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Good morning and welcome to In Our Range.
I'm your host, Mike LeBeau.
Joining me on this special presentation of In Our Range is local artist and historian Larry Peterson.
He joins me this morning on Halloween weekend to mine through the history of the spooky and apparent normal events of life here on The Range.
Good morning, Larry.
Good morning.
Thank you for the nice introduction.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, it's good to have you back on here.
You know, I was trying to think of what to do for this week's In Our Range, and I thought, you know, let's just delve back and talk about some spookier things about life here on The Range.
And so,
came up with this topic I hope people find interesting.
So descriptions of spooky characters and events in the Northwoods go really, really far back in time, long before the first miners and lumberjacks ever set foot on the range.
From the hodag in Rhinelander to the pauling light near Watersmeet, these phenomena which make up part of our culture have their origins and tales of ancient Ojibwe history and lore.
Modern sightings of Bigfoot in the Porkies are just a recent chapter in ancient tales where the Ojibwe described the Windigo.
The Ojibwe legend of Leninah and Little Girl's Point describes the Pukwajanis, or the Little People.
There are many names for these Pukwajanis.
Ojibwe legends of the Little People correlate to similar legends in Iroquois tribes of the Northeast.
The Windigo and Bigfoot still permeate our imaginations and with new sightings and stories to this day.
The little people are almost a universal trade.
Yeah, like
gnomes and fairies.
Especially
the Irish with the shining and leprechaun and nobody matters a little folk.
And you find that, you know, all through history is people would be seeing these fairy-like folk or, you know, in relation to Little Girl's Point and the legend of, you know, that.
And even, like, remember the controversy that was at Lewis Carroll?
these girls fake these fairies and for a long time people actually thought these two kids were photographing various you know just very clever photographers and you know doing things like that
yeah when I got into studying the legend of little girls point and this idea of the little people and a few years ago I'd found like a really great resource online that I couldn't find recently but
stories of these little people here on the range come up even into more recent history like when the Ojibwe would have these territorial battles with the Sioux as the Sioux would come back east.
There's even a story of how the little people helped push back the Sioux tribes and aided the Ojibwe in their battles with them and I find that really interesting how these legends live.
right here in this land that we occupy today.
But today I wanted to focus on two local phenomenon they keep coming up for me.
They involve displays of glowing lights, sometimes even orbs that are floating in the sky.
And the most talked about one and the subject of one of the subjects of our talk today is the Paulding Light, which is just north of Water's Meat.
And then the other one involves the reports of flying glowing orbs or UFOs.
Both of these also have roots in Ojibwe legends indicating that they're not just simply a recent explainable phenomenon.
Definitely, prior to the European impact and then quite a while after the European impact.
Even as Ojibwaz were becoming more and more Christian, Catholic in particular, they still held on to large parts of their allegiance and their original religion or however they saw things.
And one of them was known as a bear walker.
If somebody died a disturbing death or something like that, chances are
a bear walker, which could be an animal, it could be a person, or it could be both.
Because it was going through transformations, and I can't get into the nuances here, but a lot of times, because of disorderly death or disturbing death or something like that, there would be this habitation of a bear walker.
Now, before you went to see if there was a bear walker on the grave site, the reason why it would do that, because before the actual confirmation,
There were these orbs, these circular lights that you were talking about, and they would see these and it would...
Bear Walker is, you know, so I mean that is in relation to there, whether it's mythology or whatever it is, I'm not, you know, I'm not a mythologist and non-anthropologist, but it's sort of coincidental to what you were talking about.
One other thing, I want to give a real local, local history.
Before Hurley was ever founded, okay, even before Raphael Pumpelli had his campsite on there where the gas tanks were,
To the Ojibwa, where Silver Street and etc would be, it was known as the dwelling place of the wasa moan.
Now the wasa moan were these huge thunderbirds.
So when somebody kicked off the wasa moan, the flapping of the wings, thunder.
and the flashing in the eyes lighten it.
So Hurley was jumping even before it had Silver Street.
Yeah, and the Thunderbirds have this deep place in Ojibwe lore as in relation to the great panther spirit of Mishupeshu, who lives in Lake Superior and creates all the turbulence and danger
in the Thunderbirds.
