Picture taken by the Charlotte Area Paranormal Society (CAPS)

The Brown Mountain Lights were immortalized in a song written by Scott Wiseman, a North Carolina native, and performed alongside his wife as Lulu Belle and Scotty. It goes like this…

Way up on old Linville Mountain

Where the bear and the catamount reign

A strange ghostly light appears every night

Which no scientist or hunter can explain.

In the days of the old covered wagon

When they camped on the flats for the night

With the moon shinin’ dim o’er the old canyon rim

They watched for that brown mountain light.

High on the mountain

And down in the valley below

It shines like the crown of an angel

And fades as the mists come and go

In this case, it’s not just a song. It’s reality. Go up to the mountains near Linville or Morganton, North Carolina on any given night and you can witness the paranormal lights for yourself. Large balls of bright white light appear in the mountain gorge and float across the tree tops as if dancing.

These light spheres have been witnessed here for centuries, long before electricity, trains, and automobiles. The first recorded sighting was in 1771 by a German surveyor named William Gerard de Brahm. He was scouting the area for the colonial governor when he saw the lights and heard mysterious sounds. He attributed the phenomenon to nitrous vapors. Long before this time, Native Americans had observed the lights for centuries and passed the stories down verbally to their children. But the lights gained widespread notice after a 1913 article by the Charlotte Daily Observer. The paper reported that a fisherman saw red circular lights just above the horizon every night in the area.

So what causes the gorgeous light display? To this day, there are no definitive answers. Answers range from ghost lights to swamp gas.

Cherokee folk legend tells of a devastating battle in the year 1200 between the Cherokee and Catawba tribes. They claim the lights are the spirits of Cherokee maidens endlessly searching for their lost warriors.

Another legend says that a young woman’s ghost continues to search for her fiancé who never showed up the night they were to elope. She died of heartbreak. While another story blames the lights on the ghost of a pregnant woman murdered by her husband. She appears to guide people to her remains so she can be at peace.

The most pervasive folk legend is that of a slave lost in the woods of the mountain trying to find his way back to his master’s estate (Brown Mountain was named after a local plantation owner from the 1800s).

But like all ghostly tales, there are skeptics determined to find more logical sources of such phenomenon.

In 1919, the United States Geological Survey ruled the lights were caused by headlights from passing trains. In 1922, geologist George Rogers (also from the US Geological Survey) concluded the lights were a myriad of normal events – 33% train lights, 47 % automotive lights, 10% stationary lights, and 10% camp fires. But these explanations do not take into account a massive flood that devastated the area shortly after Rogers’ report. The flood knocked out all electricity for an extended period of time, the train tracks were under water so no trains ran, roads were closed so there were no cars either, and no one was camping in the flooded out forest. The nightly display of lights in the Brown Mountain gorge continued unabated.

Around 1960, another theory came forward to explain the lights – UFOs. This angle was perpetuated by an episode of the X-Files titled “Field Trip” where the show’s main character, Fox Mulder, believes dead hikers found on Brown Mountain were killed by aliens from another planet. Back in 1965, a renowned UFO researcher named Ralph Lael claimed he cooperated with alien abductors several times in the mountains. There are even unsubstantiated reports of an extraterrestrial base underneath the mountain.

A modern theory gaining traction relies more on nature than the supernatural. In the early years, skeptics blamed the lights on swamp gas or mirages. However, in 1977, an experiment with a 50,000 candela floodlight positioned twenty-two miles from Brown Mountain produced red circles of light to float above the trees, similar in shape and movement to the phenomenon. The researchers concluded the lights were a result of simple refraction of ordinary lights.

This theory was later expanded by Joshua Warren and the League of Energy Materialization and Unexplained Phenomena Research to encompass geological and atmospheric conditions. Brown Mountain is composed of mostly magnetic granite, with an extremely high quartz content. This rock foundation stores electric energy when water runs through tunnels in the mountain. At night, the earth cools, the rocks contract and the electricity is discharged into the air. When the charges combine in large enough quantities, visible lights are produced.

Geologist John Conner agrees with the last assumption. Upon investigation, his team concluded the lights were a result of physio-electricity as the high-quantity on quartz in the earth emits electrical charges. His team also encountered incredibly high electromagnetic field (EMF) readings, but only during the night. Cameras that measure temperature showed the lights to be colder than the surrounding area, debunking the theory the lights are distant campfires.

To date, people have only seen the lights, except for one man who claims to have touched one of the balls of lights in 1982 and received an electric shock from it before the light flew away.

Paranormal? UFO? Or naturally occurring? Regardless of the source, the Brown Mountain Lights are a beautiful marvel to behold. So where are the best places to view the lights? The Brown Mountain Overlook is located about twenty miles north of Morganton, North Carolina on NC Highway 181 (one mile south of the Barkhouse Picnic Area). There’s also the Lost Cove Cliffs Overlook located on the Blue Ridge Parkway (mile post 310).

But according to a local expert on the Brown Mountain Lights, Tina McSwain of the Charlotte Area Paranormal Society (CAPS), the absolute BEST place to view the lights is Wiseman’s View Overlook (five miles south of Linville Falls on Kistler Memorial Highway). Her team has visited Brown Mountain a few times and has never been disappointed from this vantage point. No matter what time of year, between 9:30 PM and 12:30 AM, they have witnessed the lights. She also reports that the lights have been exactly the same each time her team visits – same shape, same movements, and appear around the same time. Ms. McSwain warns folks interested in seeing the lights to disregard the lights you see when looking down from the overlook (those lights give off heat and can be determined to be camp fires). She advises visitors to look across the gorge. These are the true Brown Mountain Lights – large balls of white light rising up from the trees and moving around.

If you enjoy the mountains or are just passing through scenic North Carolina, do yourself a favor and stop by Brown Mountain after dark for a spectacular light show.