Another Mysterious Mystery

The annual selfie!

As some of you may know, there’s a very mysterious mystery that has been mystifying people in Joplin, MO since 1836 : The Ghost Lights!

What are ghost lights?

Strange balls of light that appear suddenly upon a darkened highway known as The Devil’s Promenade bounce around and just as suddenly disappear.

No one actually knows what the light is, where it comes from, or—apparently—where they really show up because they’re called The Joplin Ghost Lights but the road they appear on is actually just across the border in Oklahoma.

Enough people have seen these lights over the years that the Army Corps of Engineers actually came out to investigate. They couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on, unless people were seeing the reflection of lights from passing cars on a highway a few miles away.

Which just goes to show you that, although I have a great deal of respect for the Army Corps of Engineers, they must not be careful readers because, once again, the lights have been appearing since 1836.

Not a lot of cars bopping around in 1836.

Unless, now that I think of it, the Army Corps of Engineers was trying to hint that there was some sort of weird TIME PORTAL that cars are driving through…or getting caught in…getting caught in and endlessly traveling down The Devil’s Promenade, trying to lure unsuspecting travelers to the same horrible fate…

Kind of glad I didn’t come up with THAT theory while Eric and I were driving The Devil’s Promenade last weekend or I might have completely freaked out.

Because, yes, you guessed it, The Hadley – Yates Vacation this year was Joplin, Missouri to investigate the mysterious mystery of the ghost lights.

Though I have to be honest, the first mysterious mystery that mystified us was the exact location of The Devil’s Promenade. Because, as I’ve said before, Eric and I are not what you would call navigational geniuses. And it might surprise you to know that these are not the type of locations easily found on Google Maps. I’m also shocked to report that the kind of websites that give you directions to ghost lights can be a little…well…can I say sketchy?

In fact on our first sojourn to The Devil’s Promenade Friday night, our directions said we needed to follow Highway 86 for a couple of miles to Highway BB then turn on Gum Road. And we never found Highway 86 or BB…though we did find Highway 43 which I reasoned was half of 86 and therefore likely to take us to the same place.

I will now pause for my husband Opie, my mom, and other logically minded folks to yell things like “Are you out of your damn minds?!”

And I won’t even gloat when I tell you that this plan actually worked –we found Gum Road and Highway 51 and the alleged Devil’s Promenade (also known as Spirit Light Road)

Did we find the Ghost Lights of Joplin?

I don’t know…we saw lots of lights. Some of which could have been the reflection of car lights on another highway a few miles away, some that could have been radio towers in the distance, a couple that could have been enormous mutant fireflies (Or Fireflies of Unusual Size if you’re a Princess Bride fan) but we didn’t see anything that could definitively been called ghost lights.

I can tell you that we were chagrined (mostly because I like the word chagrin and try to use it whenever I can) but not defeated. We went back to Joplin, where we were staying at the same garage apartment Bonnie and Clyde hid out for several weeks in 1933 and were immediately mystified with another mysterious mystery. Specifically, what is the name of this piece of furniture:

Is it a divan (that was my guess…but, again, mostly because I like the word divan)? Is it a chaise lounge (that was Eric’s guess…and, though he wouldn’t admit it, I suspect he just likes the word chaise)? After a lot of Internet research (and, to be honest, a lot of wine) we were actually more mystified as it could also be a Davenport, a settee, or even a Chesterfield.

Anyone know?? It’s seriously sending me right over the edge.

In any case, Eric and I are not the kind of investigators who let these kind of things distract us. We are the kind of investigators who go to the Joplin Museum Complex to do more research, find this rather sad display:

 

Seriously, this was in an actual MUSEUM.

and then get distracted by one of the most random collections of alleged artifacts I’ve ever seen. Like the creepy china doll collection…or the circus collection of things from circuses in other cities…or the Cookie Cutter Collection...like I said, random.

Got this little gem  FREE at the National
Cookie Cutter  Museum -- vintage clown! Jealous, aren't you?

We’re also the kind of investigators who get distracted by the fact that we are somewhat near the exact spot where Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma intersect and we could go there and—after a literal TWO HOUR search—drink a toast to 20 years of vacations in THREE STATES AT ONCE.  I won’t bore you with all the details of this epic journey, I’ll just say it involved a few of signs like this one,

more than a little swearing and a few shouts of things like “We’re off the map, how in hell did we get off the map?!” and “Are you freaking kidding me, are we back in Oklahoma?” It also involved a few selfies where we laughed like little kids about being in separate states even though we were in the same car,

I'm in Kansas and Eric's in Missouri!

a teeny-tiny bit of what some people call trespassing but we prefer to think of as exploring, and a slightly disconcerting trip down a gravel road just north of a buffalo preserve.

But we found it, that’s the point!

Feeling suitably fortified by success, we decided to go back to our hotel, fortify ourselves with more wine, then sleep until 11:00 and go back out to The Devil’s Promenade.

And, for those of you who are shaking your heads and saying things like “Remember when we were young and pre-partied at someone’s house and didn’t even hit the bars until 11:00?” I would just like to remind you that in our misspent youth, Eric and I actually used to go out to the bars really early when you didn’t have to wait in line for a drink and we could OWN the dance floor. When the rest of you people showed up, we started talking about going home.

But I digress..

We set the alarm, stumbled around grumbling at each other until we got our hands on some coffee, and drove back out.

Did we see the lights?

Again, I don’t know.  We saw SOMETHING.  And when we got back and took a closer look at the pictures, we saw that we had one with what could very well be a Ghost Light in the upper corner left hand corner…it’s not in the direction of the other highway, it wasn’t a radio tower…we don’t know what it was.

So, we are still mystified by the mysterious mystery in Joplin, we still don’t know the name of that weird piece of furniture, we still struggle with basic directions but I think we have a pretty clear understanding why neither of our spouses ever want to come on our annual trip!