Brown Mountain and Its Mysterious Lights
Imagine that you are driving through the mountains of North Carolina on Highway 181 just North of Morganton. You see a crowd gathered at an overlook ahead. Not too unexpected of an occurrence when you consider that this type of scene happens daily at various highway mountain overlooks throughout North Carolina. Tourists often gather at such viewing areas to take in the beautiful mountain scenery - daytime scenery ranging from sunrises, to fall foliage, to rhododendrons blooming in springtime, to sunsets to spectacular views of valleys and distant mountains attract hundreds of people daily to these overlooks. The startling difference with the scene at this overlook on Highway 181 is that it is taking place at night. What could bring such a crowd to an overlook at night when the typical mountain scenery is shrouded in darkness. The answer - the Brown Mountain Lights.
I first heard of the Brown Mountain Lights soon after a family trip to the North Carolina mountains when I was about eight years old. My brother and I were in the midst of recounting the adventures of the trip to our grandmother when she asked us if we had seen the Brown Mountain Lights while we were there. We grudgingly admitted that we had not but assured her that we had lots of fun anyway. We tried to act as if we knew what she was talking about but curiosity soon got the better of us and we asked eagerly, "Grandma, what are the Brown Mountain Lights anyway?".
Well it turns out that that is a question mankind has been trying to answer for centuries - dating back to legends told by Cherokee Indians that lived in the area long before European settlers moved in. Needless to say my grandmother could not explain what the lights were either and in fact she had never seen them herself (I am not entirely sure that she ever visited the mountains of western North Carolina). She had heard about them from friends that had seen them. She explained that they were mysterious lights that appeared some nights over a particular mountain in western North Carolina.
I was immediately intrigued and seriously spooked. I was eight years old so I was a pro at asking questions but the questions I asked always had answers. How could these lights just appear out of nowhere without explanation? There was no answer to this question and I found this hard to fathom. Not understanding the origin of their name I envisioned lights with a glow similar to that of streetlights when viewed from a distance, speckled accross the surface of a deserted mountain (except in my vision the glow of the lights was somehow brown rather than amber).
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