Marfa Lights, Mitchell Flat and Paisano Pass, Texas

Marfa sits at 4,688 feet in northeastern Presidio County, far out in West Texas. East of town, between Marfa and Paisano Pass, lies Mitchell Flat. Most sightings come from there. Look south-southwest toward the Chinati Mountains, and you are looking where the lights are said to appear.

Tradition puts the first sighting in 1883. A cowhand named Robert Reed Ellison saw a "flickering light" at Paisano Pass and took it for an Apache campfire. When settlers went looking, they found no ashes. The first account in print came much later. Paul Moran's "The Mystery of the Texas Ghost Light" ran in Coronet magazine in July 1957.

Witnesses describe glowing orbs, usually yellow-orange but sometimes green, blue or red. National Geographic described reddish-orange spheres three to six feet across, faint as a distant star before brightening like a flashlight. They hang above desert brush but below mesas and pulsate. James Bunnell says they can last up to forty minutes.

Then they move. The Handbook of Texas says they "move about, split apart, melt together, disappear, and reappear". In 1967 Mrs. Michael Frary put it this way: "They'd zoom in and be big as a headlight, yet with no possible road to put them up the mountains, or they'd seem to bounce off the mountainside." In 1960 a newspaper reported that when the light is approached from the air or across the desert, it "suddenly vanishes."

Mrs. W.T. Giddens had "seen the ghost lights all my life". In 2010 Richard Brown of Odessa saw what looked like "a car light comin' down the mountain, but there are no roads up there!" His friend watched a stationary light split into three. "I looked up at the stars, and [the lights] looked nothing like them." Rancher Mike Shurley described faint flashes, like "a sparkler, two or three football fields away."

Cowboys searched in 1919. Military observers searched during both world wars. They looked by ground and by air, and they found no source. In 1989 Unsolved Mysteries brought experts to the site. The result was inconclusive.

In May 2004 physics students from UT Dallas spent four nights at the site with traffic counters, video, binoculars and chase cars. The number of lights rose and fell with traffic on US 67. Flashed headlights looked just like Marfa lights. The students concluded that every light they saw on those four nights was a car headlight. In 2008 Karl Stephan of Texas State University ran 20 nights of spectroscopy. Every candidate turned out to be headlights or small fires. His team said that "genuine" lights still needed study.

James Bunnell, a retired aerospace engineer, began filming in 2000 with automated low-light cameras. Through 2009 he logged 60 "true" lights on 31 nights. He estimates that about 3% remain unexplained.

Headlights on US 67 and US 90 lead the list. Brian Dunning of Skeptoid also points to mirage, arguing that temperature swings of 40 to 50°F can lift lights from below the horizon. Bunnell proposes plasma rising from rock beneath Mitchell Flat, while Stephan has floated earthquake lights. Critics note that Ellison's 1937 memoir never mentions the lights and that evidence predating the highways is anecdotal.

In 2003 the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Center opened on US 90, about nine miles east of town. Every Labor Day weekend brings the Marfa Lights Festival. And visitors still gather at the platform, face the Chinati Mountains, and wait.