Brown Mountain Lights 1986 Investigation

These mysterious lights are by far the most famous lights in this region. They appear over Brown Mountain, a low tree-covered summit near Linville, North Carolina. One of the best viewing areas are either the 181 Overlook or Wiseman’s View.

The lights usually appear during fair weather, although they have been seen through mist so heavy that the mountain itself was lost. They resemble toy balloons, often pinkish or red in color, rising up from the mountains.

Brown Mountain’s mysterious globes are extremely shy and when approached, they simply vanish into thin air. (That description is very similar to the Joplin, Missouri Spooklight.) However, an observation tower was built on Brown Mountain in the early 1960s. One night, a globe raced toward a group of observers and passed within inches of them. Unfortunately, this close brush did not yield any new data, but the occupants of the tower received severe headaches for their experience and some speculated that the light was an effect of nuclear radiation, as some of the observers in the lonely tower seemed to have symptoms of radiation sickness!

There have been attempts to determine the origin of the lights. The first such investigation was made by the Smithsonian Institution in 1919. After extensive research, the report suggested that the lights could possibly be similar in nature to the Andes Lights in South America. The Andes Lights are large discharges of static electricity, but they only occur in the Andes at altitudes of 15,000 feet or more, and furthermore, they do not occur in the air like these lights.

In 1922, the U.S. Geological Survey also sent an expedition to solve the mystery of the lights. The expedition’s report state that 47% of the lights was caused by reflections of automobile headlights, and the balance were due to various factors such as brush fires and will-o’-the-wisps. The local mountain lore laughed at this explanation saying that there weren’t enough roads around the area to reflect that many lights. Anyway, the people said the lights continued to appear after the Great Flood of 1916 washed out the roads and cut off electric service throughout the entire area.

Historians at the University of North Carolina ridiculed the report even further by pointing out the Cherokee legends dating back to 1200 mention the lights and that the German engineer, Gerald William de Brahm, was the first one to write about the lights in 1771. The “headlight reflection” theory was promptly forgotten thereafter.

That report by George Rogers Mansfield is produced in whole in my book “Illuminating the Darkness: The Mystery of Spook Lights. This was perhaps the most scientific investigation of its kind of the lights. Many professionals offered their help and guidance to Mansfield during his studies there.

Many explanations of the lights have been offered. The principal ones are listed below: Will-o’-the-wisp, phosphorus, phosphorescence (fox fire) which is a gas given off by decaying wood, radium emanations, chemical reactions between hydrogen sulphide and lead oxide, blockade (illicit stills), St. Elmo’s fire, Andes Lights, mirage, locomotive headlights, automobile headlights, reflections of nearby city lights caused by a temperature inversion layer, ball lightning, hallucinations, gases from subterranean mines, piezoelectricity caused by tectonic plates colliding and creating these balls of lights and similar to lights seen at Mt. Saint Helens before that volcano blew its top, earthlights which is a natural phenomenon, foo fighters, ignis fatuus, fairy lights, corpse candles and even gases given off by decomposing bodies.

In Mansfield’s summary, he concluded that the lights are clearly not of unusual nature or origin. 47% of the lights that he observed were due to automobile headlights, 33% to locomotive headlights, 10% to stationary lights and 10% to brush fires.

The U.S Geological Survey, after recovering from the snafu of their first investigation, tried again a few years later. The concluded that the lights were not due to foxfire or St. Elmo’s fire, and the most probable answer was spontaneous ignition of swamp gas. This ‘explanation’ met with even greater laughter than the previous one, as everyone around Linville knew there were no swamps or marshy areas around Brown Mountain. Indeed, the U.S. Geological Survey’s own maps place the nearest marshy area at about 100 miles away!

J.L. Hartley, State Fire Marshall, said in 1947, “I have lived for 60 years within sight of Brown Mountain…it seems that since God made Brown Mountain, he could have made a light for it.”

In 1951, there was a report from a local resident of a very close encounter of this strange light. John P. Bessor, an investigator in the field, was told of a couple on the summit at around dusk when a brilliant light “as long aa a man’s arm” suddenly formed overhead. It emitted a sizzling noise and hovered motionless for a time, and then lengthened and shortened several times in succession. (I personally knew Bessor and he was a great investigator in the field and I have no doubts as to the validity of this sighting.)

Address: Highway 181 between Morganton and Lenoir, North Carolina

Hauntings: There have been innumerable investigations of these lights by dozens and dozens of paranormal organizations and interested individuals. I even had a chance to view the lights from the Rt. 181 overlook and Wiseman’s View. I was indeed lucky to meet Mike Frizzell of the Enigma Project and Raymond D. Manners, President of the International Fortean Organization (INFO). We tirelessly spent hours upon hours on that weekend in fruitless pursuit of these elusive lights. Unfortunately I “think” that I “might” have observed one very short bluish light during the entire weekend. The weather during that summer excursion was unsettled and quite humid, even during the evening hours. The weather seems to be the determining factor in all of the investigators and sightings of these lights. Perhaps future investigations might shed some light of these mysterious balls of lights

Equipment used: cassette tape recorder, 10x35 binoculars and Panasonic VHS camcorder.

Experiments performed: Most of the time we were just observing the mountain ranges in the distance from the Route 181 overlook. The zero-lux camcorder was pretty much useless as all we recorded was darkness. This was about 10 years before Sony made their Nightshot NIR camcorders.

The Ghost Research Society investigated the Brown Mountain Lights on June 1. 1986. Team members included: Dale Kaczmarek with help from Ray Manners from the International Fortean Organization and Mike Frizzell from the Enigma Project.

Personal experiences:

Dale Kaczmarek: It was a pretty uneventful weekend as I only saw what could have been a very faint and brief blue light that appeared over the mountain and in air and not on the hillside. This was, in my opinion, not caused by reflections or even automobile headlights as the light was free-floating in the atmosphere.

I believe that perhaps Manners and Frizzell might have seen this globe as well.

Conclusions: This was an awesome place to investigate and observe this well-known phenomenon even if the lights did not make more of an appearance. Going up to Wiseman’s View was a bit hairy as the road on the right-hand side was almost washed out and we also had to watch out for possible on-coming traffic coming back down from this lookout point.

It was a better trip down as we were able to hug the side of the overlook. The view was tremendous but we did not see any light anomalies while up there. Apparently the Route 181 overlook is probably the best observation point. Others have claimed to have see lights from Blowing Rock as well.

As always, when arriving at a possible haunted or strange location, it is hit or miss when it comes to seeing or experiencing anything. I was able to make some friends with Manners and Frizzell and not long after this outing I was invited by Ray Manners to speak at the International Fortean Organization (INFO) conference Fortfest 1987. I gave a talk on Spirit Photography. I was able to meeting such notables like Budd Hopkins, John Keel, Mark Chorvinsky, Alvin Holm and David Drake.

I would like to possibly come back here with more state-of-the-art equipment and see if any evidence or lights could be captured.