The History of the Marfa Lights

by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”In Marfa, Texas, there is a phenomenon known as “The Marfa Lights” that has been around for a long time and still remains a mystery. It’s been studied by members of the Society of Physics Students from the University of Dallas and a retired aerospace engineer, James Bunnell. The students thought people were seeing car headlights on U.S. 67. Bunnell thought there was more to the lights than mere misidentification.According to the Texas State Historical Association website entry on the subject by Julia Cauble Smith, the first historical record of a mystery lights sighting dates back to 1883. According to Smith, Robert Reed Ellison, a young cowhand, saw a flickering light while driving cattle through an area known as Paisano Pass and thought it might be coming from an Apache campfire. Other settlers told him they had seen lights on other occasions and when they investigated, they found no signs of fires in the area. This has been used as an argument against the car lights on U.S. 67 explanation by defenders of the mysterious nature of the lights, such as Ariel Slick, who posted an article on the Deep South Magazine website headlined “Marfa Lights: The Spirit of Texas” on August 19, 2022. Read more →