The enigma of the Hornet Spook, the “ghost light” that appears on the famous US Route 66.

On a 4-mile country road eerily nicknamed the “Devil’s Walk,” just off old Route 66 in the far northeast of Oklahomaa paranormal mystery has baffled spirit seekers for over 100 years.

The “Hornet Spook Light”, a mysterious basketball-sized luminous sphere named after the ancient city of Hornet, has been appearing in the night sky since 1881.

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No one knows what this peculiar, smoky ball of light means, where it comes from, or what it is made of. Even the Army Corps of Engineers has concluded that it is a “mysterious light of unknown origin”.

It moves, turning and bobbing up and down, like a lantern held by a dancing ghost, and is usually seen from just inside the Oklahoma border looking west.

As Route 66 historian Cheryl Eichar Jett, author of “Route 66 in Kansas” and founder of the annual Route 66 Miles of Possibilities conference, explains, “the route of the main highway through (the towns of) Joplin , Galena, Baxter Springs and then south to Quapaw, coincides with the Hornet Spook Light at the corners of Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma where the 3 state borders meet. And so, the legends of the eerie light have become linked to the legendary highway“.

Drawn by the mystery, like so many other Route 66 aficionados, I parked my car on the empty road in the stillness of a moonless night.

I waited for over an hour in the dark, and although the ghost light never appeared in the distance, what I had read so greatly increased my expectation that the headlights of the car passing by scared me, if only for a second.

Versions for all tastes

Local resident Vance Randolph documented his encounter with the phenomenon in his 1947 book “Ozark: Magic and Folklore.” “I myself have seen this light on three occasions,” he wrote.

“First it appeared about the size of an egg, but it varied until sometimes it seemed as big as a bathtub. I only saw a single glow, but other witnesses have seen it divided into 2, 3 or 4 lights smaller. It looked like a yellowish thing to me, but other witnesses describe it as red, green, blue or even purple in color,” she said.

“A man swore he passed so close that could clearly feel the heatand a woman saw it burst like a bubble, scattering sparks in all directions,” she added.

Dean “Crazylegs” Walker is originally from Baxter Springs, Kansas and was the inspiration for the character Mater in the Cars film franchise, which is based on Route 66.

Walker is a volunteer at the Route 66 Visitors Center and recalled seeing the phenomenon at “Paso del Diablo” on several occasions, beginning with a first sighting at age 8.

“My father, my mother and my uncle often took my cousins ​​and me to try find the ghost light“, said.

The lights on Route 66 became popular, attracting visitors from across the US and entrepreneurs producing merchandise. (COURTESY OF THE JOPLIN MUSEUM.)

“Once, it even floated past the windshield of our car! My cousins ​​and I crouched in the back seat, hiding from the light, until poof! it was gone. We were so scared that no one said anything until we got back home.“, he narrated.

Grace Goodeagle, a Quapaw Indian elder, has a similar story.

“One night when I was about 10 years old, my uncle took my brothers and me to the Devil’s Walk. Moments later, a bright light appeared in the distance, deep in the woods. But we weren’t scared,” he recounted.

An indecipherable ministry

Although locals agree that the Hornet ghost light exists, few agree on what causes it.

Vance, in his book, offered some theories of his time. Some believed that he was the ghost of a murdered osage chief and others said it was “the spirit of a quapaw maiden who drowned in the river when her warrior died in battle.”

Goodeagle, for his part, rejected these accounts. “We must remember that our peoples are not native to this area“, said.

“We Quapaw peoples were forcibly removed from our ancestral home in the Mississippi Valley beginning in 1830, after the Indian Relocation Act was enacted,” he recalled.

The US Army tried to clarify the origin of the “mysterious light”, but without positive results and for this reason it has been described as “of unknown origin”. (Getty Images).

“The legends that “indian spirits” haunt this area are just that, legends. Our people believe in spirits, good and bad, but our family believed that the lights were simply due to nature, and not spirits good or bad, who played with us”, he added.

the simplest version

The first documented investigation into the “Hornet Spook Light” was carried out by AB MacDonald, a reporter for the Kansas City Star, in January 1936. MacDonald judged that the mysterious lights were the headlights of the cars traveling east on Route 66.

Writer Robert Gannon came to the same conclusion in a 1965 article in Popular Mechanics. This, after carrying out a test: he turned on the headlights of his car on the adjacent road at a certain time. His assistant, stationed in the “Paseo del Diablo”, reported that the ghost light appeared at the same time.

“I doubt it was car headlights,” Goodeagle replied.

“I’ll never forget the experience. The light I saw bounced off and slowly approached my uncle’s truck. They just didn’t look like car headlights from a distance at all,” he added.

“Some locals believe that the lights are caused by swamp gas“, he added.

There are those who attribute the spooky phenomenon to the lights of the cars that travel along a route parallel to the famous highway. (GETTY IMAGES).

However, Andrew George, an associate professor of biology at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, disagrees.

“The landscape surrounding the Hornet Spook Light is unlikely to produce luminescent gases, which are thought to cause similar phenomena elsewhere,” he explained.

Although he has not tested it himself, George endorsed the idea of ​​headlights.

“The Hornet Spook Light is almost certainly caused by the headlights of vehicles traveling on the larger roads a few miles to the west,” he said.

“The unusual appearance and movement of the light is likely the result of changes in air density over the Spring River and the surrounding forests and fields. Light is refracted as it passes through warmer and cooler air,” he said. .

Walker, like many locals, did not accept this version.

“No, it’s not car headlights,” he said. “It’s too far from the highway. There’s no way,” she shot back.

This story was originally published on BBC TravelRead the article in English here.

Source: Elcomercio