Theories flew Saturday about the ghostly lights seen prowling the slopes of Brown Mountain since antiquity. At a symposium on the so-called Brown Mountain Lights, the suspects ranged from the scientific to the fanciful - radon gas, campfires, ball lightning, even UFOs. Whatever is up there, it's real to Steve Woody. He had a rare close encounter with the lights in the autumn of 1961. He was 12 and on the mountain with his father, waiting for dawn to go deer hunting. About 4:30 a.m., with heavy sleet falling, they both saw two lights silently wandering through the trees toward their truck. "It was a peaceful experience," recalled Woody, now 62. "They were soft, pleasing orange lights, perfectly round, about four feet in diameter." A memorable experience, he said, for a day when they bagged no deer. Brown Mountain, a lump in the wrinkles of the Blue Ridge, has attracted attention for centuries because of the phenomenon.
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