Judaculla Rock and the Undeciphered Petroglyphs of the Southern Appalachians

Dear Shadow Tribe,

 

A few miles southeast of Cullowhee, in Jackson County, North Carolina, a mysterious soapstone boulder sits in a field beside Caney Fork Creek. It is known as Judaculla Rock. Its surface is covered in more than 1,500 carved marks, images, and designs. No one has fully deciphered them. No one knows exactly who first created it, or exactly when. It pre-dates the Cherokee of the region. 

Photo by Warren LeMay in 2018

I lived less than ten minutes from Judaculla Rock for a few years. I visited it many times, intrigued by the mysteries it holds. It is still there today, for anyone wanting to visit it. The site is free and open in daylight hours (address 552 Judaculla Rock Road, Cullowhee). Please respect the site and do not touch the stone.

Cherokee folklore ties the rock to legends of Judaculla (Tsul’kalu), the slant-eyed giant and master of game who lived on Tanasee Bald. One version says the marks are the scratches left when he jumped from the mountain to the valley. Other stories place it as a boundary between ordinary ground and the spirit country he controlled. The Cherokee still regard the place as significant. Archaeological work, however, shows the story is far older and more layered.

Soapstone bowl quarrying at the site dates to the Late Archaic period, roughly 3,500 years ago. Some of the petroglyphs, which include nested circles, tracks, figures, and other motifs, appear to be added later, during the Woodland (~1000 BD to ~1000 AD) and Mississippian (~1000 AD to ~1600 AD) periods, and some may even reach into the early historic era as people continued to crave it. Clearly identifiable Cherokee culture didn't show up until about 1400 AD (Qualla phase). 

No one has deciphered the marks, but many theories have been proposed:

• A stylized map of the surrounding terrain
• Hunting-ground boundaries
• Records of events
• Religious or mythological depictions
• Abstract symbols never meant to be literal

None of them are the final answer. Questions remain. The carvings continue to weather. Shadows at certain times of day make more of them visible. Rain, snow, and time make others fade.

Judaculla Rock is the densest and most accessible example of a broader regional pattern. Similar soapstone petroglyph boulders (sometimes grouped under the Track Rock Tradition) occur across the southern Appalachians of western North Carolina and northern Georgia. 

 

A 2025 analysis examined 23 sites and 37 panels of this style. The larger North Carolina Rock Art Project, begun in the mid-1990s under Forest Service archaeologist Scott Ashcraft, started with only about seven known petroglyph sites in the state and eventually recorded more than 100. 

The full list is intentionally not public. Many of the stones sit on private land or in remote, unmonitored stretches of national forest. Publishing locations would raise the risk of vandalism, accelerated erosion, and trespass. 

 

The same remote character that keeps the inventory restricted also means the survey is incomplete, as large areas of steep, wooded terrain have never been systematically checked. New stones still turn up when people walk ridges, clear trails, or examine soapstone outcrops that were previously overlooked. Some are almost certainly still waiting to be found under leaf litter or second-growth forest.

The carvings on Judaculla Rock remain unread. The giant’s stories are older than written records. The other stones are mostly unlisted and only partly mapped. There are still a lot of things we do not know about these mountains. Judaculla Rock is one of the places fact that makes that obvious. 

 

Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

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3I/ATLAS: Our Interstellar Visitor and What the Data Shows

Dear Shadow Tribe,

International Gemini Observatory photo

International Gemini Observatory photo

Is there an alien probe examining our solar system? In July 2025, the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile spotted an object later named 3I/ATLAS. It is only the third confirmed interstellar object to pass through our Solar System, after 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov. But this one is exhibiting some very unusual activity, changing speeds in ways that cannot be explained by gravity alone.  

Some online discussions about 3I/ATLAS have called its non-gravitational acceleration evidence of a technological origin. In other words, it is an artificial object being actively steered as it left the inner Solar System. 

Published research provides a different reading of the same data. Multiple studies claim that outgassing of ordinary ices can account for the measured acceleration under realistic assumptions about the object’s size and activity. The object itself shows clear signs of being a comet despite its unusual shape and behavior.

Path Through the Solar System

3I/ATLAS follows a hyperbolic orbit, meaning the Sun’s gravity cannot capture it. It entered the Solar System at roughly 58 km/s relative to the Sun and reached closest approach (perihelion) on October 29, 2025 at 1.36 Astronomical Units (AU), between the orbits of Earth and Mars. At that point its speed peaked near 68 km/s. It passed within about 0.19 AU of Mars in early October 2025 and later made a more distant pass by Jupiter in March 2026. It never came close enough to Earth to pose any threat and is now on its way out of the Solar System.

