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The Truth Is Out There
Michael Hall, 2006. Texas Monthly, June 2006.
A long magazine investigation of the legend. Hall finds that Robert Ellison's 1937 memoir has no clear reference to the lights, that the plaque's claim that O. W. Williams wrote about them in the 1880s is doubted by his grandson, and that the earliest known story is a San Angelo Times piece of February 1945. It collects ranchers' and visitors' accounts, dates the first roadside viewing area and festival to 1986, and ends with the author mistaking Venus for a Marfa light.
What it's used for here
Texas Monthly, June 2006: traces the history behind the legend, finding the 1883 Ellison story absent from his 1937 memoir and the earliest known newspaper report in 1945.
Our copy
Research copy, for editors and curators. The work is the publisher's, so readers are sent to it. We keep this copy so the citation can be checked if the page changes or goes.
texasmonthly.com · fetched 29 Oct 2026
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Cited by on this site 20 records
The Marfa lights
MYSThe mystery article
Cite it
Hall, M. (2006). The Truth Is Out There. Texas Monthly, June 2006. https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-truth-is-out-there/
@misc{hall2006truth,
author = {Hall, Michael},
title = {The Truth Is Out There},
howpublished = {Texas Monthly, June 2006},
year = {2006},
url = {https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-truth-is-out-there/}
}TY - GEN TI - The Truth Is Out There AU - Hall, Michael PY - 2006 JO - Texas Monthly, June 2006 UR - https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/the-truth-is-out-there/ ER -
Hall, Michael. “The Truth Is Out There.” Texas Monthly, June 2006 (2006).