Iraqi child at night seen through night vision lense.
Photo by Master Sgt. Keith A. Milks.

I'm not scared of ghosts, but ghosts always scare me when I come across them myself. That happens often enough that I'm used to it. I accept the initial horror as a part of the contact. It's kind of like handling snakes. Some people can't do it, others learn that it's nothing to be afraid of, and still others learn to handle the dangerous kinds, the ones that kill you if you get a little careless. Ghosts -- or whatever it is that people describe in that way and other ways -- are like that. Sometimes if you grab one, you above all should not let go. Sometimes they're friendly. Most times they don't even show up.

Brown Mountain wasn't like that for me. I first went there because some folks I knew were convinced that an ancient spaceship was buried there, periodically giving off the beams of energy that people know as the Brown Mountain Lights of Linville, North Carolina. My friends told me I'd need a horse to explore the area thoroughly. On taking a look at the area I decided they'd probably never been there, because the country is rugged enough that you wouldn't see much of it on horseback. The mountain in areas off the many trails is pretty rough country and tough to even stand up in here and there.

On the other hand, it's interesting. The Brown Mountain Lights are famous, globes of energy rising from a particular spot on the mountain's bluffs at night, particularly in the fall of the year, and moving erratically about or zipping into the sky at high speed. Ghost lights aren't uncommon in other areas there, including Linville Gorge. Brown Mountain is quite a tourist attraction, with as many as two hundred cars parked along the Blue Ridge Parkway a couple of miles from the hotspot on nights when the ghosts are particularly active.

Follow up:

Old legends from the days before the white settlers showed up talk about the lights as though they were always there. Native Americans labeled the place as bad business and explained the lights as the ghosts of young maidens searching for the souls of their warriors who died in an ill-fated local battle centuries ago. Much of the land around there is sacred to Native Americans, who believe the Linville Gorge and Table Mountain above it to be particularly powerful places. Ghost lights are common there as well, but these other locations don't have the evil reputation of Brown Mountain. In the Brown Mountain area people also report UFO's and alien abduction experiences. Camping on the mountain is banned, but it's a popular place for mountain bikers and four wheelers, with a maze of trails, old logging roads and hiking trails covering the passable slopes. If you go far enough up the mountain you'll find the remains of an old weather station and a lookout at neighboring peaks, though I forget at the moment whether it's Grandfather or Grandmother Mountain you see the best from there. North Carolina is beautiful hiking and backpacking country even for just plain ordinary reasons. The ghosts are extra perks.

A beautiful spot with an evil reputation seemed like a good place to go camping, so I went back the next year, not to look for buried spaceships but to investigate the lights from up close. I intended to wander around the mountain for a few days and camp at the point of greatest activity, and when I asked the local rangers for permission they were very cooperative. That surprised me, since I've had lots of trouble with the Park Service before. All they wanted from me in return was to come back and report what happened if I did see anything unusual. I was back in a few days brimming with good stories, and told them one, about the light that cruised over my tent on the third night. That was the least scary event of the whole vacation.

All I want to mention in this post is the first night, because if you have an interest in ghosts it fits the pattern most people would expect of a supernatural encounter. If you're Native American, it's sort of a preliminary to the real thing. When you visit these old places you have to hang around awhile. If anything unusual lives there -- and not every place has spirits -- they need time to check you out. They'll probably test you a bit, to see what sort of person you are, and if you're somebody of interest to them they might even talk to you later on. I'd guess that most people wouldn't hang around long when they start testing.

My first night on the mountain I'd already had several strange experiences while simply getting there, recognizing the places along the trail I took and a few of the events of the day as things I had dreamed some months before, in exact detail. It's not deja vu when a little piece of the future slips into a dream -- it's a piece of the real thing, misplaced in time. I picked an area of open woodland for my first camp and set up my tent over a depression in the ground filled with dead leaves. The weather was good and it was a soft place to sleep, low and out of sight in case some out of season hunter wandered through in the early morning.

