First Published Article on the BMLS
The R.T. Claywell story
Winston-Salem Journal, September 14, 1913
Re-typed by E. Speer January 2, 2014 from copy of original article
(Uncertain words indicated by underline)
Strange Light in Mountains Still Alarming
Remarkable Phenomenon can be seen in Burke County
Spectator gives Vivid Description
By
George H. Manning
Washington,
Sept. 13---The strange white light which has greatly excited the people in
Burke county, N. C. since it was first seen about four months ago, may still be
observed almost nightly and is gaining materially in brilliance, according to
R. T. Claywell, of Morganton, who is in Washington in the interests of Maply
McDowell’s candidacy for the United States Marshal-ship in the Western
District. Mr. Claywell says he last saw
the light about a month ago when he and a number of friends were spending a night
at Cold Spring Hotel. That Mr. Claywell
is extremely excited over the appearance of the light is evident by his manner
when he vividly described the awe-inspiring light he and his friends witnessed.
“There’s
something ghostly and uncanny about that light that I and the folks up in the
neighborhood can’t fathom and we want to get a government scientist down there
to discover just what it is and the causes and effect,” said Mr. Claywell.
“The
night that I and a number of friends saw this strange phenomenon, I was up
there with George Patterson and wife, of Concord, Miss Bell Means, niece of
Colonel Paul Means, and Mr. Honeycutt of Concord, Miss Sallie Hogan,
Miss Fannie Roundtree, Miss Sarah Claywell, all of Morganton, and Robert Lovin,
of Cold Spring.
“It
was the last Thursday in July, July 31st,” continued Claywell. “We were all sitting on the cottage porch in
conversation, on Rattlesnake Knob, about 150 yards from the Cold Spring Hotel,
at exactly 10:05 o’clock.
“The
first thing unusual that attracted our attention was a hazy kind of a light
across the valley on Brown Mountain in two places. We all watched it intently with mixed feeling
of awe and wonder, while shivers ran up and down the spine of everyone present. In a few minutes while we all directed our
gaze intently on the two hazy spots, just off to the right of the light in the
direction of a Morganton, we saw this brighter light appear at the foot of
Brown Mountain where Upper Creek cuts it at Joy. It appeared to be swinging to and fro, pendulum
like, and then went upward about a distance of 200 feet. When it first appeared it seemed to be round
and yellow, and gained steadily in brightness, becoming redder and redder as it
went upward. When it reached its
greatest height, it appeared like a flaming red ball, but the strange thing
about it was that it did not cast off a particle of light. All the air around it seemed to be as dark as
ever, and that added to its ghostly appearance.
“It
was across the valley from us at a distance of about 12 miles. It had rained in Morganton that day and there
were a few clouds still hanging about.
When the light started rising again and reached a height of what seen from our distance to be about 1200 feet,
it went behind one of these clouds and we did not see it any more that night.
“It
was one of the strangest experiences I believe I ever had, and many of the
folks were near fainting. In fact it was
with difficulty that Mrs. Patterson was revived from a faint. We had been at the cottage three days previously
and every evening had gone to bed about nine o’clock but this Thursday night we
stayed up later. We would probably have
witnessed it the other evening had we stayed on the porch a little later.”
Mr.
Claywell with Congressman Webb, called at the Geological Survey today to urge
them to hurry the arrangements being made to send a scientist to fathom the
mystery.
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