An eyewitness recalls a bizarre and unexplained experience near Senath, Missouri involving the Senath Light. He was accompanied by his cousins and one of their best friends.
I received the following account:
"My story takes place in 1964 near Senath, Missouri. You may have already heard of the Senath Light but they aren’t as well known as other lights. So I will tell you what I have heard about them. It has taken me 53 years to talk about this except to my wife and children and even now I don’t know how I feel about it. I guess I need to know if anyone can explain what happened.
I grew up near a small town in the bootheel of Missouri and graduated in the spring of 1964. My dad had just bought a 1962 Chevy Impala, cherry red hardtop convertible and I thought it was the sweetest car I had ever seen. (This will be important to the story shortly) I grew up with my cousin Bill on my dad’s side and my cousin Rudy on my mother’s side and Rudy’s best friend was Kenneth. We were all bumming around in my dad’s new car and we happened to pick up another friend named Mike who was hitchhiking into town.
We had no plans so someone suggested we go see the Senath Light. The legend is that you park your car, turn the lights and engine off and you may get to see them. While they are around, you can’t get your car started and you can’t get near enough to them to actually catch them. A group of college kids are supposed to have made an attempt to find out what they are and according to the stories, they surrounded one and closed the circle on it and it just disappeared before they could find out what it was.
We decided to go even though Kenneth wasn’t too enthused about it. We went down the dirt road next to a field and turned around facing the way we came in. On the other side of the field, there was a drainage ditch full of rainwater. The field past the drainage ditch was completely underwater except for a small island way out in the middle of the field. I’m not sure if that field was a rice field or if it was just flooded from the recent heavy rains.
After a while, Kenneth got bored and decided to take a walk. We all figured he would try to sneak up on us and scare us so we all kept watching for him. After another 45 minutes to an hour with no action, we all got pretty bored and decided to leave but Kenneth wasn’t back yet. We honked the horn and shouted to him then we listened for an answer. At first, we didn’t hear anything but then we heard a very faint voice saying, “Help me.”
We finally located the direction and it was coming from the flooded field. I tried to move the car so I could point the headlights in that direction but my car would not start. We all got a little nervous but couldn’t think of anything else to do but keep trying. After what had to be 5 minutes of trying I finally got it started and turned the car toward the voice. During all this time we could still hear him calling out to us to help him. The headlights reached the little dry island in the middle of the field and we could actually see Kenneth. There were about a dozen trees on the island and he was sitting on the ground leaning against one of them.
Mike stayed in the car while my 2 cousins and I started to go out there. We realized we would have to walk through the flooded field so we took off our shoes and socks and rolled our pants legs up above our knees. We made it to him and he was just sitting there moaning and sort of delirious and still asking for help. I shined the flashlight on him and he had three scratches across his forehead that were almost dripping blood but mostly just abrasions. We tried to get him to tell us what happened but couldn’t get anything out of him. We were really scared by this time and all got the strong feeling of being watched.
My cousins were both big boys so they picked him up, one on each side, and carried him back to the car. I followed behind and felt like it was the longest walk I had ever experienced. We got him into the back seat of the car and we decided we needed to get him to town and try to see a doctor. He had a very high fever and his head was hurting terribly. I started driving, and all of a sudden he went absolutely crazy and started kicking the door and window trying to get out of the car. The two guys in back with him couldn’t hold him down and he kicked so hard he left his foot imprints in the upholstery on the door. (Kenneth was always the most respectful person I’ve ever known regarding other people’s property and he would never have done damage to my dad’s new car if he was in his right mind.) He finally settled down and we were able to get some information from him.
He said he was just walking along the dirt road and the next thing he knew it felt like he was floating or being carried. He woke up and started trying to call us but he didn’t know for sure how he got there or how he got the scratches. We got to town and decided we had better clean the mud off us so we pulled into a little drive-in hamburger place. We got out and the three of us started to go inside to clean up and told Kenneth that he should go with us so he could get the mud off himself. The really weird thing is, he had no mud on him and he still had his shoes and socks on. We have no idea how he got out there.
To my knowledge, none of us ever spoke about that night with each other. I don’t know why we didn’t but it just seemed like we didn’t really want to know what happened. Kenneth was killed in Vietnam so we may never know what really happened. If he pulled a fast one on us, he really did a number on all of us." GT
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