Lone Star Lore: The Marfa Lights Mystery
10/16/2003 5:51 AM
By: Doug Johnson
Everybody likes a good mystery. I especially love them, and Texas is filled with them. That's one of the reasons some people say the state is so large -- to hold all the mysteries that we have.
I'm going to tell you a few mystery stories in upcoming Lone Star Lores, but let's start with the most popular one of all, perhaps -- the story of the Marfa Lights.
A lot of newspapers have done stories on them, TV stations have gone out there and recorded them, but no one has ever figured out what causes them.
There was a fellow by the name of Robert Ellison in 1883 who was herding some cattle with his wife between Marfa and Alpine, Texas.
They camped one night on a high mesa. Ellison was building a fire to cook the evening meal when he looked over and saw lights hovering. First there was one, then two and then three, and they'd move around and sometimes they'd merge and then separate.
Ellison was afraid they were Indians, so he and his wife did not get much rest that night.
He wrote about the incident, and it was the first recorded sighting of the lights.
Afterwards we found out the Indians had seen them many times for maybe a hundred years or more and thought they were the spirits of lost souls.
A lot of folks have since gone out there and seen the lights for themselves. In fact, today there's even a kind of overlooking view where you can pull off the highway and have a look for yourself.
Many TV stations have gone out and done stories on the mystery. "Unsolved Mysteries" even went out once and tried to work on it.
And every kind of scientific expert and paranormal expert in the country has been out there studying them. Still, there's no solution.
In recent years, though, a lot of people who see it claim it's lights from cars on HWY 64, which is off in the distance. The problem of that theory is, it was first seen in 1883 -- there was no HWY 64 and there certainly weren't any cars.
If you want to see for yourself, go out to Marfa and check them out. Maybe you'll come up with an idea.
If you know anything else about the Marfa Lights Mystery or if you have a great story that you want Doug to share e-mail us at lonestarlore@news24houston.com.
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A spooky mystery of light
10/25/2003 12:00 PM
By: Staff and wire reports
There's a mystery on Mitchell Flats, just outside of Marfa in far West Texas, which is open land left behind by an ancient sea.
The best place to witness this unexplained phenomenon is at the viewing site, just east of Marfa on U.S. Highway 90.
From there, on almost any given night, you can watch the mysterious lights. What do they look like? Well, it depends on who you talk to.
"I remember the night when I saw the Marfa Lights for the first time. I was sitting on a pickup while my group wandered off. And suddenly they appeared moving at a very fast rate of speed. They split into two bright lights and suddenly split again into four lights. I've seen them several times and have never seen them appear the same way twice. Each time I have seen the lights they have been very different," said Marfa resident Sheri Eppenauer.
"It was about six years go when the strangest thing happened to me. I was living on Chinati Mountain on a ranch out in Texas and getting ready to go to bed that evening, got into bed, turned out the light, and a bright light just showed up just through my window. It changed colors and lasted for a few minutes and then went away," said Marfa resident Felicia Wood.
In the middle of the Mitchell Flat is what remains of an old World War II Air Force training base. During its prime in the mid-1940s, many of the pilots saw the mysterious lights. Marfa resident Fritz Kahl was one of them.
"We discovered the lights by chance off in the distance, very small, very soft. And it's a phenomenon that they tell me that it exists over other parts of the world. This happens to be our local chapter of that book, of phenomenon in the mystery world," said Kahl said.
Who can explain their source? Where are they actually located? How long have they been in existence? The mystery is no closer to being solved now than when they were first seen.
"The thing is that if they ever solve the mystery, then it's gone, put down everything. As long as it's unsolved then there is gonna' be people out here looking for it, trying to figure it out," said game warden Jim Kitchens.
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Lone Star Lore: Saratoga Lights
1/29/2004 5:51 AM
By: Doug Johnson
A few months ago, I told you about the mystery of the Marfa Lights. I got a lot of e-mail on that one, and it's not as much a mystery as I once thought it was.
But there's another place in Texas where some mysterious lights are seen occasionally, and it's near the town of Silsbee, which is north of Beaumont, over in East Texas.
They're called the Saratoga Lights.
There's a lady named Bonnie Marsh, who is a grandmother, and several of her friends went out one night with the intent of seeing these mysterious lights.
So they drove along this small road -- only seven or eight miles long -- on a dark night after a hard rain, and sure enough, they saw the lights.
When they first started to see the lights, the people in the first car -- who were out on the hood, laughing and carrying on -- all got back in the car, rolled the windows up and locked the door.
Now, the Association of Scientific Thinking (based in Houston) is an organization that goes out and investigates mysterious matters, such as psychics and palm readers, to see if there is anything real to them. Most often their isn't.
The Association spent four nights watching the Saratoga Lights, and they discovered it was headlights out on the 787, a road nearby, just like the Marfa Lights.
However, I enjoy the way the Association worded it at the end of their report. They said: "Caution must be taken. Because, while we were there for the four nights, nothing out of the ordinary happened. It doesn't mean that sometimes extraordinary things happen."
See, we all like mysteries and we enjoy solving them, but once they're solved, they're not as interesting anymore.
By the way, the Association also spent some time studying the Marfa Lights, and just as everyone told me through e-mail, the lights are simply car headlights.
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