Young Ben talking to Richard

[bastor]

First the facts:

While re-watching Season 3 I noticed something i had not before. Ben running out into the jungle and meeting "young" Richard and their dialog. As we know the fence is on when Ben arrives on the island (the sonic one) so Smokey can not possibly pass through to impersonate anyone inside the Barracks. Even if we lay out the hypotheses that there is some way for Smokey to project the dead people without entering the barracks parameter you too see the surprise on Richards face when young Ben tells him he that his mother did not die on the island.

As we know and can see Smokey can only impersonate/create/make an illusion of people who actually died on the island and that would explain the strange burial habits.

We have not seen anything else other than Smokey impersonate any dead people (at least not that we know of) (this will cut out the idea that lets say Jacob or someone else appears as Bens mom).

As we know these things we can state a few sure facts:
Ben is special and was special before having his wound or whatever healed by the hostiles.
Bodies of those who died on the island can be manipulated by Smokey.
Bodies of those that did not die on the island can NOT.
This sort of excludes the god of death theme and idea. If Smokey had some sort of god of death connection I doubt Richard would have shown any surprise that Smokey impersonated anyone whos dead.

This in the end leads to my theory. Ben is and has been the leader of the Others all along. Locke was just a mistake made by Richard because of the time traveling done by Locke and the confusion (especially when he picks the knife) It seems that Locke is just Esaus loop since if we assume he and Smokey are the same (that makes the "I just ate" that "Esau" said a whole lot creepier) Locke just sees him as a beautiful light...not a dark smoke... Think about it! In the end Ben was the one who had to stab Jacob, who had to be angry who COULD kill him.

[Mrs Alpert]

I also think that Smokey is Jacob's rival. I just watched the same episode, The Man Behind the Curtain, and had similar thoughts about Ben's mom.

Smokey can manipulate bodies of those who have died on the island as well as dead bodies that were brought to the island (Yemi, Christian, and Locke). What we don't know for certain is whether Smokey can also impersonate people who died off-island and stayed off-island (Ben's Mom).

Also in this list of mysterious appearances is Walt to Shannon (he wasn't dead), Dave to Hurley (if he wasn't an hallucination, he appeared both on and off island), and the string of dead people visiting Hurley at SRMHI (Smokey-manifestations off-island or actual ghosts?).

I believe that Ben is special (seeing his Mom), but I also believe that Locke was special, or else Jacob wouldn't have touched him. I'm working off the theory that Jacob isn't effected by all this time-travel stuff and can see who someone really is, unlike what Richard's done with Locke, on which I agree with you. But Locke did see Smokey as black smoke, when it grabbed his leg and tried to drag him into the ground. The only time something appeared to him as a white light was the first time, and since Smokey can appear as people and smoke, I'm not ruling out the possibility that it could also appear as a bright light.

On another note, I always thought it was strange that Ben and Locke were both born prematurely to mothers named Emily, on the west coast of the US... if there were some sort of prophesy, it could have been either of them.