Spooky Blog

The Spook Light – First seen in Devil’s Promenade  by Indians at an annual gathering. Almost every evening since 1866, an orange ball of light matter bounces around the road in an easterly direction. As the light moves through the air, it leaves behind luminous traces of dancing sparks. The light has been known to enter cars and buses, but paradoxically, dodges people chasing it. Loud bright noises also make it vanish. It has been called the Spook Light, Hornet Light, and the Devil’s Jack o Lantern, but scientists who studied the phenomenon have never agreed about what causes it to happen. In 1946, a study by the Army Corps of Engineers concluded the phenomenon was “a mysterious light of unknown origin.” A 1983 investigation by the Ghost Research Society revealed the light is diamond-shaped, with a hollow center. Legend says it is the ghost of a pair of Quapaw Indian lovers, who committed suicide together. Others believe it is the lantern of a ghostly miner searching for his wife and children, who were abducted by Indians.

Devil’s Promenade is in the village of Hornet, 11 miles southwest of Joplin. The area is near the borders of Missouri, Oklahoma, and Kansas. The spook light is in Oklahoma but can only be seen from the east.  This tri-state region is known as the Spooksville Triangle.

Directions to the spooklight, take the LAST exit on I-44 to the west before the Oklahoma Will Rogers Turnpike begins (where you can go north to Baxter Springs and Galena, Kansas). This intersection is actually within about 500 yards of the tri-state marker for the joining of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. If you take this exit to the south and turn right (west) it will go for a block or two and turn south and you are on the State Line Road between Missouri and Oklahoma. About four miles down this road is the intersection where you can turn right (west) and be on the Spooklight Road (it is a “T” intersection, you can’t go east). The light is usually visible through the trees, straight down the road. You can drive towards it up and down gently rolling hills, and by the time you get to where you thought it was, it will disappear.

No one can say for sure exactly what is the Spook Light. Some have tried to explain away spook-light sightings and encounters with more “down-to-earth” causation. Debunking explanations include such things as swamp gas, ball lightning, mineral deposits, headlights, etc. But, they all seem to have holes in them.

As mentioned on page 330 in the Missouri Department of Natural Resources’ 1990 book, Geologic Wonders and Curiosities of Missouri, the HSL has been around many years before autos and planes existed:  summarized theories regarding its origin, stating that, some people think that the light at the Devils Promenade is the ghost of an Osage Chief who was murdered near this spot; others say that it is the spirit of a Quapaw maiden who drowned herself in the river when her warrior was killed in battle.” Other theories . . . . are those of marsh and methane gas, automobile lights driving east on Highway 66, and Quapaw, Oklahoma airport beacon lights.

But the old-timers laugh at all such explanations, claiming that the Indian lights were seen at the same spot in the deep wood, fifty years before the ‘Devils Promenade’ road was built. Fred C. Reynolds of Kansas City says that his grandfather, a pioneer doctor at Baxter, Kansas, observed these lights long before there was any such thing as a motor car, adding that he himself saw the jack-o-lantern as a boy. Bob Hill of Joplin, Missouri, observes that the phantom was seen by many persons in this vicinity before there was a Highway 66, and certainly long before the airport was established at Quapaw, Oklahoma.