Tag: Marfa Lights

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Marfa Lights Chasing Cars

For the moment, set aside those sightings that may have been mirages of common lights. In his book Hunting Marfa Lights, James Bunnell seems to take particular note of those car chasings that may have been only mirages, not actual chasings. Let’s now consider those sightings, within and without that book, in which car chasing seems unlikely to have been from any mirage.

Linda Armstrong was driving to Marfa, Texas, on the night of October 8, 2008, when she was startled to see a bright white light in her rear-view mirror; it seemed to be gaining on her car. Two aspects of her encounter each discredit the Fata Morgana mirage explanation: The light passed her and followed the curvature of the highway ahead of her. If the light had been a Fata Morgana mirage, it would have remained in the rear-view mirror, and it would not have followed the curvature of the road.

Judith M. Brueske, Ph.D., has written much about sightings of Marfa Lights, at least some of which are included in her book The Marfa Lights. I have taken the following accounts from her writings that were adapted for the book The Campfire Collection.

Ophelia Ward was alone, driving from Marfa to Apine, Texas, around 1973, when she looked south and saw what looked like a ball of fire approaching her van. The orange-red flying light appeared to be about two and a half feet in diameter, frightening her as it got closer. She tried to accelerate away from whatever it was, but the light kept up with her, flying alongside her van but just on the other side of the fence next to the highway. At about fifteen miles from Alpine, the light was gone. Ward maintained that she had been driving up to ninety miles per hour, trying to get away from that light.

Another report involves car chasing. One night in 1987, two women were driving to Marfa when a “huge red and green light” appeared silently above the back window, about thirty feet off the ground. This coorelates with some of the CE-III lights that Bunnell has documented flying at about that height.

New Ideas About Marfa Lights

Intelligence of Marfa Lights

Ghost Lights or Marfa Lights Alive

Bioluminescent Predators in Texas

Reply to the Houston Chronicle

Science and Marfa Lights

On a typical night when one or more of Bunnell’s cameras picks up mystery lights, the start time for their appearance usually differs greatly from the start time of the previous night in which there was an appearance. . . .

When a group of intelligent predators has a successful hunt, they may, on the next day (or the next night for nocturnal predators) repeat what was recently successful, assuming the hunting conditions are similar. . . .

Why are those start-times on July 14-15, 2006, extremely significant? If the night of July 14th was very successful for nocturnal hunters, they might have returned on the night of July 15th, even a minute earlier than the previous night, out of anticipation. A slight difference in the weather would not distract nocturnal predators on the second night.

Non-fiction cryptozoology book "Live Pterosaurs in America" - third edition - back cover

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Temperatures During CE Marfa Light Sightings

CE Marfa Lights (the designation James Bunnell gives to the mystery lights, in southwest Texas, that display characteristics suggesting chemical and/or electromagnetic aspects)—those ghost lights can appear at any time of year, in a variety of weather conditions. But eight years of data gathering indicate those lights have a preference for warmer air temperatures.

Warmer Nights for Marfa Lights

Of the fifty-two sightings recorded by James Bunnell (author of the nonfiction book Hunting Marfa Lights), he included much information in his book, including temperatures when each sighting began. . . . None of those temperatures were below 20 degrees Fahrenheit. About 15% were from 20-40 degrees, 25% were 40-60 degrees, and 58% were from 60-80 degrees (one sighting began when it was over 80 degrees). This is consistent with a group of nocturnal predators that need to hunt year round, but find it more challenging to find prey on colder nights.

Regarding predators hunting in cold winter weather in North America, consider the contrast between the Black Bear and the wolf. One hibernates, the other hunts prey. But if a group of large, intelligent nocturnal flying predators were to survive in North America, why would they not adapt a different strategy for winter? Why not fly long distances to hunt, if necessary? With local prey animals more likely to be underground, why not travel further away when hunting in winter? I suspect such predators would hunt more on more moderate nights, rather than the coldest nights, unless they were especially hungry or had a particularly rewarding opportunity.

