Case file · Ghost light · Road, bridge or woods

The Marfa Lights

Also known as Marfa Mystery Lights, Marfa ghost lights, Chinati lights

Glowing orbs that seem to dance over the desert east of Marfa have drawn watchers for generations. Studies point mostly to distant headlights and mirages.

On clear nights, people gather at a roadside viewing area nine miles east of Marfa, a high-desert ranching town in far West Texas, and look south-west across Mitchell Flat toward the Chinati Mountains. Sometimes they see lights – white, yellow or red – that twinkle, hover, split apart and merge, then vanish. Locals have personified them as friendly watchers, and explanations have ranged from electrostatic discharges and moonlight on mica to UFOs and the ghosts of Spanish conquistadors searching for gold.

The traditional origin story dates to 1883, when a young cowhand named Robert Reed Ellison is said to have seen a flickering light in Paisano Pass and wondered if it was an Apache campfire, only to be told by settlers that they often saw such lights and never found ashes. Skeptic Brian Dunning points out that this account comes from Ellison’s descendants, and that Ellison did not mention the lights in his own 1937 memoir; the first known published report appeared in a magazine in 1957. Other stories tell of First World War observers and Second World War pilots at the nearby Marfa Army Airfield hunting the lights without success.

Promotion turned the lights into an institution. Armando Vasquez, who first saw them in 1971, spent two decades taking motel guests to watch from a bluff, and in 1986 the Chamber of Commerce held the first Marfa Lights Festival, now an annual September event. The Texas Department of Transportation built a roadside parking area on U.S. 90, and the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Center followed in 2003. The lights also attracted serious study: retired NASA engineer James Bunnell, who grew up in Marfa, ran networks of automated cameras for years and remains convinced some lights are unexplained.

Most investigations have reached more ordinary conclusions. In 2004 students of the Society of Physics Students at the University of Texas at Dallas found that the lights they could identify matched car headlights on U.S. 67 between Marfa and Presidio, distorted by layers of warm and cold air. A 2008 spectroscopic study by Texas State University scientists over 20 nights likewise attributed the lights it recorded to vehicles or small fires, while acknowledging that rare reports remained unexplained. The Handbook of Texas calls a mirage-like atmospheric effect the most plausible explanation.

What people report

Basketball-sized balls of light, white, yellow, red or blue, seen low over the desert, that pulse, hover, drift, divide and recombine before fading. Witnesses describe them as appearing to move in ways headlights should not, and some claim lights have come close to them.

Where and when

Viewed from the Marfa Mystery Lights Viewing Center on U.S. 90, about nine miles east of Marfa, looking south-west across Mitchell Flat toward the Chinati Mountains and Paisano Pass; usually after dusk. The land beyond is private ranch property and closed to the public.

Timeline of the haunting

1883 (traditional)
A cowhand’s campfire light Paisano Pass, Texas
Robert Reed Ellison is said to have seen a flickering light while driving cattle. The account comes from family tradition rather than his own writings.
1957
First published report Texas
A magazine article brings the lights to wider attention, the earliest written account skeptics have found.
1986
The first Marfa Lights Festival Marfa, Texas
After years of lobbying by local guide Armando Vasquez, the Chamber of Commerce launches a festival that now draws thousands each September.
2004
UT Dallas physics students investigate Marfa, Texas
Over four nights the students find that identifiable lights correlate with car headlights on U.S. 67, and they reproduce a “Marfa light” by flashing a parked car’s headlights.
2008
Spectroscopy study Marfa, Texas
Texas State University researchers record lights over 20 nights and attribute them to headlights and small fires, while calling for more work on rare unexplained cases.

What could explain it?

Distant car headlights on U.S. 67, seen across tens of miles of open desert, account for most lights in controlled studies.
Temperature inversions bend and distort distant light, making it shimmer, split, hover and seem to move unpredictably – a mirage-like effect.
Ranch lights, campfires and occasional hoaxes add further sources, and distance is notoriously hard to judge at night.
Claims that the lights predate cars rest on family tradition; the earliest written report found so far is from 1957.

Ghost tours, books and screen

The lights feature in Unsolved Mysteries, King of the Hill and The Simpsons, in David Morrell’s novel The Shimmer (2009) and in songs. Marfa’s annual Marfa Lights Festival celebrates them, and the town’s art scene, from Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation to Prada Marfa, has made the lights part of a larger desert mystique.