Activity and Non-Gravitational Acceleration

As 3I/ATLAS warmed near the Sun it developed a coma of gas and dust. Multiple observatories, including Hubble, JWST, and ground-based telescopes, recorded outgassing of carbon dioxide, water, and carbon monoxide among others. Tracking data shows non-gravitational acceleration, meaning small changes in its path that gravity alone does not explain.

Several research papers have examined this effect. Models that include outgassing of volatile ices such as CO and CO₂ can reproduce the observed acceleration for nucleus sizes in the roughly 0.4–3 km range, depending on density and active surface area assumptions. 

A late-October 2026 analysis of distant observations found that the acceleration is clearly present in the combined inbound and outbound data, even though the exact activity pattern remains hard to pin down. Estimates of nucleus size from different methods range from under 1 km to an upper limit of about 5.6 km from early Hubble imaging. The object is surrounded by a coma (the cloud of gas and dust surrounding a comet's nucleus), which makes direct measurement difficult. 

Composition and Possible Age

James Webb Space Telescope observations of the ice grains in the coma show a dusty mix that resembles material seen in some icy bodies beyond Neptune in our own Solar System. Separate measurements of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) in methane released by the object are elevated compared with typical Solar System comets. Researchers note that this pattern is consistent with formation in a cold, low-metallicity environment under high cosmic-ray exposure, possibly more than 7 billion years ago, long before our Sun formed. Other measurements support an origin in the outer regions of an older star system, potentially in the Milky Way’s thick disk.

Current Status and Open Questions

As of late 2026, 3I/ATLAS continues to be monitored as it recedes. Production rates of various gases have been tracked across perihelion, and surface erosion models indicate it has lost a measurable fraction of its outer layers. The combination of ancient chemical signatures and measurable non-gravitational forces makes it a useful test case for how interstellar comets behave. 

While some online discussions have claimed non-natural causes (alien technology) for the acceleration, published analyses find that conventional outgassing of common volatiles accounts for the data under realistic assumptions about size and activity.

Further observations will refine the size, mass, and activity history. Objects like 3I/ATLAS offer direct samples of material that formed around other stars, and each new detection improves our knowledge of how planetary systems create their icy building blocks.

 

Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

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Tartaria: The Counter Arguments

Dear Shadow Tribe,

 

Last post I looked at the three main arguments for the Tartaria conspiracy. This post looks at the counter-arguments against it.  

The mainstream response is straightforward. Each of the three main evidences for the Lost Kingdom of Tartaria has a documented, ordinary explanation that does not require a lost empire or a hidden reset.

A label for the unknown, not an empire

European cartographers used Tartaria as a broad regional label for large parts of Asia they knew poorly. It was never intended as the name of one government or civilization. Most maps subdivided it into Great Tartary, Chinese Tartary, Independent Tartary, and others, reflecting different areas under different rulers. 

 

As exploration improved in the 18th and 19th centuries, the old blanket term for "unknown" was replaced by more accurate names such as Siberia and Central Asia. Contemporary sources, including encyclopedias and travel accounts from the same period, describe the region as inhabited by various nomadic and settled peoples, not a single advanced empire. The actual history of those lands, such as the the Mongol Empire and its successor states, is recorded in multiple languages and archaeological records. The old maps record European ignorance of the areas, not the existence of a unified Tartarian civilization.

Buried lower levels show ordinary city growth

Windows and doors below modern street level appear in many older cities for practical reasons. Streets were raised to install sewers, improve drainage, or reduce flooding. Buildings were sometimes lifted or new ground levels added as cities expanded. Chicago and Seattle both have well-documented projects that raised street grades in the late 19th century. 

 

Similar work occurred in European cities around the same time. Contemporary city records, engineering reports, newspaper articles, and photographs show these changes happening over years through ordinary construction, not a sudden global mud flood. The pattern matches known city development, not a worldwide catastrophe that somehow left no other traces.

The ornate buildings actually fit 

World’s Fair structures such as those at the 1893 Chicago exposition were temporary. They were designed by known architects, built quickly with plaster over wood frames, and demolished afterward. Construction photos, contracts, and contemporary descriptions exist. Similar ornate styles appear worldwide because classical and Beaux-Arts forms were taught and copied throughout the 19th century. 

 

No physical or written evidence supports free-energy systems or other technology beyond what was available at the time. The speed of construction is explained by large workforces, prefabrication, and the temporary nature of the buildings. Reassigning them to a lost empire requires ignoring the paper trail that already accounts for them.

