Brown Mountain Lights — Overmountain Victory Trail

Since before European contact, mysterious lights have danced above Brown Mountain in Burke County, North Carolina. The Catawba people told early settlers that the lights were the spirits of Cherokee and Catawba women searching for their warrior husbands lost in an ancient battle. The U.S. Geological Survey investigated twice — in 1913 and 1922 — attributing the lights first to locomotive headlights (disproven when floods took out the railroad and the lights continued) and then to local automobile headlights (disproven by the same logic). The lights continue nightly, most visible from Wiseman's View and the Lost Cove cliffs.