What is the Mysterious Paulding Light in Michigan?

In summary, the locals in Paulding believe that mysterious lights can be seen on backroads there every night, and that car headlights are the perfect visual cue for the phenomenon. However, the lights disappear if anyone tries to approach them, and the phenomenon is likely caused by atmospheric conditions and not by headlights.
  • #1
Ivan Seeking
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PAULDING -- Hidden on the back roads of Paulding is a mystery, something that brings locals and visitors alike out in the middle of the night, hoping to catch a glimpse.

Our location was on Robbins Pond Road, off of Highway 45. We arrived early; our team was Vicky Crystal, Bill Roth, his wife Shana, their dog Moose, and I. That gave us time to scope out the valley where the light is said to appear on most nights.[continued]
http://www.wluctv6.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=185121
Video
http://www.wluctv6.com/news/video.aspx?id=185121

They say that these lights have been observed for 40 years.
 
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  • #2
Ivan said:
They say that these lights have been observed for 40 years.
I remember hearing about this years ago. Hasn't anyone tried to move toward the light to see if it remains?
 
  • #3
We need thousands of people to cover the area. If it appears someone will be close.
 
  • #4
bassplayer142 said:
We need thousands of people to cover the area. If it appears someone will be close.
+1 imo

but that seems relatively easy to do... which makes me think its a well-organized scam :S
 
  • #6
Thanks CEL. I didn't know that the Marfa lights had been definitively explained.

...May I have the envelope, please? The winner is ... the car headlights combined with some fascinating atmospheric phenomena. In 2004, The University of Texas sent the Society of Physics Students, a highly respected professional association, to investigate the Marfa Lights. Their official report, available at spsnational.org, found conclusively that when the lights appeared, they were precisely correlated with car headlights on Highway 67. The lights were completely predictable and the phenomenon was fully repeatable, based on cars on the highway. [continued]
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4038

Thanks to the good ole SPS.
 
  • #7
I have a hard to believe it is headlights. There are so many cars in so many conditions that you would think these lights would appear everywhere in the world considering the many highways and many unique conditions. North Michigan can't be one of the only places where car headlights are lined up right. Something more is playing its part if it is car headlights.
 
  • #8
It looks an aweful lot like headlights and tailights to me.
http://www.pauldinglight.com/clip.html

I would guess that we are looking a highway cresting a hill. The bright white lights first appear as a car approaching the observers crests the hill from the other side. At points we can also see taillights heading away from us and going up the hill [on the right side of the road]. We get some interesting optical effects that make it seem more mysterious.

I have seen similar optical effects with flashlights in the fog.
 
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  • #9
bassplayer142 said:
I have a hard to believe it is headlights. There are so many cars in so many conditions that you would think these lights would appear everywhere in the world considering the many highways and many unique conditions. North Michigan can't be one of the only places where car headlights are lined up right. Something more is playing its part if it is car headlights.

To be lined is not enough. The atmospheric conditions must be such that the Fata Morgana phenomenon is present. That is why the lights are visible only in certain nights.
 
  • #10
I live relatively close to Paulding, MI and am planning a trip to go see the light. I'm guessing that none of you have been to the Upper Peninsula (UP). It is sparsely populated, compared to the Lower part of the state. In my opinion there is no way that it can be headlights. I have been in the area once before and I'm not sure I would even call Paulding a town. The only thing there was a bar, which would constitute a town in the UP. There are very few roads and the nearest "real" towns are at least 10 miles in either direction. The site is really in the middle of nowhere. I will see if I can wrangle up a video camera and I will try to tape the event.

By the way. The people I've talked to who have been there and have seen the light say it disappears if someone tries to walk towards it.
 
  • #11
SoapDish said:
I live relatively close to Paulding, MI and am planning a trip to go see the light. I'm guessing that none of you have been to the Upper Peninsula (UP).

I spent Christmas in Iron Mountain one year. My sister-in-law used to live there.

