Experiencing the mystery orbs of Far West Texas
We saw the mystery orbs of Marfa, Texas back in mid-to-late October 1990. These were the notorious Marfa Lights. Some of these had logical explanations, and many also exhibited UFO behavior associated with UAP orbs. UAPs, of course, stands for Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, the current term in use for the umbrella-like spectrum of high strangeness. For those of you new to this topic, UAP includes not just machine UFOs of all shapes and sizes, but also USOs (Unidentified Submersible Objects) and orbs. UAP also includes psychic and paranormal phenomena, psionics, magick, ETs (Extraterrestrials), EDs/IDs (Extra-/Interdimensionals), UTs/CTs (Ultra- and Cryptoterrestrials), mythological beings, “the Old Gods,” psychospiritual phenomena, altered states, new physics, zero point energy, the Afterlife, astral realms, antigravitics, temporal beings (time travelers), even ghosts and faeries.
UAP thus constitutes an astonishing array of entities, technologies, experiences, and events along an extraordinary spectrum of phenomena. Consciousness seems to be the one, central, unifying nexus of all of these, and yet consciousness itself remains the ultimate mystery. I had encountered UAPs including orbs before as well as so-called “nuts-and-bolts” craft. Because of unique experiences with such phenomena in my childhood into my adult life, my interest in such things was deep, intense, and also haphazard. Here we were suddenly searching for mystery lights out in the desert far from the nearest big city and even further from home. In the end, once again, the mystery of what we witnessed did indeed seem related to the greater mystery of consciousness.
What led us to Marfa:
At the time, my then-second, now-ex-wife Gwen and I lived in Southwestern North Carolina near the edge of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Both of us are originally from Virginia, and we worked in outdoor adventure recreation and education. We were in Far West Texas for a month of adventure travel and exploration. First, a fun group of us daredevils from a whitewater center in North Carolina and surrounding states, NOC or the Nantahala Outdoor Center, spent an extended time exploring the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande (Río Grande del Norte or Río Bravo del Norte in Mexico) along the US border with Mexico. Then Gwen and I spent nearly two weeks backpacking, camping, and dayhiking in Big Bend National Park, just the two of us. We experienced many daily and even nightly adventures and challenges. These were, for us from the humid, lushly vegetated Southeast, fun, amazing, and sometimes a little scary.
From there we moved northwards to explore the high desert towns of Marfa and Alpine. Even experienced snow flurries in Alpine, Texas in October! We pushed on across the Trans-Pecos region into Guadalupe National Park and then on into parts of New Mexico before turning back into Texas. Eventually, we returned home to NOC at Wesser, North Carolina, before moving temporarily to Virginia. Along the way, however, we stopped just outside Marfa to see if we could see any UFOs.
Gwen and I hadn’t heard of the Marfa Lights before our road trip. Somewhere along our journey someone told us of the mystery orbs and insisted we go check them out. Probably some overenthusiastic staffer at the famous Hotel Paisano we stayed a night at, or a restaurant we ate at where we had the hottest chiles rellenos ever. Those superhot rellenos left me sobbing for mercy and laughing loudly at the same time and begging for more ice cold beer. And I don’t even drink much alcohol! But I do tend to talk a lot about flying saucers, “alien” ETs, and direct mystical experiences.
Where we went:
The locals directed us to the MLVC to see the lights, the Marfa Lights Viewing Center. It’s directly alongside US Route 90, the old, more southern road that first crossed Texas east to west back in 1927. We’re also a little west of the town of Alpine, a small city high up in the Trans-Pecos west of the Hill Country and surrounded by tall peaks a mile above sea level. We’re also just east of where Route 67 curves around a mesa and cuts down the side of a ridge into the valley floor as it rolls north from the Mexican border into Marfa. All this road and MLVC location info is important when it comes to attempts to explain away the mystery. Found out later the big, flat plains between Routes 90 and 67 were Mitchell Flat, or the Flats, part of an old, now abandoned World War II US army air base.
What we saw:
I remember we watched quite a few lights. Most appeared mundane, disappointingly boring even. Some of those were clearly the headlights of cars and other motor vehicles as they drove around a mesa-like hiill and then rolled down the hill towards Rt 67. We also noticed whenever a car or truck drove uphill heading south, their faint taillights made it obvious each time they were Earth Human machines. Other lights, however, were just plain weird. Bizarre. These strange lights were out in the flats and seemed to hover in place or drift about then wink out of sight or suddenly reappear. Pranksters out in the bushes randomly turning truck lights on and off? Maybe, but we didn’t think so. Besides, it was nearly 35 years ago as I write these words today. Some memories remain as sharp as ever. Others blur. We do recall what we saw.
