Marfa Mystery Lights

The Marfa Lights—or Marfa Mystery Lights, as some call them—are a top reason to visit Marfa, drawing visitors from around the globe for a chance to see these unexplained phenomena. Accounts of the strange spectacle just east of Marfa began during the 19th century and continue to this day.

Ranchers, Native Americans, high school sweethearts, and famous meteorologists alike have reported seeing seemingly sourceless lights dance on the horizon southeast of town, an area that is nearly uninhabited and extremely difficult to traverse. The mystery lights are sometimes red, sometimes blue, sometimes white, and usually appear randomly throughout the night, no matter the season or the weather.

While the source of the mystery lights is still a point of contention, the show goes on. By most reports, they are whimsical and friendly; other witnesses maintain that they are ever distant and aloof; and some sources claim they zoom across the plains at terrifying speed, only to whip back around and dissolve before hitting the dumbstruck viewer.

The cynics will tell you that this so-called paranormal phenomenon is just the atmospheric reflections of cars and campfires at night. The mystics will tell you that’s hooey.