I think you Yupers are nuts! It gets cooooooooold back there. :biggrin:
 
  • #12
I too think that they are nuts, but not because of the cold. It takes a different kind of person to make it up there. Its not THAT cold up there. if you want cold you should check out International Falls, MN now that's freaking cold!
 
  • #13
I was just talking to someone about the paulding light. I live 40 minutes from it. So i googled it. And i see a few people are in the dark on the situation. The bar u are talking about is jarvi's bar and then there is a gas station and ice cream store before you go to bond falls. Anyways i have gone there several times and do not believe it every time i go i hear people say they see it...its head lights and tail lights on highway 45. some people say it comes right up to the gaurd rail. but never have. People go there for something to do and yeah some people drink at the end of the road and walk around. But what i want anyone who wants answers is to go to google go to maps and search paulding michigan. follow highway 45 and go south. Your going to notice a road running north/south to the west of it, Keep going south until 45 intersects with that road. and you will see the name of the road. Old US Highway 45. zoom out you will see how it is vehicles. idk why they closed it but it is kinda a steep grade. Me personally i go there every once and a while to laugh. don't get me wrong i went there with and open mind, but after going there about 10 times its too funny. bring some friends go crack jokes on the people who will believe anything as far as that video i do believe its out of focus or having someone with highbeams on was too much for the camera to handle going from dark to bright. If your going to come up to the paulding light and waste time and money might as well go maybe an hour more north to see lake superior its way better then the light.
 
  • #14
SoapDish said:
I live relatively close to Paulding, MI and am planning a trip to go see the light. I'm guessing that none of you have been to the Upper Peninsula (UP). It is sparsely populated, compared to the Lower part of the state. In my opinion there is no way that it can be headlights. I have been in the area once before and I'm not sure I would even call Paulding a town. The only thing there was a bar, which would constitute a town in the UP. There are very few roads and the nearest "real" towns are at least 10 miles in either direction. The site is really in the middle of nowhere. I will see if I can wrangle up a video camera and I will try to tape the event.

Would you mind bringing a few friends over and triangulating the position of the lights? The news teams meant in that skeptoid link failed at triangulating, but if it is possible to see the lights from widely separated locations, I don't see why triangulation shouldn't be successful even if they are mirages.

By the way. The people I've talked to who have been there and have seen the light say it disappears if someone tries to walk towards it.

If you walk too close, yes; that makes sense. The Fata Morgana mirage is due to light going up, bending, and coming down again into the observer's eyes. As the observer moves closer, the light is forced to take a higher path; light rays on a low path travel a large horizontal distance between meeting the low-refraction-index air that bends them down again, meaning they'll overshoot the observer. Eventually, the angle required exceeds the critical angle for total internal reflection and the mirage disappears.
 
  • #15
sceptical?
 
  • #16
BigFairy said:
sceptical?

Me? Yes, but I was completely serious when I suggested the trigonometry experiment. If it's successful, and four different lines of sight to the lights converge on the same point on the same highway when plotted on a map, that's pretty conclusive evidence. If one person moves in on that point to monitor car activity there and discovers that the Paulding Light is perfectly predictable, even better.
 
  • #17
ideasrule said:
Would you mind bringing a few friends over and triangulating the position of the lights? The news teams meant in that skeptoid link failed at triangulating, but if it is possible to see the lights from widely separated locations, I don't see why triangulation shouldn't be successful even if they are mirages.



If you walk too close, yes; that makes sense.
If they are headlights, triangulating them will not work. They'd have to be pointed at you (so you can't get angular separation) to see the phenomena.

The best bet would be for one person to move toward them while another stays where they can be seen as the "Paulding Lights". It is essential to coordinate, otherwise confirmation bias will cause believers to reject the car as the source and just assume the lights didn't come out that night.

Also, for that ine video taken at dusk, it really should be possible to positively identify the source with binoculars or a telescope - or just drive down the road, it looks like the lights are seen on the road the people are viewing it from!
 
