Hidden Truth/Hidden Truth.iso/data/newspostings/1401-1500/1431

Text File | 1996-06-19 | 10.7 KB | 193 lines

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From: [e-mail] (Charles Gregory)
Newsgroups: alt.paranet.ufo,alt.paranet.paranormal
Subject: Re: Marfa Mystery Headlights
Date: 18 Jun 1996 21:30:41 -0400
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[e-mail](Bart Scott) wrote:
> <[e-mail]> writes:
> >>I'm looking for information on so-called "ghost light" areas,
> >>such as the Marfa lights, or the area in northeast Oklahoma.

> >You mean the Marfa Mystery Headlights? They're visible most every night,
> >depending on cloud cover and the number of cars driving between Marfa and
> >Presidio.

> Well, I guess that just about says it all.  Atmospheric conditions.
> Marfa is now history for me, but Seneca still hold value.

Because people keep making "simple" claims like "car hadlights", I thought I
would offer up excerpts from the Web Page run by Marfa itself. Please pay
particular attention to the bits refering to the Presidio highway....

-----------------------------------------------

   Excerpts from "GHOST LIGHTS"
   by Kirby F. Warnock reprinted from Big Bend Quarterly, Summer, 1988
   copyright ⌐ Trans Pecos Productions. All rights reserved.

These excerpts are reproduced pursuant to the copyright law provisions
allowing for brief passages to be quoted for the purposes of review.
Within the article, I find the following items, descriptive of the lights:

   ... The light pulsate, move around, grow extremely bright,
   and disappear. The lights are of a white color, not orange (like
   fire), and can be seen without fail every night of the year.

   ... After about a two-minute wait, we saw three tiny white lights appear.
   The end less plains made depth perception almost impossible, so it was
   hard to tell if we were watching a large light 20 miles away or just a
   flashlight beam some 50 yards in front of us. Certain of the lights
   moved, while others remained stationary. Occasionally they would
   pulsate, grow extremely bright, and then disappear. After a few
   minutes they would reappear and begin the cycle anew.

Fritz Kahl, a resident of Marfa since 1943, is quoted as saying,

   ... "Thirty years ago, it was a lot easier
   to see the Marfa lights, because there weren't as many lights out
   there competing with them. There were no electric lights back then and
   no four wheeled vehicles, so the lights were easier to see. There are
   Marfa lights, but they've been overrated and overpublicized. So many
   asinine stories have come out." For instance? "Oh, tales about people
   disappearing or dying. There have been no tragedies because of the
   lights. We lost eight cadets during the war, but not from chasing
   lights or trying to dive under them."

   ... Fritz seemed adamant in his denials of any supernatural cause for the
   lights, yet he admitted that they exist. What, I asked, did he believe
   they really were, and why hadn't he ever found out for sure? Fritz let
   out a long chuckle. With a grin, he told me, "The reason people come
   to see me about the lights is be cause I chased them in an AT-6 air
   plane. Me and another pilot got a fix on them and tried to fly to that
   spot, but when we got up in the air, we couldn't see them. I kept
   getting lower and lower, until finally the fellow in the back seat
   started shouting at me to get out of there because we were so low he
   could see the yucca plants." So one can't see the lights from the air?
   "I have never seen them from the air. A few years back, Sul Ross
   University did a study on the lights and tried to find out what they
   were. I had three people in a plane with me, and one of them was the
   editor of the Alpine news paper. We didn't see a thing. They had
   people on the ground who could see them, and those people tried to
   radio us and and tell us where the lights were, but none of us saw a
   thing."

   ..."We have the right conditions for St. Elmo's
   fire in the spring of the year. It even appears on the horns of
   cattle. The only problem with that answer is, you can see the lights
   year-round."

