Marfa Lights remains an unexplained mystery that continue to baffle people

While filming the 1956 drama “Giant” in Marfa, Texas, actor James Dean was so captivated by strange lights in the sky that he kept a telescope in his hotel room to observe them, reported BBC. Today, thousands gather each September to witness the same spectacle, known as the “Marfa lights” or “Marfa ghost lights.” This surreal phenomenon has intrigued people for over a century.

The city of Marfa is situated at an altitude of 4,830 feet above sea level in a semiarid region. Surrounded by a desert plateau featuring sprays of colorful flowering plants, the otherwise isolated city has become an inviting destination for people worldwide. People visit the city in flocks to watch the mysterious “Marfa lights” that flicker and dance beneath the foothills of the Chinati mountains.

The first account of someone noticing these lights comes from 1883. In this year, a cowboy and rancher named Robert Reed Ellison came upon these lights, while he was driving his cattle across the plains. Creeped out, he thought that the light was a result of Apache signal fires.

According to BBC, most witnesses described these lights as “roughly the size of basketballs” darting wildly across the desert. "The Marfa Mystery Lights are visible on many clear nights between Marfa and Paisano Pass as one looks towards the Chinati Mountains," a plaque at the site reads, per TreeHugger. "The lights may appear in various colors as they move about, split apart, melt together, disappear and reappear."

But the question that has puzzled most people is, “What are they?” Some people believed these to be UFOs, others thought they were ghosts, flying dinosaurs, or Spanish conquistadors. Native Americans of the area thought the Marfa Lights were falling stars, the Houston Chronicle reports. Some World War II pilots also tried to locate the source of the mysterious lights but were unable to discover anything.

There are many explanations behind these mystery lights. One is, that it could be a mirage caused by refraction of light, reported Live Science. Sometimes called a superior mirage or a "Fata Morgana," this phenomenon occurs when a layer of warm air rises above a layer of cool layer, forming a temperature gradient. Another explanation could be that the lights are triggered by light-inducing gases like the ones in the swamp gas, phosphine, and methane. When these gases come in contact with oxygen, they ignite and give a glowing flare. In marshlands, where decaying organic matter produces plumes of phosphine and methane, this glowing light, often called, "will-o'-the-wisp," or "fool's fire" can be observed. Although Marfa’s location doesn’t have a marsh nearby, there are reserves of oil and petroleum that could produce methane gas.

Many people also think that these radiant balls of light are some distant car’s headlights, but the lights started appearing long before there were cars in this area. Above everyone else, a retired NASA aerospace engineer, James Bunnell, has researched a lot on this bizarre phenomenon. He described first seeing it as “a shocking light display for which he could find no reasonable explanation.”

As documented in his book "Hunting Marfa Lights," Bunnell spent eight years conducting field observations, interviews with locals, and collecting more than one hundred photographs. "As part of my research, I created three automated monitoring stations, Roofus, Snoopy, and Owlbert with a total of nine automated cameras that ran every night for years," he told TreeHugger. "Other people have pontificated and even written books about Marfa Lights but no one has investigated them the way I have, or come even close." According to Live Science, Bunnell believes the Marfa Lights are the result of the igneous rock under Mitchell Flat that creates a piezoelectric charge, which emits light.

Over the years, the lights haven’t only attracted tourists but also eminent artists. Donald Judd, an artist and major Minimalist, relocated from New York City to capture these lights in photographs and artworks. Soon enough, he opened his 340-acre Chinati Foundation where arrays of surreal desert-scape art stand beautifully. The dreamlike lights became so popular that in 1986, the “Marfa Lights Festival” was inaugurated, which attracts people around the world each year.

Possibilities and explanations are many, however, the mystery of the “Marfa lights” remains inside the books of unsolved cases.