For decades, locals of the tri-state area of Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas have talked about the so-called “Spook Light” phenomenon that occurs on a country road near the hamlet of Hornet, Missouri.
It’s been described as a flickering ball of light that would appear in the early evening, then would disappear if you attempted to walk or drive toward it. It purportedly was seen in the region since the 1800s, and countless tourism officials, television reporters and even a ramshackle museum near Hornet have described the Spook Light as an unsolved mystery.
Here’s one catch: It’s not so unsolved. I was aware William Least Heat-Moon, best known for his bestselling “Blue Highways,” wrote in his 2008 book “Roads to Quoz” the Spook Light was created by distant automotive headlights along Route 66 to the west.
But the solving of the mystery goes back further. Writer Paul W. Johns, who’s been writing for the Marshfield Mail and Christian County Headliner newspapers in Missouri, recently wrote a series about the Spook Light. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here.
Let’s just say Johns has done a lot of good research from contemporary newspaper accounts about the phenomenon, namely:
— In 1945, Dr. George W. Ward, formerly of the National Bureau of Standards and of the Midwest Research Institute, first theorized the Spook Light was caused by a “refraction of automobile headlights” to the west and over the distant range of hills that created a visual effect of a “moving, bouncing light.”
— About a year later, Maj. Thomas Sheard of Camp Crowder near Neosho, Missouri, investigated:
The major, armed with an engineer’s transit, a telescope, and walkie-talkies, investigated. From Spooklight Road, he used his telescope to spy an area about 10 miles to the west, where the lights might originate.
Next, he used an airplane to survey the terrain from Spooklight Road to the area he figured was where the light originated and found a road that was in line-of-sight of Spooklight Road.
Figuring that it was automobile headlamps that created the spooklight, he stationed an automobile there, and after dark he had it flash its headlights. The observers back at Hornet saw the signal flashes, thus “proving” Major Sheard’s theory.
— In 1955, eight youths from Kansas City investigated the phenomenon:
“We observed that light through a 3-inch reflecting astronomer’s telescope and found that it is actually a number of lights — sometimes as many as seven — originating from a bend of U.S. 66, about one miles south of the town of Quapaw, Okla.”
The young man who led the investigation said the team also measured temperature differences between the air near the Spring River and the other areas and determined that the different densities between the warmer and cooler air masses caused the light from the headlights to refract and thus caused the strange appearance and antics of the spooklight.
They went so far as to use spotlights, flash bulbs and even fireworks to produce light from Route 66, which was seen by observers on Spooklight Road.
— In 1960, a teen scientist, William Underwood, also concluded the light came from headlights on cars on Route 66.
— In 1965, Popular Mechanics magazine sent a reporter to investigate and brought in professors from the University of Arkansas to check it out. Prof. Jean Prideaux, using a refractor telescope, spotted sets of two lights, side by side, suggesting distant car headlights on Route 66 distorted by heat waves. The reporter covered his car lights with colored cellophane and drove the part of Route 66 visible at Spooklight Road. He blinked his car lights at predetermined times, and Prideaux, from Spooklight Road, saw each and every blink.
— Then we have the Least Heat-Moon book, which came to a similar conclusion about Spook Light.
Despite mounting scientific proof of Spook Light’s origins, other newspapers and media touted it over the years as an unexplained mystery.
The Missouri Tourism Commission in 1969 even passed along this falsehood: “Scientists, however, using various technical devices, have not been successful in determining a theory as to the origin of the light.”
No doubt chambers of commerce, knowing Spook Light was bringing in tourism dollars, became a tad reluctant to acknowledge the compelling scientific information around it.
The trump card Spook Light boosters often bring up is claim the phenomenon was seen in the 1800s, before the arrival of cars.
But Johns is skeptical of that claim, as well. The first newspaper article about Spook Light didn’t appear until 1935. The first book to refer to it wasn’t published until 1947.
Johns writes:
If you use these dates of stories published about the spooklight, you get a sense that it may well have first appeared after traffic picked up on a lonely road that suddenly saw more travelers after it was designated as part of a national highway.
