The Longdendale Lights (Devil's Bonfires), Bleaklow and the Woodhead Pass

The Longdendale valley runs about 15 miles through the Dark Peak. At its top end, Bleaklow's north face rises above Torside Reservoir. Bramah Edge. Shining Clough. Torside Castle. Below them runs the A628 Woodhead road. Above Old Glossop lies a bend called the Devil's Elbow.

The lights here have a local name. The Devil's Bonfires. A Tintwistle farming family told of lights above Nell's Pike and the Devil's Elbow, returning roughly every 30 to 50 years. They said the lights once "froze young lambs."

In the 1960s, visitors and wardens at Crowden Youth Hostel reported beams and coloured lights on Bleaklow. Ken Drabble, senior Peak Park warden at Tintwistle, led a search with walkie-talkies and gas searchlights. "When we got to the top there was nothing," he said. "There were fifteen people at the hostel that night and they did see something."

July 1970. Barbara Drabble, a teacher, was driving her Morris Oxford home to Crowden. She saw "a brilliant incandescent blue light." It lit the lower half of the mountain, the railway, the reservoirs and about two miles of road. She felt intense cold. Afterwards her car "had an icy sheen and felt cold."

In 1971, warden Joyce Buckley watched a powerful light with her guests. "At first I thought it might be car headlights but it reappeared on top of Bleaklow and no car can get up there."

Sean Wood, a North West Water reservoir keeper, moved into Bleak House at Woodhead in the early 1980s. One November evening, about 9:30 p.m., a chilly, moonlike glow filled his room. Outside, near Shining Clough, he saw "a large pulsing ball of light directly above the house." Neighbours at Crowden Youth Hostel were watching it at the same time.

It was not the last. He saw a large light 50 to 70 feet off the ridge, "pulsing again and then stopping, moving back and forth and up and down." Another time came "three lights together, much smaller in size, like in a string, moving in an arch." Over 16 years he counted more than 30 sightings. Phil Shaw, the Glossop Mountain Rescue commander who keeps a sightings log, said the lights "fade away like a will o'the wisp as they approach."

14 February 1995. Close to midnight. Laverne Marshall, her daughter Stacey and a baby grandchild were driving home from Heathrow. Four or five little balls of light appeared on the dashboard. "They were really bright and dancing up and down just like they were being controlled by a juggler." They moved over the bonnet and onto the roof, split into two groups, then came back in single file across the sunroof, "almost as if they were marching in order." About seven minutes in, at the streetlights, they blinked out.

No government or scientific body has ever investigated. Dr David Clarke, who documented most of the accounts, called for one. Suggested causes include flares, aircraft landing lights on the Manchester Ringway approach, the Holme Moss transmitter beacon, car headlights and Venus. Jim Exton of National Grid ruled out the pylons. Dr Neil Charman rejected ball lightning and suggested will-o'-the-wisp. Clarke concluded that none of these explains the range of reports.

Not one photograph or video of the lights is known. In 1999, Debbie Fair's "Haunted Valley" webcam drew 180,000 visitors in six months. The valley kept its secret.