Brown Mountain lights
In 1922, a USGS scientist, George R. Mansfield, used a map and an alidade telescope to prove that the lights that were being seen were trains, car headlights, and brush fires, which ended widespread public concern.
An important plot point in the novel consists of a mad scientist constructing an airship inside his secret lair in Table Rock, near Morganton, North Carolina, activities which cause strange lights to appear on the summit of the mountain.
The rapidly expanding electrification of the Linville Gorge area from the 1890s through the 1910s, seems to be the origin of the Brown Mountain lights legend, possibly helped by Verne's novel.
[1]: loc 281 A number of travelogues, including accounts of mysterious happenings and ghost stories, were published about the region prior to 1900; but there is no mention of unexplained lights in any of these historical sources.
4 Also, Southern Railway had begun upgrading their locomotive headlamps to 600,000 candlepower systems in 1909, rendering their trains' light output greater than that of some lighthouses that were in operation at the time.[2]: pp.
Sterrett, was dispatched to the area and quickly found that the headlights of westbound Southern Railway locomotives would have been visible from Loven's Hotel, and the train schedules he consulted left him no doubt that these were the cause of the lights that were being reported.[1][2]: p.
10 In July 1916, a flood caused train activity around Brown Mountain to cease for several weeks, which provided an opportunity for some to doubt Sterrett's conclusions.
[1] The first publication of a claim that the lights were in any way referenced by a Native American culture was an article in the Asheville Citizen in 1938; it was merely asserted as fact with no sources being provided.
[1]: loc 778–790 In 1771, military engineer, cartographer, mystic, and "eccentric genius" John William Gerard de Brahm presented a report to King George III, Report of the General Survey in the Southern District of North America, primarily describing the geography of East Florida, with sections on Georgia and South Carolina.
[4] The text in question is quoted here: Although these Mountains transpire through their Tops sulphurueaous and arsenical Sublimations, yet they are too light, as precipitate so their Sublimitories, but are carried away by the Winds to distant Regions.
In a heavy Atmosphere, the nitrous Vapours are swallowed up through the Spiraculs of the Mountains, and thus the Country is cleared from their Corrosion; when the Atmosphere is light, these nitrous Vapours rise up to the arsenical and sulphureous (subliming through the Expiraculs of the Mountains), and when they meet with each other in Contact, the Niter inflames, vulgurates, and detonates, whence the frequent Thunders, in which a most votalized Spirit of Niter ascends to purify inspire the upper Air, and a phlogiston Regeneratum (the metallic Seed) descends to impregnate the Bowels of the Earth; and as all these Mountains form so many warm Athanors which draw and absorb, especially in foggy Seasons, all corrosive Effluvia along with the heavy Air through the Registers (Spiracles) and thus cease not from the Perpetual Circulation of the Air, corroding Vapours are no sooner raised, than that they are immediately disposed of, consequently the Air in the Appalachian Mountains is extreamely pure and healthy.
[1] The first attempt to link de Brahm to Brown Mountain lights was an article in the Gastonia Daily Gazette, which is no longer in print[6] and not to be confused for modern day newspapers with similar names, in 1927.
