Devil’s Promenade

On Devil’s Promenade, a road located in southwest Missouri near Oklahoma and Arkansas, there is a stretch where people are likely to encounter the Spook Light, a scientifically inexplicable floating orb that moves, disappears, reappears, and sometimes splits in two or three. Community members know it well. Some search for it, while others keep their distance.

In Devil’s Promenade, photographers and Ozark natives Lara Shipley and Antone Dolezal blend the folklore and local history of their home region with present-day photographs of Ozark people, land, and interpretive images engaging the living mythology of the Spook Light. Oral accounts, short fiction, and the implication that things are not as they appear contextualize and complicate found photographs and ephemera, alongside Shipley’s and Dolezal’s color and black-and-white photography.

Artists: Antone Dolezal and Lara Shipley