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  • #18
the Paulding light is real. I have been there and seen it. You can move closer to the light as you walk to it you will not realize that it is over the top of you and you can not follow it. They believe that it has to do with the rocks that are around the area. It is creepy there. You are down a dead end road that has no light any where around it. there is nothing but woods around it behind and it is light up like you are in the city.
 
  • #19
ideasrule said:
I don't see why triangulation shouldn't be successful even if they are mirages.
For the same reason you can't triangulate the end of a rainbow. Like all optical effects, the apparent location is an illusion of light rays. Triangulating is meaningless.
 
  • #20
You can't triangulate the end of a rainbow because the Sun's rays always come from a certain direction. I don't see why total internal reflection would change the direction that light rays come from.

I understand russ's concerns about the headlights not being lined up, but in the video the lights seemed to be moving at a 20-degree angle instead of directly towards/away from the camera. If one person goes to one side of the road and the another person goes to the other side, that's a decent 40-degree separation. I don't know whether it's actually possible to get this 40-degree separation, but it would sure be interesting to try!
 
  • #21
trkarraker said:
You can move closer to the light as you walk to it you will not realize that it is over the top of you and you can not follow it.
That's a run-on sentence, but it sounds like you are saying that if you move toward it, it will go over your head. Do you have/have you taken any pictures/video to show us what it looks like when trying to approach it?
 
  • #22
ideasrule said:
You can't triangulate the end of a rainbow because the Sun's rays always come from a certain direction. I don't see why total internal reflection would change the direction that light rays come from.
My original example (that I deleted) is of two people a mile apart trying to triangulate on a "road puddle" mirage. The fact that it is a mirage means that there is no objective spot that can be triangulated. They will get nonsenscial answers.

We do not know the source of the Paulding Lights, but if they are (as you yourself proposed) a mirage, then the same rules apply.
 
  • #23
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, in which case please explain.

If two observers a mile apart can see the actual, unrefracted, unreflected light from a car, observer A can record its bearing, say 20 degrees, and observer B can do the same with his bearing, say 50 degrees.

Suppose that the Paulding Lights originate from car headlights. A headlight's photons go up, are refracted by a vertical temperature gradient, and reach observer A's eyes. Observer A would still 20 degrees as the mirage's bearing, since there was no strong lateral temperature gradient to deflect the light horizontally. Observer B would still record 50 degrees. They go home, plot the appropriate lines, and get the same results they would have gotten if they saw the unrefracted light from the car.
 
  • #24
ideasrule said:
Maybe I'm missing something obvious, in which case please explain.

If two observers a mile apart can see the actual, unrefracted, unreflected light from a car, observer A can record its bearing, say 20 degrees, and observer B can do the same with his bearing, say 50 degrees.

Suppose that the Paulding Lights originate from car headlights. A headlight's photons go up, are refracted by a vertical temperature gradient, and reach observer A's eyes. Observer A would still 20 degrees as the mirage's bearing, since there was no strong lateral temperature gradient to deflect the light horizontally. Observer B would still record 50 degrees. They go home, plot the appropriate lines, and get the same results they would have gotten if they saw the unrefracted light from the car.
Weeeell OK... when you put in that way. But you are assuming some very specific conditions. I thought you were simply talking about a mirage, not the specific mirage you describe above. For example, your solution assumes refraction on only one axis; it requires that there is no refraction laterally, or it won't work.
 
  • #25
Well thanks for the heads up.
 
  • #26
im personaly interested..im going to check them out myself sometime btwn july 24th and the beginning of august...im deff. guna see bout taking some equipment to do my own research
 
  • #27
jane27 said:
im personaly interested..im going to check them out myself sometime btwn july 24th and the beginning of august...im deff. guna see bout taking some equipment to do my own research

If you want to do a test, check to see if the emission spectrum of the lights matches that of car headlights. You will probably solve the mystery right then and there.
 
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  • #28
yes that wld be a great test
 
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  • #29
Spectral measurements will likely be inconclusive or misleading unless you account for atmospheric absorption and the dispersion (prism effect) of the optical ducting.

I'll say this; if it's headlights you should start to see some bluer ones. Metal halide headlamps have very distintive spectra that could be distinguished from filamented headlamps.
 
