The brown mountain lights

Brown Mountain is a low ridge in Burke County that, during dry, crisp
 evenings in the autumn, is host to a genuine and baffling mystery. When
 conditions are right, mysterious glowing orbs can be seen to rise up
off the mountain, hover and wobble about fifteen feet up in the air, and
 then disappear. There's no denying that the lights are real. They have
been observed by countless witnesses and photographed on many occasions.
 But what they are is still unknown.

The Brown Mountain Lights have been observed for centuries, and
multiple legends have arisen around the phenomenon. The Cherokee were
aware of the lights, and according to some accounts claimed that the
lights were the souls of Cherokee women searching for their men who had
died in a great battle between the Cherokee and the Catawba that took
place on Brown Mountain. Another legend says that the lights are the the
 ghostly echoes of lights that appeared during a search for a murdered
woman in the 19th century.

But what was once the most widely known legend was recorded in song
in the 1950s by the duo known as the "Sweethearts of Country Music."
Scott Wiseman and Myrtle Eleanor Cooper were both North Carolina
natives, who sang recorded as Lulu Belle and Scotty from the 1920s until
 the 1950s. A married couple, the two performed together from 1935 until
 1958 as regulars on the Chicago radio station's WLS-AM's *National Barn Dance* program. At the time, they were one of the biggest acts in country music.

The song *Brown Mountain Light*, penned by Wiseman, tells a
version of the story where a man, accompanied by a slave, becomes lost
while hunting on the mountain. The man is never found. The slave returns
 to the mountain every night with a lantern to hunt for him, carrying on
 this search even from beyond the grave.

Wiseman, who was from nearby Boone, said this version of the story is
 one he head from his uncle, who took him hunting and camping near Brown
 Mountain. The song rose to the top of the country charts and
subsequently became the best-known version of the legend for a
generation.

The legend of Brown Mountain recorded in the Lulu Belle and Scotty
song is somewhat dated, particularly in regard to its unforgivable
romanticizing of slavery. Indeed, it's easy to imagine a retelling of
this story where the lights are from people looking for the slave who,
when realizing he was alone on the mountain, seized his chance and
hightailed it for Ohio and freedom.

As for the lights themselves, many different possible scientific
explanations have been offered, from swamp gas to the reflections of
automobile headlights from the valley below. But every explanation
offered up so far seems to be too easily disproved. The lights have
been observed since before automobiles existed, so headlights are an
unsatisfactory explanation, and the lights were even observed during the
 1916 flood that shut down all automobile and railway traffic in the
valley below. The swamp gas theory seems to bed crimped somewhat be the
distinct absence of a swamp on Brown Mountain. Some have theorized that
the lights may be a naturally-occurring electrical discharge caused by
the slow movement of the geological fault line below the mountain.

Whatever their cause, people still flock to see the Brown Mountain
Lights, but spotting them is never guaranteed. Reportedly, your best
chance to see the lights comes on a dry, clear night in October or
November, after all the leaves are off the trees.

## Where to go to see the lights

Brown Mountain is located in the Pisgah National Forest, and there a few nearby overlooks commonly used to observe the lights.

* **Brown Mountain Overlook**, located 20 miles north of Morganton on NC highway 181, 1 mile south of the Barkhouse Picnic Area.
* **Wiseman's View Overlook** can be found 5 miles south of Linville Falls on Kistler Memorial Highway, which is also Old NC 105 and State Road 1238.
* **Lost Cove Cliffs Overlook**, which is found on the Blue Ridge Parkway, at mile-post 310, 2 miles north of the NC highway 181 junction.

The lights are most commonly seen on clear, dry nights in the autumn.
 Moonless nights can be a boon to visibility. The lights are a
relatively rare occurrence, and many people have sat on a car hood late
into the evening staring into the darkness and seeing nothing. But it's
definitely worth a look.