The huge sturgeon, too.
They had
this
legend of a sturgeon every time when it became...
in motion and move its tail or something like that and canoes would be just going under and you have like a Tussami from this big Lake Superior surgeon.
Yeah, so you're mentioning these orbs.
I myself have seen orbs.
When I first moved here, I met a fella who would tell me stories about how people see UFOs here pretty regularly and they usually
are like orbs and I thought, oh, that's kind of wild.
And I had a UFO sighting back when I lived in Tennessee.
And I don't want to get too into it here.
But then that summer, I'm sitting around a campfire.
I'm almost right across the street from Riverside Cemetery right there.
And I'm looking west.
you know and it's late into the evening so there's sun still out on the horizon and i see this glowing light and i just thought it was like a satellite moving across the night sky i was still getting used to how beautiful and open and clear the night skies are when we live up here and i thought just dismissed it as a satellite and i pointed it out to other people they turned around okay then i went back to doing whatever it was i was doing around the campfire when all of a sudden
people who were facing across from me looking the other direction said they saw one and it was coming from the other direction and then I looked up in that satellite that I was tracking which they normally stay on a steady course they just don't they don't ever it changed direction it veered southwest to south and then we looked in these two orbs they look like glowing white orbs no blinking lights nothing just glowing white orbs way off in the distance going so high and no sound they met
Kind of south of in the direction that we were looking at it just stayed there and then boom took off I was there with maybe eight nine other people and we all watched it just shocked The craziest part about this
Happened like ten minutes later.
We were told that the Air Force and Duluth was going to be doing training exercises that during that weekend like they often do where you see the f-18s or the f-16s, you know coming in there.
They're doing training exercises We started to hear fighter jets
Ripping towards us from Duluth long before we could see them or you hear these jet engines and we're like what is that?
These Jedi these jets two of them were flying pretty low much lower than these orbs were made a huge sound that you could hear forever and they were just Screaming off in the direction that we had all watched these two orbs go all right and it almost looked silly it looked like Somebody on a bicycle trying to catch up with somebody in an F1
The Formula One racing car, it just seemed so silly.
But that's my description of seeing orbs, and I've heard other stories where people have seen orbs, you know, literally hovering over their house and being able to observe them for moments and moments at a time.
And I wonder if other people out there on the range have had similar experiences.
I've had people tell me about sighting orbs in the area that you're talking about.
almost like a bright red ball that was ascending and descending and be there one moment and then it wouldn't be.
And they were at a distance where they couldn't just run around the corner and see what the heck it was, but certainly definitely there.
What it is, who knows?
I know it could be.
And there's even recent video of people seeing them over Lake Superior and up in Copper Harbor.
and up near on to noggin places like that there's there's video of them where you'll see three of them and they're moving around and they move in formation and they change they're not just like like elons the satellites and a string across the sky they're moving independently and changing speed and direction and it's really it's really pretty wild but yeah
upon an entry um along the lines of what you're discussing
And I was going through old newspapers on a lot of microfilm and I don't know the exact date, but it was some sometime in 1891, I believe there was a lighthouse some place in Chippewa, Michigan Bay I don't remember the name of the lighthouse or the exact location, but the arrangement was a little different and the keeper
Was hearing the starter come out of nowhere.
No, this wasn't in the middle of the summer.
This was more towards fall.
I I can't give you the exact probably an October something like now.
Here's this loud thundering and Looked out over the lake and he sees this meteorite going across Just over the surface of the lake and then when it hit the water it exploded your big big explosion.
That was it
You know, nobody ever determined what it was.
It was just mentioned as sort of, you know, this human interest story, you know, and it's like, is the lighthouse keeper watching this meteorite crash into Link Superior?
You know, and just because they're so hot and that lake is so cold, you can imagine.
But I don't know how much factual basis that has or not, but I figured I'd just throw that in since you're talking about orbs,
you know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's move the conversation now over to the paulding light, which is the glowing light that really draws a lot of attention to the gogebic range here and our listening range, just north of Waters Meet.
All of our listeners probably know.
For many decades now, the hubbub really kicked up around 1966 when a group of teenagers were hanging out there and pauling off a old Highway 45 and saw this light.
The light appears white and then it turns red.