Recently, Gwen, who now goes by Vie, remarked we “could tell which of the lights were car lights as vehicles moved in straight lines as they followed the road.” If the road turned and twisted, so did those particular lights. If the road went downhill, so did the lights on it, and vice versa. Then we saw balls of lights, orbs, out on the open plains of Mitchell Flat float, flicker, bob up and down, and dart sideways to vanish. Sometimes the orbs floated slowly, then split apart into two or three orbs, then multiple floating balls of lights would quickly merge together and wink off. And other lights would pop up as if those same ones were turned back on. So strange.
Gwen and I and the few others watching with us also found it hard to determine their size. None of us were prepared with any scientific instruments. Those orbs reminded us of the size of soccer balls, basket balls, beach balls, but from a distance. They were clearly real, but the mysterious ones that were obviously not headlights and campfires remained unidentified. They existed long before motor vehicles, too. Unlikely to be campfires either. Campfires don’t float up on some miragey temperature inversion then zoom across the desert changing colors as it divides into two or three orbs, vanishes or winks out, then turns back on.
People have seen a variety of different colors among the Marfa Lights. The colors we saw, however, were basically orangey-yellow and yellowish-white. Came upon a fascinating history of automobile headlights in my research on the Marfa Lights. Headlights back in those days were older with the newer ones at or after 1990 being halogen. Halogen is bright! Gwen and I drove a 1987 Dodge Caravan we had modified into a little camper minivan. It used old-style dual beam headlight bulbs. They used two filaments to combine high and low beam functionality in one unit without requiring a separate bulb for each beam. Pre-halogen headlights were often yellowish and dim. We were in October 1990 along the timeline of witnessing these Marfa Lights.
Debunkers are conditioned to ridicule nearly everything abnormal like dogs in heat feel driven to mate regardless of the conditions they’re in. They hold true to science as a more of a religion where everything must be measurable and recorded as such so as to be further reduced into whatever mathematical formula is in vogue. Clearly, however, one can distinguish between motor vehicle headlights, orb UFOs, and, yes, even ghosts. Gwen and I saw plenty of examples of the former two and none of the latter.
What are they?
Debunkers say the orbs are car are truck headlights. Well, sure, some clearly are. Many others, however, clearly are not. White settlers began seeing them in the early 1880s. At first they were dismissed as Apache campfires. Turns out Native Americans have been witnessing mysterious lights and orbs in the area for centuries. Many of them believed the lights were stars fallen down from the sky. Some of the settlers then speculated the lights were the ghosts of long-dead Native people, but those lights do not behave as ghosts usually do. The lore of ghosts is full of many different varieties of spooky lights, yes, but not basketball size orbs floating, zooming, multiplying into more orbs, with all then merging back together again into something the size of a soccer ball. Without any sound, too.
Some say aliens and UFO orbs. I would be inclined to agree, tho more from what I know about and experienced with UFO spheres, saucers, and orbs in the past. Yet this doesn’t make any sense either. Orbs are a constant. They are among the most common UFOs witnessed. They usually aren’t, however, tied to one place across centuries as is so with the Marfa Lights. For what reason would Extraterrestrial or Interdimensional beings have to hang out over dry, desiccated ranch land atop prehistoric volcanic landscapes? Makes zero sense. Except NHIs or Non-Human Intelligences would most likely not behave like us because, well, they’re not Humans.
If there were extradimensional or transtemporal portals of some kind, by a former military base at that, wouldn’t we know it? There have been no sightings of any such portals, at least not in the literature. Would a NHI allow pesky, violent, messy Humans to build a military base atop their portal during their bloodiest ever world war? No. And what did the soldiers and airmen encounter there? Whatever they saw or didn’t see certainly did not interrupt operations, as far we know today. Perhaps something did occur, and remains classified. We wouldn’t even know.
Maybe it’s earthquakes, EQs. Piezoelectric discharges from planetary stress down in the crust and mantel may be creating those orbs. Marfa is on an earthquake fault line and has had 6 small EQs, small but Magnitude 1.5 or greater, in last 30 days as of 13 March 2025. Texas is splintered with old, slumbering EQ faults. As of 20 August 2025, the Marfa and its surrounding environs had 4 EQs M1.5 or greater in the last 30 days with a total of 33 EQs in the last 365 days. So piezoelectric discharges from mineral-rich rocks being ground, smushed, and stretched in a hydrocarbon basin being a cause is reasonable. But do piezoelectric discharges create ball lightning orbs that float, split, merge, wink out, turn back on, and zoom about? Do piezoelectric lights change color? Dr. James Bunnell, a retired NASA engineer, has studied the Marfa Lights for decades. He’s written several books on them. He still doesn’t know what they are, but he leans closest to the piezoelectric discharge theory over anything else. It’s the geology of the region in play. We live in an active planet at the bottom of an ocean of gas upon a constantly moving crust around a dynamic mantel.