If the Marfa Lights predators often sleep in a cave in the Big Bend National Park, they would be expected to spend less time hunting around Marfa on the coldest nights, for it would be more difficult to find prey. This coorelates very well with the data compiled by Bunnell over many years.

A Scientific Look at Marfa Lights

The consecutive nights of July 14th and 15th, 2006, (Texas time-date, not the Universal date mentioned on Modern Pterosaur: July 15-16) fit well the hypothesis of glowing flying predators, because of the start times of those ML events, recorded by Bunnell’s camera or cameras. On the first night, the mystery light display started 38 minutes after sunset, and on the second night, 37 minutes after sunset.

The above post relates indirectly: not according to temperature but consecutive-night sightings. This is another way to use the data to test the bioluminescent-flying-predator hypothesis.

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A Scientific Look at Marfa Lights

The data collected by James Bunnell, on CE-type Marfa Lights, and published in his book, deserves close examination. The explanation given in “Analyzing Data for a Marfa Lights Interpretation” (the April 7th post on Modern Pterosaur) may be a bit daunting to some readers, however, so I’ll try to make it more clear. Here is my simplified interpretation.

In the book Hunting Marfa Lights, Bunnell included ten pages titled “Table B1.” Dozens of sightings are listed, with data such as date, time-of-sunset, time-of-first-appearance, time-sighting-ended, temperature (and other weather details). What a treasure for the scientifically-minded to analyze! The following quotes are from Modern Pterosaur.

We now notice the resulting complexity of potential behaviors and area patterns resulting from the above conditions. On any particular night, it would be unlikely that even one of Bunnell’s cameras would pick up even one CE type mystery light. But we have room for at least one prediction.

Bunnell himself admits that some mystery lights observed around Marfa, Texas, show complex behavior. He also admits that there are limitations to what his cameras can record in this large area where the lights are observed.

We now examine some of Bunnell’s data for camera recordings of significant mystery light appearances from late 2000 through late 2008 . . .

This post then goes into details about “night-successions.” There are two kinds of successions, although this is probably not mentioned or at least emphasized by Bunnell, at least not by that label: consecutive nights, and sightings separated by many days, even weeks or months. The point? Observations of mystery lights (called ML by Bunnell) are rarely on consecutive nights, but those exceptions are extremely important in this analysis on Modern Pterosaur.

For example, the consecutive nights of July 14th and 15th, 2006, (Texas time-date, not the Universal date mentioned on Modern Pterosaur: July 15-16) fit well the hypothesis of glowing flying predators, because of the start times of those ML events, recorded by Bunnell’s camera or cameras. On the first night, the mystery light display started 38 minutes after sunset, and on the second night, 37 minutes after sunset.

The significance? Take any consecutive ML-sighting dates at random, for example July 12, 2003 is followed by May 8, 2004. (That happens to be one of the longest periods without any camera recordings.) As expected, very little similarity is seen between these sightings, except that the lights recorded were both classified as “ML.” The wind speed on both nights was about 8 mph, surely just a coincidence. But some ML appear hours after sunset, sometimes many hours, and the one minute difference between July 14th and July 15th, 2006, was surely no coincidence, at least not when we consider the bioluminescent-flying-predators hypothesis.

To be brief, the group of bioluminescent predators probably had a successful hunt on the night of July 14th, so they left their sleeping quarters (perhaps a cave) at the same time on July 15th, soon after sunset, and flew to the same general area where they had success the previous night. Fortunately Bunnell’s camera recorded the activity on both those nights.

To any critic who might suggest that those two consecutive nights were very similar (in start times for mystery light appearance) because of similar conditions, what about the weather data for those two nights? Consider the details, the differences on those two nights:

Maximum temperature in daytime: 93 versus 86 (F.)

“Temperature at start” was 78.8 versus 75.2 (F.)

