light that appears in a rural area near the Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas borders east of Quapaw, Oklahoma.
The screening will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the theater at 24 S. Main St. in Webb City. Filmmaker David Glidden will host a question-and-answer session afterward.
Here’s the trailer for the film:
The film also has a Facebook page here.
Glidden told the Joplin Globe newspaper he became motivated to make the film after a 2015 documentary from University of Central Oklahoma about Spook Light claimed it had found a scientific explanation for the long-persisting phenomenon. The UCO team said the the reflection of distant headlights or taillights of passing cars, mostly likely from Route 66 near Quapaw, caused the phenomenon.
Glidden wasn’t convinced:
“There were sightings back in the 1800s, way before there was a highway there,” Glidden said. “A lot of spook light sightings can be dismissed as headlights, but some can’t.”
Glidden makes a deep dive into the spooklight in a new documentary that is showing this week at the Route 66 Movie Theater in Webb City. “Into the Light: An Exploration of the Spook Light Phenomena” features interviews with locals, lore and on-location filming as he and co-producer Josh Heard attempt to capture footage of the legendary light.
Joplin is not alone as host of floating fluorescence. “Into the Light” also covers similar phenomena in St. Mary’s, Iowa, and near Brown Mountain in western North Carolina. Glidden and Heard dive into the history of those three lights and feature their successes and failures at getting answers.
Glidden said he also was inspired to make a full-length film because he couldn’t find videos that explored Spook Light in depth.
Glidden said the film would be released on DVD, digital download or streaming by late spring or early summer.
I decided to look up the UCO video about Spook Light. It’s about 22 minutes, and it makes a compelling case on how it happens:
Best-selling author William Least Heat-Moon also convincingly explained the phenomenon in his 2009 book, “Roads to Quoz” — including lanterns and campfires causing the light during the pre-automotive age.
And, as the OCU video notes, Popular Mechanics magazine essentially explained how the Spook Light occurred way back in 1965.
Wikipedia has a detailed page about Spook Light, which also has been called Hollis Spooklight, Hornet Spooklight and Joplin Spooklight over the years.
If you want to explore Spook Light for yourself, the Waylan’s Ku-Ku restaurant in Miami, Oklahoma, along Route 66 provides a map to guide you to the viewing area if you ask for one.
(Image of teenagers in the 1950s observing the Spook Light)