Silver Cliff Cemetery is a cemetery established in the early 1880s outside

Silver Cliff, Colorado The Town of Silver Cliff is the Colorado municipalities#Statutory town, Statutory Town that is the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality in Custer County, Colorado, Custer County, Colorado, United States. The population ...

, about a mile south of State Highway 96 on Mill Street (County Road 340).

Background

Silver Cliff Cemetery is split into two sections, one half for

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

burials and the other half, known as the Cross of the Assumption Cemetery, for

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burials. The cemetery is still in use today and is owned and operated by the Town of Silver Cliff.

Lights

The cemetery is noted for reports of "dancing blue lights" seen on occasion around the cemetery at night. The lights, which according to reports look like blue lantern lights or white spheres, are said to float through the cemetery and bounce on the headstones. These effects have been reported since the 1880s. The lights were featured in the August 1969 ''

National Geographic Magazine ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...

'', Volume 136, No. 2.Town of Silver Cliff, Silver Cliff Cemetery
/ref> These lights were seen for the first time by a group of miners who took the cemetery as a shortcut to get to the town more quickly. But the miners got lost and later saw the lights appearing. Word of the lights spread, and as the lights became famous more people became more interested in the cemetery. Some people say these lights are a normal phenomenon called "

Wildfire A wildfire, forest fire, or a bushfire is an unplanned and uncontrolled fire in an area of Combustibility and flammability, combustible vegetation. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire may be more specifically identified as a ...

", which normally appears in swamps and wet places. Researcher and writer

Karen Stollznow Karen Stollznow (born 12 August 1976) is an Australian-American author, linguist, public speaker, and podcaster. Her books include ''Bitch: The Journey of a Word'', ''Missed Conceptions: How We Make Sense of Infertility'', ''On the Offensive: ...

investigated the cemetery, and wrote that there were several possible natural explanations for the coloured lights, such as a

receptor Receptor may refer to: * Sensory receptor, in physiology, any neurite structure that, on receiving environmental stimuli, produces an informative nerve impulse *Receptor (biochemistry), in biochemistry, a protein molecule that receives and respond ...

on the retina of the eye sensitive to the colour blue, or the effect of

phosphene A phosphene is the phenomenon of seeing light without light entering the eye. The word ''phosphene'' comes from the Greek words ''phos'' (light) and ''phainein'' (to show). Phosphenes that are induced by movement or sound may be associated with ...

s, brief flashes of light perceived by the eye, sometimes induced by eye movements, "which would also explain the lights “dancing”, “floating” or “darting” across the cemetery." Stollznow reports that not all visitors see the lights, supporting her conclusion that "seeing lights during darkness in Silver Cliff Cemetery is a personal experience, likely caused by a person’s eyes and mind after they have spent many hours determined to “see” something."

References

External links

* * {{Coord, 38, 07, 21, N, 105, 26, 34, W, display=title, type:landmark_region:US-CO Cemeteries in Colorado Atmospheric ghost lights Cemeteries established in the 1880s Protected areas of Custer County, Colorado Buildings and structures in Custer County, Colorado