The Mystery of the Brown Mountain Lights

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Anyone who has spent a night out in Appalachia knows just how dark its nights truly are. With a pitch black veil of darkness covering the ancient land. But around the Brown Mountain area in North Carolina, mysterious lights have been observed in the dead of night for generations, varying in color, brightness, and behavior, astonishing all who see them. And after centuries of sightings, surveys, and legends around these lights, they are seen as one of the biggest mysteries in Appalachia to this very day. So if you want to learn more about them, stick around as we are going to look into the mystery of the Brown Mountain Lights.

[00:00:44]Today's topic takes us to the Pisgah National Forest in western North Carolina, specifically around Brown Mountain and the Lynville Gorge, where mysterious lights have been seen in the dead of night. According to the folklore of the region, the lights have been known of long before European arrival, potentially as far back as 1200 AD when the rival Cherokee and Pataba nations would have seen the Lynville Gorge as a strategic location at the edge of their respective territories. And although stories from the colonial and civil war periods are also widespread, the oldest known sighting is said to have taken place vaguely around 1854 when Josiah Lafayette Fate Wiseman and his father were camping at what is now Wiseman's View one night when out of nowhere a flash of light could be seen in the [music] distance. Fate claimed that every night when he visited Wiseman's view, the same flash of light would show itself in roughly the same place at roughly the same time. The first published account of the Brown Mountain lights would come in on September 23rd, 1913 in an article of the Charlotte Daily Observer, which reports on sightings members of the Morgantown Fishing Club had sometime before 1810.

[00:02:06]Spotted from Rattlesnake Knob, which is just off of Highway 181, a light resembling a fire balloon would rise in the southeast at about 7:30 p.m. again at 1000 p.m. every single night.

[00:02:18]Described as being far larger than a star in the sky, but far smaller than a full moon with a red coloration with sightings lasting for less than a minute each. These men would be mocked by the locals, which is likely why the story took so long to come out. But the very next month, North Carolina Congressman Edwin Yates Webb would receive concerned requests to investigate the phenomenon.

[00:02:46]So DB Starret of the US Geological Survey would be requested to investigate the matter. And after just a few days, Barrett would quickly wrap up his investigation, claiming that the lights are nothing more than the headlights of a train seen over the horizon. This theory was heavily scrutinized. But for the most part, it made sense, or at least it made sense until 1816 when heavy flooding would devastate the region and put the railroads in the area out of commission. Despite this, the lights would still be reported. This led to a second, more thorough survey carried out by George R. Mansfield in 1922.

[00:03:31]This time lasting 2 weeks and gathering as much information as he possibly can.

[00:03:37]Mansfield would gather testimony from many locals, including Joseph Levven, owner of the Leven Hotel, who would document sightings from guests along with his own reported sighting from all the way back in 1897.

[00:03:51]And by the end of his extensive survey, Mansfield would come to the conclusion that we will save for later, but just know that it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Well, it is pretty unusual when you get down to it, but nothing unexplainable.

[00:04:08]But even Mansfield's explanations weren't enough to satisfy the many who believed that the lights were something otherworldly. And throughout the 1900s, the legend of the Brown Mountain lights would capture the interest of people across the nation with many stories and legends coming into public eye. And one man who brought these lights on to a brighter stage was Nashville songwriter, Hall of Famer, and great nephew of Fate Wiseman, Doy Wiseman, whose 1961 song, The Legend of the Brown Mountain Lights, would put many more eyes on the mountain and the gorge below. Throughout this period, the lights were mostly affiliated with spirits, with legends of wartorrn lovers searching for the other's light. A lost slave and master searching for each other, murder victims seeking justice from beyond the grave, and parents looking for their missing children. But in the mid60s, ufologists would begin to look into the lights, theorizing them to be the vessels from another world. New to this, the Brown Mountain Lights often are featured in UFO related media, creating their own episodes of X Files and Ancient Aliens, cuz of course, and inspiring the 2014 movie Alien Abduction. And in 2022, the city of Morgan would create its own yearly Brown Mountain Lights Festival, which features local bands and encourages people from all over to come and view the lights for themselves. And to this day, many people have claimed to seen the lights, including Lendigon, who did his own deep dive on the Brown Mountain lights just a few years back.

[00:05:53]Appalachin State University would do its own investigation into the lights, placing cameras across the valley. And despite gathering over 6,000 hours of footage, the lights didn't appear in a single frame. But all these years later, people still are in disagreement as to just what the lights even are, leaving them a mystery.

[00:06:20]So, just what are the Brown Mountain lights? Are they science, fiction, or both? As mentioned, many people believe the Brown Mountain lights to be tied to aliens given that by definition they are unidentified flying objects and others believe that the lights are restless spirits who sweep through the gorge.

