By JJJ on Sunday, November 2, 2003 - 03:56 am:
THE DOG MEADOW LIGHTS/PAULDING LIGHT
THE DOG MEADOW LIGHTS off hwy 45, north of hwy 2. On hwy 45 going north
3.5 miles north of American Motel-Casino is on the right on hwy 45
5.4 miles north of hwy 2 on hwy 45
Turn left (north on compass) you will drive down a dead end road less than a half-mile
A sign about THE DOG MEADOW LIGHTS is on the left. There may be several other cars. Turn headlights off use parking lights? They might not plow the snow on the dead end road in the winter? They can get 300 inches of snow in the winter. The snow might not be melted till after the end of April? I have been there in December and could drive down the road. I do not think the snow was plowed but just packed down from all the cars that go down there to see THE DOG MEADOW LIGHTS at night.
You can walk north toward the light down a path leaving your car at the end of the dead end road. You
Can’t walk to far before you come to a small creek. It was only a foot deep in the summer. If you could find some long logs you might be able to cross it. It might be frozen in the winter. If you can get across the creek the trail starts to go up the railroad grade. (I would like to go further up the railroad grade next time I go. If I could get across the creek.) I would bring water proof boots in the summer, cross country skies, snow shoes or a snowmobile in the winter if the creek was frozen, a compass, GPS, flash light, binoculars, Waki Talkies, spotlight, maybe a road map to see if the light is coming off of hwy 45 since you see white lights and red lights, which I think, are head lights and tail lights? But here is the story that was copied out of a ghost book. They call it the THE DOG MEADOW LIGHTS from the book, which has about 15 ghost stories. Some one found the book in the library several years ago and made copies. Here is the story from the book.
THE DOG MEADOW LIGHTS
Vacationers to the Eagle River area of Wisconsin find peace and relaxation in the northern playground of lakes and woods. But now they’re finding something else… mysterious lights that linger in the skies about thirty miles north of Eagle River (five miles north of Watersmeet, Michigan).
Although some local people claim to have seen the strange lights over a long period of time, the first reported sighting was in 1966. A carload of teen-agers had stopped one clear evening along a swampy area of the old Military Road called Dog Meadow. Suddenly brilliance filled the car’s interior and lit the power lines paralleling the road. The frightened young people fled to report their experience to the local Sheriff. Since that time many have witnessed the phenomenon, but none can explain it.
Local lore spins haunting legends. Some say that one night, about forty years ago, a railroad switchman, lantern in hand, was crushed to death between two cars while attempting to signal the train’s engineer. Others say that an engineer was murdered along the railroad grade where the lights appear. A third story tells of a mail carrier and his sled dogs who were mysteriously slain a hundred years ago at Dog Meadow. The lights appear near the scenes of these various alleged tragedies and are thought to be connected with them. The lights can be seen on almost every clear night in all seasons of the year.
One motorist, coming over the crest of the gravel road that runs parallel to the old abandoned track bed, faced a golden bull’s eye and thinking it to be a one-eyed car, pulled off the road to avoid a head-on collision. There was no car.
On a frigid winter evening, a group of snowmobiles came upon the light. Not knowing what to make of it and badly frightened, they tried to surround it, to no avail. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
On another night, a drunken fellow from Eagle River shot at the light but it disappeared first. The light is usually the size of a weather balloon, appearing on the northwest horizon and seeming to move toward the northeast.
On a hot June evening in 1977, Elmer Lenz and Harold Nowak of Wisconsin decide to check out the phenomenon. A newspaper account said that no sooner had they parked their car on the gravel road than the light appeared-a bright spotlight shinning directly at them. It moved closer, backed away, appeared at an angle from time to time. To lenz, who grew up in the shadow of a railroad yard, it looked like the headlight of a train.
Suddenly a smaller light appeared below the large light and slightly to the right. Lenz recalled that “the two, at times, seemed to move together, then apart, one or the other disappearing, then showing again.“ The movements, he reasoned, were those of a switchman would make in signaling with a lantern. Sometimes the light changed color from white to red and occasionally a dim green. Lenz judged the light to be “two or three blocks away.”
After watching for an hour, Lenz, still skeptical of any supernatural basis for the phenomenon, determined to catch the pranksters responsible. He approached, the lights seemed to disappear down over the next rise but cast a bright glow in the sky.
A half mile later, finding nothing that might explain the mystery, the pair turned around and the lights reappeared over the rise. When they reached their car, other observers said that, in the man’s absence, they’d seen a large red light above a small white one in the middle of the road a block ahead of them. These lights would have been between the men and their car.
Two hours later, the men drove ahead for some distance, parked, and shut off the headlights. The lights reappeared, the large headlight and the smaller one beneath it beaming down the middle of the road. A minute later, the headlight vanished, and the smaller light, Lenz said, “seemed to touch down and burst into three.” The outer two lights disappeared, but the third remained, about two hundred feet away. Nowak snapped on the headlights but the light in the road didn’t move. Then, several minutes later, it rose slowly to a height of four or five feet and vanished.
Of his experience, Lenz, still perplexed, said, “No teen-agers, no flashlights, no strings attached.”
Charlie Gumm disagreed. His search led him to a secluded but well-used side road leading up to a plateau. He suspected that teen-agers manipulated the lights from there. Nightly? In temperatures of
Twenty degrees below zero? At five o’clock in the morning? It seems unlikely.
Yet, if the light show is not the work of pranksters, what is it? Similar lights along railroad tracks have been observed in other parts of the country, notably at Maco Station near Wilmington, North Carolina. Could they be caused by a luminous gas of some seismologists theorize that the weight of glacial ice in the area has created conditions favorable to future earthquakes, that the earth’s crust, compressed eons ago by massive ice sheets, is now trying to expand to its original contour and, in the process, causing luminous gases to escape through faults in the crust. Although anomalous lights are frequently associated with earthquakes, their presence does not necessarily predict quakes. So far, the study of the earthquake lights raises many questions but offers few answers.
Meanwhile, curious sightseers throng the Dog Meadow area. They watch the lights. They listen to the legends. And they wonder.
By Lefty lu ,wi on Tuesday, April 27, 2004 - 03:04 pm:
I have seen the paulding light to it is real
By cale lyttinen, Tapiola Michigan on Tuesday, January 11, 2005 - 10:24 am:
how come people dont have any pictures of the paulding light. i need some pictures for a presentation. i have been searching far and wide for one picture. please send me a picture
