Paulding — You won’t see any signs on US-45 telling you where to find Michigan’s only mystery light, yet somehow a small crowd has found its way to a makeshift viewing location on a dirt road in the western U.P. to see the light on the horizon.
While the eerie incandescence separates its visitors into believers and skeptics, the Paulding Light is real, and it’s something every Michigander should experience.
I saw it on a dark, cold August evening. It was not my first time going down the unmarked dirt road that ends with a metal barrier flanked on the right by power lines.
When I came with my family on vacation over a decade ago, locals were drinking in the backs of their pickup trucks and blasting music.
Now, it’s quiet and creepier than I remember. I think about how remote it is out here, how dark.
The Ottawa National Forest provides a beautiful, uncaring backdrop for the inexplicable incandescence. The outline of the trees form a dark backdrop as the light of day sinks behind them and the temperature drops.
Streetlights don’t appear this far west in the U.P., where the closest hospital is over half an hour away in Wisconsin. The closest tow truck is just as far. Towns are sparse out here, and the stores close early, even on a Friday.
Shortly after sunset, the Paulding Light appears, without fail. It’s a small orb of light that appears between the trees and the powerlines, changing between white and red. Some say it turns to green, as well.
Naysayers dismiss it as headlights and taillights, but the locals say the light appears even when roads are closed and travel is only possible by snowmobile. Longtime residents tell their children the light was visible before traffic lights and cars.
The locals prefer the story that the light comes from the tormented soul of an unfortunate train brakeman who met an untimely death and now haunts the former tracks with his lantern every night.
The Paulding General Store shares this view in a video played on a constant loop while you wait for ice cream. It also sells Paulding Mystery Light T-shirts with ghosts and the brakeman on them.
Another legend—the one I heard growing up—is that the light is caused by Pancake Joe. He tightropes on the powerlines using a frying pan for balance.
Despite the frying pan’s help, he still loses his balance, so Pancake Joe must step on the other powerline. Electricity then courses through his body and the pan, causing it to glow the distinctive red and white color seen by the watchful.
Another legend has it that a man chased a train in pursuit of his wife who was taken from him. He was killed, and the light signals he is still searching for her.
There are over a dozen people here in the inky black wilderness on a Friday, some nearly 2,000 miles from home. Lynn-Ann and her daughter are watching the light. They’re from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Others are here from Tucson, Arizona, and the Twin Cities.
Some people stay in their trucks, others approach the barrier with their smartphones high above them to document what they can see with their own eyes but not fully explain.
That’s the magnetic pull of the Paulding Mystery Light: It demands to be seen in person. A zoomed-in cell phone video can’t capture it the same way.
Unlike most unexplained phenomena, this is a group experience. Those brave enough to venture into the darkness in pursuit of it are rewarded with the reassurance that we’re all seeing the same thing, none of us are crazy.
We’re all out in the dark to watch the same orb of light emanating between the trees and the powerlines, staring at the intersection of the visible and the believed.
Brendan Clarey is deputy editor of Michigan Enjoyer.
