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THE
MYSTERY OF THE MARFA LIGHTS
Marfa,
Texas
Suggested slogan:
"We've been leaving the lights on for you for 120 years." © |
| "A photo
of an actual Marfa Light; I thought the whole thing was a hoax, but
I can't explain what showed up in the picture...maybe you can."
- Photo courtesy Julie McConnell, June 27, 2004 |
Then
there is the mystery of the Marfa Lights. Which, after all these years,
is about all you can say about them. There are lights. They're near
Marfa (9 miles east), and they're a mystery.
The City of Marfa conducts their Mystery Lights
Festival every Labor Day weekend
(the same weekend that Alpine
has their Balloon Festival) celebrating these unusual phenomena.
The Texas Department of Transportation has thoughtfully provided a
parking area where the lights can be viewed.
© John Troesser
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Marfa Texas
Forum
Subject:
Marfa Lights
I was browsing
the forum and found some stuff on the Marfa Lights. My pal John
Tolleson and I had an unusual experience with some 'Marfa Lights'
that weren't THE Marfa Lights in late June, 1991. We'd been to the
Western Writers of America's convention in El
Paso and were returning to San
Antonio and Seguin.
We got caught in a gullywasher of a thunderstorm between El
Paso and Sierra
Blanca--water about 8" deep on I-10, all the lights out in Sierra
Blanca, winds that were pushing that old Lincoln all over the
road. When we got to Van Horn we were ahead of it, and we turned
south there onto old US 90.
We decided we'd see what we could see at the Marfa Mystery Lights
viewing area--and we saw quite a show. What we were seeing were
brilliant flashes of light out on the flat. Now, I am an experienced
artillery forward observer, so this is pretty accurate estimation.
At ranges of 2000 to 4000 meters from the viewing area, we were
seeing brilliant flashes of pure white, pinkish, bluish, and pale
orange light. These were from ground level to upwards of 20 meters
in the air, brilliant enough that they lit up patches of ground
some 200 meters in diameter with such intensity that we could distinguish
the shapes of individual bits of brush, even from a mile to 2 1/2
miles away.
We came back convinced we'd seen the Marfa Lights.
I was out there several years later and mentioned what I'd seen
that night in '91. The people out there said "We've never seen anything
like that out there!" I later discovered that the previous April
there had been a minor earthquake in the area. I believe what we
saw may have been produced by aftershocks from that earthquake.
- Charley
Eckhardt, May 26, 2006
You haven't
lived until you have seen the Marfa lights on a moonless night while
flying solo in a Cessna 182. That will make the hair on the back
of your neck curl. - B Eubanks, June 22, 2002
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