The Paulding Light, Robbins Pond Road, Michigan (1966)

The Paulding Light lives at the end of a road. Robbins Pond Road is a stub of old US-45 that stops at a guardrail just outside Paulding, near Watersmeet, in the Ottawa National Forest of Michigan's western Upper Peninsula. Beyond the rail lies a tree-filled valley. Some call it the Dog Meadow Light.

The first recorded report came in 1966. A group of high school boys told the local sheriff about a light in the valley. Their names were never recorded, and no report from that night survives. Yet the light, it is said, appears nearly every night.

Witnesses describe a bright white light glowing deep inside the woods. It changes size and shape before fading into the darkness. Some see yellow. Some see red, and sometimes red and blue. It hovers near the horizon. It vanishes when approached.

John Willims of Milwaukee has visited for about 20 years. "It bounces up and down," he said. Aaron Halvorson of Presque Isle, Wisconsin, first saw it at age 12. "It started kind of at the top of the trees and it looked like it was coming down the hill towards us." Back at the site with a reporter, he was firm. "That wasn't car lights… I have no idea what I saw, but that was pretty freaky." Linda Schulz, owner of Running Bear Resort, put it simply. "When the real mystery light shows up, it's a light of its own."

The Forest Service sign at the site acknowledges the ghost. A railroad brakeman, crushed more than a century ago while trying to stop a train from hitting stalled railcars. His lantern needs constant relighting. That is why the light comes and goes. Other tales speak of a ghost train, a murdered mail carrier, and a grandparent searching with a lantern for a lost grandchild.

In October 1990, Seal, Lombardi-Rice and Rice studied the light with telescopic, spectroscopic and travel-time analysis. Their 1994 paper in the Wisconsin Academy Review judged it highly probable that the lights were vehicle headlights and taillights north of Paulding. Drive times along a straight stretch near Erickson Lake matched the intervals between lights. Tags on the valley's power poles dated no earlier than 1955. Before that clearing, trees would have blocked the view.

In 2010 a Michigan Tech optics club led by Jeremy Bos brought a telescope to the overlook. Through it, the light became headlights. They even spotted an Adopt-a-Highway sign. Bill Norkus logged cars on US-45 while students logged the light. Every appearance matched a passing car. "Bill put on his hazards, and we saw flashing yellow lights."

The team argued that hills make the lights rise and fall, that autokinesis makes a distant point seem to drift, and that heat shimmer and a stable inversion layer carry the glow 4.5 miles. Police stops explain red and blue. Benjamin Radford, writing in Skeptical Inquirer in 2017, accepted the finding, while noting how hard it is to rule out every possible source of light. Believers were unmoved. "We've been told we haven't seen the real Paulding Light," Bos said.

Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files called it unexplainable. Strange Evidence returned in 2017. The cars still come. Asked whether a mystery remains, Bos answered. "I want to say that there is if you're looking for one."