The Brown Mountain Lights

Brown Mountain is a modest ridge, about 1.5 miles long, on the line between Burke and Caldwell counties in Pisgah National Forest, North Carolina. From Wiseman's View, a rock outcrop above Linville Gorge, it lies on the horizon about 8 miles to the east.

For decades the story began in 1771, with German engineer William Gerard de Brahm. The best sources reject it. His passage concerns thunder and mountain air in a South Carolina chapter of his report, and he may never have entered North Carolina. The link to Brown Mountain first appears in a 1927 newspaper.

Family tradition offers an older memory. Around 1854, Fate Wiseman camped at Wiseman's View with his father. Each night he saw a flash of light in the distance. Same spot. Same time, within about half an hour.

Around 1910, Rev. C. E. Gregory built a cottage near Loven's Hotel at Cold Spring and began reporting the lights. Then came September 1913. The Charlotte Daily Observer described "mysterious lights seen just above the horizon every night." A red light, at about 7:30 p.m., again 20 to 30 minutes later, and again around 10 p.m. The paper vouched for it through "Anderson Loven, an old and reliable resident."

Later witnesses described lights twice the size of a star, shifting up and down, tinted red or blue. A minister with field glasses watched them as they "rose high in the sky and terminated." A Forest Service sign says people have long observed "weird, wavering lights rise above this mtn. then dwindle and fade away." Some split into smaller lights. Climb the mountain, and they vanish.

In 1913 D. B. Sterrett of the USGS found that westbound Southern Railway headlights, visible from Loven's Hotel, matched the reported times. Then, in 1916, a flood washed out the Catawba Valley rail bridges. The trains stopped for weeks. The Lovens said the lights continued.

In 1922 George Rogers Mansfield of the USGS spent about two weeks near Loven's Hotel with a map and an alidade. A light Joseph Loven called genuine stayed fixed all evening. Mansfield found the lights "clearly not of unusual nature or origin." About 47 percent were car headlights, 33 percent locomotives, 10 percent stationary lights and 10 percent brush fires, bent by refraction over the Catawba basin. In 1977 an Oak Ridge National Laboratory team aimed a distant arc light toward observers waiting west of the mountain, who saw an "orange-red orb apparently hovering several degrees above Brown Mountain's crest."

Around 2006, Daniel Caton, director of observatories at Appalachian State University, and engineer Lee Hawkins set up low-light cameras at two homes overlooking the mountain. By 2014 they had logged 6,300 viewing hours. Nothing unexplained. Then, July 16, 2016. Both cameras caught an orb over the mountain. Caton called himself "getting beyond skeptical."

Joe Nickell visited in 2014 and found planes, cars, the lights of Morganton, a red tower beacon and a firefly. Skeptoid's Brian Dunning called the de Brahm quote misquoted and out of context. Others suggest ball lightning or plasma. The supposed Native American legend first appears, unsourced, in 1938. Ralph Lael's tale of a light speaking in a "booming voice" is widely treated as a hoax.

Scotty Wiseman's 1961 song "Brown Mountain Lights" was covered by the Kingston Trio and Tony Rice. The X-Files featured the lights in its 1999 episode "Field Trip." Since 2022, Morganton has held a Brown Mountain Lights Festival. And the overlooks still draw crowds, watching the ridge after dark.