Conclusions

Taken together, the three main claims rest on reading ordinary historical and engineering records as anomalies, or ignoring them altogether. Those records show regional map labels, city-by-city street raising, and well-documented construction projects. No contemporary accounts, archaeological layers, or physical evidences support a recent global mud flood capable of erasing an advanced civilization across multiple continents at the same time.

Despite my usual skepticism toward official narratives, this is one alternative I have to reject. A mud flood recent enough to bury 19th-century buildings and global enough to affect cities on several continents should have left unmistakable traces in newspapers, government records, and diaries, as well as considerable physical evidence that would be impossible to hide so quickly. The complete absence of those traces, while ordinary explanations match the maps and buildings, makes the claim impossible for me to accept. 

Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

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Tartaria: The Evidences

Dear Shadow Tribe,

 

Supporters of the hidden-history version of Tartaria (post link) point to three main lines of evidence that they say do not fit the standard narrative.

1) Old maps label Tartaria 

Maps drawn by European cartographers from the 1500s into the early 1800s repeatedly show sizable areas marked Tartaria, Great Tartary, Independent Tartary, Chinese Tartary, and similar names. These are not mistakes. Well-known mapmakers such as Guillaume de L’Isle around 1700 divided Asia into substantial Tartarian zones covering what is now Siberia, Central Asia, and lands farther east. The labels largely vanish from ordinary maps as the 19th century continues, replaced by Russian, Chinese, or other modern names. From this perspective, a consistently named region on primary source maps, followed by its near-total disappearance, looks like a real political or cultural entity that was later written out rather than simple geographic ignorance.

2) Buildings with buried lower levels

In cities across Europe, North America, and elsewhere, many older buildings show ground-floor windows, doors, and archways that sit partially or fully below the current street level. Examples appear in Chicago, Seattle, Paris, and smaller towns. These are not isolated basements. The pattern is systematic in places, as if the original street level was several feet lower. Old photographs of some cities also show streets that look recently cleared or unusually empty next to large, ornate buildings. The explanation offered is a large-scale mud or sediment event (or series of events) that buried lower stories. Streets were later rebuilt higher, while the buildings themselves remained. The history of how the ground rose is said to be missing from standard accounts.

3) Ornate buildings too advanced for their time period

Many grand structures, such as domed capitols, star forts, elaborate civic buildings, and the temporary palaces of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair or the 1915 San Francisco Panama-Pacific Exposition, are claimed as Tartarian. Construction records for some of these, especially the fair buildings, show them going up extremely quickly with limited documented heavy machinery relative to their scale and detail. After the fairs, most were demolished, yet contemporary photos and accounts describe them as finished, substantial structures rather than flimsy temporary sets. Similar classical or ornate styles appear on multiple continents without a clear chain of continuous transmission that matches the official timelines. Combined with claims of free or wireless energy systems suggested by the prevalence of domes, spires, and certain metal elements, the pattern is read as the remnants of a more advanced civilization whose structures were later re-dated and reassigned.

These three evidences (maps, buried architecture, and surviving ornate structures) form the core case for the hidden history version of Tartaria. My next post will give the counter-arguments against this version.  

 

Suggested Readings

• Michael Luciano, The Lost Civilization of TARTARIA. Presents the case for a lost advanced empire, mud floods, free energy, and a historical reset.
• James W. Lee, The One World Tartarians: The Greatest Civilization Ever Erased From History. One of the earlier book-length treatments of the global Tartaria claim. 
• Simon Horowitz, The Great Tartaria: Myth, History, and the Lost Empire. Covers the historical name alongside the modern alternative narrative. 

 

Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

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Tartaria: The Hidden History Narrative

Dear Shadow Tribe,

 

In the alternative history version, Tartaria (or the Tartarian Empire) was far more than a name on old maps as mainstream historians claim (see my previous post Tartaria: The Mainstream Historical Narrative.). It was a real, advanced civilization that once covered large parts of the world. Supporters say it built grand architecture on multiple continents, possessed technology beyond what official history credits to the 18th and 19th centuries, and was then deliberately wiped from the record.

Available on Amazon

According to this account, Tartaria was a unified or loosely unified empire with its own rulers, culture, and style of building. Its people are described as technologically capable, often peaceful, and skilled at large-scale construction. Many of the ornate public buildings, star forts, domed structures, and even the temporary World’s Fair palaces that appear in old photographs are said to be Tartarian, not the work of the nations that later claimed them. Some versions of the story add that the Tartarians used free or wireless energy systems, visible in the domes, spires, and metalwork on surviving structures. Giants are sometimes included among the population as well.

