Reviews for The Bayman: A Life on Barnegat Bay

The average rating for The Bayman: A Life on Barnegat Bay based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-09-02 00:00:00 George Harris North Carolina Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff by Kent Priestly (Globe Pequot Press 2011)(917.56) is a collection of the oddest attractions to be found in North Carolina. The best, of course, is the section about the Brown Mountain Lights, which is a natural phenomena that science has yet to explain. Wikipedia it for a full in depth explanation, but I've seen it, and there can be no debate but that it's true. In the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, on an overlook called Wiseman's View or Wiseman's Bluff, looking out over the mountains, mysterious lights appear where nothing other than distant scrub and brush are to be found in daylight. I was first shown this place by a couple of locals. They had seen it many times and had no explanation. Some night no lights appeared, and some nights so many lights appeared that it looked like a city (or Brigadoon) in the distance. Further, the lights would appear at different times throughout the night. All I can tell you is that on the night that I went (in the 1980's) at about 2:00 in the morning, faint lights began to appear on the moutainside in the distance. They gradually became brighter and brighter, and more and more appeared. At the height of the show, there were hundreds of lights glowing all over the ridge. Some were still, some were rolling about, and there was a rotating beacon of light that literally rolled up and down the face of a cliff where no one could possibly go. Writers, scientists, and folklorists have argued about the source of the lights since they were first reported, and the reports are all over the board. BUT - I'm not here to take a position on what causes the lights; I'm only writing this to say that they are real - I have seen them - and it's a phenomenon not to be missed if you are in northwestern North Carolina just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are three viewing locations cited in this book: "The Brown Mountain Overlook, located 20 miles north of Morganton, on NC 181, 1 mile south of the Barkhouse Picnic Area; Wiseman's View Overlook, located 5 miles south of the village of Linville Falls on Kistler Memorial Highway, aka Old NC 105 or SR 1238; and the Lost Cove Cliffs Overlook, located on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Milepost 310, 2 miles north of the NC 181 junction." North Carolina Curiosities, pp. 68-9. My rating: 7/10, finished 11/19/12.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-08-06 00:00:00 Chris Milner I really enjoyed this. I'm planning some local trips based on some of the essays.