One group of people have proposed those lights represent an unknown form of bioluminescenty. They claim those mystery lights are from yet unidentified, nocturnal, bioluminescent predators. Well, where are those animals? Are they otherwise invisible? Nature is rich with an astounding array of bioluminescence across multiple kingdoms of life. No predatory animals have turned up other than what normally would be found hunting out there on the range to begin with. Not even found run over dead in the road. Or shot by some of the locals. Or witnessed by Indigenous people since ancient times. Plus there would have to be a large enough and constant supply of food to sustain such a dense population of frequent predators. Besides, why in the same geographical location century after century after century without wandering around in neighboring regions or attacking livestock? Don’t we Humans tend to get trapped in our confirmation biases when we hyperfocus upon just one possible solution? So while the idea of cryptic predators with bioluminescence as they floated around splitting apart and merging back together is curiously fascinating, there isn’t the evidence to substantiate such a hypothesis.
Eventually Gwen and I got back in our dusty but cozy, golden-brown 1987 minivan and drove off into the night. We felt disappointed we didn’t see anything overly dramatic, and yet we were satisfied we saw a number of strange lights engaged in bizarre actions. We were also glad we could make out cars and trucks moving along the distant road enough to discern those lights were motor vehicle headlights. They were clearly distinct from the weird ones out in the flats.
To be clear, we never saw a swarm of crazy lights. We only saw a few at a time. Later we learned for many nights at a time there aren’t any mystery lights to behold. There’s nothing there other than an obvious pickup truck barreling along the hills. Regardless, we saw the mystery! Later, learning about the role of consciousness and the psychospiritual aspects of the paranormal, did we two specific Humans with the intense desire to see them, with me being a repeat-experiencer, somehow call them to appear on this one night of nights? Does consciousness and our interpretations of our perception of reality mean anything or have something to do with us seeing those orbs that long ago October night?
Different kinds of orbs:
One of the mysteries of UAPs is there is such a startling variety and number of variations. Nuts and bolts transmedium time traveling space ships defying gravity and distance come in all sorts of shapes, colors, sizes, and patterns. Orbs do so as well.
Other mystery lights elsewhere in the world including the Brown Mountain and Table Rock Mountain Lights of Western North Carolina. Those aren’t too far from where Gwen and I used to work at NOC on the edge of the Smokies, but we weren’t aware of them at the time. Were instead too busy paddling, climbing, and hiking back in those days, working hard for long hours then taking time off to travel far. Those were the days in which we saw the Marfa Lights.
William Dudley Bass
Thursday 13 March 2025
Wednesday 20 August 2025
Revised Thursday-Friday 21-22 August 2025
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol
Sources:
Biggerstaff, Claire. ‘The history of headlights,” Headlights dot com, April 2020. https://headlights.com/the-history-of-headlights/.
Lallanilla, Marc. “What Are the Marfa Lights?” Live Science: Human Behavior: News. June 2013. https://www.livescience.com/37579-what-are-marfa-lights-texas.html.
Staff. “Recent Earthquakes Near Marfa, Texas, United States,” Earthquake Track: Today’s Earthquakes, Aug 2025. https://earthquaketrack.com/us-tx-marfa/recent.
Post Script on me & Gwen:
Gwen and I moved around a bit during our outdoor adventure travel phase, thruhiked the whole Appalachian Trail in 1991, and relocated back to Seattle and the Great Pacific Northwest. We lived in various intentional communities together, including two as urban cooperative households. She and I had two children together, both amazing daughters, and navigated career changes and financial challenges. Sadly, we drifted apart, finalized our otherwise amicable divorce in 2004, and married others. In 2024, Gwen changed their name to Vie, French for “Life.” We remain good friends thru the ups and downs and backup-agains of a sometimes rollercoaster life.
On our pictures:
Most of the slide transparency fotos I took during this month-long adventure were destroyed along with many others in the March 2010 house fire. A small number survived. There may be an even smaller number of surviving slides we took of the Marfa Lights. My post-fire foto restoration project is a tedious one, and once determined any Marfa Lights pictures are among those, those will be duplicated here at that future date. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Copyright © 2025 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.