The Spooklight

Due to this alignment, headlights of cars driving east on Route 66 are unexpectedly visible in the distance from higher elevation points along E 50; this is the cause of the Spooklight.

[1] Some instances of these staged experiments were in 1946 by Thomas Sheard, in 1955 by a group from Kansas City, by Robert Gannon in 1965,[1][3] and by Allen Rice and his "Boomers" sleuths in 2015.

It had a three-inch (76 mm) telescope that allowed people to view the light for 25 cents, but the owners had set it up indoors to look through a half inch hole in the wall, which stopped down the aperture so much it couldn't resolve anything.

[3] Belief in the supposed mystery of the Spooklight has for generations been promoted by local businesses and chambers of commerce who embrace it as an opportunity for tourism revenue.

[1] In 1969, the Missouri Chamber of Commerce ran a press release in many newspapers that included the false statement, "Scientists, however, using various technical devices, have not been successful in determining a theory as to the origin of the light.