Hornet Spook Light

[W. Gray]

This is somewhat related to Flying Saucers but not quite.

http://www.prairieghosts.com/devprom.html

I first heard of the Hornet Spook Light in the 70s after reading about it in the Kansas City Star.

Hornet is a long gone town 127 miles from Howard near Seneca, Missouri.

About 1974 I drove down to the area. Arriving about midnight, I parked my car on a lonely desolate country road and waited. After four hours, I saw nothing as seems to be the case the majority of the time. There might have been thirty cars loaded with people waiting for the light to come up the road.

At the time, there was a little store that sold soft drinks and treats and had old newspaper headlines on the wall blaring about the spook light.

[Wilma]

I have heard this story from a lady that used to live in the area and had seen the light.  And she isn't one to tell an untruth.

[flo]

this is a legend that has been around for eons - when I first heard it I was visiting in Quapaw OK (was a teenager) so evidently we went east to see it, if it was towards Seneca.  It didn't appear on this night, however.

[W. Gray]

The evening I went to view the Hornet Spook Light, there were approximately thirty cars parked along the dirt road.

We were parked in front of a farmhouse and I could not help but wonder whether these folks had ever gotten use to cars full of people parked in front of their house every night for years. 

Some cars contained only couples but a good many were full of high school kids packed into a car and were probably from Joplin having come down to see the light.

Many of these cars were all girls.

About 2 a.m., a very spooky light started coming down the road right at us. The hair on my arms stood up and the girls in the cars started screaming at a fever pitch. It was like a scene from a scary movie with the crescendo of screams reverberating across the countryside. My heart beat heavily as the light came nearer. I was upset earlier at not having brought my camera but at this point I do not think I would have remembered to ready one for a shot.

As the light came closer, the screams got louder. Suddenly an automobile came over the small rise heading past us. One of the cars parked further up the road had given up and was heading home. The screams suddenly turned to uncontrolled laughter up and down the road. Again, I wondered how the people living here could put up with this at this time in the morning.

A photographer for the Kansas City Star took a photo showing a light hovering over the road in front of his car.

I have never gone back in hope of seeing it.

[Roma Jean Turner]

I went to college in Pittsburg, KS in the sixties and it was a legend then. (I am guessing this is the same spook light).  I remember going over there once, frankly we were all drinking beer and talking.  Someone said they thought they saw something, but by the time the rest of us looked, nada..........  I actually have some friends from here who still go over periodically to see if they can spot it.  I'm too impatient to sit somewhere for long periods of time for any reason.  I guess I would need the saucer to land in my back yard and then I might be to preoccupied to spot it.

[Diane Amberg]

 I have a feeling if we could actually "see" electricity, microwaves, radio waves, magnetic fields and such, all the time, we would be amazed at what is actually zipping around out there.

[W. Gray]

During the big New Madrid earthquake in 1811 people saw lights coming from the ground as fissures opened up.

A lady geologist the other night said it was probably from rocks grinding together from the huge force making electrical sparks.

[Jo McDonald]

Diane, with all of those "zippy things' you referred to...is probably what makes our noses itch just all of a sudden.  Zapper-zippy- itchy things.   lol

[Diane Amberg]

Or maybe it's just ragweed?

[sixdogsmom]

My folks were young when they lived at a small farm near Webb City, Mo. during the 30s. They were both curious people and investigated everything. They spoke of going to see, and witnessing these lights when they were young. Gasoline was 10 cents a gallon, and they might have to cut wood for some time to drive on a pleasure trip like that. But they did, and we heard about it at the supper table many times when I was growing up. There seems to have been many strange things happen in those hills.