While a body of folktales has grown up around the Brown Mountain Lights, it should be pointed out that no scientific explanation for the appearance of the lights exists. Unimpressive as far as mountains go, Brown Mountain rises to but twenty-six hundred feet and is best described as a long, low ridge when viewed from higher points in Burke and Avery counties.

Numerous sightings of the strange lights have been documented over the years, and the lights are still visible today from vantage points along the Blue Ridge Parkway and from points between Blowing Rock and Linville.

Margaret Jordan of the Davenport Weekly Record of Lenoir, North Carolina, wrote in April of 1922 that "the mysterious light on Brown Mountain . . . has again been seen by the Burke County people." She went on to recount one of the first attempts to explain the lights, noting that on June 8, 1908, "a body of men was immediately dispatched from Morganton to learn the cause of the light, but the expedition was a failure."

Those curious men from Morganton shouldn't have felt too badly, even though they trooped over to Brown Mountain again three nights later when the light was spotted once more. Every scientific attempt since then to explain the appearance of the ghostly Brown Mountain Lights has failed.

In 1913, a United States Geological Survey investigation verified that the lights did indeed exist. After a brief examination, the investigators determined that the lights were nothing more than the reflected headlights of trains traveling through the Catawba Valley at the base of Brown Mountain.

The locals knew that there was not a chance that his was true. The lights had been seen long before the coming of trains to the area. A severe flooding of the Catawba Valley in 1916 proved them right. The flood washed away railroad tracks and bridges and tore down power poles in the valley. Throughout the weeks it took to restore the tracks, the Brown Mountain Lights continued to appear regularly. The flood was nature's way of disproving the scientists who attempted to write off one of her mysteries as another matter of routine reason.

Later in the decade, the United States Geological Survey again investigated the mystery lights, this time along with the United States Weather Bureau. Using a wide array of modern instruments, they determined that lights appearing above the mountain arose from the spontaneous combustion of marsh gasses. They also suggested that any remaining lights were the reflections of brush fires.

March gasses? Perhaps they were paying too much attention to their instruments and ignoring their surroundings. There are so marshy areas on or anywhere near Brown Mountain, no swampy holes where such gasses might gather.

It didn't take other scientists long to discount this theory. It was noted that phosphorous combustion could not have been seen from great distances even if marsh gasses were present; phosphorous combustion is more visible as you approach its origin. The Brown Mountain Lights, on the other hand, seem to disappear as you approach, and they are rarely visible at all from lower altitudes, where swamp gas would be likely to accumulate. Again, the lights are seen high above Brown Mountain.

In a 1940 report, Hobart A. Whitman concluded that the lights were not the result of natural ground sources. He analyzed rocks and soil from Brown Mountain and the surrounding area for any unusual elements. The rocks and soil didn't differ from rocks and soil across the entire western region of North Carolina.

As for brush fires, the mountain would have long ago burned down to support so many fires for so many years.

The Smithsonian Institution discounted the popular theory that the Brown Mountain Lights were a manifestation of St. Elmo's fire, the electric-glow phenomenon occurring at the edge of a solid conductor such as an airplane wing. St. Elmo's fire does not occur in midsky as do the Brown Mountain Lights.

Eventually, it was suggested that the lights were a mirage, the best scientific explanation of the regular appearance of the mysterious, floating globes over Brown Mountain to date. Legend has taken over where science failed. If the lights cannot be explained by science, they must exist outside the world of science.

Unexplained lights at night are often personified in folklore and Indian legend as a lover in search of his or her beloved in the eternal hereafter. This is true of the Brown Mountain Lights as well. One legend has it that a storm swept away a beau on his scheduled night of elopement; his faithful lover waits still with a lantern in her hand for his arrival. Another version has it that a lover burns a candle as she searches for her beloved, who was murdered by a jealous rival.