Stories about mysterious lights that dance around a nearby mountain ridge have been told for centuries. Cherokee Indians believed the glowing balls of light that rose from Brown Mountain into the night sky were the spirits of fallen warriors. Early Scotch settlers in what later became Burke and Caldwell counties thought the lights were the ghosts of lost hunters. Civil War soldiers told tales of fallen comrades or runaway slaves trying to find their way. The Morganton Public Library contains files with reams of letters and newspaper clippings about brilliant lights and red flashes. No one knew what the lights were, only that they existed.Joey Wakefield first saw the so-called Brown Mountain Lights as a teen with his grandfather, and he still can't figure them out. There was no sound, no sign of anyone on the mountain, he said. "It was such a huge, spectacular sight that it captured my imagination," Wakefield said. In the daylight, Brown Mountain is pretty unassuming. At 2,600 feet, it lies in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Scientists say the granite, quartz and magnetite ridge is 10 million years old. But at night, the mountain assumes a different personality. Wakefield, who works at an area campground, often finds himself trying to explain the unexplainable to campers who ask about the lights.

"It's spooky. When you sit there, you laugh about it until they come out, and I actually locked the door that night I saw them," he said. "It's a white glow, and it comes up and it dances. It will start in the valley and come up, and it seems like you can reach out and touch it." More down-to-earth types claim the Brown Mountain Lights are only reflected lights from nearby towns. Three government studies have been inconclusive, attributing the lights to marsh gases or passing trains. Now, a team of paranormal researchers from Asheville has come up with a new theory -- Brown Mountain is a basically giant static electricity generator.

View: Full Article | Source: NBC17

Now that makes me smile when you have a long standing mystery, that after being investigated, can be shown to be a natural phenomenon. And can be repeated in a lab. And still people would rather have the Mystery. I guess people have a need for the Unknown,

I live in Burke County North Carolina and often go to Brown Mountain/Wilsons Creek area to camp, but I have never seen the lights. If you ask someone about them, they will tell you that they know someone who has seen them, but they have never seen them theirselves. One day!

Probably just stories from old indian folklore