State

Is This Brown The Truth About Mountain Lights? Many articles have been written about these mysterious gleams, but here“s some¬ body who claims that their origin is per¬ fectly logical in every way. I HAVE BEEN reading articles about "The Brown Mountain Lights" for more than thirty years. Something like twenty years ago, I was a member of a party that went up there to investigate them. As I recall, we went to Wise¬ man’s View, but anyhow we in¬ quired in that section and went to the place where the natives told us was the best place to see them. In the party we had four men with B.S. degrees. One was a chem¬ ist, one an electrical engineer, one a civil engineer, and one a business administrator. We reached Wiseman’s View dur¬ ing daylight hours. We made sev¬ eral inquiries as to the exact loca¬ tion of Brown Mountain, and sev¬ eral people pointed it out to us. They were all agreed as to its loca¬ tion. Below the Horizon Here is a very important point that I wish to call to your attention. Most folks go to Wiseman’s View- after dark to see the lights. They are under the impression that the lights appear above Brown Moun¬ tain, and that therefore they arc above the horizon line. This, how¬ ever, is not so. We found that the top of Brown Mountain, as seen from the place where we w-ere standing, is considerably below the horizon. There are other moun¬ tains, further off, that tower above Brow-n Mountain. This fact cannot be determined at night, but it is perfectly apparent in the day. We set up two surveying instru¬ ments and took readings on the location of the lights from two points. We found that through the telescopes on the instruments, the lights generally appeared in pairs. They consistently recurred at cer¬ tain places as indicated by the read¬ ing of the angles on the surveying instruments. By triangulation, we calculated the distance of the lights. We spent several hours making various checks and looking for something mysterious to show up. The natives w-ho were there with tty O. \. MORRISON us said positively that we were looking at the genuine Brown Mountain lights, and that they never had seen any other lights different from the ones at which we were looking. In talking with the natives, w-e did not make any pretense of know-- ing the explanation of the lights. We just talked in generalities, and so did they. But it was perfectly obvious that they knew as w-ell as w'e did that we w-ere looking at automobile headlights. How-ever, why should they admit this? They knew that we w-ere deeply inter¬ ested and they also knew that the mysterious lights brought many tourists to their section. These tour¬ ists enjoy speculating about the lights and they would not appre¬ ciate being disillusioned. So you can rest assured that every resident within a radius of twenty-five miles of Wiseman’s View is going to in¬ sist that the origin of the lights cannot be explained, and that they are something beyond the realm of knowledge so far as human be¬ ings are concerned. More Observations There is another point I almost forgot to tell you. The week-end following our visit to Wiseman’s View, we organized another expe¬ dition consisting of three or four cars. One car drove out to the ob¬ servation point and parked facing toward Brow-n Mountain. Two other cars toured the various high¬ ways east of Brow-n Mountain in the area where we thought the lights originated. We had no accu¬ rate maps so could not locate the origin of the lights accurately. The car that remained at the ob¬ servation point flashed his lights on and ofT at regular intervals. I be¬ lieve it was once every half-min¬ ute, or something like that. The car touring the low country watched the top of Brow-n Mountain. The car in which I was riding found two or three points from which we could see the other car flashing his lights. When we reached such a point, we parked our car and flashed a pre-arranged signal. When the other car acknow-ledged our signal by cutting ofT his lights, w-e sent him a message by spelling out the letters in dots and dashes. He answered in the same manner. We did this from tw-o or three points before we finally flashed: “Going home now: good night.” He flashed back “Good night.” and cut ofT his lights. He told us later that our lights looked exactly like the so-called mysterious lights. Before Automobiles One other point. The people liv¬ ing in that section say that the lights have been observed for many years, perhaps since the mountains were first settled. Anyway long be¬ fore the days of automobiles. All of w-hich may be perfectly true. It should be remembered, however, that people traveled at night even before the days of automobiles, and that when they did they usualy car¬ ried lanterns. Such lights could have been visible on clear dark nights. And here is something else in which you may be interested. Dur¬ ing our period of observing them (from twilight until about mid¬ night), we noticed that they be¬ came less and less frequent. When w-e made our second set of observa¬ tions about 2 or 3 o’clock the same night, we found that the lights ap¬ peared very infrequently. Earlier in the evening, they showed up so often that w-e could not check on all of them. But by 3 o’clock there w-ere long waits between each ap¬ pearance. Then, too; during the early part of the night, we observed a num¬ ber of stationary lights which burned continuously. These started ( Continued on page 1 6 ) THE STATE. DECEMBER 21. 1946 5