As soon as I laid down, I heard odd noises, footsteps in the leaves. That's not unusual in the woods. Lots of animals live in places like this and I'd already seen wild turkey and spotted some deer tracks. These sounds were different, carefully paced and rhythmic, like the footfalls of a person. I told myself it must be a deer, and after a few minutes I yelled and shook the tent frame loudly to scare it off. Sitting up, I heard nothing, so I laid back down again intending to set aside any lingering concerns and just get some rest. It was a nice night, with only a few stars visible through the tree limbs and the hazy sky. Now and then a plane went over, but I was out of sight of lights from the highway, and I didn't see anything unusual going on.

But, again as soon as I laid down, the footsteps started. I laid there wide awake and studied them, slow and careful footsteps with the soft sounds that moccasins make, not the heavy crunching of boots. Two feet, not four feet with split hooves. The footsteps moved steadily in a circle around my camp, about a hundred feet out and too far away for me to see anything moving in the dark. At first they stopped when I made angry noises, but gradually whatever it was got used to me and didn't stop, just kept circling in that infuriating and frightening pattern. And yes, it was scary, some people camping in the Gorge had been murdered at night just a few years before and going there is always a reminder of the bad things that happen when you're trusting and unprepared. I'm neither of those, but when it could be a crazy fellow circling your camp at night, you do worry a bit.

Forcing myself out to answer nature's call -- and carefully check out the area -- I saw nothing unusual and heard nothing out of the ordinary. As soon as I laid down again, the pacing started up, the slow steady circling of moccasin-clad feet. I was reminded of a fellow who was hunting from a deer stand in Texas years ago, spending the night on the platform in the trees to get an early and quiet jump on the game the next morning, when something like this happened. He heard someone circling below the stand, around and around the tree, and when he sneaked a peek through the floorboards he saw moccasined feet and leather leggings. I don't recall what else he did, whether he stayed through the night or got out of there. There always is that choice, to run or to stay.

I stayed. I was miles from anywhere and the middle of the night is no time to break camp. Eventually I slipped into sleep, hovering on the edge, trying to keep track of the sounds of my visitor and sleep in careful snatches with one hand on the handle of my tomahawk just in case.

Hours later, the footsteps changed.

I woke up to the new situation because the footsteps started coming in my direction. Now they were different. Now they were heavy, and the pattern was four feet moving. As they got closer I heard panting. It definitely sounded like a bear. The only kind of bear in that part of the country is a black bear, and I didn't expect any trouble. My food was outside the tent, in a sack hanging from a tree branch out of reach. I expected the bear to take a swipe at it and then move on. A friend of mine camping in the Gorge one year, sleeping on a flat boulder in the middle of the Linville River, woke up to find wet bear tracks on the rock around his sleeping bag. At least in summer when they're fat and happy, black bears seldom make trouble.

It sniffed at the tent. I was scared. I hoped it would go away. Those are appropriate feelings to have in response to being checked out by a bear. The bear found the tent frame and started shoving it, banging the tent around like a toy until I was sure it was all going to collapse around me and then I'd be wrapped in a sleeping bag and a fallen tent trying to fend off an angry bear.

Then, it went away. I listened to it shamble off and felt no inclination to stick my head out and watch it go. I was getting really tired.

As soon as it left, the old footsteps started again, circling the camp carefully just a hundred feet out, the sound of a man putting his feet down like he knew what he was doing, toes first and then the heel like hunters and warriors walked in the old days.

The point of no return came the next morning, when I woke up tired and groggy and looked around for tracks. No sign of anything. No bear tracks. No deer tracks. No moccasin tracks. The tent looked like nothing messed with it, and a hundred feet out from the tent the dry leaves under the trees were undisturbed. Brown Mountain is the kind of place where you wake up and check everything the next morning, look yourself over to see if there are any unexplained marks, and look for new old scars. I realized I had two more nights to spend there, and anything could happen. I almost decided to pack up and go home.

But, I like to hang around these places and see what happens. Sometimes, not always but sometimes, something does. Sometimes the closest I come to being brave is choosing not to run.