Mysteries – Joan Hall

The Marfa Lights

Published on March 27, 2023March 27, 2023 by Joan Hall33 Comments

Okay, I’m cheating again. There is not a new Mystery Monday post this week, but there’s a good reason. After a couple of weeks of being “stuck in the middle” of Blood Red Dawn, I’m writing again. (Sorry, couldn’t resist a reference to an old Steeler’s Wheel song.)

Part of my problem came about because of the third book, Edge of Twilight. I haven’t even begun that one, but a secondary character in Blood Red Dawn will be the male lead of book three. After an evening of serious brainstorming, I addressed my concerns. Not only is Blood Red Dawn moving along, but I’m making notes and a skeletal outline for Edge of Twilight.

To solve the problem for Mystery Monday, I decided to bring back my very first post from 2019. The Marfa Lights have long been a source of fascination for me, so I hope you’ll enjoy reading about them.

The town of Marfa is located in Presidio County between the Davis Mountains and Big Bend National Park. With a population of less than two thousand, it might just be another dot on the map in a remote area of Texas where people measure distance by minutes and hours rather than miles.

“How far is it to San Antonio?”

“About six hours.”

“Where’s the closest Walmart?”

“Three hours away.”

In recent years, Marfa has become a center for minimalist art. The Chinati Foundation and Building 98 are two of its major attractions. I frequently mention Marfa and the art community in the third book of my Driscoll Lake S eries, Unclear Purposes.

But long before the artists arrived in the Trans-Pecos region, Marfa became famous for something entirely different—a mysterious phenomenon known as the Marfa Lights. Just what are these lights and when were they first discovered?

In 1883, Robert Ellison and his wife were driving cattle westward from the railroad in present-day Alpine through the 5,067-foot Paisano Pass when they stopped their wagon on a high, open plateau called Mitchell Flat. Around sundown, the mysterious lights appeared. Ellison thought them to be the campfires of Apache Indians.

Not long afterward, a surveyor named O. W. Williams claimed to have seen the lights. He later recorded in his journal the Indians of that region believed they were the spirit of an Apache chief named Alsate. Ranchers in the 1890s saw the lights and assumed they were Apache campfires. However, when they checked the following day, no one could find signs of any fires.

Sightings continued throughout the years, including during World War II when the Army established a pilot training base near Marfa.

I took this photo in the town of Marathon which is about 57 miles (or 55 minutes) from Marfa. It gives you an idea of what the West Texas landscape looks like.

I first heard of the Marfa Lights in the late 1980s when the television show Unsolved Mysteries did a story about them. In July 1989 the show’s producers asked three scientists from Sul Ross University and the nearby McDonald Observatory to investigate the lights. One was a professor of chemistry, the other was a geologist, and the third was an astronomer. The investigation included eleven other technicians and observers.

The team placed border markers along the road through the Chinati mountains to easily identify automobile headlights. Around midnight, a light appeared near one of the markers which were determined not to be from traffic. The team concluded this light did not come from a man-made source but was unable to determine the origin.

In 2004, a group of students from the University of Texas at Dallas spent four days studying the lights and concluded they were from automobiles traveling along U. S. 67. In May 2008 scientists from Texas State University spent twenty nights in the area. They concluded the lights could be attributed to headlights from vehicle traffic.

Other theories include they are a mirage caused by gradients between warm and cold layers of air. Marfa is at an elevation of 4,688 feet and can experience as much as 40-50 degree temperature differentials between night and day.

It’s not surprising these lights have become a popular tourist attraction. They are best viewed on US 90 about nine miles east of Marfa. There is a pull-off, complete with tables, where you can have a nighttime picnic and wait for the lights to appear.

In 2003, the town of Marfa used $720,000 from the Texas Department of Transportation and the federal government to build the Marfa Lights Viewing Center. It has restrooms, mounted binoculars, and several bronzed plaques.

I have never seen the Marfa Lights, but I have a family member who has. A friend who once lived in the neighboring town of Alpine saw them several times. Ironically, her husband, who was with the border patrol, never saw them during the years he worked in the area.

What do you think? Automobile or campfire lights? A ghost? An atmospheric phenomenon? Please leave a comment.

The Disappearance of Paula Jean Welden

Published on January 9, 2023January 4, 2023 by Joan Hall36 Comments

Hey, Readers. Welcome to the first Mystery Monday post of 2023. I have a lot of topics already lined up for the year. Instead of having one Mystery Monday each month and another Legends and Lore post, I’m combining the two and making it a weekly feature. Now for this week’s story.

In the United States, 423 national parks and sites encompass 85,000,000 acres. Around 300 million people visit these sites each year. Of those visitors, there are an average of 330 deaths per year. More than half are accidental—drownings, falls, and car accidents. Some deaths are purposeful suicides.

