There was no snow in the forecast, but that didn’t stop the ice storm that struck Fish Lake Valley in the middle of the night. By the next morning, there was a dusting of snow on the ground and a slick of ice on the back deck of our house. That was enough to lead to this week’s paranormal story.
My mother and I stayed inside for most of the day as we waited for the ice to melt, but it didn’t. The temperature remained far below freezing for most of the day. Around six o’clock that evening, I asked Mom to go to the mother-in-law quarters and get some chicken from the extra fridge. A few moments later, I heard a loud thud as she slipped on the ice and broke her arm. The ambulance came shortly after to take her to the emergency room in Bishop, California.
She was gone several hours before the emergency room physician called home to say I could pick her up. I was not looking forward to driving in all the ice, but I had no choice in the matter. They were not going to keep her overnight and I wasn’t going to let her sit in the emergency room all night, so I packed up several things, loaded the dogs in the car, and started the slow, cautious drive to Bishop.
On the way I ran into several hazards. There were many ice patches, forcing me to drive slow. At one point a giant jackrabbit sat down in the middle of the road and I ended up killing it because I didn’t want to slam on the brakes on the ice. Even in the car I was driving, I would’ve spun out.
After that shake-up, I continued on the journey through Ice World. There was no one on the road right now, but as I neared an old house near the north end of the valley, a single blue light appeared in the distance. I didn’t think much of it at first, assuming it was just an approaching car. However, the light never got any bigger as I approached.
I passed the house and the light, which appeared to be suspended over the road. Doing a double take, I cautiously stopped the car, rolled down the window, and looked again. There was the little, orb-shaped light hanging about twenty feet above the road. It didn’t move, nor did it make a sound.
I looked at it for a few minutes, then shrugged and rolled up the window. Perhaps there was a light fixture hanging on a wire over the road. Making a mental note to check it out tomorrow morning, I headed to Bishop to pick up Mom. We stayed the night in a motel so I didn’t have to tackle the ice a second time in one evening.
Fortunately for us, the ice had melted the next day and our drive was smooth. As we passed the old house at the north end of the valley, however, I saw no wires crossing the road. There were no light fixtures that could’ve created the glow that I saw yesterday evening.
It doesn’t happen every time, but every once in a while when driving after dark, I will see that little blue orb hovering over the road. I don’t know what it is or what it represents, it’s just there. I often wonder if other people have seen it and wondered what it is. The old house where it appears is a leftover maintenance station from before the road was paved, but I don’t know how that would have anything to do with this strange sighting.
The question is why is it there in the first place? Is it some kind of weird reflection? Many ghost lights around the world are found to be reflections of light from other locations, such as highways or buildings. However, Fish Lake Valley is an extremely remote area of the Nevada desert and there were no cars on the road when I was out that icy evening.
Perhaps it was a reflection from a water pivot in one of the alfalfa fields. These lights come on when the pivot moves and turn off when it stops, making them transient and somewhat creepy in the darkness. The light I saw that night had about the right proportions for one of the pivot bulbs.
There are some problems with this hypothesis, however. First of all, the lights on the Fish Lake Valley pivots are usually yellow or white, not blue. Secondly, it was the middle of winter and none of the pivots were operating at the time I saw the light. That pretty much eliminates this idea.
Could it have been a reflection from another light? Not at the time. Though there is now a large development present near the old house, it did not exist at the time I spotted the light. The only house for miles around was the old one where the light appeared. There were no porch lights or lights from inside the house that could’ve reflected over the road, either.
Perhaps it was a more distant light that was somehow refracted and reflected over the highway. It’s entirely possible. However, none of the lights I could see in the distance were blue. They were all those orange-yellow halogen jobs. This does not mean that refraction didn’t change the color of the light, especially with all the moisture in the air that evening.
One more thing about that, though. The light has appeared on several nights but it has not appeared on all of them. If it were a reflection of a distant light, it would be consistent and appear every night, assuming the light it was reflected from was lit every night. If it was caused by the moisture in the air, it does not explain why it’s appeared on dry nights when the humidity was in single digits.
The riddle of the Dyer ghost light continues to make me scratch my head. I’m sure there is a perfectly logical explanation for it, but so far I have not determined what it is. Perhaps it’s something I haven’t thought of yet. Until that time, it remains one of the many mysteries I am investigating.