Some people say they see green.
Some people say they see it go up and down and up and down and it appears pretty much every night as long as there's no fog or super cloudiness.
And the tale is that it's a railroad worker who's trying to warn a train coming of some dangers ahead.
and gets killed by the train and loses his head and he's out there still trying to warn people.
Some people say it's ridiculous that there would be railroad tracks on this land because it is the dog valley or whatever.
And so the hills, there's no railroad grade.
So the story might have adjusted to a railroad guy got in a fight with another fella at a tavern.
Some say it was a conductor and he's looking for damage on the track.
So let's
say what he was when he just described.
But I've heard no, even when
had a psychic author and tried to make contact with him.
So I mean, we're going through the whole evolution of how people have sort of handled the polling area.
So the phenomenon has been so consistent and so many people that there's actually like a historical marker, like a state marker and a parking area for people to go view it any time of the year and people really do still come out
have like an evening picnic, late night picnic in the summer to come out and see this
thing.
I'm surprised by the number of people that have told me they've seen the Paul Dinten light or something like that.
And, you know, I expect them to say, well, I sort of undulate some Paul's of topography and it's, you know, reflections off the highway and everything else.
And most people, I'd say, well, what do you think?
They go, you know, most of them go damn straight.
Yeah.
You know, I don't know what it is.
I don't know.
We try to figure it out, but it's up snake
eyes.
People have tried to walk directly towards it to get closer to it.
And they say that it just always stays in the distance or disappears.
And they just find themselves out there in the middle of
nowhere.
And I'm glad it stays that way.
I want it in limbo.
Having a little mystery is nice.
Tourists
loved it, you
know.
In 2010, a group of folks from Michigan Tech University, you know, went out there and studied things with telescopes and all kinds of special instruments and mathematics and they claimed to prove what people are seeing are headlights coming in one direction on highway 45 and tail lights going in the other direction.
But still, to this day, the mystery remains because so many people will say, well, where I saw the light and how I saw the light.
It's very different than the lights they're claiming they're seeing coming off the highway and that distance from where the viewpoint is to where there could be a clearing to see It's about six miles or so and it does get really dark.
There's not a lot of light pollution
I get a little upset with science campaigning though to have the answers for everything you got an explanation for you We can't explain it, but we can we can tell you about it, you know, and it's like
Some things are going to remain a mystery, and that's the way it ought to be, I suppose, you know?
I
think so, too.
People need to go on intuition and from their own experience.
So, the mystery still remains for a lot of people, and it is a phenomenon that can be exciting and spooky if you ever go out there.
It can be seen all year round, so...
If you're gonna talk about you awful sightings.
besides the orbs.
The time between around 1962 and 1966, there were a lot of sightings on the Gurgibag Ranch, I mean a lot of UFOs.
Like nurses that were working with the DeWine infant hospital, you know, without having a cigarette or something, you know, and all of a sudden, I mean they all saw this, they all described it, you know, it was in detail, and it's like,
was mentioned and, you know, never heard of it again.
Then somebody else in 1966 is riding around on one of the back roads and, you know, definitely sees something.
It'd be interesting, you know, how many sightings there were on the ranch.
And if anything like that could ever be compiled, make an interesting book.
I think it's one thing that I really appreciate about living here is when you live here in the North Woods and like where we live,
there's still very palpable sense that we live in an ancient land you know and these tales they take on kind of a different tone and flavor up here than they do in other places that you know are more modern and urban and have a lot more people
It just feels spookier and unique.
Some of you are in a place where legends still feel very alive today.
Some places like what you're talking about in relation to this area, the folklore as well as everything else you're talking about sort of just meshes itself almost physically into the culture.
Okay.
Like, you know, it's not just the passage.
There's a whole folklore to it.
There's multiple legends for Little Girl's Point.
There's not just one story that is slapped on a sign, okay?
So there's always more substance.
There's always more to work with than people realize.
But that's why they write books, okay?
That's right.
And when it's all said and done, you don't really know when you know.
I like it that
way.
Well Larry, thank you so much for joining us this morning and I hope everyone out there has a spooky paranormal tense but safe Halloween weekend.
Have a great time.
This is Mike LeBeau for In Our Range and we will catch you back here next week.