Night at Michigan’s Paulding Light

The Paulding light in Michigan is not a very well-known place unless you are a local. Most locals can tell you the story of how the light came to be.

I could not tell you the dirt road it was on if the road is even there anymore. I have not been there since the early 90s. I could not say what has become of the old spot many have come to see these mysterious lights. Google says it is in Bruce's Crossing in Michigan. It shows how to get there, so I must assume there has to be some part of the old road left for onlookers to take a gander at this weird light that comes out every night.

The picture below is the last time I had seen the old spot. They put a railing up because the road caved in. This is the road that they claim the tracks used to be on.

The story has it…

The light is from a railroad brakeman. The legend states that the valley once contained railroad tracks and the light is the lantern of the brakeman who was killed while attempting to stop an oncoming train from colliding with railway cars stopped on the tracks.

A big sign-up at the beginning of the road explains this story. The road that has the sign is claimed to be where the railroad tracks use to be years ago.

The first sighting was back in the ’60s A group of teens reported seeing the light to the local police.

I had gone there many times to see the light. Years ago in the early 90s, I went with a group of friends. This is when the road was still intact. Now the rain has caved the road in and you can't even walk down halfway anymore.

We went before dawn and walked down the road. It split like the letter Y. Rumor has it a hermit lived somewhere in those woods.

I also heard that the tv show unsolved mysteries even went to investigate. Without an explanation. Scientists went and some say it was swamp gases, some say it’s headlights and tail lights coming from the highway behind the woods.

I can tell you from all the experience that it is not car light of any kind and nor do I believe it to be swamp gases.

I had brought binoculars with me so I could see close up to the light. Mind you this light comes out every single night. If you chose to go see if you are in for a good show.

Through the binoculars I saw all kinds of colors and where does green, yellow, and blue come from car lights. I saw all those colors from what looked like a circular changing color lantern. However, there was no lantern, nothing, just these colored lights dancing just above the tree line.

Not that I think it’s the lantern from the brakeman. Just that’s what it looked like. You only could see the colors with the binoculars. The eye only showed as an off-white dot.

Every ten minutes the light would rise past the tree line and stay up for five minutes maybe a bit longer at times, then go back down. I took a couple of pictures off a Google here to share how it looks, just above the tree line, and other times it could be a lot lower.

If this was gases or car lights why did when we shined our car lights at it,

and flashed our car light at it, the light would not come back up for a longer period. For almost a half-hour we had to wait. When it was very consistent before that, about every ten minutes.

Some kids claim the light had come up close to their car, and jumped on top of their car when they flashed their car lights at it. This is why we tried the same, not getting the same results, unfortunately.

This is my true encounter with the Paulding Lights or the Dog Meadow Lights.