Reality Checking—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, September 2024
Those Alabama mystery lights again
by: Brent Raynes
On Saturday, August 10th, I found myself once again at Huntsville, Alabama's Open Inquiry Group meeting, where I had spoken myself on two different Saturdays back in April and in July. In March they had a speaker, one Leslie Mitts from Chattanooga, talking on cryptozoology accounts - mainly the so-called dogmen cases.
This time around my longtime friend Wyatt Cox was speaking. His topic was the mystery lights of Lauderdale County, Alabama, in the northwestern portion of that state. He's the author of Spooklights: The Amazing Cloverdale, Alabama Spooklight Mystery (2007) and UFO and Bigfoot Sightings in Alabama (2004). Seated at his side was his good friend Greg Keeton, who had also been investigating this puzzling light phenomenon with him since 1977. In the early years, they took many photographs using 35mm cameras securely positioned atop tripods, often taking time-lapse images that showed how these puzzling lights moving across the sky made slight up and down movements. In the late 1970s, they began writing a series of reports with photographs of the lights in Thomas Bearden's Specula magazine, which was quite popular at the time. Bearden was quite interested in these mystery lights. Back around 1976-77 he was a consultant to Vestigia, a New Jersey Fortean group that was investigating a series of unexplained lights appearing over a section of railroad track in Long Valley, New Jersey. Interestingly, later when the RR tracks were removed the lights stopped appearing! It was theorized that the iron tracks acted as conductors for the electrical charges being generated by seismic pressures in the ground below, which in turn was released into the air as plasma lights. The geology of the area, its quartz crystals and iron ore were considered as causal factors - factors that exist too in these Alabama "earthlight" episodes.
Peter Jordan, an investigative journalist in New Jersey, who likes tackling unusual subjects like UFOs, poltergeists and even the cattle mutilation controversy, and who has had an extensive background in researching and investigating many such matters, also came to become involved in this case, meeting many of the physicists and electrical engineers who worked with Vestigia and spent their own time and money (up to around $30,000) working on putting together the instrumented technology needed to detect, record, and photograph (both regular and infrared) these anomalous displays. He wanted us to know about new and improved technology for use in trying to effectively acquire good evidence of anomalous aerial phenomena. He mentioned the UFO DAP (UFO Data Acquisition Project).
Link: https://ufodap.com/
Below is a link regarding the New Jersey investigations.
Link: https://weirdnj.com/stories/unexplained-phenomena/hookerman-spook-lights/
In a recent private conversation with Peter, he expressed excitement over what we've been seeing, things recorded thus far, and emphasized some measure of urgency hoping we could double down on being able to document some truly solid evidence that would stand up to the terse skepticisms often launched at such investigators from debunkers. He said there's much resistance in academia over such reports, and that even many scientists are still doubtful over reports of ball lightning, which kind of surprised me as I felt the case for ball Lightning was now pretty well established by science. At least as to its reality, even if it remains still a bit of a puzzle as to how it works.
Wyatt gave what I felt was an excellent power point presentation for the small group of about a couple dozen attendees. I was able to record it using my laptop computer and afterwards downloaded it to YouTube and then to my Alternate Perceptions Facebook page. I'll also download it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM0OnDLjE4s&t=90s
Wyatt grew up in the area of this activity, several miles north of the city of Florence. Greg Keeton still lives close by. Wyatt however moved off to Anderson, South Carolina some years back, to work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at Hartwell, Georgia. Retired now, he still comes in periodically to visit his parents, friends, and to gather with my wife Joan and others to skywatch, usually in the Cloverdale area. This year, for some reason, seems to have been particularly active. The night before Wyatt's talk, Friday, the 9th of August, he and several other sky watching returnees again gathered on the property of a man who lives on Route 272, who has also seen the lights, and they weren't disappointed. There were four lights in a straight vertical line in the distance, over the top of the tallest tree in a row of other trees toward the northwest. The highest one was described as the brightest and was slowly moving upward and perhaps closer it seemed and had a slightly greater distance between it and the lower three, that appeared to be about the same distance apart. Soon all four blinked out. This was a little after 9:30.
Joan and I made sure we joined the group that Saturday night, August 10th, as we wanted to see what else might show up. We arrived about 7 p.m. It was still daylight. Several others were already present. A local medical professional who has taken a very serious interest in these lights, after filming them himself back in February, was showing me his metal pole that was extended up to 19 feet, with a solar powered video camera positioned at the top. He was explaining to me how he was hoping to be able to remotely access the camera from his home several miles away, and eventually be able to have it where others could also access it online.
Around 9:40 we saw three lights slowly rising up around and slightly to the left of the cellphone tower where we'd seen lights before. As before, they only were visible for a short time before fading out. Then around 10:17, over the large tree that Wyatt, Greg, librarian Lee Freeman and fellow "earthlight" hunter Jim Noble had seen the vertical display of lights the night before, we observed a single white light fly from the top of the tree horizontally to the right, and as usual, fade out after a few seconds. Then after a short while another did the same, then a third, then a fourth, and finally a fifth. Doing the same thing over and over for several minutes. It was a curious sight. I was like scratching my hit thinking of a Mobius Loop scenario I had seen in a couple of sci fi flicks. Joan remarked that the first one in its horizontal flight had, at one point, dipped down slightly and then bounced back upwards like. The medical man announced that he had filmed it.
It had been a long day and we ended up leaving around 10:53 p.m. But even as we were leaving, off in the northwestern sky, a bright light appeared briefly again. I caught a glimpse of it as we sped away. Wyatt called me on the cell and said it was just wanting to say goodbye to us. We had a hearty chuckle. Still, I continued on.
The remaining group had a good number of other mystery light sightings after we left. The oddest were two orange lights flying horizontally, going west to east, one right above the other in tandem. Jim and Wyatt remained till a little after midnight. However, the owner of the property we were on that night told Wyatt later, who told me, that he had gotten up and stepped into his bathroom around 3:30 a.m. that Sunday morning (August 11th) and saw a strange light at a fairly close distance. I phoned him on the 14th and asked him about his sighting. He said he saw this light, a pastel blue glowing thing flying slowly (estimated 2 or 3 miles per hour) several feet above what he called a wet weather creek in the field to the east of his home. I asked him how far the ditch was from where he was looking and he estimated it was 150-200 feet. I asked how big the light was and he replied, "I'd say it was probably about a foot in diameter." As to the shape he said, "It was kind of round and a little oblong." He couldn't tell that it illuminated the ground beneath it. He didn't think it was bright enough. He estimated that he may have watched it anywhere from 15-20 seconds. He said it was flying roughly southwest towards the northeast. When it came up close to 272, a two-lane country road, it began rising up into the air at an angle and he estimated that he lost sight of it around 25-30 feet in its ascension. Maybe more.