“Temp Change (day high to ML Start)” was 14.2 versus 10.8

Dew Pt. (F.): 42.8 versus 48.2

Max. Humidity: 41% versus 52%

Start Humidity: 28% versus 38%

Start Wind Speed (mph): 11.5 versus 17.3

Obviously, any non-living hypothesis (for CE mystery lights of Marfa) that involves atmospheric conditions fails to address this extremely close coorelation between these two consecutive nights. Does anyone still doubt? Look at the above data. The hypothesis of a group of bioluminescent flying predators hunting early at night—that fits the start time perfectly, for the July 14-15, 2006, one-minute difference. It appears those glowing predators have again survived scientific scrutiny.

Third edition of "Live Pterosaurs in America"
Live Pterosaurs in America, third edition, nonfiction
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Cheesman Lights and Marfa Lights

How are strange flying lights seen in New Guinea, in the 1930’s, related to strange flying lights seen recently near Marfa, Texas? Many of the CE-III Marfa Lights (so classified by the scientist James Bunnell) fly horizontally at low altitude; the lights observed by the British biologist Evelyn Cheesman, deep in the interior of the mainland of what is now Papua New Guinea, were seen in a horizontal line.

In her book The Two Roads of Papua (Published by Jarrolds, Limited, in 1935), Lucy Evelyn Cheesman described strange flying lights that defied any commonplace explanation. She saw that it would be unreasonable to suppose that the natives could have produced the lights; human origin was out of the question, for people would have to have been strung out for several miles, in a dense jungle, coordinating the on-off flashs of their flashlights. Eventually she gave up trying to explain them.

On the surface, it might seem better to tie the Cheesman lights to the ropen light of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, for all those lights, as individual lights, seem to last for only about five or six seconds or so, and individual CE-III Marfa Lights may last much longer. But the indava lights (seen just a couple of mountain ranges or so south of where Cheesman was) sometimes do glow longer than a few seconds.

How do these flying lights relate to pterosaurs? In general, they are seen in areas where eyewitnesses have seen apparent living pterosaurs, and sometimes an eyewitness will see a pterosaur that glows as it flies.

British Biologist Observes Strange Lights

She described the flash: It lasted “about four or five seconds, but that flash had been a little distance away from the first. Flashes continued at intervals. . . . by no possibility could there be human beings out there using flash-lamps at intervals . . .”

Cheessman Lights and Pterosaurs

Some people might ask how unidentified flying lights connect with living pterosaurs. They connect in three ways. The more-direct way is that pterosaurs or pterosaur-like flying creatures are sometimes seen to glow. A recent example is from a lady who was on a cruise in the Caribbean, with family members. Her daughter brought her onto the deck one night, anxious for her to see what was flying over the sea. The mother, who had not been drinking, saw two apparent pterosaurs, glowing and flying back and forth, sometimes closer to the ship. Other examples are found from the writings of explorers, like Paul Nation, Jonathan Whitcomb, Garth Guessman, and David Woetzel, who interviewed eyewitnesses in Papua New Guinea.

Marfa Lights as Predators

On some warmer nights, a ball of light [Marfa Lights of Texas] seems to  split into two, which will separate and fly away from  each other before turning around and flying back  together. They have recently been linked to flying  lights in the southwest Pacific, north of Australia,  lights that natives of Papua New Guinea testify are  made by large flying creatures. Local names for  those creatures include “ropen,” “seklo-bali,”  “duwas,” “kor,” “wawanar,” and “indava.”

Bioluminescence and Marfa Lights

A recent report, from a researcher and explorer, who has seen these nocturnal creatures himself, indicates one of the pterosaurs had a glow on the leading edge of the wings.

Bioluminescence of Pterosaurs

No biology textbook explains anything about pterosaur bioluminescence, at least not yet; but my associates and I believe the day will come when biology textbooks will include that subject. Future discoveries may reveal something about the biological chemistry involved, for it may differ from the bioluminescent of other organisms such as fireflies.

Dragons, strange lights, and pterosaurs

When considering flying lights and eyewitness accounts of living pterosaurs, we need to consider what some persons would call a large flying creature with a long tail and teeth but no feathers: “dragon.”