Burke County, North Carolina
Wounded in the Civil War, a Confederate colonel returned home to his plantation in 1863. Once recuperated, he climbed the mountain to go hunting, and never found his way home. After a few days, the colonel's faithful servant went in search of his master, taking with him only a small amount of food, water, and two lanterns, and vanished.
One of the many legends surrounding the mysterious phenomena of the phantom lights is that they are the two lanterns carried by the servant, seeking his master for eternity. Yet another, slightly different, version is that the colonel was found, and the lights are the lanterns they carry while trying to find their way to a home that's no longer there.
Yet another favorite story is that of the suspicious disappearance of a woman, circa 1850. The community, in general, suspected foul play at the hands of her husband and banded together to help search for her. Shortly after the search began, the strange lights appearred on the ridge. Many believed the source to be the woman's lost spirit returning to taunt her killer. The woman wasn't found during the search. Soon after, the husband disappeared without a trace.
Years later, the woman's skeleton was found and the lights continued to be seen, perhaps as some sort of warning to others, perhaps as a forever-lost soul.
Another story reaches further back in history to an Indian tale from 1200, the year a great battle was waged between the Cherokee and Catawba Indians. Some believe the lights to be those of the Indian maidens mourning their lost loves.
So what are the Brown Mountain Lights? They're described in an array of soft hues, with translucent qualities, up to approximately fifty feet in diameter which appear from nowhere, rise into the air up to 100 feet, then float back to the ridge and wink out with a touch of red.
Several scientific explanations have been presented and then discounted through the years. In 1771, a German engineer, Gerard Will de Brahm, stated that, "the mountains emit nitrous vapors which are bourne by the wind and when laden winds meet each other, the niter inflames, sulphurates and deteriorates." Not so, according to the U.S. Geological Survey conducted in 1913.
The official findings stated the lights to be reflections of the nearby railroad tracks and the train which travels them. Except for one thing. In 1916, after the findings, heavy rainfall flooded the area, knocking out the railroad bridges, and though there were no passing trains for weeks, the lights continued to be seen.
Swamp gases have been blamed, but there's no swamps in the area. Reflections of moonshine stills have been faulted, yet there's not enough in operation to produce the lights in the numbers in which they appear. Reflections from nearby towns are a favorite theory, yet again, when power lines are down, the dance of the mysterious lights continue. Will-o'-the-wisp, fox-fire, radium rays, strange gases, rocks -- all have been offered as an explanation, and all have been dismissed.
In May 1977, the Oak Ridge Isochronous Observation Network (ORION) placed a 500,000 candlepower arc light in the nearby town of Lenoir, while a group of observers watched from Route 181, west of Brown Mountain. The observers witnessed a red-orange orb hover several degrees above the crest of the mountain. Based on this experiment, it was concluded that at least some of the lights, particularly those above the crest, are refractions of artificial lights. Again, bear in mind that when the power is out in the area, the lights remain.
While many explanations have been suggested, none can be considered conclusive. Whether endlessly roaming spirits, a playground for UFO's, or an unknown scientific anomoly, the Brown Mountain Lights continue to attract attention, and have been featured on such programs as Unsolved Mysteries and The X-files, and written about in a bluegrass song:
Way out on the old Linville Mountain,
Where the bear and the catamount rein,
There a strange ghostly light, can be seen every night,
Which no scientist nor hunter can explain.
