The true story of the Paulding Light

Since I was a kid, I wanted to check out the Paulding Light, an eerie orb that glows in a valley outside Paulding, in the western Upper Peninsula. The light is supposed to be swamp gas, or some kind of geological phenomenon, or the ghost of a railroad brakeman, or the ghost of a mail carrier, or the ghost of a Native American, or....well, you get the drift. Suffice it to say that no one could really agree on what it was, but everyone could agree that it was spooky.

However, it looks like the Paulding Light is nothing more than...drumroll please...car headlights. Check out this video recorded by students from Michigan Technological University, who investigated the phenomenon. (The first video on the website shows the light, the second video shows the students' investigation.)

Paulding Light Videos

They do a pretty good job of debunking the myths, and establishing that the lights are, in fact, car headlights shining through the night from US-45.

Kind of a no-brainer, but also kind of a bummer. I didn't really believe the Paulding Light was the ghost of some unfortunate soul, but it's always fun to let one percent of your brain believe these kinds of things.

Another website on the Paulding Light, this one less skeptical:

The Paulding Light