In a Nutshell

Common barn owls  may be responsible for many of the reported “ghost lights” in the United States. According to the nonfiction book author Jonathan Whitcomb, of Long Beach, California, the Gurdon Light of Arkansas, the Ghost Light of Masters Knob (Tennessee), and the Hornet Light of Missouri are all strange flying lights whose behaviors resemble those of Tyto Alba, the barn owl.

The idea that some barn owls have intrinsic bioluminescence is not original with Whitcomb; the Australian Fred Silcock has done extensive research on certain sightings of Min Min lights in Australia. The sightings that especially caught the attention of Silcock were those that suggested hunting barn owls and those in which a glowing barn owl was actually observed.

Whitcomb carried Silcock’s findings over onto the America continent, comparing characteristics of various strange lights. Many of those flying lights were seen over railroad tracks, with the same weaving motions common with barn owls. The conclusion seemed obvious.

But Whitcomb is an author of cryptozoology books about living pterosaurs, not owls. He has explained that a minority of the reports of American ghost lights do not suggest owls but something far stranger. In Marfa, Texas, the mystery lights have fascinated investigators for many years. But the behavior or the lights does not suggest owls but ropens, and that nocturnal flying creature is said to be a living pterosaur of Papua New Guinea. The ropen is not yet classified by Western science but is a cryptid like the Bigfoot and Nessie.

According to National Geographic, regarding the Marfa Lights (Texas), “Reports often describe brightly glowing basketball sized spheres floating above the ground, or sometimes high in the air.” (Word-for-word National Geographic correlates with Wikipedia here.) Wikipedia adds that skeptics attribute the lights to “mistaken sightings of ordinary nighttime lights, such as distant vehicle lights, ranch lights, or astronomical objects.”

According to Jonathan Whitcomb, author of the nonfiction book Live Pterosaurs in America, some of the America ghost lights may be from bioluminescent pterosaurs, similar to the ropen of Papua New Guinea. Those flying lights are sometimes seen above mountains, sometimes with a mountain background, and sometimes moving too fast to be from any human source; they are not from vehicle lights (especially where there are neither vehicles nor roads, especially in the sky), astonomical objects (with mountain background), or natives’ flashlights.

The British entomologist Evelyn Cheesman investigated the strange lights she saw deep in the mainland of New Guinea, in the 1930’s. She never was able to come to any conclusion about what caused the lights, although she was sure that they were not from any human origin.

See also “Pterosaur Interpretation of Chessman Sightings.”