One day in about 1996, I was searching the web for information about spooklight phenomena...
I found some pages with information about specific spooklights, but I didn't find any pages dedicated to the general spooklight phenomena. Hence this web page was born. Plus it only seemed reasonable that since I have a burning interest in spooklights, ball lightning, and other such things and since I happen to live only about 2 1/4 hours from the Tri-State Spooklight that I should add my own experience to the web. My focus for this page is to provide a comprehensive guide to spooklight phenomena, complete with locations and directions to the various lights that I know of.
The Spooklight Enigma
For those who don't know, spooklights are an unexplained and mysterious phenomena which to a large extent have been ignored by science. I found out about spooklights in about 1994 when a friend mentioned that we have one within driving distance of where I live. I became obsessed with the allure of the mystery and coerced him into finding out how to get there.
Thus our journey began...
Spooklights in general are usually surrounded by ghost stories... Slaughtered indians. Murdered railroad men. Restless spirits roaming the countryside seeking justice.
You get the picture.
I should say right up front that I do not buy into the ghost stories. However, I do believe that there's compelling (and somewhat stimulating) evidence for spooklights. Theories for the mechanism behind spooklights (also known as mystery lights, nocturnal lights, ghost lights, will-o-wisps, etc.,) range from spontaneous ignition of marsh gas to car headlights in the distance to owls with luminous bacteria growing on them to hoaxsters to overactive imaginations and unsettled stomachs.
None of these theories particularly thrill me either.
The theory that I find most plausible and interesting is related to piezo-electricity. For those who don't know, piezo-electricity is electricity produced by placing stress on a crystal. You've seen it before in the push button ignitor on your gas grill. There's a little spring loaded hammer in there that smacks a crystal when you push the button and produces a high voltage spark. Some cigarette lighters use the same principal. I saw an old episode of 'Nova' where a guy in a laboratory illustrated the principal by crushing a piece of granite in a hydrualic press. When the granite finally gave way you could see little balls of light flying from the fracture points. (They just looked like sparks to me, but the show said that under careful scrutiny in the laboratory they were determined not to be sparks, but actual balls of light.). The coolest and most readily available example is to simply buy some Wint-O-Green Lifesavers and chew them in the dark in front of a mirror. If you let your eyes get accustomed to the darkness first, you'll see the breaking lifesavers illuminated by little flashes of light as you bite down on them.
You say, "What does this have to do with spooklights?"
Well, if you consider the crushing forces in the earth, especially along fault lines where rocks and quartz crystals and all sorts of things are being crushed under tremendous pressure as the earth shifts, it could have a great deal to do with spooklights. Electricity must be being generated in all those crushing rocks and crystals. The big question is, "How is all that electricity making it's way to the surface and stimulating the atmosphere into a luminous state?" That's the gap that needs filled and nobody really has an answer.
Enough theory. Below are some links to mysterious lights that I am aware
of. This list will grow as I obtain more information.
Last updated on 02/21/2009.
If you would like to report any problems, make suggestions or simply correspond, email me.
first run January 1997 - June 2001
Revived February 2009