Orbs over Spirit Mountain: Cody's Ridge Lights Return

Cedar Mountain fills the western skyline of Cody, Wyoming: a 7,880-foot ridge between town and the Buffalo Bill Reservoir. It is also known as Spirit Mountain, the name the cave on its flank has carried since the 1950s. In late September 2026 a Cody man said the lights were back over it.

The report

On 26 September 2026, Cowboy State Daily published an interview with Cody resident Jezriah Krubeck. He told the paper that every night from November 2025 through February 2026 he watched from his porch as up to about two dozen white lights rose above the mountain, drifted toward one another, and tracked along the ridgeline. The lights then stopped appearing for months. Speaking in the week of the story, he said he had started seeing them again “within the last two or three nights,” which puts the return at roughly 23–25 September.

Krubeck told the paper he set out to disprove the sightings rather than confirm them. He says he ruled out stars and meteors, that the lights matched nothing on the satellite trackers he checked, that they showed none of the flashing beacons he expects on aircraft, and that they sometimes stopped or changed direction. He also noticed that ordinary air traffic over the mountain seemed to pick up while the lights were active. Krubeck also described shining a small laser at them. The ledger is not repeating that as a test anyone should try. The FAA treats aiming a laser at aircraft as a federal offense and a real safety hazard, and you can’t know what a distant light is before you point at it.

The same article carried a second, separate account. Casey Edwards said that on the night of Wednesday, 23 September he saw a light stop dead in the sky near the Medicine Wheel turnoff in the Bighorn Mountains, on the far side of the Bighorn Basin from Cody. By the time he reached camp he counted five or six, hovering and jostling for two and a half to three hours. His first thought was ranch or hunting drones; archery season had just opened.

Who is saying what

Richard Beckwith, Wyoming state director of the Mutual UFO Network, reviewed both videos for the paper. He suggested Edwards’ clip could simply show a distant airplane. On Krubeck’s footage he said he had no explanation, citing the lack of FAA-required navigation lights and saying he was inclined to rule out drones, balloons and lanterns. MUFON is a volunteer civilian organization. Beckwith’s take is one group’s opinion of a video. It is not an official finding, and he says himself that most sightings turn out to be ordinary.

No statement has turned up from the FAA, the Bureau of Land Management, the Park County Sheriff’s Office or AARO. No raw video files, timestamps or camera metadata are public.

One report, several echoes

Every account of the Cody lights goes back to a single piece of original reporting, the Cowboy State Daily story. CBNC / Coast to Coast AM summarized it on 28 September. IBTimes UK rewrote it on 30 September, adding the FAA laser warning and a note that some Reddit users had floated Starlink as an unverified explanation. None of them interviewed new witnesses or obtained new footage. For this ledger that is one source, several repeats, and both witnesses are self-reported.

Why the mountain has two names

The second name has a paper trail. Outfitter Ned Frost found a cave on Cedar Mountain in January 1909. On 21 September 1909 President Taft’s Proclamation 880 set aside 210 acres around it as Shoshone Cavern National Monument. A month later Wyoming’s Buffalo Voice reported that the “great Shoshone cavern” on Cedar Mountain had been made a national monument. On 17 May 1954 Congress abolished the monument by statute (Public Law 83-360, 68 Stat. 98) and authorized handing the land to the City of Cody, which marketed the site as Spirit Mountain Caverns. After the attraction failed, the city let the land go back to federal ownership in 1977. Today the Spirit Mountain Cave is managed by the BLM’s Cody Field Office.

Safety and access: the cave entrance is gated and locked. Entry needs a BLM permit and key from the Cody office. It is a wild cave with climbing, crawling, fall hazards and no services. This file gives no cave coordinates and no directions to where the lights were seen. Medicine Wheel is a sacred site for many tribes, and we name it only as the area the witness gave.

Competing explanations

• Aircraft seen head-on. Approach and landing lights viewed nose-on can look like steady white globes, and strobes are hard to see at range. Yellowstone Regional Airport sits at the edge of town. Krubeck’s own observation that air traffic increased during the episodes fits. Against: he reports no strobes, and the lights moved in different directions. Test: exact times plus an ADS-B replay of traffic around Cody.
• Drones. Ranch, hunting and hobby drones are common, and the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office, at the other end of the state, has described drone-like formations over the Red Desert for more than a year. Against: Edwards describes nearly three hours aloft, which is long for small consumer drones but not for larger ones. Test: FAA Remote ID data, or a local operator coming forward.
• Satellites or Starlink. Raised online and unverified. Against: Krubeck says the trackers didn’t match, and satellites don’t stop or reverse. Test: pass predictions for the exact times and directions.
• Stars, planets and the autokinetic effect. A bright point over a dark ridge, watched for a long time, will appear to wander, and a handheld phone adds its own drift. Against: several lights at once, reportedly moving independently on video. Test: match the footage against the star field for the date and bearing.
• Lanterns or balloons. Weak fit for lights that recur over many months in the same spot and reportedly move against each other.
• Unidentified. This is where the case officially stands: two self-reported witnesses, one outlet, one volunteer analyst’s “no explanation,” and no data anyone else can check.

Ledger status

Marked open, and likely prosaic. Nothing in the record yet points to anything beyond aircraft, drones or sky objects seen under difficult conditions, and nothing has been ruled out with data. The lights are said to be active again, so this is a living case.

Next checks: timestamped ADS-B tracks for the sighting nights over Cody and the Bighorns; sky charts (stars, planets, satellite passes) for the same times and bearings; any statement from the BLM Cody Field Office, the Park County or Big Horn County sheriff, or the FAA.

Sources

Modern reporting (one original, the rest derivative):

• Emma Jane Jackson, “Mystery Orbs Are Back Over Cody, And UFO Expert Can’t Explain Them,” Cowboy State Daily, 26 Sep 2026 (URL dated 25 Sep) — original interviews with Krubeck, Edwards and MUFON’s Beckwith — cowboystatedaily.com
• “Watch: Mysterious Orbs Repeatedly Seen Over Mountain in Wyoming,” CBNC / Coast to Coast AM, 28 Sep 2026 (summary of the above) — cbnc.com
• Bgie Areña, “‘They Would Interact With Each Other’: Wyoming Resident Reports Enigmatic Orbs Hovering Over Mountain,” IBTimes UK, 30 Sep 2026, 7:12 a.m. PT (rewrite; adds FAA laser warning and the unverified Starlink suggestion) — ibtimes.co.uk

Place history:

• Proclamation 880, Shoshone Cavern National Monument, 21 Sep 1909 (36 Stat. 2501) — American Presidency Project · govinfo
• Public Law 83-360, ch. 203, 17 May 1954 (68 Stat. 98), abolishing the monument and authorizing transfer to Cody — govinfo
• The Buffalo Voice (Buffalo, Wyo.), 22 Oct 1909, p.1 — Library of Congress, Chronicling America — loc.gov
• National Park Service, “Abolished National Monuments” (Shoshone Cavern: abolished 05/17/1954; to BLM 1977, open by permit) — nps.gov
• WyoHistory.org, “Shoshone Cavern, Wyoming’s Only Delisted National Monument” — wyohistory.org
• Bureau of Land Management, Cody Field Office (1002 Blackburn St., Cody; cave permits) — blm.gov