[00:06:41]There are many beliefs in rural communities across the world of ghost lights and some think that these lights are similar to willow wisps which are a phenomenon which is caused by deposits of natural gases like methane that catch fire. This usually occurs in swamps and bogs and no deposits like this are known to exist in this area. Some theorize that the lights could be some form of rare lightning like St. Elmo's fire or ball lightning. St. Elmo's fire is a phenomenon where blue or violet plasma forms around an object, typically a rodlike object, and this commonly occurs on airplanes mid-flight. The only problem is that St. Elmo's fire requires a highly charged atmosphere to form, typically in thunderstorm like conditions and not during a calm night.

[00:07:34]So for that reason, it would not be a regular cause of the lights. Ball lightning can be ruled out for similar reasons too, as it also requires a charged atmosphere and is so incredibly rare that it only appears once in a million lightning strikes. So again, it is not likely to be thundering every single night a million times on Brown Mountain. The lights also got me thinking about those lithium deposits that they recently found in Appalachia.

[00:08:05]But these deposits are in the northern reaches of the range and not down here.

[00:08:10]But on a similar note, some theorize that the makeup of the area consists of odd minerals which are causing the lights to form. But after two surveys of the area, nothing out of the ordinary was found. A glowing fungus known as foxfire has been brought up as a potential source for the lights. The glow from foxfire is nowhere near bright enough to be these lights. Not to mention the fact that this fungus doesn't fly around in the air every single night. A really interesting theory that I don't see brought up nearly as often as it should be is that these lights were caused by moonshiners.

[00:08:49]According to Mansfield, one man claimed that moonshiners were operating around Brown Mountain and are using screens to block off light from their fires around their stills. But sometimes they will take these screens down as steam from the still is rising, causing the light to reflect off of it and forming the lights. The man suggests that this could be a deliberate process to signal to other members in their operation or maybe to scare people off. This is a very interesting theory that does not get nearly enough attention, but at the same time, it would imply that moonshiners are operating out here every single night and signaling that they are there every single night, but somehow they are never caught. I also don't think that the lights are the result of flares as they are typically shot into the air during an emergency and I doubt somebody would be doing this every single night without being discovered.

[00:09:49]And for a similar reason, I'd like to rule out fireworks. And also, there isn't a report of loud noises or bangs accompanying the lights, making them more unlikely of an explanation than even the emergency flares. Ultimately, I believe that there isn't a single cause for the lights, the vast majority of the causes are far from supernatural.

[00:10:11]Finally going back to that survey as it wrapped up after hours of observation, interviews with locals, and even quite a few experiments, Mansfield came to the conclusion that Brown Mountain lights were caused 47% by car headlights, 33% by train headlights, 10% from stationary lights, and 10% from bush fires. Train headlights seemed like a ridiculous theory at first, but Mansfield did some soouththing and managed to find that a train schedule at Fermal City had matched up with another occurrence of the lights as the train was set to arrive at 9:53 and the lights viewed from Blowing Rock would occur between 9:30 and 10:00.

[00:11:01]And although the distance from Blowing Rock to Ferrermal City is 45 mi. And that does seem like a lot of distance for that light to cover, the candle power of a train's headlight was 600,000 candle power. For comparison, Mansfield mentions the Minot Sledge Lighthouse in Massachusetts, which had a candle power of about 75,000 and could be seen for over 25 m out, leaving no doubt that such a light would be seen from that distance. Train services have been active in the area since 1854, which like Fate Wiseman's tale claims is around 1854.

[00:11:44]So, train headlights likely did count for a good amount of the light sightings, but they could not count for those that were seen during the period that the trains were out of operation, but what wasn't out of operation at the time were vehicles. Automobile headlights are said to make up a bulk of the sightings and it would explain the 1910s wave of sightings as around the same time cars would become more common around Morgan with lights moving through the tree line being a new sight for some. Some sightings of the lights describe a reddish light with smoke. So obviously this would be counted towards brush fires and larger than usual campfires. And there were some buildings used by rangers in the area, which could explain the stationary lights. As time went on, these percentages likely changed as roads and cars became more common in the area and high power flashlights became more common as well.

[00:12:46]But hold on, hold on. People described lights that were changing direction in the air in many of these reports.

[00:12:52]Surely, people weren't driving into the air. So, how could you explain that?

[00:12:57]Well, Mansfield explains it a bit better than I do, but basically during the sunset, cool air begins to move down the Kitaba Valley from the Blue Ridge in the north, converging with all the other air currents, which are all different temperatures and flowing in different directions, creating an atmosphere of varying density and temperatures, which refracts light traveling through it. Of course, these conditions are also ripe for rain and mist, which also could mess with the light in other ways. So, as you could see, Mansfield was pretty damn thorough with his survey, even making a map of connecting viewing locations to known light sources in the area. It also makes sense as to why there are so many varying descriptions and occurrence times of the lights, as a distant train's headlight would have a different appearance than a car's headlights on a nearby road. The survey managed to convince most people who read it that the source of the Brown Mountain lights wasn't anything entirely unexplainable.

