In the woods of Missouri lurks a spectral phantasm.

The spooklight, a glowing orb that legend says people have been seeing ever since there

have been people there to see it.

Some say it's sources unknown, others say it must have a supernatural explanation.

Today, we're going to find out just what it is that terrifies people in the night in

the Missouri woods.

The Hornet Spooklight is coming up right now on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid, I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com, illuminating the Hornet

Spooklight.

It goes by many names, the Hollis light, the Joplin spooklight, the Ozark spooklight, the

Tri-State spooklight, the Hornet spooklight, or often just the spooklight.

It has as many spooky explanations as it has names, that it's the lantern of a minor

of old searching for his lost family, that it's the spirits of forbidden lovers who plunged

off a cliff, that it's the ghost of a murdered Native American chief.

Whatever it is, the Hornet Spooklight has been fascinating eyewitnesses for many, many

years, and continues to be reported as unsolved, or as confounding all efforts to identify

it.

Today we're going to shine the light of science on this wondrous apparition.

Hornet Missouri is so small that it hasn't even had its own post office since 1902.

It's an unincorporated community amid the beautiful green farmlands of Western Missouri,

not far from the state's meeting with Kansas and Oklahoma.

It's only about eight miles from the city of Joplin, which is also known for the same

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