- The first documented information about this phenomenon dates back to the end of the 19th century.
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| Image of a section of the famous Route 66, which is part of the original US federal highway network. |
The mystery of the 'ghost light' that appears at night on the famous Route 66
The legendary US Route 66 highway contains an enigma that has continued to baffle its travelers for more than a century: it is a mysterious sphere of floating light, named 'Hornet Spook Light', from which very little is known and much has been speculated.
The first documented information about the sighting of this ghostly light dates back to the end of the 19th century, in 1881, although it was not until 1946 when the US Army Corps of Engineers studied this phenomenon to try to give answers, although only they concluded that it was a "mysterious light of unknown origin".
Although this light has been associated with Route 66, this paranormal phenomenon can be seen at night from a rural road nicknamed the "Devil's Walk", which coincides with the famous Route 66 as it passes through the extreme northeast of the state of Oklahoma.
As historian Cheryl Eichar Jett, author of Route 66 in Kansas, 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 borders of those 3 states meet. And thus, the legends of the eerie light have been linked to the legendary highway", he indicates in statements collected by the BBC.
Some residents of the area have come to document how their encounters with this mysterious light were, as is the case of Vance Randolph, who in his book Ozark: Magic and Folklore, from 1947, indicated that he had contemplated this phenomenon "on three occasions ".
As he wrote, "it first 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 split into 2, 3, or 4 smaller lights." It looked like a yellowish thing to me, but other witnesses describe it as red, green, blue, or even purple in color," Randolph described.
Dean 'Crazylegs' Walker, of Baxter Springs, Kansas, who works as a volunteer at the Route 66 Visitor Center, first sighted that light at age 8, as his parents and uncle often took him along. to his cousins to try to contemplate this enigma in the so-called "Devil's walk".
"Once, it even floated past the windshield of our car! My cousins and I crouched in the backseat, hiding from the light, until poof, it was gone. We were so scared no one said anything until we got back home", he recalls in statements collected by the BBC.
The testimonies of the locals who witnessed this phenomenon are similar, although no one coincides in pointing out what causes it. In his book, Randolph points to the theories that existed in his time about this mysterious light and that have contributed to the legend: from the ghost of a murdered Osage Indian chief to the "spirit of a Quapaw maiden who drowned in the river when their warrior died in battle."
However, AB MacDonald, a reporter for the Kansas City Star newspaper, already in 1936 raised a simpler theory about the famous 'Hornet Spook Light' with which many scholars have agreed decades later. According to MacDonald, this mysterious light was actually coming from the headlights of cars traveling east on nearby Route 66.
Locals like Grace Goodeagle, an elderly Quapaw Indian, question this version and point, in any case, to the gas emitted by the swamps: "I will never forget the experience. The light I saw bounced and slowly approached my uncle's truck. They just didn't look like car headlights from a distance at all."
For his part, Andrew George, associate professor of biology at Pittsburg State University (Kansas), rules out that the lights could come from the gases of any swamp and points to the hypothesis of car headlights and the effect they produce on that environment as the most plausible theory: "The unusual appearance and movement of the light is probably the result of changes in the density of the air over the Spring River and the surrounding woods and fields. The light is refracted as it passes through the air hotter and colder," he concludes.
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