   ... "I've been around phosphate
   deposits before, and those are not phosphate," said Pal Keeney, a
   geologist for the Fort Worth-based Meeker Corporation. When he'd first
   come to Marfa to check on some oil leases, he had been told of the
   Marfa lights, and had been fascinated by them. He had then begun a one
   man crusade to solve the mystery of their origin. The first thing he'd
   done was to test out all the popular explanations. Since daytime check
   revealed no ranches in the area, the next possibility was car lights
   on the Presidio highway. Keeney was able to determine with topo
   graphic maps and surveying tools that there was one stretch of highway
   that was visible from the old airbase. He located this strip of road
   with a survey or's transit and marked the location, from beginning to
   end, with surveyor's stakes that had highway reflectors attached to
   them. He lined up three stakes, one behind the other, so as to sight
   down the tops of them and deter mine the start of the stretch of road.
   Then he marked the end the same way. With this arrangement, he was
   able to sit in a lawn chair at night and, with a flick of his
   flashlight, to sight the reflectors and determine whether a light in
   the desert was a car or a ghost light. "I tried to get a fix on the
   ghost lights and triangulate on them to get their position so I could
   check it out," he said. "But I never got a good triangulation, because
   they are always moving." Nevertheless, Keeney had a good idea of where
   the lights were located, and, with another geologist, Elwood Wright,
   he headed out 8 small ranch road for a closer look. About two miles
   down the road, they saw a pair of lights moving out on a flat at a
   high rate of speed. "They looked like they were moving at about a
   hundred-fifty to two-hundred miles per hour, but of course I had no
   way of measuring that. The lights spooked some horses, almost ran into
   them. Those horses started kicking and running through a cactus patch,
   trying to get away. The lights came to the edge of this road and
   stopped. "Several times I had see lights around this old hangar they
   had on the airbase. Well, one of these lights took off for that
   hangar, but the other one stayed there by the side of the road. It
   kept moving around a bush, kind of like it knew we were trying to get
   near it. It seemed to possess intelligence-it was like that thing was
   smarter than we were. It was making us feel pretty stupid. It was
   perfectly round, about the size of a cantaloupe, and it moved through
   that bush like it was looking for something. When the light stopped
   moving, it would get dimmer, but as it moved, it got brighter.
   Finally, it pulled out in the middle of the road about twenty yards
   from us and just hovered there. "I had left the engine running, and El
   wood said, 'Put it in gear and floorboard it. We'll run over it.' All
   of a sudden it got real bright and took off like a rocket. It was the
   damndest thing I have ever seen. I still don't know what it was that
   we saw." Since that close encounter, Pat Keeney has been out to the
   site of the spot ting almost 74 times and has yet to see "them" up
   close again. Keeney was a spotter for the Navy during World War II,
   and he is familiar with almost every type of aircraft. He is not a man
   given to heavy drinking, and as a geologist, he has a very analytical
   mind. He story cannot be discounted.

   ... The lights have been see since the 1890's, when several
   early ranchers feared that they were the fires of renegade Indians.

   ... We noticed from our new vantage point
   that whereas we had seen the lights "go out" while watching them from
   the old airport, here they dipped down into draws instead, or dropped
   behind a bush, their glow giving away their location. A moment later,
   they would rise into view again. They were definitely moving. As we
   got up and prepared to hike on, they disappeared. They did not
   reappear during the next hour.


   ... the scope but had trouble finding the light because of the scope's
   extreme magnification. After much jiggling and cursing, he finally
   found the light and immediately blurted out another expletive. "It's
   got all kinds of colors!" he exclaimed. I looked through the lens and
   sure enough, the light was glowing in varying colors of blue, red,
   green and gold! Skip took his turn. What does it look like to you?" I
   asked breathlessly. "Car lights," he replied. "They look like car
   lights." Surely he was mistaken. I grabbed the scope and looked again.
   My heart sank. He was right. A pair of head lights could clearly be
   seen winding down the road. We checked our surveyor's stakes and sure
   enough, the lights were in the area designated as the Presidio
   highway. But there was another light that appeared off of the highway,
   farther up, on a hill. We focused on it. It was so far away that it
   appeared as a white globe of light, pulsating and changing intensity
   constantly. "Let's drive down the highway and look back in this
   direction," suggested Miles. We piled into the Blazer and took off,
   marking the spot by a ranch light that was just 500 feet from where we
   stood. Upon our arrival on the Presidio highway, a glance back at our
   old position revealed the ranch light, but no "Marfa lights." However,
   we could see some other lights to the south of us, on the opposite
   side of the road.

   ... You can see them on most any night, even through rain or cloudy
   skies.

   ... Some of the lights are car lights-but not all of them.

Quite clearly, the story shows that people are able to identify car
headlights under the viewing conditions, and distinguish the genuine lights.
Reports of close approach also tend to disagree with the premise that it is
only lights on a highway.

Comments?



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Charles Gregory
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Home Page: [J]ump to "http://www.freenet.hamilton.on.ca/~ab801/Profile.html"
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