Brown Mountain Lights Mystifies Researcher Don Cooper
Most people know of the Brown Mountain Lights. But even where I live, in Spruce Pine about 50 minutes travel time from Brown Mountain, you occasionally hear "I've never heard of them." Those around here that have seen them, say they have only seen them on rare occasions.
So in writing this, let me assume little. Next to Rt. 181 about 20 miles north of Morganton, you drive next to Brown Mountain. It is a rather flat, unimpressive mountain, as mountains go. It has no peak. But its fame dates as far back as 1,200 A.D. with Indian legend. After that there is legend after legend of lost lovers searching for each other, all the way through the Civil War.
From this you pick up on the idea that the Lights must look like lanterns.
And most of them do. Usually white. Usually stationary. And most often appearing for only a second or so. But from that their appearance expands to a wide variety of size, colors, and characteristics. Also, the duration of their appearance, once lit, can go from minutes to hours. More than once I have left the viewing site with one or more of these balls of light still shining. My personal length of looking for them may be from 1 1/2 hours to 2 or more hours.
Before I give some specific examples of a few outstanding appearances, let me say this. The "Brown Mountain Lights" appear on many other mountains adjacent to THE Brown Mountain. Speaking personally, I have only seen the Lights twice on that mountain after about 6 visits, but from another location called Wiseman's Overlook about 10 miles to the west of Brown Mountain one finds several mountains on both sides of the Linville Gorge with the Linville River passing between that put on a better showing. Perhaps, I should qualify that.....a better showing for me, and those that have gone with me. As of December 1, 2007, I have visited that site 36 of 37 times, and failed to see them only twice. One of the 37 was from Lost Cove on the Blue Ridge Parkway, and what you see there is the northern end of Brown Mountain. My discovery of Wiseman Overlook came about in reading a front page article in the Asheville Citizen's Times in July of '05. A Dr. Dan Caton, professor at Appalachian State University tells of his 5 visits up to that time, and having never seen them, but the article gave much of the history behind them. From that I checked with a friend that told me he and his brother had been to a church -camp trip to Wiseman some 30 years ago, and the Lights put on a two hour display like as if Fourth of July. So that introduced me to that beautiful site, which I should add is located in the Pisgah National Forest, a 5 mile trip much on dirt road from Linville Falls Village.
From the two Overlooks at Wiseman one can see Lights from time to time on the following named mountains: On the east side of the gorge from left to right: Sitting Bull, Hawksbill, Table Rock, with what we call the Saddle between Hawksbill and Table Rock. One can see Brown Mountain itself above the Saddle, but it is too far away to visualize any lights it may be displaying. Beyond Table Rock to the south are the Chimneys, and then furtherest to the south you see Short Off. It is one continuous ridge with these different mountain names from Table Rock to Short Off. Then on
the Overlook side there is only one named mountain to your right, That is Dogback. Lights are seen on all of these named mountains from time to time. Most likely from my experience is on Table Rock, then on the ridge to the Chimneys. Rarely are they seen on Sitting Bear. They quite frequently appear along the Linville River, below. On my last visit, December 1st, I saw a great display of them for the first time as far to the left as one can see on the Overlook side on both sides of the river, but nearly all on the Overlook side.
More on there appearance, and validation as not of artificial sources such as car lights, engine lights, man held lanterns, campfires, or swamp gas. First to appearances. The size of the glow can vary from that of a lantern light to the size of a house. Colors may be blue, green, yellow, orange, red, but mmost often white. They are round, with the exception of the few I have seen that shoot like Fourth of July skyrockets. A number of streaks at a time. Those were orange. A frequent appearance is a glow of orange or yellow as big and the shape of a campfire. When these appear down by the river one must be careful if they are seen on this side of the gorge as there is a trail there with places one can build campfires, if not in a drought like now. But proof of at least some of these "campfires" being BML is when on at least one occasion, I threw a beam from my powerful lantern at two of these.
When the beam hit the "campfires" they instantly went out. After about 10 seconds they both came back on the same size. Upon repeating this some minutes later, the same thing occurred with both. Another time, even before pitch dark a number of us spotted a"campfire" below to our right. Even I had thought it was a campfire. After it was lit for at least 10 minutes it rose up in the sky and crossed the river. Not many campfires can do that! I have a picture of that one. On that same night to the right of Table Rock there appeared a red ball elevated perhaps 40 feet in the air. The crowd around me said look over there, there is a red beacon light on a tower. I told them there was no tower there, they were seeing a BML. No one believed me till after about 20 minutes it shot up in the air and disappeared. The climax of that same evening was a BML I have only seen act like this once. It was a white ball, perhaps the size of two basketballs that shot from the far south end of the gorge all the way to the left through the gorge to as far as one can see, covering that approximate 12 mile distance in about 4 to 5 seconds. Later I found another person that saw this same phenomena once, only it took more like 10 seconds to travel the distance.
As far as car lights are concerned, there is only one road visible from Wiseman on these mountains I've mentioned. That road is 105 across Dogback. We have traced that road with walkie-talkie and by car. So now if we see a white light on that we are not fooled. Though one time we saw a white streak go across about 100 feet below the road just minutes after a car had passed. We have done the same study on paths on Table Rock so we cannot be fooled by the possibility of a lantern pointing to us from a path over there.
The closest the Lights have come to me, and my witnesses, was to a bush only about 12 feet from us at the lower Overlook. They appeared as white balls, three of them, one at a time, about 20 seconds apart, and staying lit only about 2 seconds. Their size was approximately that of a soft ball.
Most unusual was the time they appeared in the fog. White specks of light.
Not trusting one eyes, the two sets of witnesses to this phenomena kept seeing for a half hour these specks. The only ones (two) that we counted as BML was when the two witnesses in each case shouted and pointed at the same Light at the same time. Years before, I had someone tell me they could see them in the fog, but I thought they had to be kidding.
Though I have only one still picture of a Light (mentioned above), I only have one other series and that is on cam-recorder. As a rule "they" do not like to be photographed. Sound strange, doesn't it. Personally, and many others have reported their cameras not working when attempting to photograph. Along with that seeming personality of the Lights, it may be true that they wish to appear only to "believers", not to skeptics. For example, after 20 visits, skeptic Dr. Dan Caton claims to have never seen even one. A close friend of mine saw them for the first time, when I encouraged him to go with me. Not bragging, but others have indicated this may be true.
So what are they? Some say plasma. Dr. Caton is exploring the theory that if such do exist that it is ball lightning. He admits that would be mostly during a storm, but not always. Plasma can take on many forms. The theory that it is geological in nature seems to run into difficulty with their shooting into the sky at times. A person with me the last trip hypothesized that they could be signals coming from some underground base to a distant planet.
There are those that say they hope the mystery is never solved. As for me, I stay curious, and enjoy visiting once to twice a month weather permitting.
I have over 60 on my BML Group list that like to be notified when I anticipate a next trip, and even those living far away like to hear the report of each visit.
If you would like to be added to the list, let me know. Or better yet sometime come along.
In closing let me say the U.S. Geological Survey have been sent two times to study them. When they have come they stay one week and come up with conclusions that are ridiculous. My efforts of observation are year round.
They show every month of the year, though admittedly so far, the best months are as publicized by the Forest Service as September and October.
Don Cooper
doncooper5@bellsouth.net
