Marfa Lights - Unsolved Mysteries Testimonies

Unsolved Mysteries Testimonies

The lights were the subject of a segment on the TV series Unsolved Mysteries. Elderly local resident Julia Plumbley discusses the sighting her father Robert Ellison reported in the early 20th century. Ellison and a fellow rancher witnessed the lights and initially assumed them to be Apache campfires, but the fires continued to be seen for weeks on end, and beyond.

Another local resident, Hallie Stillwell, told of coming to Marfa in 1916 on business with some family members and was riding near town in a car when a family member pointed out the lights. The group observed them. Stillwell recalled "We were just visiting and talking, and all of the sudden we saw lights over on the Chinati Mountains. It couldn't be any kind of car lights. And we first thought probably it was a campfire of Indians or Mexicans, or ranchers. But it didn't act like a campfire at all. The reenactment segment shows a young Stillwell commenting on the lights moving around and floating above the ground. "They were peculiar and I'd never seen anything like them before. And of course none of us knew anything about it, we were not scientists or anything like that, so we said 'Well, it couldn't be anything but a ghost, it's just ghost lights.' And from then on we mentioned them as ghost lights."

The segment further tells of the lights being seen again in 1943 near Marfa's army air base. Witness Fritz Kahl stated in interview, "When we saw the Marfa lights the first time there was no vehicular traffic at night. Fuel was rationed, lights were a phenomena in themselves in those days because there were no lights. When the moon is out, it's beautiful. When the moon is not out its so dark it's . . . awesome. We saw something that was totally foreign to anything in and around the airbase. When we did see the lights we were very curious and we inquired in the village of Marfa about these strange things, and yeah, sure, 'we've got little lights, what else?'.