Since the 1860s, an old road near the Oklahoma border has been the scene of one of America’s most famous spook lights. The Hornet Spook Light, as it is known, appears in an area called the Devil’s Promenade. The light, which rushes, bobs, and weaves down the road, is described as being bright, hot, and about the size of a basketball. In the 1950s, a reporter who witnessed the light described it as a diffused, orange glow. Hundreds of people have seen the light. It has been photographed and investigated by scientists, but so far no one has been able to explain what it is. According to legend, however, the light belongs to the ghost of an old miner whose children were kidnapped by Indians in the early 1800s. He set off into the Devil’s Promenade with a lantern to search for them and never returned. Others say the light is the spirit of an Osage Indian chief. The Hornet Spook Light became so famous that a small museum was once dedicated to it.
Paulding Lights - Watersmeet, Michigan
Since at least the 1960s, visitors to the forest around Watersmeet and Paulding in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula have reported encountering a strange red light. It is said to rise up like an ember, grow in size and intensity, and then disburse in a haze. This phenomenon is repeated almost nightly, week after week. The Paulding Light became so well known that Ripley’s Believe it or Not offered a cash reward to anyone who could determine its origins. Unlike other spook lights, this one has been recorded on film by the local media. Its first reported sighting was by a group of teenagers in 1966. They claimed the light shone so brightly that it lit up the interior of their car. Ten years later, Elmer Lent and Harold Nowak had a more dramatic encounter. They saw not one, but two lights that alternated colors between red and green. The smaller light appeared to move around the other. Some researchers concluded the Paulding Light is nothing more than car headlights reflecting off the unique terrain, but most locals strongly disagree.
Maple Lake Lights - Springs, Illinois
Maple Lake is a man-made body of water roughly half a mile in width. With its wide, curving shores and tranquil waters, it is a deceptively peaceful place. Over the years, Maple Lake has acquired a reputation for the unusual. Visitors have reported seeing strange lights hovering over the lake, and there have been at least two homicides and four drownings there. Stories of strange lights have circulated for decades. “An inexplicable red glow has been seen oozing around the shoreline, between the trees and above the sand,” ChicagoTribune reporter Howard Reich wrote in a feature story on Halloween 1980. This “oozing” glow was later described as small and was said to hover in the one particular location in the middle of the lake. According to most contemporary accounts, the spook light is most often visible from the Maple Lake Overlook along 95th Street between 10:30pm and 12am. Onlookers report that the red light shines brightly for a few precious moments before it disappears.
The Oxford Light - Oxford, Ohio
Milford Road runs straight through a rural area filled with farms and forests just east of Oxford and north of Trenton Road. For years, local residents and students at neighboring Miami University have told a tragic story about two young lovers whose ghosts appear along the road as bright burning balls of light. According to legend, a young woman once lived on Milford Road and was forbidden from seeing her boyfriend. When her father was asleep, she would drive his car down the driveway to the edge of the road, where she would flash her break lights three times. That was the signal for her boyfriend, who was hiding up the street on his motorcycle, to come over. Unfortunately, one evening a boy was peddling down the road on his bicycle and didn’t see the young man. They collided and were both killed. The young woman was so distraught that she hanged herself in the barn. Today, if you travel down this road and flash your headlights three times, bright red lights will materialize. One person describes his encounter: “Sure enough, and much to my disbelief, there it was! A single, bluish-white light seemed to actually make its way down the road. I mistook it for a car and cried out ‘Tony! Car coming! Turn your car back on, we don’t want an accident!’ Well, luckily, he knew better. This light just faded in and out from ontop of a hill, perhaps a yard away from our car, never actually coming down at us.”
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