Lights mystify generations

A slave devotedly searching the hills for his beloved master, a murdered woman returning to haunt her husband, spirits of Native American women searching for their slain husbands following a great battle -there are numerous theories and legends offered in explanation of the mysterious aurora known as the "Brown Mountain Lights."

For hundreds of years, the unsolved mystery of the lights has drawn attention to Burke County. As with any unexplainable mystery, various descriptions exist about the lights.

Most accounts claim that the lights appear as pulsating orbs of light, usually just below or above the ridge of Brown Mountain.

Red and white are two of the most common colors reported, although there are many claims that the lights are blue, green, yellow and orange.

Appearances can range from anywhere between a few seconds to several minutes.

Those who claim to have seen the lights at a close range have likened them to a large ball of fire hovering several feet above the ground, moving away when approached.

A few of the most popular places to view the lights are the Brown Mountain overlook, located 20 miles north of Morganton on N.C. 181, Wiseman's View overlook, located five miles south of Linville Falls on old N.C. 105/N.C. 1238, and the Lost Cove Cliffs overlook, located on the Blue Ridge Parkway at mile-marker 310, two miles north of the N.C. 181 junction.

They are reportedly best seen after dusk on clear nights, often after a rain.

The lights gained fame in 1913 when the U.S. Geological Survey conducted the first of two studies to determine a scientific explanation of the lights.

They concluded that the lights were actually reflections of headlights from locomotives traveling through the Catawba Valley south of Brown Mountain.

However, a flood three years later, in 1916, gushed through the valley, destroying railroad bridges and stopping travel for weeks.

Roads and power lines also were washed away in the flood, but the lights continued to appear.

The second study reported that the lights were caused by spontaneous combustion of marsh gases, but there are no known marshy places on Brown Mountain.

The lights are so well-known that the TV show, "The X Files," based an episode on them called "Field Trip," which first aired Sept. 5, 1999, in the show's sixth season.

Countless other research groups and universities have studied the lights, including the U.S. Weather Bureau, which reported in 1919 that the Brown Mountain lights were similar to the Andes light of South America.

The Asheville-based paranormal research team, League of Energy Materialization and Unexplained Phenomena Research, has compiled 15 years worth of scientific research on the lights, and maintains a Web site, www.brownmountainlights.com.

Theories that the lights are atmospheric reflections of electric lights in Morganton, Lenoir and Hickory are debunked by the fact that the lights were documented to have been seen before the Civil War and electricity, even as far back as 1200, when the Cherokee and Catawba Indians roamed the area.

Cherokee legend explains the lights as the spirits of women searching for their husbands and sweethearts after a major battle on Brown Mountain between the Catawba and Cherokee tribes.

The lights were also documented by Geraud de Brahm, a German engineer who was reported to have been the first white man to explore the region in 1771.

Science Frontiers online reports that in May 1977, the Oak Ridge Isochronous Observation Network put a 500,000 candlepower arc light in Lenoir as a group gathered on the overlook on N.C. 181, approximately 20 miles north of Morganton and 3.5 miles west of Brown Mountain.

When the light was turned on, the observers saw an orange light hovering above Brown Mountain.

The experiment accounted for lights that appear above the crest, but offers no explanation for the lights that many see pulsating and moving above and below the top of the mountain.

ORION also detonated charges of dynamite on Brown Mountain to see if the lights could be seismic, but no lights were produced.

Joshua P. Warren with the league team wrote a report based on the group's research on the Brown Mountain Lights.

In it, the team suggested that the lights are of a plasmic origin.

"Considering all data available, the most likely explanation was that those primary illuminations traditionally known as the 'Brown Mountain Lights' are a form of plasma.

Plasma is the product of so much energy being added to a gas (including air) that one or more electrons are ripped from each atom producing a swirling, luminous mass of free-floating electrons and atoms that have a positive charge.

According to David Hackett, ORION also concluded the lights are most likely a plasma phenomenon.

Plasmas would indeed interact with nearby human observers since the plasma field would be influenced by the field of a human body," the report states.

Explanations for the lights' origin ranges from scientific ones of Foxfire, earth lights, radioactivity, plasma, St.

Elmo's fire, lightning discharges, seismic movement, swamp gas and reflections of artificial lights, to paranormal ones such as UFOs, giant fireflies and spirits.

No single explanation completely covers all aspects of the lights, always leaving a "what if ?" or a loophole.

Although normally very skeptical, I personally can vouch for the fact that the lights do exist.

After years of hearing about them and doubting their existence, I saw them from the N.C. 181 overlook one night.

I was convinced that the light I saw above the Brown Mountain ridge slightly blocked from view by a tree near my vantage point was only an orange- colored star.

I attributed its dimming and brightening effect to my lack of sleep.

When it started moving to the left, away from the tree, I reasoned that it was a plane that was too far away for me to see its blinking lights.

However, when the light completely disappeared as I watched it, I became a believer.

The Brown Mountain Lights - do you believe it, or not?