Haunted Wisconsin

The Paulding Light Mystery

Ezra Zeitler first heard about the Paulding Light when he was a high school student in Minocqua. “On Monday mornings students would come back and say they had seen the Paulding Light over the weekend and it was real scary and mysterious,” Zeitler recalled. Despite the captivating stories, he didn’t make the 120-mile round trip to the Paulding area, just over the Wisconsin border in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, for several years. Ezra’s younger brother, Micah Zeitler, heard similar stories. He eventually made the trip because his friends “guaranteed” him that he would see the mystery light. He was impressed with what he saw and heard, including that the spirit of a dead trainman produced the light. “I told everyone I’d seen a ghost.” Micah and Ezra, however, eventually went one step further once they got to college in River Falls. They shared the tale of the Paulding Light with their geography professor. The three of them set off to uncover the truth about the light. Their results may once and for all reveal the origins of this particular mystery light, at least for those willing to accept something less than a paranormal explanation. The Zeitler brothers certainly are not alone in their interest in what has alternately been called the Paulding Light, the Watersmeet Light, the Dog Meadow 48 The Paulding Light Mystery Light, or, simply, the Mystery Light. For decades, thousands of visitors have made the nightly trek north out of Eagle River, Wisconsin, on U.S. 45, through Watersmeet, Michigan, to a point about a dozen miles from the Wisconsin state line. The visitor turns off on an old gravel road about four miles north of Watersmeet, drives up the hill, and parks. If it’s a “good” night, a dim, glowing orb of white light will appear in the far distance. The light may vanish for a period of time, only to reappear moments later. Sometimes other lights appear with it. During winter and early spring, the light may appear only infrequently. Theories abound as to what causes the light. Some believe it must be supernatural . To these folks, the light glows from the lantern of a long-dead trainman, or maybe a slain dogsled musher. Some have even attributed it to passing UFOs draining energy from some nearby power lines. More earth-bound observers maintain the light might be produced by methane gas escaping from a fissure in the earth. Others say the phenomenon is nothing more than the reflection of lights from boats on Lake Superior or cars on a distant highway. Tourism officials quickly recognized the allure of the light. One vacation brochure calls it the Watersmeet Mystery Light and includes it in the same sentence as a local trout hatchery. Another brochure listing “Things to Do” in the Watersmeet region gives the phenomenon its own paragraph: The “Light” appears almost every night after dark on a lonely old gravel road and has defied explanation for years. It appears to arise from the horizon, glows like a beacon, splits, changes color and mysteriously disappears as quickly as it came. But how did the legend of the Paulding Light come to be, and what will one see in that pocket of wilderness? Despite the insistence of some locals—and tourism promoters—the “mystery ” of the light is usually traced no farther back than the mid-1960s, when a carload of teenagers stopped one clear evening on a gravel road near the swampy area known as Dog Meadow. Suddenly, the teens claimed, brightness filled the car’s interior and lit the power lines parallel to the road. They were so frightened they fled back to town and reportedly told the sheriff what they had seen. Another of the earliest documented sightings came from two Wisconsin men, Harold Nowak and Elmer Lenz, who told a newspaper reporter that they parked their car on the gravel road and the light appeared in the distance—a bright spotlight shining directly at them. The light moved closer, backed away, and even appeared at an angle from time to time. Lenz grew up near a rail yard and he said the light looked just like a locomotive headlamp. The Paulding Light Mystery 49 The men said a smaller light appeared below and slightly to the right of the large, white light. “The two, at times, seemed to move together, then...