The end of this civilization, in the claim, came suddenly in the 19th century (sometimes earlier). A global or near-global “mud flood” buried lower levels of cities, raised street levels, and destroyed much of the population and infrastructure. Surviving buildings were left with windows and doors partially underground. After the catastrophe, the story continues, those in power rewrote the history books to their benefit, reassigned the architecture to later cultures, demolished many of the remaining structures, and erased Tartaria from standard accounts. The name disappeared from maps at roughly this same time. Wars, revolutions, and institutional control of education and publishing are offered as the tools that finished the cover-up.

In short, the hidden-history narrative holds that a sophisticated Tartarian world existed into relatively recent times, was destroyed by a mud flood or similar event, and was then systematically removed from public memory so that modern nations could claim its buildings and its timeline.

 

What evidences do the proponents of this theory offer? Several, it turns out. Some of which are hard to dismiss. In part 3 (Tartaria: The Evidences), I will present their top three evidences that Tartaria was very real. Until then, check out the suggested readings list. 

Suggested Readings

• Michael Luciano, The Lost Civilization of TARTARIA. Presents the case for a lost advanced empire, mud floods, free energy, and a historical reset.
• James W. Lee, The One World Tartarians: The Greatest Civilization Ever Erased From History. One of the earlier book-length treatments of the global Tartaria claim. 
• Simon Horowitz, The Great Tartaria: Myth, History, and the Lost Empire. Covers the historical name alongside the modern alternative narrative. 

Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

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Tartaria: The Mainstream Historical Narrative

Dear Shadow Tribe,

 

1700 Map / Grand Tartaria

If you look at old European maps from the 1500s to the early 1800s, you will often see large stretches of Asia labeled Tartaria or Tartary. The name covers huge areas that today include Siberia, parts of Central Asia, Mongolia, and regions farther east. To most historians, this is not mysterious. It is simply what European mapmakers called a part of the world they knew very little about.

The word comes from “Tatar” or “Tartar.” That was a broad European term for various Turkic and Mongol peoples who lived on the Eurasian steppes. After the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, Europeans associated the name with the lands those groups came from. On maps, Tartaria functioned as a general regional label, not the name of one single empire or country. Mapmakers sometimes split it into pieces: Great Tartary or Russian Tartary for Siberia, Chinese Tartary for Manchuria, Independent Tartary for parts of Central Asia, and Little Tartary for the area around the Crimean Khanate.

European knowledge of the region stayed limited for centuries. The people who lived there were mostly nomadic or organized into different khanates and empires of their own. The most famous of those was the Mongol Empire under Genghis Khan and his successors. Later, Russian expansion, Chinese rule in the east, and better exploration gradually filled in the blanks. As that happened, the old blanket name Tartaria stopped being useful and dropped out of ordinary use by the mid-to-late 1800s. Newer terms such as Siberia and Central Asia took its place.

In the mainstream view, nothing dramatic was erased. There was no single advanced Tartarian civilization that suddenly vanished. The name was a cartographer’s shorthand for poorly mapped territory. Once Europeans mapped the area more accurately and identified the actual peoples and states there, the old label faded. Historians treat the maps as products of their time, not as proof of a hidden empire. The real history of those lands is documented in Mongol, Turkic, Chinese, Russian, and other local records.

That is the standard account: Tartaria was a European name for a large, little-known region, not a lost super-civilization. The next part of this series looks at the very different story told by people who reject this official narrative.

Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

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Graveyard Rules of the Appalachian Mountains

Dear Shadow Tribe,

The Appalachian rules I previously posted (link) keep you from getting lost in the forest or answering something that is not there. These mountain graveyard rules keep you from bringing something home that you don't want to follow you.

Old burying grounds in the Appalachian mountains are usually small, often on a hill, sometimes half-sunk into the woods. Family plots. Church yards that closed when the congregation moved or died out. Stones lean. Names wear off. Trees and weeds spring up. People still treat them carefully.

The ones I heard growing up:

1) Do not step on a grave. Walk between them. Stepping on one is bad luck at best. At worst it wakes whatever is still attached to the place. People who grew up mowing church yards still step around the sunken places.

2) Do not whistle. Same rule as the woods, only tighter. Sound carries farther when the trees are thinner and the ground is open. Something may answer, and in a graveyard that something already has a reason to be interested.