  • #30
Antiphon said:
Spectral measurements will likely be inconclusive or misleading unless you account for atmospheric absorption and the dispersion (prism effect) of the optical ducting.

I'll say this; if it's headlights you should start to see some bluer ones. Metal halide headlamps have very distintive spectra that could be distinguished from filamented headlamps.

Yes, I was thinking more in terms of fingerprints rather the entire emission spectrum. Presumably, there would be clear peaks that would match.
 
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  • #31
Duh, it seems that there is a much easier way to do this. I would have expected the lights to be too bright to view directly, but it sounds like a telescope does the trick.

Using a telescope, we were able to identify the light as being the headlights and taillights of cars in the distance. The cars were driving on a hill north of Paulding on Hwy 45...
http://www.unexplainedresearch.com/files_anomalies/paulding_light.html
 
  • #32
russ_watters said:
...it really should be possible to positively identify the source with binoculars or a telescope -

I never saw this [old thread]. It sounds like that will do it.
 
  • #33
has anyone looked into the power lines overhead?? I don't know if it is possible for power lines to give that light off, but if so, would that not be an obvious source to check? could it not be an arc or some sort or a high voltage spark? maybe some optical illusion or anomoly stemming from the electricity?
 
  • #34
I believe I have explained the Paulding Light mystery using nothing more than Google satellite photos. See if you agree. First we'll take a look at the daytime view from the viewing area. Ridge two is where the light appears to come from http://www.flickr.com/photos/61718250@N00/4886952517/

Next we'll look at an aerial photo to compare the view from the viewing area to the geography of the area. In this photo you can see the two ridges from the previous picture as well as the viewing area. This is where my hypothesis comes into play. At the top of the photo you can also see three residences which are placed on top of the second ridge and the road which leads to these homes is in direct line of sight to the Paulding Light viewing area. http://www.flickr.com/photos/61718250@N00/4887554168/

Here is a closer image of the residences.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/61718250@N00/4886951205/

The last image will debunk the theory that the lights come from the highways. The area of forest cut out for the power line zig-zags to avoid a lake which means any line of sight to the highway would be obscured.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/61718250@N00/4886951865/

It seems that the Paulding Lights are, in fact, car lights. These are the cars that belong to the residents that live north of the viewing area. You would be able to see the lights as they were coming and going. If the residents have a sense of humor perhaps they sometimes turn on their lights from the ridge and give everyone down at the viewing area something to talk about later.

For an unedited google satellite photo of the site visit this address: http://maps.google.com/maps?client=...246,-89.172249&spn=0.032634,0.076475&t=h&z=14
 
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  • #35
ideasrule said:
Would you mind bringing a few friends over and triangulating the position of the lights? The news teams meant in that skeptoid link failed at triangulating, but if it is possible to see the lights from widely separated locations, I don't see why triangulation shouldn't be successful even if they are mirages.



If you walk too close, yes; that makes sense. The Fata Morgana mirage is due to light going up, bending, and coming down again into the observer's eyes. As the observer moves closer, the light is forced to take a higher path; light rays on a low path travel a large horizontal distance between meeting the low-refraction-index air that bends them down again, meaning they'll overshoot the observer. Eventually, the angle required exceeds the critical angle for total internal reflection and the mirage disappears.



Exactly the answer! From the evidence I've seen it is the Sun reflecting off the lake over 8 mis away in the distance then bouncing upward to create the mirage. That is why it is seen just after the Sun sets at Paulding and only lasts until the Sun sets behind the lake. With Google Map you can extend a line following the road/transmission line to the west and find the cause for the effect. With some digging you will probably find that the building of the road corresponds to the start of the lights. That cut acts as a lens. Of course, if it can be seen during a cloudy night that covers far over the horizon, then I'm wrong about the Sun.

Proof could be found by having a lift to observe from and seeing if the light shows at the same time from the base to the high point of the lift. If there is a difference, then it is a mirage effect. Great effect even though it is explainable.
 

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