4. THE MARFA LIGHTS

Mystery: Unidentified glowing orbs in the desert might sound like something out of the X Files, but they’re very real to people in the town of Marfa, Texas. The fist recorded sightings of the lights came in 1883 when a ranch hand noticed them and thought they were Indian fires. On further investigation, though, he found no ash from any fires or evidence that anyone had been there at all. And the story has been like that ever since. The lights glow red, orange, and yellow, appear on most clear nights, and bounce like balls in the sky near where Highway 67 and Highway 90 meet. But no one can actually identify where they’re coming from.

Solved? Not really. People with an interest in ghosts and ghost stories claim that the Marfa lights are supernatural spirits (both friendly and harmful), while others claim that they are aliens. But the most likely explanation is that they are some kind of mirage produced when warm and cold layers of air meet and bend light. The fact is, though, that no one really knows. You can’t see the lights up close, only from far away, so no one have ever been able to truly identify what they are. Texas considers them a tourist attraction, and the highway department built a viewing area off Highway 90 so that curious visitors could see the Marfa lights for themselves.