Prof. Seeks Truth Behind Legendary Lights (Brown Mountain NC)

LINVILLE FALLS, N.C. - A full moon illuminates Linville Gorge, painting the river below in a pale, hazy glow. It's quite a view, though hardly the clear one Dan Caton had hoped for. Caton carefully scans the surrounding trees and studies the horizon over the low-lying ridge of Brown Mountain, trying to catch a glimpse of a spooky ball of light or a fleeting sparkle in the darkness.

The Appalachian State University physics and astronomy professor is chasing the elusive Brown Mountain Lights, a legend that has lured tourists for decades.

But in 20 visits over the years, Caton has yet to see the lights. And he's beginning wonder whether they actually exist.

"I think when I finally see them - if ever - it'll be one of those things where I go, 'Oh, I know what that is' or 'What was that?'" he said. "We just haven't seen it yet."

Over the years, watchers have tagged the Brown Mountain Lights as everything from ghosts to UFOs to various natural phenomena.

It's not even really clear when people started talking about the mysterious lights.

Folklorists point to a Cherokee legend that says the lights came from torches carried by grieving maidens following a battle between American Indian tribes on the mountain. Another tale says they're from a lantern carried by a slave's ghost seeking his master, who disappeared while hunting in the 1800s.

In 1913, The Charlotte Observer reported on the lights, describing them as "much smaller than the full moon, much larger than any star and fiery red." That same year, the U.S. Geological Survey conducted the first of two studies, concluding in 1922 that the lights were from trains, cars and fires.

That explanation proved unsatisfactory, as reports of the lights predated the invention of the automobile - going all the way back to a journal kept by a German engineer in 1771.

The stories inspired the 1960s bluegrass song "(Legend of the) Brown Mountain Light" by Tommy Faile and made their way into a 1999 episode of "The X-Files" TV series. And they're as much a part of this region as the sweeping views along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Locals have claimed to see the lights at a viewing area off N.C. 181 between Morganton and Pineola, and at the parkway's Lost Cove overlook. But trees and other vegetation have encroached on both views, and the U.S. Forest Service sign about the "weird, wavering lights" was apparently stolen years ago from the gravel pull-off along 181.

Wiseman's View offers another spot to look for the lights. It's at the end of a bumpy four-mile drive up the ridge on Kistler Highway, a winding gravel road - formerly old N.C. 105. - that cuts through the wilderness.

"Everybody in this country has grown up with the Brown Mountain Lights," said Dale Thompson, a lifelong Pineola resident. "Everybody loves a mystery. I hope they don't ever find what the cause is, because the mystery would be gone. The fun would be over."

For 28-year-old Joshua Warren, the fun started when he first saw the lights as a teenager. The image of the reddish lights gliding back and forth along the ridge before dwindling away so enthralled him that he has made a career investigating the paranormal.

Warren heads a group that claims to have filmed the lights in 2000. The group believes the lights are a form of naturally occurring plasma that shows up best in the fall after it rains.

"The reason the lights have been a mystery for so long is because they don't happen all the time," Warren said. "You might go for days and see nothing, or you might be one of the lucky ones who goes up one time and sees them."

Around the mountain, it's certainly not difficult to find folks who claim to have seen the lights. Many local residents suggest they're caused by some kind of gas escaping from the mountain.

Donna McDaniel, 52, a retired teacher from Morganton, saw the lights when she was 13, describing them as "big balls of light, going from one tree to the next, up and down."

Joyce Warriner heard the legend shortly after moving with her husband from Florida to Pineola in 1975. Five years later, she went to Wiseman's View with friends and saw reddish lights off the ridge. Warriner went back with her husband, but didn't see them again.

On a recent night, two tourists come by to peer into the gorge, claiming that they, too, have seen the lights - another all-too-familiar moment that leaves Caton thinking: Am I the only one who hasn't?

"From my experience, I just can't fathom that people are seeing truly mysterious lights that often," he said, recalling all the false lights he's seen that have been caused by cars and campfires.

Minutes later, a small white light shines across the gorge. It lasts for a few seconds, roughly twice as long as it takes for anticipation to build that this might be the stuff of legend. Caton and observatory assistant Lee Hawkins quickly make an assessment honed by science and perpetual disappointment.

"That is what a lot of people mistake as the Brown Mountain Lights," Hawkins said. "Those are car lights."

Nothing jumps out like that again. By 1 a.m., they pack up their Web cam, laptop computer and tripod, and begin walking back up the path to their SUV.

"It gets hard to stay much longer when you never see anything," Caton said. "It's hard to study something where you play by the rules and it never happens.

"I started out intrigued, then I got skeptical, now I'm cynical - almost bitter that we haven't seen anything real."

Yet Caton and Hawkins keep coming back. After all, maybe next time will be THE time.

"I'm willing to believe they exist, but I haven't seen them," Hawkins said. "You know, show me the money."

...The strange occurrences began in the western part of our great American State of North Carolina. There, deep amid the Blueridge Mountains rises the crest called the Great Eyrie. Its huge rounded form is distinctly seen from the little town of Morganton on the Catawba River, and still more clearly as one approaches the mountains by way of the village of Pleasant Garden.

Why the name of Great Eyrie was originally given this mountain by the people of the surrounding region, I am not quite Sure It rises rocky and grim and inaccessible, and under certain atmospheric conditions has a peculiarly blue and distant effect. But the idea one would naturally get from the name is of a refuge for birds of prey, eagles condors, vultures; the home of vast numbers of the feathered tribes, wheeling and screaming above peaks beyond the reach of man. Now, the Great Eyrie did not seem particularly attractive to birds; on the contrary, the people of the neighborhood began to remark that on some days when birds approached its summit they mounted still further, circled high above the crest, and then flew swiftly away, troubling the air with harsh cries.

Why then the name Great Eyrie? Perhaps the mount might better have been called a crater, for in the center of those steep and rounded walls there might well be a huge deep basin. Perhaps there might even lie within their circuit a mountain lake, such as exists in other parts of the Appalachian mountain system, a lagoon fed by the rain and the winter snows.

In brief was not this the site of an ancient volcano, one which had slept through ages, but whose inner fires might yet reawake? Might not the Great Eyrie reproduce in its neighborhood the violence of Mount Krakatoa or the terrible disaster of Mont Pelee? If there were indeed a central lake, was there not danger that its waters, penetrating the strata beneath, would be turned to steam by the volcanic fires and tear their way forth in a tremendous explosion, deluging the fair plains of Carolina with an eruption such as that of 1902 in Martinique?

Indeed, with regard to this last possibility there had been certain symptoms recently observed which might well be due to volcanic action. Smoke had floated above the mountain and once the country folk passing near had heard subterranean noises, unexplainable rumblings. A glow in the sky had crowned the height at night.

When the wind blew the smoky cloud eastward toward Pleasant Garden, a few cinders and ashes drifted down from it. And finally one stormy night pale flames, reflected from the clouds above the summit, cast upon the district below a sinister, warning light...

from "Master of the World", 1904, by Jules Verne (They don't make Frencemen like him anymore.)

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.