Three Books on Mysterious Nocturnal Lights seen in Marfa TX and Brown Mountain NC

[Explorer]

To better understand the claims made about unknown nocturnal lights (or orbs) seen in Marfa TX and in the Brown Mountains NC, I selected to read the following 3 books.  I was curious about the claims made in these locations because I have seen orbs in CA, UT, and AZ and wanted to check if the phenomena claimed was like what I saw.

 

Mysteries of the Marfa Lights Revealed, by Robert Wagers and Judy Wagers, 2012

In Defense of the Marfa Lights, by James Bunnell, 2021

The Brown Mountain Lights, by Wade Edward Speer, 2017

 

Wagers book is excellent and provides good science background for those who want to study far away (over 1 mile) lights.  The Wagers concluded (based on the cases examined) that all mystery lights were explained by automobile headlights and in some cases, they were mirages caused by light refraction due to temperature inversions in the valley.  Robert Wagers has a PHD in electrical engineering from Stanford and it shows in the detail analysis and assessment made for each of the cases.

 

One of the many good tidbits of information that Wagers shared is that:

“A person with excellent vision might only be able to resolve two objects, in the daylight, that are 1.2 minutes of arc separated from one another.  It gets worse at night.  In the dark, when the pupils of a person’s eyes open wide to collect more light, visual resolutions is reduced by nearly a factor of three from daytime visual acuity.  Under the condition of fully open pupils, car lights that are 4.5 feet apart cannot be distinguished from a single light at distances greater than about one mile”. 

This is a compelling argument against paying attention to any lights seen over a mile away in forested areas with lots of dirt roads.

 

James Bunnell (a retired aerospace engineer) spent a decade researching the Marfa area in search for the rare lights.  He set up multiple camera platforms in private ranches in the area in addition to the public Marfa viewing location.  While he agrees with the Wagers that most of the lights seen by the public are caused by automobile headlights, he dissents that there are no mystery lights.  He claims that the true Marfa Lights are very rare and do not follow the path of roads.  During his 10 years of research, he only captured 38 instances of anomalous lights.  His last book was all about defending the few photographs that he claims captured the true Marfa Lights.  The photographs are indeed odd looking and seem to be above the land surface.  Nonetheless, Wagers made a good case for the frequency of light refraction in that valley and appearances could be deceiving.  Moreover, the lights that Bunnell captured in photographs are also far from the viewer (7 to 13 miles).

 

Wade Edward Speer is a geologist and led a multi-disciplinary scientific team on a 3-year study (2012-2014) of the Brown Mountain nocturnal lights claims.  He concludes that 98% of the lights seen are misinterpretations of man-made lights (vehicles, airplanes city/town lights, flashlights/headlights, campfires, gas lanterns, etc.), 1% due to natural lights (celestial lights, forest fires, blue ghost fireflies, moonlight reflections, etc.), while the remaining 1% are unclassified due to lack of sufficient information.  Part of the research done by Speer’s team was to conduct staged light tests whereas members of the team visited different parts of the Brown Mountains (by hiking at night on dirt roads, ATV trails, and hiking trails) and recorded their light fingerprints from the far away viewing platforms.  These tests provided good evidence of how mysterious ATV lights and headlamps could look from the popular viewing platforms (Highway 181 overlook and Wiseman’s View). 

 

Speer also wrote a good chapter about the pseudoscientific explanations popularly used to explain earthlights. He rejected as pseudo-science the tectonic strain hypothesis that claims that earthquake faults, tectonic strains and piezoelectric effect are causing earth lights in that area.  As a geologist, he did conduct the due diligence in looking for faults, earthquake evidence, and researching the geology before discounting that hypothesis as bunk.  That chapter was worth the price of the book.  Overall, an excellent read for those interested in the Brown Mountain lights history and science.

 

Despite the conclusions from Speer, there are a few photographs on the internet of some odd looking lights captured over the Brown Mountains that are still considered mysterious (see YouTube link below with photo and videos from Charles Braswell).  Nonetheless, all these photos are of nocturnal lights that are over a mile from the observer.  The Braswell photos and video were captured in Oct. 2001, and he published a book in 2015.  Thus, Speer was fully aware of the photo and the claims made when he wrote and published his book in 2017.  Speer was probably not impressed.  While Speer did not analyze Braswell’s video or photo in his book, he probably dismissed it at either a low flying plane or helicopter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zq6_Fxv_8RY

 

After reading these books I concluded that whatever is observed in Marfa and Brown Mountains (probably mostly man made lights) is different to what I and others have seen in the High Sierras in CA. Most of the lights seen in Marfa and Brown Mountains are far away from the observer and hard to determine origin by causal and uninformed observers (if they are automobile headlights, ATV headlights, night hikers or campers, etc. that are miles away). What interest me are the nocturnal lights or orbs that are seen close to the observer (30 ft to 1,000 ft) within the forest canopy in wilderness areas that have no roads nearby. 

[Kiwakwe]

Nice synopsis and review, Thanks Explorer.