Still, there are a number of unexplained disappearances and many of those often go unsolved. Such is the case of Paul Jean Welden who disappeared while hiking Vermont’s Long Trail hiking route in 1946.

Paula was an eighteen-year-old sophomore at Bennington College in North Bennington, Vermont. On the afternoon of December 1, 1946, she set out to hike the Long Trail. She wore adequate clothing for daytime temperatures but not for the anticipated nighttime drop. She took no extra clothing or money. It appeared she didn’t anticipate being gone for more than a few hours.

Welden hitched a ride from State Route 67A near the college to a point on State Route 9 near the Furnace Bridge between downtown Bennington and Woodford Hollow. From this point, Welden either hitchhiked or walked to the start of the trail in Woodford Hollow.

A group of hikers passed her as they ascended the trail. She asked them a few questions, then continued walking in a northerly direction. She was still on the trail in the late afternoon as darkness approached. It’s presumed she continued her walk along the Bolles Brook Valley, although the last confirmed sighting was at a place called Fay Fuller Camp.

When she didn’t return to campus, her roommate notified school officials, and a search began. Classes were suspended so that fellow students could help. Paula’s father enlisted the aid of the Connecticut State Police. (At that time there wasn’t a state police force in Vermont.) Despite an extensive search, Paula was never located. She was later declared dead in absentia.

There are several theories as to what happened. Authorities believe she ran away to begin a new life. Some believe she was depressed and committed suicide, while others speculate she was kidnapped or murdered. There was one person of interest, a lumberjack named Fred Gadette, but with insufficient evidence, no corpse, and no forensic evidence, authorities closed this avenue of the investigation.

The area where Paula disappeared came to be known as the Bennington Triangle, a reference to unexplained disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. In addition to Paula, there were at least four other mysterious disappearances in this area between 1945 and 1950. There are rumors Long Trail is home to a sasquatch-like animal known as the Bennington Monster. Some believe this creature is responsible for Paula’s disappearance.

If there is anything good that came from this event, it’s the creation of the Vermont State Police. They are now responsible for all wilderness search and rescue missions in the state.

This year, I’ll feature more unexplained disappearances in national parks. One of the most mysterious was the story of Glen and Bessie Hyde in the Grand Canyon. In 1928, the Hydes attempted to raft the Colorado River. Their story was one of my first Mystery Monday posts.

Book Reviews: The Edge of Fear @MauraBeth2014, Twelve Years Gone – K J Kalis, Survive The Night – Riley Sager

Published on July 13, 2021July 12, 2021 by Joan Hall31 Comments

Hey, everyone. Time for another book review Tuesday. Today I’m sharing my reviews of three recent reads. The first by an author I’ve read before, the others by “new to me” authors, although one of them is quite popular.

Because of the length of this post, I’m skipping the blurbs. I guess you could call these “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” The last book isn’t really ugly but it just seemed weird to me. Nonetheless, let’s start with the good.

Earlier this year, I read Maura Beth Brennan’s The Edge of Memory. I enjoyed it and was eager to read the sequel.

My Review

The Edge of Fear is Maura Beth Brennan’s second novel and a wonderful sequel to The Edge of Memory.

Hattie (Harriett) is now married to Eli, a local artisan. They have a three-year-old daughter, Lily. Her life is better than she ever imagined, but she begins having inklings that something is about to happen to destroy her happy family.

Then the unthinkable does. Hattie’s ex-husband, Frank, kidnaps Lily and holds her for ransom. After one attempt at giving him the money goes awry, weeks happen without any contact. That’s when Hattie decides to take matters into her own hands. She’s determined to find her daughter at all costs.

With the help of her best friend Celine, the two women set off on a journey to find the kidnapped child. What follows is a page-turning adventure as they trace Frank’s footsteps.

The character development was superb, the action well-paced, and the ending… Well, I won’t give it away.

If you haven’t read The Edge of Memory, this book could easily stand alone. For those who have read it, you’ll see familiar characters—beloved Agnes and of course, Celine. You’ll also meet new ones whom you’ll come to like, and I hope will appear in future books.

A resounding five stars for this one.

The next book I discovered through a BookBub promotion. Suffice to say, I’m glad it was free. This is probably the longest review I’ve written, so bear with me.

My Review

I wanted to like this book. I really did. The premise sounded great. A teenage girl goes out for a hike and never returns. Twelve years later, her family wants answers. Enter Emily, a former Chicago Police detective turned private investigator. She’s contacted by the mother of the missing girl and decides to travel to the small town of Stockton to investigate.

