The Mystery of Brown Mountain

For hundreds of years strange unexplained lights have haunted the mystery shrouded foothills of Brown Mountain in North Carolina. The earliest reports supposedly go as far back as 1200 A.D. to the local Native American population.

The tale goes that two warring tribal nations, The Cherokee and the Catawba, had a great and bloody battle on the mountain. Many warriors are said to have died upon the rocky slopes and the lights are believed to be the lost spirits of maidens searching for their loved ones who never returned home.

Yet another tale speaks of a family that settled at the base of the mountain, right as the Revolutionary war began. The father, leaving behind his wife and three small children, set off to fight for his country only to return at the end of the war to find his home a charred husk of the one he left behind. In what one can imagine was a state of absolute shock and despair, the man ran out into the mountain to search for his lost family. For days and nights he searched until its said he died at the top of mountain of starvation and that the lights are the man searching for his family for eternity.

In 1913, the first of three expeditions funded by the government to investigate the lights of brown mountain, A U.S. Geological Survey had come to the explanation that the lights must be reflections of Locomotive and automobile headlights. However, this explanation was debunked in July of 1916, as a great flood knocked out all the electricity and made the area impassible, yet reports of the lights did not relent.

The second, having taken place in the 1940’s, decided that the source of the lights must be swamp gas igniting (Despite the lack of swamps on Brown Mountain.) Still the reports continued.

A third report in 1977 from from Hobart A. Whitman stated that he believed that the lights “Were not the result of natural ground sources.” So with three reports spanning over 60 years, we still find ourselves no closer to answers. At least none that the U.S. government has disclosed as of yet.

In 1952 the goverment funded “Project Blue Book” did a major case study into the mysterious lights of Brown Mountain, and despite MANY of the case files becoming public due to the freedom of information act, the files on Brown Mountain remain curiously classified.

The phenomena itself seems to not really have had any lulls as well, with reports still coming in to this day. For many years people have gone missing from Brown Mountain without a trace, with many stories attributing the disappearances to the lights themselves, In fact in October of 2011 one of the most bizarre and potentially horrifying occurrences associated with the lights occurred. Its said that on a night when there were hundreds of reports of the lights, an entire group of vacationers camping on the mountain vanished along with a few law enforcement officers.

So what are these strange aerial anomalies? Are they indeed the ghosts of warriors or lost souls from long ago? Are they a kind of Ball Lighting that seem to occur because of an unknown force in the foothills? With many reports claiming that the lights seem to move as if under intelligent control could it possibly be some kind of secret government program? Could there be a base below Brown Mountain that perhaps, all these missing campers and hikers stumbled across?

There is a popular theory that lights are in fact U.F.O.’s. Which makes the prospect of the disappearances on Brown Mountain far more sinister. If there is a extra-terrestrial or extra-dimensional presence involved, it could explain why the “Project Blue Book” files on the case, were never released. Maybe they did find something.

Here’s a fun video from WBIR in Knoxville, Tennessee November 20th 2017. I personally think that whatever these lights may be, there is definitely a little magic and a lot of mystery attached to the whole of the Appalachians.

Keep it creepy kiddos,

-C

SOURCES:
Roberts, N. (1967). Ghosts of the Carolinas. Columbia, SC: McNally and Loftin. https://www.wbir.com/video/news/local/the-mystery-of-the-brown-mountain-lights-part-1/51-2806308