[00:14:05]But there is still a bit of a problem because earlier I did mention how natives knew about the lights centuries before European arrival. Well, what if I told you that claims of Native Americans observing the Brown Mountain lights didn't surface until 16 years after a Mansfield survey was even published.

[00:14:26]Whenever looking into claims of Native American legends, it's important to be careful as many times a supposed Cherokee legend turns out to be a white man's invention. And in the case of the Brown Mountain lights, that's what this claim seems to be with. Many experts believing the same thing. The same can be said for other claims of the lights from before 1912, as even Fate Wiseman's account wasn't published until 1971, 10 years after Scotty Wiseman's song about the lights came out. It's also interesting that the brown mountain lights inspired so much science fiction works. As one year before the first published sighting of the lights, Goulles Vern's science fiction book, Master of the World, would be translated to English. And in this story, a mad scientist was setting up a secret base beneath Cable Rock, a mountain right next to Brown Mountain, and could be seen from Wiseman's view. The mad scientist is using this base to work on an airship. And as he does, all of the activity creates balls of electricity which hover around the mountain. Mind you, this book was written in 1906 in French, 6 years before the Charlotte Daily Observer article. Also, when looking at Table Rock, I too think that it looks like a great place for a Dr. Dofen Schmmert style evil base. And I'm glad that there's a French dude from over 120 years ago that agrees.

[00:16:10]And so it appears that the unique conditions of the region combined with modernized lighting created the perfect conditions for the Blue Mountain lights.

[00:16:20]And as we've done since the dawn of time, we created stories around them.

[00:16:25]And to many, the myths became all too real. With technological advancements and more development in the area since the 1910s, causes of the lights has likely shifted far more in favor of car headlights along with crane headlights, flashlights, tires, and even brand new causes like drones and airplanes. But many people around Brown Mountain area still claim that the lights are far too unusual to be explained by these means, still holding on that the true cause of the lights is still a mystery. And although I believe that the vast majority of the Brown Mountain light sightings are the result of explainable and not that far out causes, there is more than enough room in the Lynville Gorge for weird things to go hidden. The only way to find out what's really going on here is to go on out to Brown Mountain and go see for ourselves.

[00:17:24]And that's going to do it for the Brown Mountain Lights. This was a very interesting topic to cover. This was a suggestion from one of our members.

[00:17:32]Sorry I can't hear you over my freedom.

[00:17:36]and uh he claims that one of his friends had their own sighting of the lights a couple years back and wanted to see what I had to think about it. And uh honestly, I remember Wendon's video. Uh the screenshot I'm going to show shows that there's like no watch hours on the video, but I watched it twice, but so I'm not a larer, but I did remember that Wendon covered something about Lights Out in the mountains. So I'm like, "Oh, I wonder if this is a similar thing."

[00:18:01]And oh, it's the same thing. So that was cool to rewatch that and do my own research on the side and although the two of us definitely disagree on a lot of the causes. I I disagree with a lot of his takes on it. But uh that's the beauty of it all. Uh you know in that case this is like a a Wendigon exposed uh because uh sheerely only because he is not continuing the crypted iceberg series. Uh put out a new iceberg video please. But uh yeah, this is definitely interesting. If you want to see more of a a look into the folklore of the lights and the stories and legends, definitely go check out Wendigon's video. It's definitely one of his more memorable ones.

[00:18:46]I really liked it and it was really cool to cover something like this. I I tried to bring a lot of the the same approach that I do towards like cryptids and stuff like that towards another Appalachian mystery. These lights aren't cryptids unless they are unless you think they're some sort of life form going about. And technically an alien is a cryptid, but cryptos all just really don't like that because animals yada yada yada. It it's interesting. But ultimately, yeah, I do think that the lights are not super weird. I think some of the causes could be out there. like maybe one time ball lightning formed and that was the lights or you know something like that. But for the most part, I think it's all pretty levelheaded. But what do you think about it? Do you think that I'm uh I'm I'm too close-minded about this? Do you think that this could be something far more unexplainable? Do you think it's something that will be explained in the future but can't be explained with [music] today's science? Do you think that these are spirits? or do you think that it's a ground sloth reflecting [music] the light of Venus off of its butt? Make sure to let me know down in the comments below and leave your own suggestions.

[00:19:59]I'm definitely all ears uh for I usually do crypted type content, but stuff like this is also pretty cool to look into and I wouldn't mind looking into more mysteries. Uh but with that, I'd like to thank you all for watching. If you like this video, make sure to leave a like, and if you have the ability to hype it, make sure to hype it on up. Uh, if you like this content, make sure to subscribe, ring that notification bell for all sorts of videos. Leave a comment down below what you thought about it, and if you have any suggestions, and also consider becoming a member. Members gain early access to content, priority recommendations just like this one, and of course, you get a spot here in the member shoutout section. And on top of all of that, you are a real one. But if you made it this far into the video, you're a real one regardless. And for one last time, [music] I'd like to thank you all for watching, and I will see you in the next one.