Brown Mountain Lights:
Songs pay tribute to the
mountain’s wandering spirit
We’ve read about the strange lights that soar and dash over the vast stretches of rugged roads in the Ozarks. In North Carolina, mysterious lights hover above the Brown Mountain. And just like the spook lights in the Ozarks, the North Carolina version of the phenomena has inspired fear and curiosity among the locals and songs among country and folk musicians.
No one knows when the lights first began to appear along the mile and half ridge that stretches along the Pisgah National Forest that meanders through North Carolina’s Burke and Caldwell counties. Some say that Cherokee Indians were the first to spot the lights, possibly even as far back as the 1200s. But most of the documented cases start appearing in records during the nineteenth century.
Just to be clear, a lot of skeptics want to blame the lights on highway phenomena—swinging headlights for example—but these early cases were established well before automobiles were invented, or, at least, were common in the region.
Although the accounts are spread over hundreds of years, the descriptions of the phenomena are roughly the same. Often compared to a roman candle, the lights appear at the ridge top. They’re extremely bright. Witnesses from dozens of miles away claimed to see the anomalous flames appear and then climb into the sky, before exploding and snuffing themselves out. Some of the silent explosions appear to climb well above the mountain. Weather is often to blame for the phenomena, but the lights appear irregularly, in all types of weather conditions and during all types of temperature variations.
Most people familiar with the Brown Mountain lights say you should view them from the Linville Falls, a scenic spot near the Blue Ridge Parkway.
That area has another bright spot—the musicians and songwriters who live there and fill the ridges and valleys in the area with country, folk, and bluegrass music. It doesn’t take a genius to predict that good music and the spooky lights of the Brown Mountain would one day meet in song.
Scotty Wiseman was one of the first to talk about the strange lights near his hometown of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Wiseman, now enshrined in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and his better half, Myrtle Eleanor Cooper, formed the famous country and western singing duo, Lulu Belle and Scotty, often referred to as the Sweethearts of Country Music. One of the songs that Wiseman became most famous for was the tune “Brown Mountain Light.” The lyrics of the song point to one of the spookier explanations for the light show.
According to Wiseman’s song and other legends that have been passed around the hills and hollows of this section of North Carolina, the lights are from the spirit of a slave. The slave’s master went hunting and got lost. He never returned to the plantation. His slave, though, went out to find him. As darkness was approaching, he made sure he grabbed a lantern and when he could see no more, he lit the lantern to continue his search. He never found the lost man, but he was so dedicated to that quest that he continued his search until he died. And even after his mortal body was laid to rest in the good North Carolina soil that he tromped on endlessly, his spirit continued his quest. The lights that people see on the mountain are from the lantern of this long-dead slave.
The song was covered by some of the most famous acts in country and folk music. The Kingston Trio and the Hillmen recorded versions.
Not everyone believes the story of the faithful servant spirit, but even scientists are forced to admit that something weird is happening on Brown Mountain. They’re just not ready to label that activity supernatural—yet. Since the early twentieth century, researchers from the US Geological Society, as well as several groups of researchers from nearby universities, have investigated the lights. The researchers haven’t convinced a lot of people with their theories, which blame everything from power lines to automobiles for the lights. Often these scientific attempts at debunking have been debunked by the Brown Mountain light faithful. For example, power to the power lines in the area was severed—once by flood damage—but the lights kept showing up. Car lights also seem like a convenient excuse for the researchers, but, as mentioned, some of the lights show up where there are no roads.
And that’s where we still are today. Some people believe that the lights are supernatural, some people believe the lights are completely natural, albeit rare. The rest—like Roy Orbison and the Kingston Trio—are content to avoid the debate and just sing about the strange glowing orbs that haunt the hills of North Carolina at night.