A group of friends and family were traveling up Brown Mountain, NC to observe the lights. After a bumpy drive, an unexplained series of events occurred on the way down the mountain.
I received the following account:
"This happened in 1972 when I was 14 years old. My father decided to drive up a logging road that led up to Brown Mountain in North Carolina. We had a 1969 Ford van with four rows of seats. In this van were my father at the wheel, my mother, us five kids aged between about 8 and 15, and I think my father's friend and his wife. Long van, with lots of seats, all full.
I think my father must have wanted to see the lights at night (the famous Brown Mountain Lights), because, you know, they appear at night. This is maybe not directly related, but then again maybe it was. My father had met an old fellow named Ralph. I was there; it was at some local store that carried Mr. Ra[lph's pamphlets about getting to the top of Brown Mountain and being taken into a crystal chamber by the UFO people there. I think they promised to take Mr. Ralph and his wife with them when things got very strange.
So we all bounced up a dirt road after sundown on a mountain probably sixty miles from home. The road just kept switching back and getting narrower, as the night went completely dark. All you could see was what the headlights lit, and that was only twenty yards at most. I vaguely recall that I may have been worried, during the drive up, that the saucer people might not like us as much as they liked Mr. Ralph.
After what I honestly believe was well over an hour, and maybe closer to two, the road was so narrow, steep, and rutted that my father was struggling to keep the van going farther, and there seemed to be no place wide enough to turn around. In those days my father had a "cheater knob" aka suicide knob on the van's steering wheel. These are legal, but do yourself a favor and don't get one unless you need it.
This knob is important to the story because we ran into a ditch running across the road. Good thing we were only going ten miles an hour. It was still a spine rattler, and my father's hand cracked the windshield while holding the broken-off knob.
I don't think his hand was actually broken, but it was out of the game. My father's friend took over, somehow got a loaded van out of a ditch somewhere far up Brown Mountain, found a way to get us turned 180, and drove down off the mountain.
Funny thing, we were back on the main road within 10 minutes. I never understood how we got down off the mountain and back to the main road that quickly, especially after it had taken us over an hour to drive up the mountain. Another strange thing also occurred. We saw hundreds of bright orbs on the drive down the mountain. None of us ever understood what happened that night." R
NOTE: Here is an article by Dr. Raymond Keller Ph.D about the Brown Mountain Lights - Field Location #2: Brown Mountain of North Carolina Lon
HAVE A COMMENT? GO TO OUR SUBREDDIT AND POST YOUR THOUGHTS
Your financial support of Phantoms & Monsters and our other pursuits is much appreciated. Please click the banner above. Thanks.