Some claim it was seen by Cherokee Indians during their forced march to Oklahoma in 1838 and 1839, but Johns said no documentation of this exists.
Others claim it first was written about in the 1880s in a booklet or pamphlet, but Johns says no such publication ever has turned up.
From newspaper articles in the 1960s, a few locals said they saw Spook Light in the teens or even a few years earlier. But others pinpointed first sighting it during the mid- to late 1920s, when U.S. 66 came into existence.
Even if it was seen during the 19th century, Least Heat-Moon offers one plausible explanation: Though cars didn’t exist at the time, people on horses occasionally would have used lanterns, and campfires also would have been seen in the distance.
In a way, Johns has performed a public service by debunking the “unsolved mystery” malarkey revolving around Spook Light. Tourism officials simply should describe Spook Light for what it is — a unique effect of seeing car lights from distant Route 66 that has fascinated and inflamed the imaginations of observers for almost 100 years.
(Image of teenagers in the 1950s observing the Spook Light)
To paraphrase from the film The Man who Shot Liberty Valance: “When people prefer the legend to the truth, print the legend”. That applies to countless “beliefs”; from religions to Santa Claus to the Loch Ness Monster. There is something in them that fills gaps in people’s lives. Reality is not enough.
The I can say that maby he cude explain this ghost lhigt but we have one in Sweden that no one can explain believe me thay have tried it’s still a mystery it’s on a Island called Gottland it’s in the forest no rods clos by.
Could it be marsh gas? Something known about for centuries, and observed all around the world.
I have seen the Joplin spook light many times and it is not headlights. Once it floated within twenty feet of me. It is sometimes high and sometimes low to the ground. It is not headlights. It might be gas but not car lights.
If it were car lights on Route 66 wouldn’t they be seen constantly all the time? Instead of only very seldom? Just because you can see lights from Route 66 doesn’t mean those are the spook lights
It is really spooky when you don’t know the real thing behind it. Thank you for sharing this interesting post.
Next things to “debunk”: religions and deities! Who’ll be first?
BS!!! More arrogance by someone “who’s going to get to the Truth”, and find a scientific answer.
Get over yourselves! , “man “is just not near as smart as he thinks he is, just look around.
As for the car headlights justification, I grew up around many old timers that knew of the spook light before there were cars , and I , personally have given chase in a car in all different directions , and seen it in the middle of the woods and have seen it bouncing on the hood of a car .
So here is what everyone needs to know….
You DON’T know!!
So quit coming up with comfortable little solutions , that you can get your minds to cope with, and realize that there are truths , and knowledge that you can’t handle .
So make up your OWN minds and deal with it!
For a good deal, call BR549.
This doesn’t explain ALL of the sightings. The first report is from 1881. About 6 or 7 years before the first automobile & the first automobiles didn’t necessarily have headlights.
It’s not a stretch to surmise the effect could have been caused by distant lanterns or campfires during the pre-automobile age.
Some four decades ago a bunch of New Zealanders hatched a plan to fool radio and TV stations that a UFO was travelling the length of both islands.
They arranged to phone in from one location after another, to report seeing it. As if it was flying at a steady speed first along one coast then back along the other – before disappearing.
Later the hoax was revealed.
So “something was seen” in 1881? Or someone SAID they saw something. And, from that, over a century of “sightings” have been reported.
Once a story begins rolling, it is hard to stop it. Think of the tale of Adam and Eve and a talking snake. That piece of nonsense has been around a lot longer than the “Spook Light(s)”.
The article didn’t say, but I’m wondering how they explain the “light” staying on after they’ve packed up their gear and left. In other words, they created artificial lights which were designed to simulate the Spook Light, and they succeeded. But the Light continues to be seen well into the night when there is virtually no traffic on Route 66.
My solution is that the light, and others like it around the world, is shining through a tiny pinhole in the universe which is only visible at night. And that’s as good an explanation as any other.
I have personally seen the Spook Light. I went to high school in Joplin, in the 1950’s. We used to drive down those county roads to see what we then called the “Hornet Light.” For your consideration, here is a video that shows exactly what I saw when I was there.