3) Do not point. At a stone, at a name, at anything that moves at the edge of the your vision. Pointing draws attention. Some say the finger that pointed would go stiff or start to hurt. Most just say it was rude and unwise.

4) Do not take anything. Not the flowers, the stone, the dirt, or anything else. Leave what is left by others. People who took a souvenir sometimes say the bad luck followed them home. A few say the haint did too.

5) Talk little, and only quietly. No laughing, no calling out. Make your words polite and soft. The dead are listening, and perhaps something else that sits with them is too. Finish your business and leave.

6) Be respectful. Read the names if you want. Pay your respects. Straighten a fallen flag or flower display.  Do not lean on the stones. Do not sit on them. Do not treat the place like a park. The people buried there are still somebody’s people.

7) No, you didn't see that. If you see something that does not belong, you did not see it. Same rule as the woods. Keep walking. Do not look twice. Do not tell anyone until you are well away from the graveyard.

The Haints

 

Haints are what people called the restless ones. Not every ghost. The ones that stay because they have unfinished business, or are angry, or simply do not want to leave. They can make a dog refuse to go near a porch, a baby cry for no reason, or a healthy person sick.

What people actually did when someone died: they covered the mirrors so the dead could not see themselves and stay. They stopped the clocks. They opened a window so the soul could leave. They sat up with the body all night so it would not be alone. They carried the coffin out feet-first so it could not look back and call someone else. Some painted their porch ceilings a pale blue, called haint blue, to keep spirits from settling at the house. Others left a light burning or salt on the sill.

None of it is dramatic, or performance for the sake of performance. It is just what you did so the dead stay where they belong and the living keep their own house.

The dead rest here. Give them respect in their home.

 

Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

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Europe’s Werewolf Trials

Dear Shadow Tribe,

 

In the late medieval and early modern Europe, it was believed that some people could transform into dangerous wolf-like creatures. These "werewolves" could be involuntary transformations (from curses) or voluntary ones (through witchcraft or pacts with demons). From the fifteenth century into the early eighteenth, courts across much of Europe tried hundreds of men and women for transforming into wolves, attacking livestock, and devouring children. 

The early cases clustered in Switzerland, then spread through French- and German-speaking regions, and later into the Baltics. They peaked in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries before fading.

Dutch historian Willem de Blécourt estimates several hundred prosecutions across Europe. One catalog by Elmar Lorey records roughly 280 known cases from about 1407 to 1725, with the heaviest concentration between 1575 and 1657. Claims of thirty thousand executions in France alone do not hold up, as de Blécourt traced the figure to a misreading of Pierre de Lancre’s 1611 account of the Labourd region.

Most werewolf accusations centered on a demonic pact. The accused supposedly received an ointment, belt, skin, or similar item that let them change form. Confessions, typically obtained under torture, routinely included cannibalism, child murder, and livestock attacks. The people charged were often marginal types, such as shepherds, beggars, hermits, or outsiders. 

 

Some cases may have involved real killers or actual wolf attacks on vulnerable people. Others look like scapegoating for unexplained deaths, disappearances, or hard years. Physicians of the time sometimes treated “lycanthropy” as a form of melancholia or delusion, yet courts still tended to treat the matter as criminal.

Some Famous Cases

• In 1521, French shepherds Pierre Burgot and Michel Verdun confessed to a pact, an ointment, and eating children. They were burned. 
• In 1573–74, near Dole, France, the hermit Gilles Garnier, already known locally as the Hermit of St. Bonnot, was accused of killing and eating several children while in wolf form. Witnesses and his own statements (given under duress) described attacks in vineyards and near the woods of La Serre. He was burned in January 1574. 
• In 1691–92 in Livonia (now Latvia), an elderly man known as Old Thiess claimed to be a “good” werewolf who fought witches and the Devil in Hell to protect harvests. He was put on trail where judges tried unsuccessfully to force a Satanic pact narrative. So, he was merely flogged and banished rather than executed.
• The case of Peter Stumpp (sometimes rendered as Stubbe or Stumpf) in 1589 at Bedburg near Cologne remains the most notorious. The farmer confessed to a devil-given belt, years of murders including children, cannibalism, and incest. His execution was exceptionally brutal: skin torn with hot pincers, limbs broken, beheading, and burning. His head was displayed on a pole with a wolf likeness. Pamphlets spread the story across Europe.
• The last known werewolf trail was in 1853, in Galicia, northwestern Spain. But this one had a twist. The accused, Manuel Blanco Romasanta, claimed to be not guilty because of  his condition of lobishome (meaning werewolf). He was still found guilty of a number of murders, but Queen Isabella II commuted his death sentence. Blanco is now part of Spanish folklore as the Werewolf of Allariz.

