Ever since Mansfield demonstrated that the Brown Mountain lights that were being seen in 1922 were nothing stranger than distant electric lights, local writers have tried to protect the mystery by inventing new tales of the lights' origins; one apparent goal of this storytelling is to try to insinuate the idea that the lights had been seen before trains and electrification. The first publication of a claim that the lights were in any way referenced by a Native American culture was an article in the "Asheville Citizen" in 1938; it was merely asserted as fact with no sources being provided. Experts on historical Native American traditions state that this is a myth that was invented by white people to justify their own beliefs in the lights. A new variant of an older ghost story about a woman and baby murdered in the Jonas Ridge community became the first published ghost story to incorporate the lights in 1936. Other ghost stories in similar vein were devised through the rest of the 20th century to the present. Newer ghost stories about the lights include one about a Revolutionary War soldier that was first published in 1982; while a story linking the lights to Civil War ghosts was first seen in 2012, on the internet. The UFO movement began to influence the Brown Mountain lore in the mid-20th century. Ralph Lael, who used to display what he claimed was a mummified alien in his rock shop, self published a book detailing his claimed extraterrestrial encounters on Brown Mountain, and his trip with the aliens to their home planet of Venus, in 1965. At some point, a transition took place between the distant lights that were the foundation of the original legend, and the much more recent stories that feature 'close encounters' with glowing spheres that float in the air, stories that are notably absent from the early 20th century reports, even though thousands of loggers were working in the Brown Mountain area then. Currently, the lights draw people interested in the popular 'ghost hunting' hobby; providing them a supposedly haunted location to investigate. The lights, as a cultural phenomenon, evolved over time to suit the desires and changing expectations of the people who participate in that culture, including borrowings from outside.