Monday, October 27, 2008

Paulding Light

So with Halloween coming up all the haunted, unexplained stories come out of the woodworks, but this was the first time I've seen the Paulding Light on anything. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the Paulding Light is in Paulding, MI - heading out of the UP into Wisconsin. I had the chance to see this once while coming back from a Wolf Study in Ely, Minn. with some classmates. We decided to stop and see it. The story goes that a railroad man was killed along the tracks and he haunts the old line with a lanturn and that's what the light is.

Having seen it, at first I thought it looked like far away headlights and taillights, except no road is running along the old rail-road grade, just a sevice line for the electric company. Not too mention it's blocked off by the Forest Service to Public Access. The television series, Unsolved Mysteries, took a look at it back in the 90's but couldn't get it figured out either. The scientific belief is that there is a natural phenomenon causing headlights and taillights to be seen from a strange angle - a reflection, curvature of the earth, optical illusion, etc...but they couldn't get it figured out either how it was happening, plus they couldn't get a timing on vehicles on any of the roads around there to correspond to the light sightings.

So while I was there, being adventurous with my friends (and no, it may have been college, but we were not indulging in anything), we decided to hang out and see this thing. I swear to God it light everything up, enough I could see the features of the person next to me in the pitch black and cast shadows on the trees. Still not being convinced, we decided to walk towards it. We hiked a good ways in the dark along the service road and got up on a high spot. And never saw it out there...but when we got back to other people who had come out to witness the phenomenon, they said it had never let up. It was very strange, and it definitely made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Anyway - check out the uTube video:



It's not creepy, just strange. But if you want creepy look up stuff on the SkinWalker Ranch in Utah. That is creepy and totally freaks me out. I won't even post info about it - it bothers me that much.

2 comments:

h said...

Everyone who lives near us has been there at least once. :) Here's a website where you can actually read the sign - that video was awful since the stupid camera kept moving so it was difficult to read the sign.

http://www.backwoodswisconsin.com/paulding_light.htm

Andrea said...

I am such a dork. I could have not gone hiking up there. I would have peed my pants. I probably would have needed some liquid help of getting up the nerves to go even look at the light. Oh dear. Halloween so freaks me out with all the ghost stories. !!!!!