Earlier medieval stories had often treated the werewolf differently. Marie de France’s Bisclavret, the Werewolves of Ossory in Irish tradition, and tales of cursed or noble knights trapped in wolf form could be sympathetic or ambivalent. They did not produce mass trials. The shift toward the demonic werewolf tracked the broader rise of diabolical accusations (witchcraft and demon pacts) in the fifteenth century. 

Real medical conditions such as hypertrichosis (excessive hair growth), clinical lycanthropy (the delusion of being a wolf), or rabies (which can produce aggressive, animal-like behavior) have been suggested as possible influences on some stories. These conditions are rare, and none account for the scale or pattern of the trials.

By the early eighteenth century the prosecutions largely ended. The pamphlets and trial records remained. So did the older question of what walks the boundary between human and beast when the night falls. Have you ever encountered a werewolf? 

Suggested Reading

• Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Were-Wolves (1865). A classic nineteenth-century survey of European legends, trials, and folklore; public-domain editions are widely available. (Amazon link)
• Montague Summers, The Werewolf (1933). Gothic in tone and broad in scope; reprints key contemporary material on the Peter Stumpp case. (Amazon link)
• Willem de Blécourt, editor. Werewolf Histories (2015). Modern scholarly essays covering the major regions and the shift from medieval stories to early modern trials. (Amazon link)
• Carlo Ginzburg and Bruce Lincoln, Old Thiess, a Livonian Werewolf: A Classic Case in Comparative Perspective (2020). The trial transcript of Old Thiess with comparative analysis of Baltic folk beliefs versus the demonic model. (Amazon link)

   

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   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

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The Brown Mountain Lights: Local Reports, Ghost Lanterns, and What the USGS Claims

Dear Shadow Tribe,

 

Brown Mountain, NC

People in Burke and Caldwell counties of North Carolina have been watching lights over Brown Mountain for a long time. On clear nights after dark, especially in warmer months, you can sometimes see small, steady or drifting orbs along the ridge. Most are white or yellowish. A few pick up red or blue. They show up from overlooks on the Blue Ridge Parkway and from spots along Highway 181 looking across Linville Gorge. They are documented, and still hotly debated.

 

The best-known story attached to them is the lantern of a faithful servant. A planter or hunter went into the mountain and never came back. One of his people took a lantern and went looking. Neither returned. The lights are said to be that lantern still moving across the ridge. Scotty Wiseman turned the tale into the song “The Legend of the Brown Mountain Lights” (also recorded as “Brown Mountain Light”). Listen to it on You Tube.

Other versions talk about Cherokee women searching for warriors lost in an old battle, or a bride who vanished on her wedding night. These stories travel well, but they are obvious later additions. Printed accounts of the lights themselves start showing up around 1912–1913, right as electric lights and railroads were reaching the valleys. Earlier oral claims exist, including a 1771 note from surveyor John William Gerard de Brahm about "vapors" rising from the mountain.

Government people looked at the lights twice in the early years. In 1913 the U.S. Geological Survey sent D.B. Sterrett. He watched from the heights, checked train schedules, and said the lights were locomotive headlights on the Southern Railway lines in the valley. Locals were not convinced. 

 

A big flood in 1916 washed out tracks and stopped trains for weeks; some people said the lights kept appearing anyway, which would be impossible if they were train lights. In 1922 the Survey sent George R. Mansfield. He spent about two weeks on the ground, set up an alidade (a surveying telescope), and took repeated bearings on whatever lights showed. He plotted the results on maps that included the rail lines, roads, and houses.

Mansfield’s conclusion, published as USGS Circular 646 (reprinted in 1971), was straightforward. Of the lights he could measure, roughly 47 percent lined up with automobile headlights, 33 percent with locomotive headlights, 10 percent with stationary lights (houses, etc.), and 10 percent with brush fires. Some appeared to move or flare because of atmospheric refraction in the valley air. Through the telescope many stayed fixed even when the naked eye saw them dance. He did not find evidence for swamp gas, electrical discharge, or anything else exotic as the main cause. 

A 1977 experiment by a group of scientists from Oak Ridge National Laboratory aimed a powerful arc light from miles away; observers on the usual overlooks saw it as an orange-red orb sitting above the ridge. Distance, terrain, and night air do a lot of the work.