First, I’ll comment on the writing. There are numerous word echoes throughout the book. A couple of examples – the word truck was used five times in one paragraph and a sixth time in the preceding one. The name Angelica was used sixteen times in three pages. Even in an eighty-three-word author’s note, Kalis used the book’s name twice. Was it not possible to say, “this novel” or “this book?”

The author also mixed up a character’s name. Benny became his father Bucky for a couple of pages. Totally confusing.

The book also has redundancies. How many times do we need to know Emily wasn’t sure if she was going to take the case? Was it not clear Cameron was upset over the death of some of his cattle? Or that Kathy wanted to get out of Stockton but was too scared to do anything about it? Despite all that, I kept reading.

The solution was fairly predictable, but the book had several loose ends. I thought there could have been a lot more tension toward the end. There wasn’t. After building up to the fact the sheriff wasn’t on the up and up and was wary of Emily’s presence, he more or less disappeared. The unusual behavior of a local veterinarian wasn’t explained. Why throw those things in if you aren’t going to do anything with them?

Then came the unbelievable ending. I won’t say more because I hate spoilers in reviews, but I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. Guess I should have paid more attention to the word vigilante justice in the sub-title.

On the positive side – I liked Emily’s sidekick Mike, a computer nerd who helped her out of more than one tough situation. There was also her dog Miner, aptly named for the number of holes he digs in her back yard. One line I found amusing: “All the dog needed was a hardhat and a headlamp.”

Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good and I feel I’m generous in rating it three stars (actually 2.5 rounded up to three). The use of beta readers, critique partners, or an editor would have been helpful. I won’t bother with any more books in this series or by this author.

I received an ARC of Survive The Night through Net Galley.

My Review

I’m still trying to come to grips with the mixed feelings I have about this book. Hate it? No. Love it? Absolutely not. Somewhere in between, for sure. I will say this was my first time to read anything by Riley Sager, so I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Charlie Jordan is a theatrical student at a small New Jersey college. Her roommate and friend, Maddy, was murdered by the campus serial killer. Charlie feels responsible because she left Maddy to walk home alone from a bar. Maddy never made it.

Trying to fight the guilt, Charlie decides to go home to Ohio, leaving behind school and her boyfriend Robbie. Because both her parents died in an auto accident, Charlie doesn’t drive, so she posts a note on the campus’s drive board, hoping for a ride. Along comes Josh who offers to take her there on his way home.

They set out around nine at night. As they enter Pennsylvania, Charlie realizes something is amiss with Josh. Is he even who he says he is? Before long, she’s convinced he is the Campus Killer, and Charlie is in for a wild ride.

The book kept me turning the pages because I wanted to learn the outcome. However, Charlie lives her life in the fantasy world of movies, something like hallucinations, so it’s hard to determine what’s real and what isn’t. She makes several stupid mistakes, beginning with accepting a ride from a total stranger. Her poor decisions were based largely because of her guilt over Maddy’s death.

As I got further into the story, it wasn’t hard to figure out the killer’s identity, although the author did throw in several twists to keep readers guessing. A plus for that. But overall, I’m left with a somewhat dissatisfied feeling. Again, I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it. I might consider reading this author again, but judging from this one, the books don’t merit the big price tag. My consolation is the fact I did receive a free advanced reader copy from Net Galley.

Sodder Children #MysteryMonday

Published on August 26, 2019August 24, 2019 by Joan Hall17 Comments

Hey y’all. Welcome to this week’s Mystery Monday. I first became aware of this incident from a story in Readers Digest a few years ago.

George Sodder was born in 1895 in Tula, Sardinia. He immigrated to the United States at the age of thirteen. He found work on the Pennsylvania railroads, but eventually moved to West Virginia and started a trucking company. There he met and married Jennie Cipriani, who also from an Italian immigrant family. They moved into a two-story frame home near Fayetteville and had ten children.

While regarded as one of the most respected middle-class families of the area, George was outspoken in his political beliefs, which some people in the immigrant community disliked. He was strongly opposed to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

On Christmas Eve 1945, George and Jennie and nine of their ten children went to bed. Hours later, all that remained of the house was a pile of smoldering rubble.

The Sodders and four of the children escaped. The remaining children were believed to have perished in the fire. But did they?

Let’s look at what happened that night.

