Mysterious light draws thrill seekers to Michigan forest
PAULDING, Mich. — “I can see it right now!” Bob Anderson said excitedly, staring into the trees.
It was a cool summer evening, and the 61-year-old from L’Anse, Mich., had brought a few of his fishing buddies down a dead-end road into the Ottawa National Forest to see the famous, mysterious phenomenon known as the Paulding Light, which is said to appear frequently at a remote spot in the woods in Michigan's western Upper Peninsula.
Those who’ve seen it say it’s a bright white light, glowing deep inside the woods, changing size and shape before fading into the darkness.
For half a century, the Paulding Light has been a legend in the Upper Peninsula. But it’s not easy to find. You have to take narrow U.S.-45 to Paulding, which is a tiny speck of a town near the Wisconsin border. Then turn down unmarked Robbins Pond Road — also known as the remnant of old U.S.-45 — which is now little more than a gravel road encroached on its sides by the creeping forest. About a half mile in, it dead ends at a guardrail overlooking a tree-filled valley where the former highway vanishes into the woods.
This legend spread by word of mouth, and later by TV shows about the paranormal, and people have enthusiastically speculated on what it could be ever since it was first seen. That is, until a few years ago, when a group of engineering students from a nearby university conducted experiments at the viewing site and claimed to have solved the mystery once and for all, in a fairly unexciting way.
But, despite the proof the students offered for their explanation, a lot of people still come to the forest in hopes of seeing the light for themselves. And a lot of them still refuse to give up their belief that it’s truly something magical.
Close encounters of the blurred kind
The first recorded sighting of the Paulding Light was in 1966 when a group of high school boys reportedly saw it and told the local sheriff.
The official legend says the light comes from the swaying lantern held by the ghost of a railroad brakeman who died when he was crushed as he tried to stop an oncoming train from hitting railcars stalled on the tracks. This was logging country more than a century ago, and local residents say there were a number of railroads that ran through the forest and are now buried in the underbrush.
Some believe it’s the light of the train, which itself is now a ghost. Some claim it’s the distraught spirit of a grandparent looking for a lost grandchild with a lantern that needs constant relighting, the reason the light seems to come and go.
Others have speculated that it’s swamp gas. Or something related to the Northern Lights. Maybe even something extraterrestrial.
All along, doubters noted that the light looks rather similar to automobile headlights at a distance, and their location just happened to coincide where there’s a sight line to a highway. Plus, reports of the light began pretty much about the time that highway was constructed.
Curious visitors have flocked to this remote town, turning a hidden, abandoned gravel road into one of Michigan's most popular tourist spots.
“I get a million people that come looking for directions because they’re lost,” said Jason Lannet, the 43-year-old owner of the Paulding General Store, which sits at the town’s only intersection, a few miles north of the viewing area.
It got so popular that the U.S. Forest Service erected a big sign in the middle of the woods at the end of the road, noting that it’s the place to see the famous Paulding Light. “Please do not litter,” the sign asked politely.
Shedding light on the subject
In 2010, Jeremy Bos was an electrical engineering grad student at Michigan Tech in Houghton and was trying to find a project to engage the members of the Society of Photo Optical Instrumentation Engineers — a club for those who study optics. And about a dozen students joined him on a road trip to Paulding.
“When you tell them about how it’s a spooky ghost story, it got people really wanting to get involved,” said the 39-year-old, now an engineering professor at the school.
They brought a spectrograph and a telescope to the dead-end road, sent each other driving down the new highway while blinking their lights in a prearranged pattern, and recorded the results.
Every time the light appeared, one look through the telescope showed what sure looked like the headlights of oncoming cars, which could be seen clearly through the lens, sometimes with the distinct outline of the car coming down the road, which is about 8 miles away. The group even shot a video through the telescope so others could see, and posted it online. The flickering, they said, was caused when cars went over a hill.
Mystery solved, they announced.
Not everyone agreed. Bos still gets flak from people who refuse to give up their belief in the supernatural origin of the light. Some people say the light they’ve seen in the woods is too bright to be headlights. Some say it moves in ways no car can. And some, he’s found, don’t have a particular objection — they just want to keep believing.
“It’s the same with anything,” he said. “There is scientific evidence to disprove all sorts of things, and people still choose to believe the more fantastical, maybe because they view science as taking away the mystery of things and they want to hold onto some of that mystery.”
The shining
As Anderson and his buddies sat there, a round, flickering light suddenly appeared in the distance where the trees disappeared into the horizon. And it grew brighter as it lingered.
“See it!” Anderson yelled to his fishing buddies.
There was no missing this light. It was as bright as, say, a lantern.
The fishermen were among the first to see it that evening. But they weren’t the last. And like everyone else who’d show up that night, none of them believed the phenomenon was caused by headlights after witnessing it themselves.
“That’s pretty long lights for a car,” said 65-year-old Terry Nestle of Ithaca, Mich., squinting at the light in assessment. “That’s a long-lasting light. That’s not a car topping a hill.”
Nestle and a friend had come from downstate to the Upper Peninsula to explore the woods on their four-wheelers. They came roaring out of the valley, up to the gravel road, just in time to see the light glowing persistently through the trees.
“I just can’t see how that’s a car,” Nestle said.
Every few minutes, the darkness was interrupted by the beams of car headlights coming in from the highway and parking along the gravel road in long rows. It was ink black outside. Mosquitoes were swarming and biting. Yet none of that stopped a spontaneous party from coming together in the woods.
All of them had heard that someone had debunked the story of the lights. And each of them came out to see it anyway.
“Maybe you just gotta be a believer in the light, I think,” Anderson said. “You either believe it or not.”
Follow John Carlisle on Twitter @_johncarlisle