From: "Michael Loveless" (wml@gte.net)
To: obiwan@ghosts.org
Subject: A ghost light in eastern TN, or western NC
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 14:43:14 -0500
In October, 1969, I was en route to Asheville , NC. It was somewhere between Knoxville and Asheville, around midnight or later, well into the mountains. I looked into the sky and saw what looked like an ordinary spotlight beam. I may have been the first to comment on it (I don't recall for sure), but it was pointed to the other passengers as well.
We presumed it to be what it looked like, a conventional spotlight beam. We couldn't see the source because of trees and a shoulder of the mountain. When we rounded a curve of the road, the full length of the beam was exposed. That's when the unexpected and unexplained began to unfold.
The beam had no source on the ground. It was simply suspended in the sky, with no observable source. It was a white light, and as I said looked exactly like the shaft from a conventional spotlight, wider at one end than the other, but at the end you would expect to connect to a ground source, it was simply cut off and blunt, and had no connection to the mountain.
Then it began changing shape. I've never seen a beam of light go through the changes of shape I observed in the next few minutes. The ends began to close in, so that it became something like a fat toothpick. The end pointing toward the mountain began to open out into an arrow or spearhead shape, with the rest of the beam becoming the shaft. Then, the shaft began to shorten, as though it were being absorbed by the head, until it was gone. I think all of us were somewhat stunned. We made no real conversation about it.
When we were in Asheville we asked about it and were told it was the Brown Mountain lights. However, this doesn't fit the descriptions I've read of those lights.
Are there any descriptions out there of this, or was this a unique experience?
Nice website. I hope you find this an interesting story.
Michael Loveless
wml@gte.net
This page (http://www.ghosts.org/ghostlights/spotlight.html) last updated April 4, 2006.