Hornet Spook Light

In the extreme southwestern part of the state, very near to where Missouri meets up with Kansas in the west and Oklahoma in the south, there is a four-mile long stretch of dirt road known as "The Devil's Promenade".  I have never been there myself (if ever I visit I will update this page accordingly), but they say that on a fine summer night the road is lined both sides with cars filled with people waiting to see the Hornet Spook Light. They also say those people are seldom disappointed in their quest. The Hornet Spook Light (after the erstwhile town of Hornet, MO), also known as the Tri-State Spook Light or the Joplin Spook Light, is one of Missouri's better known examples of unexplained phenomenon.  A strange light appears, in varying hues and shapes, bounces around up and down the road and through the surrounding fields, splits into multiple smaller lights, rejoins, approaches retreats and disappears. Legend tells that it is the ghosts of two Quapaw lovers who leapt to their deaths rather than be captured by the maiden's father's warriors.  Another story claims that a child (sometimes a whole family, save the miner) disappeared from a mining camp and the light is the light on her father's helmet as he wanders the night desperately searching for her.  Local tradition claims that sightings go back as far as 1836 and I have seen one first-person account from the 1950s (see the booklet linked below) written by a man who claimed to have seen it himself in 1903. If I am reading my maps right (and I may not be -- I am unfamiliar with the area) Spook Light Road seems to be in McDonald County, in Indian Springs Township.  Skimming through a digital copy of an 1880s History of McDonald County, I didn't come across any references to a mysterious light.  I did stumble on a legend about two Quapaw lovers (a much nicer legend in which the warrior saves the object of his affection from being attacked by a bull elk and subsequently wins her love) and also the story of a fabled "Medicinal Spring" which was known to the Indians and around which a briefly prosperous town subsequently grew up.  I believe this is the same "Old Indian Medical Spring" referenced in the letter from Mrs. John Bryant in a booklet on the matter. This booklet, produced during the 1950s and generously made available online here, gives a number of first-person accounts of seeing the light.  Two men claiming to be scientists and writing in support of one another announced that they had proven the light to be refracted automobile headlights from a parallel road 13 miles south in Oklahoma and on the other side of a range of hills.  Locals retorted that their parents and grandparents had been watching the light since well before there were automobiles and back when roads themselves were scarce.  (On a side note, having now seen this booklet, I'm pretty sure it's the source for every story I've ever read about the light in any book or magazine.) During the second world war the Corps of Engineers investigated the Spook Light at length and announced themselves baffled.  They ruled out marsh gases, radioactive minerals, electrical activity triggered by fault lines and, presumably, refracted  headlights.  What it was, however, they could not say. Since that time the Hornet Spook Light has been featured on Unexplained Mysteries television program, made its appearance in countless books and articles and been seen by thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people.  Nearly sixty years on, the mystery remains unsolved.

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