Those provide possible explanations for most of the classic reports. It does not close the file. Some people still describe lights that move low through the trees or stay on the slope itself rather than hovering above the crest where refracted valley lights would appear. 

 

Modern camera projects out of Appalachian State University have logged thousands of hours and ruled out a lot of ordinary sources; they have also recorded a few brief, unexplained orbs that do not match cars, trains, or campfires. Ball lightning and other atmospheric effects get mentioned as leftovers. 

 

No one has produced a single mechanism that covers every credible report. The lights that match the USGS maps are explained. The ones that do not are still open to debate.

If you want to look for yourself, the practical spots are the Lost Cove overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway (around milepost 310) and the pull-offs on Highway 181 south of the Parkway. I've looked. So far, I haven't seen anything I couldn't explain.

Clear, moonless nights after full dark give the best chance. Bring a map, know the road and rail corridors, and do not expect a show every time. Most nights you will see ordinary lights doing ordinary things. Some nights you may see something that does not line up. Good luck.

Suggested Reading

• The Brown Mountain Lights: History, Science and Human Nature Explain an Appalachian Mystery, by Wade Edward Speer. 

 

The ridge is still there. The reports continue. The explanations that fit the measurements are on the record. The rest is still being watched. Have you seen anything? If so, let us know in the comments.

 

Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

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Share Your Cryptid and Paranormal Encounters

Dear Shadow Tribe,

I am collecting firsthand accounts of paranormal and supernatural encounters, with particular interest in cryptids such as Bigfoot and Thunderbirds.

If you have a story you are willing to share, you have two options:

• Post it in the comments section directly below this article.
• Send it by email to CadeShadowlight@proton.me.

 

You may submit anonymously. Please note that I may republish selected accounts on this site (with or without your name, according to your preference).

Exact locations are not required. I do ask for the state or region, and the county if you are comfortable providing it. General details about the environment, time of day, and what you observed are useful.

I am interested in clear, straightforward reports of what you experienced. Please, no embellishments. If you have photos, sketches, or other supporting material, please include them.

 

Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

Please subscribe for free! Just click here.

 

If this post exposed a dark world to you, consider buying me a coffee so I can keep tracking the shadows they hope stay buried! → https://buymeacoffee.com/cadeshadowlight 

 

Projects Bluebird and Artichoke: CIA Mind Control Before MKUltra

Dear Shadow Tribe,

 

Most people have heard of MKUltra (read my post from last year). Fewer know the two programs that came before it.

It is the spring of 1950. The Korean War had not yet started, but the Cold War already underway. American officials had watched the 1949 show trial of Cardinal József Mindszenty in Hungary. The cardinal appeared broken. His confession looked unnatural. Similar cases in the Soviet sphere raised the same question: had the other side found a reliable way to make people talk, confess, or obey against their own will?

On April 5, 1950, Colonel Sheffield Edwards, chief of the CIA’s Inspection and Security Staff, sent a memo directly to the Director of Central Intelligence, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, bypassing the normal review process. The memo was too sensitive. Edwards proposed forming small interrogation teams, each with a psychiatrist, a polygraph operator trained in hypnosis, and a technician. The teams would use the polygraph, drugs, and hypnotism to support covert operations. Hillenkoetter approved the request on April 20 under the name Project Bluebird and authorized an initial budget of about $65,515 (about $915,000 in 2026 money).

The stated goals were quite practical: improve interrogation of defectors and suspected double agents, learn how to protect U.S. personnel if they were captured, and gather intelligence on what the Soviets and their satellites were doing in the same area of research. Field work began almost immediately In October 1950, a Bluebird team worked on North Korean prisoners of war at a facility in Japan. Other early tests took place at U.S. interrogation sites in West Germany. The subjects were not told the real purpose of the sessions.

By mid-1951 the program was growing and the name changed. In August, Project Bluebird became Project Artichoke. Coordination moved to the Office of Scientific Intelligence. The scope widened. A January 1952 memo put the central question in plain language: could the Agency get control of an individual to the point where he would do its bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self-preservation? Researchers looked at hypnosis combined with drugs, forced morphine addiction and withdrawal, sensory isolation, and other methods meant to produce amnesia or compliance. LSD was already of interest and would become more central later.

Artichoke teams continued operational work overseas while research continued in-house. By 1954 internal CIA memos discussed a hypothetical case: could an individual be drugged at a social gathering, placed under Artichoke influence, and later induced to attempt an assassination against a foreign or American official without knowing he had been programmed? The team that reviewed the scenario judged it probably not feasible under the tight operational limits given, but the fact that the question was asked at all shows how far the thinking had moved in just four years.

