Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.
The Brown Mountain lights are a mystery that has been going on at least since 1913. They are red lights that rise up from the mountain ever so slowly, hover for a second, and then flash the words ‘Good Grief’ in Morse code – hence the first part of the name.
That’s not true. Well – to be fair the lights do seem to be an actual phenomenon, but they definitely don’t flash any Peanuts related messages. Instead they just float up there, eerily glowing red and hovering like the ghost of Anna Nicole Smith‘s used tampon in zero gravity.
This is getting gross – on with the story!
First and foremost, sorry to make you think of a dead woman’s old bathroom garbage can. Second and second-most – with a name like the Brown Mountain Lights you may be tempted to compare them to the Phoenix lights – arguable the best documented UFO sighting on record. Not so – you see the Phoenix lights are largely assumed to be a spaceship or something. Be it man made or not, it looked like a craft – some people even claim to have seen the bolts and rivets that held it together.
Although the Brown Mountain lights are definitely UFOs, it seems to us that nobody suspects them of being a craft of any sort. From what we’ve studied on the matter it seems to typically be considered more of a ghost-type thing.
We’ll let Wikipedia tell you about an early sighting:
“One early account of the lights dates from September 13, 1913, as reported in the Charlotte Daily Observer. A fisherman claimed to have seen ?mysterious lights seen just above the horizon every night?, red in color, with a pronounced circular shape.”
And we’ll let Ibiblio.org tell you a little more:
“One thing is certain, the lights do exist. They have been seen from earliest times. They appear at irregular intervals over the top of Brown Mountain – a long, low mountain in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. They move erratically up and down, visible at a distance, but vanishing as one climbs the mountain. From the Wiseman’s View on Linville Mountain the lights can be seen well. They at first appear to be about twice the size of a star as they come over Brown Mountain. Sometimes they have a reddish or blue cast. On dark nights they pop up so thick and fast it’s impossible to count them”
Of course the government has investigated. The United States Geological Survey declared at least twice that people who see the lights on the mountain are actually seeing headlights from cars, trains, or perhaps the mechanical lovechild-hybrid of the two.
Would you like to see for yourself? Well here are two videos to help you with that. The first is a news clip that’ll tell you about the legend of the lights, and actually shows a brief clip from the second video we’re posting. Said second video is pure unadulterated 49 seconds of light-flashing footage.
Enjoy them, won’t you?
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