As part of his investigation, Mansfield set up an alidade telescope near Loven's Hotel, at the former home of C. With Sterrett's investigation being considered inadequate by locals, the USGS sent Mansfield to investigate in 1922. Most of the sight lines to Loven's Hotel and the other main viewing sites happened to pass hundreds of feet over Brown Mountain (hatched area), giving observers the impression that the mountain was in some way connected to the lights. From various high elevation overlooks along the Blue Ridge, it was easily possible to see distant electric lights, including train and automobile headlights, near towns along the Catawba River valley. : loc 966, 983 Mansfield used an alidade to plot this map of the Brown Mountain light sources (numbered). 5 : loc 980 but this argument is often repeated today. : loc 978-983 It was never required that train headlights be the only mystery light source, as car headlights were another likely contributor, : p. George Anderson Loven, whose hotel was doing a good business from all the visitors keen to see the light, told the Lenoir News that September that it was still being seen nightly, although it isn't clear whether it was one specific light that he referred to, or many different lights, or possibly even every nighttime light visible from his hotel that he considered mysterious. 10 In July 1916, a flood caused train activity around Brown Mountain to cease for several weeks, which provided an opportunity for some to doubt Sterrett's conclusions. Sterrett, was dispatched to the area and quickly found that the headlights of westbound Southern Railway locomotives would have been visible from Loven's Hotel, and the train schedules he consulted left him no doubt that these were the cause of the lights that were being reported. 4Īs in Verne's novel, locals asked their Congressmen for a government investigation in 1913 United States Geological Survey employee, D.B. It described “mysterious lights seen just above the horizon every night,” red in color, appearing “punctually” at 7:30 PM and again at 10 PM attributing the information to Anderson Loven, “an old and reliable resident”. One early account of the lights dates from September 24, 1913, as reported in the Charlotte Daily Observer. 4 Also, Southern Railway had begun upgrading their locomotive headlamps to 600,000 candlepower systems in 1909, rendering their trains' light output greater than that of some lighthouses that were in operation at the time. Gregory, began trying to draw public attention to them around 1910. Joseph Loven, who lived next to Loven's Hotel, said he had first noticed the lights in 1897, but took no interest in them, and didn't hear anyone else talking about them, until his neighbor, C. ![]() Mansfield's investigation found many locals were unaware of any strange lights until 1910 or later. : loc 281 A number of travelogues, including accounts of mysterious happenings and ghost stories, were published about the region prior to 1900 but there is no mention of unexplained lights in any of these historical sources. The rapidly expanding electrification of the Linville Gorge area from the 1890s through the 1910s, seems to be the origin of the Brown Mountain lights legend, possibly helped by Verne's novel. An important plot point in the novel consists of a mad scientist constructing an airship inside his secret lair in Table Rock, near Morganton, North Carolina, activities which cause strange lights to appear on the summit of the mountain. The earliest published mentions of the lights begin in 1912, on the heels of the first publication of Jules Verne's 1906 novel Master of the World in English in 1911. History Origin and explanation of the lights With the original sightings of the early 20th century having been explained, storytellers have been creating imaginary pre-electrification histories of the lights ever since, and the nature of claimed encounters with the lights appears to have changed over the years to suit changing cultural expectations. ![]() Mansfield, used a map and an alidade telescope to prove that the lights that were being seen were trains, car headlights, and brush fires, which ended widespread public concern. The earliest published references to strange lights there are from around 1910, at about the same time electric lighting was becoming widespread in the area. ![]() The Brown Mountain lights are purported ghost lights near Brown Mountain in North Carolina. Purported ghost lights near Brown Mountain, North Carolina Brown Mountain
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