How could they debunk the spook light as automotive headlights on Route 66 when there are records of people seeing the light long before automobiles or the highway even existed?
I would advise you actually read the article before commenting. That aspect you mentioned is addressed.
You would do better with putting “sightings” in inverted commas. People will believe what they want to believe, whether it is statues weeping tears, a monster in a Scottish lake, a star following people across a Middle East landscape, a man flying between two Middle East towns and ‘heaven’ 1,400 years ago, the whole universe ‘created’ in six days – or lights on a country lane being nothing more than some people fooling about, imitatiing a chance occurrence that was taken to be unexplainable over a hundred years ago. When a doctor got taken in by two young English girls with their cut-out cardboard fairies, and the fiction persisted for half a century, there is not much hope in trying to find the truth behind the so-called spooklights.
Absolute horse s***. We saw the spook light literally dart to the side and up. Wasn’t slowly either. Please do more research before posting half naked articles like this.
I suggest actually going for yourself and not rely on Jr journalism articles like this. We went to see if it was fabricated or real and we left being believers. The light shot from side to side quickly. Then up then sat there in the middle of the road. To add on to it, sightings WERE documented back in 1883 of the light.
What makes you think I haven’t been to the site? I went, and I saw nothing unusual.
And you clearly haven’t read the article. There is no evidence of sightings before the automobile age.
I had seen the spooklight about 20 years ago when I was in the area. Some student friends from Joplin said they had witnessed it in the early 70’s and that piqued my interest so we camped out to see if it was real. I have seen the headlights above the crest of the road road and that was obvious. While I documented a light/lights above the crest of the road that night what I and three others observed was not the obvious headlights. One was about the size of a basket ball some 75 feet in front of us and was on the right side of the road way below the crest of the road in front of me. It was very dim, round and moving toward the road quite slowly. The color was a very dim blue color and was essentially transparent like dimly lit blue glass. The second was 15 minutes or so later and I thought it was someone walking down the road with a flashlight and looked like a bunch of tiny lights in an area the size of a softball. I told my companions I thought it was a person walking toward us, well below the crest of the road, and on the left side of the road. I turned on the headlights to catch the person and it just disappeared. I am a retired Air Force colonel, have worked at NASA and am a physicist. The headlight findings might account for the above the crest of the road sightings but not what I saw that was well below the highway crest and on both left and right sides of the road, not in the center. As an aside, both light were moving slowly, the first from right to left very slowly like one foot every 20 seconds. The later light was actually moving down the road on the left edge of the road and slowly moving towards us and it bobbed up and down a little until I turned on my headlights to catch the supposed human perpetrator. It was not headlights, refracted light through differential air layers and it was not man-made by any technology I am aware of. It was not self illuminating gas and not ball lightning (clear skies). I really have no explanation for either light phenomenon we observed even though I have a heavy research/science background.
I went to NEO in the 80’s and went out to see the spook light many times, only seeing it twice, And no wasn’t car headlights, it was within 20 feet of us and split, I cant explain what it was but it looked to be a ball of light, so maybe the gas thing might be plausible but not headlights.
I agree with you on this. The first time I glimpsed them my first thought was car lights. After awhile a light came down the road towards me. I could clearly see that it had no obvious source. The light was changing colors from blue, white, red very quickly. It came close enough that it lit up the foliage on each side of the road. It wasn’t a beam of light like you would have with car headlights or a flashlight. As I stated earlier there was nothing that could be producing the glow. I am not someone who is prone to “flights of fancy”. I look for rational explanations & I couldn’t find one
In 1980 I was in college in Joplin (MSSC) and went to the spooklight with friends. After a little while of looking for it, it looked like someone was shining a moving flashlight between me and a friend about two feet away from me. Neither of us wanted to say anything at the time, but when we talked about it later, we found that we had both seen it. So I have seen it.
What is the mystery in Gottland about?
I, too, have seen it. It looked like a gigantic full moon (without light emanating from it). It very slowly started coming up the road…..first to the left, then to the right, then back in the center of the road. As it got closer, I got panicky and yelled, “Let’s get out of here!.” The light in a flash went down the middle of the road and disappeared. I will never forget it.