Imagine standing at an overlook on a dark road deep in the Arkansas Ozarks.

Across the valley you see a strange light appear on a wooded hillside. It might be white, red or blue. It flickers, disappears and then sometimes appears again.

Creepy enough, right?

Now imagine someone tells you that if you call out, “The silver is here!” the lights might start moving toward you like someone is coming after you.

No thanks!

Welcome to the legend of the Dover Lights.

What Are the Dover Lights?

The Dover Lights are mysterious lights that have been seen in the hills north of Dover, Arkansas, for generations.

The traditional viewing spot is an overlook along Treat Road in Pope County. From there, you look across the Big Piney Creek valley toward the rugged wooded hills of the Ozark National Forest.

Stories about the lights supposedly go all the way back to the late 1800s, before electricity came to this remote part of Arkansas.

Sometimes people report seeing one light. Sometimes there are several.

The lights have been described as glowing orbs that appear and disappear on the distant hillside. People have also reported seeing them change colors.

If you know much about Arkansas legends, you might already be thinking of the state’s other famous mystery light, the Gurdon Light. But the Dover Lights have their own personality.

The Gurdon Light is usually described as a single bluish-white orb seen in the woods along an old railroad route, while people sometimes report seeing more than one Dover Light across a remote Ozark valley.

Of course, there are several legends about what the Dover Lights might be.

The Legends of the Dover Lights

One story says that there was once a coal mine somewhere in these hills.

According to the legend, the mine collapsed and killed several miners. The strange lights that still wander the hillside are supposedly the ghostly glow of the lanterns the miners carried underground.

Another story involves Spanish explorers searching the Ozark Mountains for gold. They never found the riches they were looking for, so according to the story, they are still searching.

But neither of those is my favorite explanation for the Dover Lights. My favorite would definitely be the story about the doctor and the silver bullets.

The Doctor and the Silver Bullets

According to the legend, sometime in the mid-1800s an elderly couple lived in a cabin near Big Piney Creek. One day the woman became extremely ill.

Because she was too sick to travel, her husband rode into town to find a doctor and brought him back to their remote home. In some versions of the story, the doctor is even given a name: Doctor Martin.

Fortunately, the doctor was able to save the woman. The man couldn’t pay him, so he offered the doctor a dozen homemade rifle bullets.

Maybe not exactly the payment the doctor had been expecting, but apparently he accepted them and went on his way.

Years passed.

One day he happened across those old bullets and decided to polish them. That is when he discovered something very interesting.

As he was polishing, the bullets began to shine.

They weren’t made of lead at all.

They were made of silver!

This is when the story starts getting really interesting.

Of course, the doctor immediately began wondering where a poor old couple living in the Arkansas mountains had gotten silver to make bullets.

He decided to go back and find out. But years had passed, and when he returned to the little cabin he learned that the couple had died.

But the doctor wasn’t giving up on finding the source of that silver.

He started by searching around their property, apparently convinced that there must be a silver mine somewhere nearby. When he didn’t find a mine, he started searching around the house.

This is when he hit the jackpot.

According to the legend, he found a crate filled with silver bars hidden underneath the cabin.

The doctor took several of the bars home with him and planned to return the next day with a packhorse to get the rest.

He never made it back.

The doctor mysteriously died in his sleep that very night.

But that’s still not the end of the story.

After the doctor’s death, neighbors supposedly began seeing two strange balls of light moving through his house.

They also claimed to hear faint voices asking: “Where is it?”

And this is how all of that connects back to the Dover Lights. The lights in the hills may be the old couple looking for their stolen silver.

And if you stand at the overlook and shout: “The silver is here!” two lights will appear on the distant hillside. Then they will supposedly begin making their way across the valley toward you.

I don’t know about you, but I think I would be perfectly happy just looking quietly.

Are the Dover Lights Real?

This is where things get interesting.

Like the Gurdon Light, the Dover Lights aren’t simply part of an old story that no one claims to see anymore.

People still report seeing them.

In 2009, a paranormal documentary crew visited the area and said that a light was already visible when they arrived around 9:30 at night.

They described it as changing from red to blue. Their cameras also reportedly picked up other lights fading in and out that they couldn’t see with their own eyes.

Then in 2015, a local television station, KATV, went to the Dover overlook to investigate the story. They spoke with people who said they had seen the lights themselves, including one man who remembered seeing them as a child and had returned to show them to his own children.

So do strange lights actually appear in the hills around Dover?

It certainly seems that people see something.

What that something is remains a mystery.

What Causes the Dover Lights?

There have been plenty of suggestions.

Car headlights, campers, reflections, campfires and even people playing tricks have all been proposed as explanations.

The biggest problem with some of those theories is the location.

This is a very remote and rugged part of the Ozarks, and the lights are traditionally seen across the Big Piney Creek valley on a heavily wooded hillside. Investigators have pointed out that there are no roads or electrical service in the area where the lights are typically reported.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the lights are ghosts.

There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation.

We just don’t know what it is.

If you enjoy stories like this one, you can find more strange tales, ghost stories and unexplained mysteries in my guide to Arkansas legends.

Can You See the Dover Lights?

There is still a traditional viewing area for the Dover Lights.

A scenic overlook along Treat Road north of Dover is locally known as the viewing area for the Dover Lights. Even nearby lodging and recreation information still refers to the spot as the “Dover Lights” scenic overlook.

Just remember that this is a remote area of the Ozark National Forest.

If you decide to go looking for the lights after dark, know where you are going, be prepared for limited cell service, stay on public roads and be careful.

And don’t necessarily expect to see anything. Apparently the Dover Lights don’t perform on command.

Although I suppose you could always try yelling something about silver.

I’ll let you go first.