In 1946, the Corps of Engineers from a nearby army camp attempted a study of the light. Captain R. L. Loftin was in charge, and he decided it was all due to car headlights being refracted over a nearby ridge by varied air density, after carrying out experiments with spotlights. (A view shared by an investigator in 1945 also.) Apart from this not explaining the nineteenth-century reports of the light, Dale Kaczmarek22 of the Ghost Research Society thinks they studied the original location by mistake, where the light no longer appeared. Loftin apparently later stated he thought they may have had the wrong location. According to Frank Edwards, the headlight theory was firmly hit on the head in 1962 when determined persons...surrounded the light as it bobbed along the road. Had it been nothing more than a reflection of distant headlights it would have been visible only to those moving directly towards the source. As it was, the elusive light could be seen from all sides when the investigators had a view of the road. In this particular case, it remained over the road until some of the party got to within twenty-five or thirty feet. Then it blinked out, and blinked back on again tantalizingly a few seconds later over a little nearby field. 

The light is said to appear nightly (another argument against headlight refractions which require special conditions to produce them), and in 1982 Kaczmarek, who has 'debunked' at least one spooklight, went to the area to see the phenomenon for himself. He was successful and obtained photographs (Plate 21) as well as first-class observations. Kaczmarek and his companions 'literally chased this light up and down the road from dusk to dawn, but could never catch it'. They saw the light best after 3 a.m., when the traffic had died down and they were the only ones on the road. 

Kaczmarek saw it through binoculars a few feet above the ground near a barn. The group of witnesses were less than 100 yards (92 metres) away and got a clear view: The light appeared to be a diamond-shaped object with a golden hue and a hollow center. You could actually see trees and bushes right through it. It stayed in that area for about sixty seconds and then dropped behind a hill. The area where the light was a second ago still glowed with some kind of luminosity or phosphorescence. The area twinkled with energy.

The light rose and fell another three times, and then the witnesses crept up the hill in their car hoping to see where it had gone. Before they could reach the top, the light appeared in the middle of the road less than 75 yards (69 metres) from them. It disappeared again, and when they reached the crest of the hill, they saw a light over treetops more than a mile distant. 

From his experiences with it, Kaczmarek felt that the light displayed cunning-'It seems to know when someone is getting too close. The light also seems to react tp light , sound and movement.' He quoted the case of a group of other witnesses studying the light over the same period as Kaczmarek: they had been studying the light when it suddenly sprang into visibility only 10 yards (9 metres) from them. It was 'about the size of a basketball, orange-yellow in color, throbbing and slowly rolling along the ground.' Awestruck rather than frightened, the witnesses remained very quiet, fascinated by the sight. But at the split second a car crunched along the gravel road behind them, the light rose into the air, split into two, and shot off in opposite directions into the surrounding woods.

The objective Kaczmarek does not know what the light is, but his investigations convince him that it cannot be accounted for by refracted headlights, Will-o'-the-Wisp, natural phosphorescence or ball lightning. Folktales abound for the cause of the light, including the now familiar motifs of a person looking for his head. The nearby Quapaw Indians hand down a tradition that the light is the merged spirits of two doomed lovers.

This suggests some antiquity for the light, and caused Frank Edwards to comment: 'Whatever it is, it always was.' Another light has been seen and photographed on a little-used railroad track near Gurdon, between Little Rock and Texarkana in Arkansas. It seems never to have been seen at close quarters, however, and could be a refraction mirage of distant car lights. Nevertheless, it does not show polarisation when viewed through filters, which would be expected from a mirage effect.

Writing in Fate (May 1982), Franklin L. Ward refers to what may be another Ozark light phenomenon. He recounts an experience he had in October 1938, but gives no more detailed location than 'a rural area of southern Missouri'. Ward was 16 at the time, and he and his father were taken to an old sawmill pond by a local fellow who told them of a 'spook' which appeared regularly next to the pond, moved around and came back to its point of origin to disappear. They watched the pond for only 20 minutes when 'a small blue light began to form near the ground' at one end of the pool. It started off'about the size of a softball and . . . expanded to the size of a basketball' changing from 'a clear cornflower blue' to more of a 'robin's egg blue'. They approached to within 10 feet (3 metres) of it, when it rose to about a yard off the ground and began to move away. The local man marked the point of origin with a tree branch. They followed the light down a road where it adopted a swinging motion , and was undulating between 2 and 4 feet (60-120cm) above the ground, lighting the surface of the road at its lowest points of travel. It covered over a quarter of a mile, circumnavigated a schoolhouse, passed through an abandoned log house- the observers could see its luminosity glinting through the cracks between the logs - and then made back towards the pond. At one point the Iighthall passed within a foot or so of Ward who heard 'a soft low hum like the 60-cycle hum of an electrical transformer'. It returned to its starting point where it hovered for about 30 seconds, becoming smaller and darker in colour, before 'settling into the sand' and disappearing. The whole sighting lasted 'for most of an hour'.

In the early months of 1973 Piedmont, in the southeast quarter of Missouri, experienced a 'UFO flap'. The wave was heralded by a sighting had by a local basketball team on the night of21 February. They saw green, amber, red and white lights near Highway 60 acting as a unified configuration. The next night a series of sightings were made in the locality. They continued to be made over following weeks. Reports of strange lights in the sky coincided with curious TV interference throughout the whole region.

On one occasion the police radio system stopped working. Domestic lighting dimmed and failed sporadically. Strange lights were reported sitting in fields and even passing under the surface of the nearby reservoir, Clearwater Lake (see the case of the Ogden reservoir in the previous chapter). A light was seen flying over the transmitter of the local radio station which, later that same evening, was 'knocked out'. By March 'UFO fever' had gripped the town, and roads around the place were lined with sightseers and parked cars. People phoned in sightings to the local radio station. There was an air of excitement. Hesitantly at first, Dr Harley D. Rutledge, a physics professor from Southeast Missouri State University, began to study the phenomena being reported. He made a preliminary field trip in early April with a colleague. His first sighting was of an unspectacular stationary light near Pyle's Mountain which his colleague was convinced was distant car headlights. Subsequent experiments by Rutledge tended to disprove this. But his first sighting of a clearly inexplicable light came while he was being flown in a light aircraft over Clark Mountain one night. An amber light appeared on the slope of the mountain near the top. The pilot also saw the light and made an immediate turn to approach it. The light promptly went out, but within seconds another popped into visibility a few ridges away. Through binoculars Rutledge felt he could see a 'slight to-and-fro' motion of the light. Quite suddenly, as they flew towards it, the light shot straight up at an incredible speed.

Rutledge went on to assemble funding and volunteers to carry out fieldwork in the flap zone and to pursue the phenomenon wherever it might occur in that quarter of Missouri over the next few years. The results of his efforts were written up in Project Identification in 1981. In the course of this work, Rutledge personally had 152 sightings of phenomena he found inexplicable. Of these, seven seemed to be what he interpreted as structured craft- 'disks' and 'a bullet-shaped object that disappeared in daylight' - and the rest (95 per cent) were 'more or less lights'.

In all, over 700 photographs were taken by Rutledge and his helpers, and by local residents such as former photography teacher Maude Jefferis of Piedmont (see Plate 22.) Most of these show blobs of light or simply lines of light marking the course of the lights in their trajectories during long exposures.