If you're from Texas, there's a good chance you've heard of the Marfa Lights. It's a phenomenon that some say can be explained away, some believe is supernatural, and others are content to accept as a mystery.
"There's at least two kinds of Marfa Lights," Texas State engineering professor Dr. Karl Stephan said. "The first kind is what you can see just about every night. If you go out to the Marfa Lights viewing area by looking south and wait until sunset, it's these strange little yellowish-white lights that move very slowly, if at all, and flicker somewhat."
Stephan said over months of nightly viewing, he determined the "first kind" can be attributed to car headlights roughly two dozen miles away from the Marfa Lights viewing area.
But what about the other kind?
Get top local stories in DFW delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC DFW's News Headlines newsletter.
"You can't prove a negative in terms of supernatural phenomena," he said. "So, you know, I can't tell them they're absolutely wrong. But that's not the most likely explanation I'm looking for. There's other theories about flammable gases that come out and catch fire occasionally. The trouble with those is these things do not act like flames."
Some of the other theories revolve around departed spirits.
"That's kind of like the Mexican folklore version of it is that they're actually witches that shapeshift and actually it kind of ties into another kind of folklore legend, if you will, where people say that owls are shapeshifting witches and that's how they keep an eye on you," said Hector Montemayor-Perez, the news director at Big Bend Radio in Alpine, Texas.
Whatever the cause of the lights, one thing that's not up for debate is that they attract tourism to the West Texas city of less than 2,000.
"We've seen towns that have changed drastically, for better or worse, in other parts of Texas," Marfa Chamber of Commerce President Abby Boyd said. "And the same thing could happen to Marfa, which is why we try to really be conscientious about what's happening here and try to make sure that the changes that happen are with us involved in the conversation."
Boyd is one of many who shares the view that the cause of the Marfa Lights might be better left a mystery.
"I'm kind of a person that's just like comfortable with not knowing things and just accepting them as they are," said Kelsey Picolo who moved to Marathon, Texas from Biloxi, Mississippi. "But, I mean, you can probably get on Reddit and read for hours about theories and things like that, if that's what you're into. But I just think they're pretty cool."
Listen to a new episode of Texas Wants to Know in the Audacy app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
