Broughton tunnels: What was the real reason for them

MORGANTON - They rest deep under the earth's surface and wind through the campus of Broughton Hospital.

When the hospital was built in the 1870s to accommodate the mentally ill, it was built with a series of tunnels, said William F. Brown III, the safety director for the hospital.

Rumors as to what the tunnels were actually used for have swarmed for years, Brown said, but the actual reason for their existence isn't an exciting one at all, he added.

"They are just utility tunnels," Brown said. "All of the tunnels end at the steam plant."

Seth Hunt, the director of the hospital, said some of the rumors included using the tunnels to transport patients who were extremely dangerous, their use in the underground railroad or as a place to chain patients up against a wall and leave them for the rats.

Determined to dispel the rumors, Brown and Hunt left the comfort of their offices, grabbed a flashlight and went down under. Brown used a key - only certain employees have one - to get through a metal door. A brightly lighted, descending hallway with arched ceilings was on the other side.

"This really isn't a tunnel," Hunt said, adding that the real tunnels weren't as nice.

Once they got to the bottom of the hallway they came into a room with several dark tunnels leading in different directions. When Brown shone his flashlight into a tunnel, the light disappeared in the darkness.

"Watch where you step," Brown said. "Be careful."

In some parts, the floor was uneven and covered with debris and while Brown and Hunt made their way through the tunnels they had to duck under hot steam lines.

"See that light up ahead," Brown said. "That's a man hole."

Hunt joked that the tunnels were a good place to come and secretly listen to employees talk. After searching through the tunnels the men concluded that there were no signs of patient abuse or locks and chains. And the only sign of death that the two men could find was the skeleton of a dead rat.

"I'd say he's been there for a while," Hunt said of the shattered bones.

Brown also dispelled the rumor that the tunnels were used to transport "crazy" patients by saying that the tunnels only went to one place, the steam room.

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?

Do you believe in ghosts? Folks say River's End is haunted

RUTHERFORD COLLEGE - Most people love a good ghost story, but actually being confronted with ghostly incidences is a different story.

River's End Restaurant on Malcolm Boulevard has a long and varied history, with some of it dotted with unexplained occurrences.

Milton Pons, a former owner of the restaurant, said the home has been used not only as a restaurant, but started out as a private home and also served, for a time, as dormitories for Rutherford College. Pons has since sold the place.

"I've been there almost 16 years and I've never seen a ghost there yet," Pons said.

However, Pons said an employee was working in the restaurant by herself one night and heard a door slam.

No one else was in the establishment.

The incident scared the employee so much, she locked up the restaurant and went home.

Pons also said some of the doors shut by themselves sometimes.

"Maybe a ghost shuts them, I don't know,"Pons said.

According to the house's history, the place was built around 1893 by Theodore Franklin after he married for the second time.

"He married this young girl and they spent their honeymoon in a hotel in Connelly Springs," Pons said.

Franklin built the house as a scaledown version of the hotel, Pons said.

The place also was used as a dormitory for the college, and it was used as a residence again.

Emma and Henry Harvey Kincaid bought the house in 1945 and lived in the house for more than 35 years.

Mary Kincaid Miller grew up in the house with her siblings.

Throughout the years they lived in the house, the Kincaid family would hear unexplainable sounds in the home.

"We would hear doors slam but we didn't think much about it," Miller said. "We thought it was the wind blowing through."

At other times the stairs in the home would creak, but Miller's father explained it away by saying the house was settling.

But it was one particular night that vividly is burned into Miller's memory.

Miller's father worked third shift, so many nights she would sleep in her parents' bedroom with her mother. The two were in the bedroom when they heard noises.

Miller's mother decided she was going to find out if someone was in the home.

The two went out into the hallway.

"It sounded like somebody came up the stairs," Miller said.

When it got to the top of the stairs, Miller said it sounded as if someone had cardboard or stout paper and was hitting it as they went back down the stairs.

"And there was nobody there," Miller said.

"She (Miller's mother) said, 'Get back in the bedroom.'"

When the two ran back into the bedroom, they shut the door and pulled a dresser in front of the door.

Carl Webb bought the house and turned it into a restaurant called the "Farmhouse." He later changed the name to the "Steakhouse." Although he said he never experienced anything unusual,Webb said he had an employee who claimed she came into work early one morning and the chairs in the front room were facing each other.

The night before, the chairs had been sitting side-by-side.

Some employees also were afraid to go into a small basement in the house that was used for storage.

"They claimed the lights would come on by themselves," Webb said.

Although he said he used to feel strange being there at night,Webb said, "I never really experienced anything." Was it a ghost or something associated with just normal sounds a house makes late at night?