Around twelve-thirty, the phone rang, awakening Jennie Sodder. The caller was a woman whom she did not recognize who asked for someone Jennie did not know. She heard clinking glasses and “weird laughter” in the background.
After hanging up, she noticed all the downstairs lights were on, the curtains open, and the front door unlocked. Marion was asleep on the sofa, and Jennie assumed the other children were upstairs in bed.
At 1:00 a.m., the sound of “an object hitting the roof with a loud bang and a rolling noise,” awakened Jennie a second time. She went back to sleep.
At 1:30, Jennie awakened a third time to the smell of smoke. A fire had broken out in George’s office. One of the four children who escaped ran to a neighbor’s house to call for help.
Thinking the remaining children were asleep upstairs, George looked for his ladder to reach a second-story window. Although it usually rested beside the house, it was missing.
He then tried to use his two trucks to drive closer to the house to climb up to the window. Neither would start, although both had been in perfect working order.
The fire department experienced various delays and did not arrive until later in the morning. The combed through the rubble but did not find any bones or human remains, but the fire chief believed the five children died in the fire. Investigators determined the fire was due to faulty wiring.

Death certificates were issued. Five days later, George Sodder bulldozed what remained of the house, intending to make a memorial garden for the deceased children. But after things calmed down, the Sodders began to question their children’s fate.

An employee of a crematorium informed Jennie Sodder that bones remain after a body has been burned for two hours at 2,000 degrees. Fire destroyed the Sodder home in forty-five minutes. A telephone employee told the family the phone lines appeared cut, not burned.

Strange events had occurred in the weeks and months leading up to the fire.

A man came to the home asking about work. He wandered to the back of the house, pointed to the fuse boxes, and said. “This is going to cause a fire someday.” George found it strange because the power company had recently deemed the wiring in good condition.
Another man tried to sell the family life insurance. When George refused, he became irate and said, “Your damn house is going up in smoke, and your children are going to be destroyed.”
Several months later, while visiting the site, the youngest child found a hard rubber object in the yard. George thought it was a napalm “pineapple bomb.”

Then came reports of sightings. A woman claimed to have seen the missing children in a car at the time of the fire. Another woman in a diner fifty miles away claimed to have served them breakfast the following morning. An employee of a Charleston, West Virginia hotel claimed to have seen four of the five children accompanied by two couples.

In 1947, George sent a letter to the FBI and received a response from Director J. Edgar Hoover. Mr. Hoover said the matter was under the jurisdiction of local authorities but did offer to assist if given permission. The Fayetteville police and fire departments declined.

In 1949, the site was excavated. Human vertebrae bones were found, but an expert said they would have come from someone between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three. The oldest missing child was fourteen. The expert also noted it was strange that more bones weren’t discovered.

Unique historic image. Fair use under US Copyright Laws.

Believed by the Sodders to be their son Louis. (Creative Commons)

The Sodders erected a billboard outside Fayetteville offering a reward for information about the children. Over the years, various sightings were reported, but none proved useful. One of the strangest events happened in 1967 when Jennie Sodder received a photo of a man who resembled one of the missing children, Louis. Inscribed on the back was a cryptic message, “Louis Sodder. I love brother Frankie. Ilil boys. A90132 or 35.”

George Sodder died in 1969, Jennie in 1989. After her death, the remaining Sodder children had the billboard removed.

Some people believe the fire and disappearance was retaliation from the Sicilian Mafia for George’s outspoken remarks about Mussolini. Others think the children perished in the fire. Whatever the case, it is one of the strangest mysteries in US history.

The Marfa Lights #MysteryMonday

Published on August 5, 2019September 12, 2019 by Joan Hall37 Comments

Hey, y’all! If any of you have read the “about me” page, you know I love a good mystery. I also enjoy hearing and reading about legends and folklore. Mysteries and unexplained events have generated ideas for several of my stories.

Today, I’m excited to have the first post of a new weekly series—Mystery Monday. Each week, I’ll feature a different event. Some posts will be mysteries involving real people, while others may be a legend or piece of folklore that’s been passed down from generation to generation. So, without further ado…

What better place to begin than with a famous mystery from my home state?

“How far is it to San Antonio?”

“About six hours.”

“Where’s the closest Walmart?”

“Three hours away.”

Sightings continued throughout the years, including during World War II when the Army established a pilot training base near Marfa.

The team placed border markers along the road through the Chinati mountains to easily identify automobile headlights. Around midnight, a light appeared near one of the markers which were determined not to be traffic lights. The team concluded this light did not come from a man-made source but were unable to determine the origin.

In 2004, a group of students from the University of Texas at Dallas spent four days studying the lights and concluded they were from automobiles traveling along U. S. 67. In May 2008 scientists from Texas State University spent twenty nights in the area and also concluded the lights could be attributed to headlights from vehicle traffic.

What do you think? Automobile or campfire lights? A ghost? An atmospheric phenomenon? Please leave a comment.

[i] Source: Portraits of the Pecos Frontier by Patrick Dearen

[ii] Source: Unsolved Texas Mysteries by Wallace O. Chariton

[iii] Source: Wikipedia