These efforts did not produce a reliable, field-ready method of mind control. Drugs made people more talkative rather than more truthful. Hypnosis worked inconsistently on unwilling subjects. Still, the organizational machinery, the willingness to test on people who had not consented, and the basic research questions all carried forward. In April 1953, under the new Director Allen Dulles, the larger program known as MKUltra was approved. It absorbed and expanded what Bluebird and Artichoke had started.

The declassified memos from 1950–1954 are public. They sit in the CIA’s FOIA reading room, the National Security Archive, and the collections assembled after the 1970s congressional investigations. They show an agency that began with a defensive fear of Soviet techniques and quickly began testing offensive applications of its own. That sequence is the direct prequel to the MKUltra program covered in my earlier post.

Suggested Reading

• John Marks, The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control (1979). Still the clearest narrative of Bluebird → Artichoke → MKUltra, built from the documents.
• Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (2019). Strong on the people and the organizational shift from the early programs into MKUltra.
• Gordon Thomas, Journey into Madness: The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse (1989). Broader on the medical experiments that grew out of this work. 

 

Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

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The Not-Deer: When Something in the Woods Looks Not Quite Right

Dear Shadow Tribe,

In my Unwritten Rules of Appalachia post, Rule 6 was simple: if you see someone who looks not quite right, walk the other way. The rule covers more than people. It covers anything that is almost familiar but is still wrong.

A great example is the Not-Deer.

You are driving a two-lane at dusk or standing at the edge of a field when the light is going. Something stands in the usual place that deer stand. Size looks right. Color looks right. Your brain files it as a deer and keeps moving. Then the details refuse to settle. The eyes sit too far forward. The joints bend the wrong way or hold an angle no deer holds. The head turns unnaturally to track you while the body stays completely still. It does not bolt. It watches. Sometimes it takes a step toward you instead of away. The feeling arrives before you can name every wrong detail: that is not a deer.

Reports of this kind of animal cluster in the southern and central Appalachians, particularly western North Carolina (my personal neck of the woods), southwest Virginia, West Virginia, east Tennessee. The name “Not-Deer” itself is recent. It showed up on Tumblr around 2018 and quickly spread on TikTok and elsewhere as part of the wider dark Appalachia conversation. 

However, the experiences people describe are far older. This is not a new phenomenon. Folklorists collected accounts of wrong deer decades earlier. Hunters, hikers, and experienced outdoorsmen in the region have long said some of them simply do not look or act like ordinary deer. 

Image by Grok xAI

Some of the reports may be explained by disease. Chronic wasting disease and related problems make deer thin, uncoordinated, and less afraid of people. Those animals do look and act wrong, but they still look and act like sick deer. 

 

Disease does not move the eyes to the front of the skull or reverse the direction a joint bends. Nor does it make the eyes glow or produce the steady bipedal stance some witnesses describe. People who have field-dressed dozens of deer tend to know the difference between a sick animal and something else entirely.

Other explanations sometimes given include: an odd-looking, unknown deer species. A hybrid between a deer and a wolf (genetically not possible). Or a forest spirit wearing a deer disguise, but not getting it exactly right.

Older stories in the same mountains are similar: full of things that wear a familiar shape but still fail to get it exactly right. Cherokee accounts include Spearfinger, who could take the form of an ordinary old woman and then reveal the stone finger. Witches are said to move in animal skins or borrowed shapes. Mountain people talk of the neighbor who was almost the right height, almost the right walk, almost the right voice, and still not the person who lived down the road. The warning was the same one that became Rule 6: if it looks not quite right, do not get closer to check.

The Not-Deer is the animal version of that warning. What people are reporting is an animal that passes as a deer until you get a good look at it, then it obviously looks or acts wrong. The practical response has not changed. Do not approach. Do not stop the car to get a better look. Put something solid between you and it if you can, and leave. Most accounts end when the witness leaves. That is the safe outcome the old rule is intended to produce.

Suggested Reading

• Lesser Cryptids of Greater Appalachia, edited by Dawn Hilbert and Michael Fitzgerald. This is an anthology of original cryptid-themed folk horror stories by regional authors. It includes the short story “The Not Deer” by S.E. Howard. (Amazon link)

 Between Shadows and Light, 

   Cade Shadowlight ☠ 

 

Please subscribe for free! Just click here.

 

If this post exposed a dark world to you, consider buying me a coffee so I can keep tracking the shadows they hope stay buried! → https://buymeacoffee.com/cadeshadowlight