The Earth's Anomalous Lightforms

Ball lightning near St. Petersburg, Russia. La Physique Populaire (July 1888), artist unknown. Public domain.

This site is a collection of articles and other material regarding anomalous luminous phenomena. It covers a range of natural but mysterious lights which for various reasons are seldom investigated as mainstream science:

• Earth Lights — balls of light that appear to issue directly from the earth, and often appear repeatedly in specific locations. The term was coined by Paul Devereux in 1982; but prior to that they were known as spooklights.
  • Lights in the Taurus Mountains - a report by Ellsworth Huntington in 1900 about mountains exchanging balls of light in Mesopotamia.
  • Spooklights in America - with locations, links, and notes.
  • The Hornet Spooklight - as seen in the Tri-State area.
• Will-o'-the-Wisps — lambent flames that flicker over marsh and fen. Though often explained as marsh gas ignited by phosphene, there is evidence to question this, and the associated folklore is interesting.
  • John Brand on The Wisp - an article from the 1777 publication of an antiquarian clergyman, reprinted in 1888.
• Earthquake Lights — startling lightforms associated with earthquakes, acknowledged by science since a series of famous photographs taken of the Matsushiro earthquake between 1965 and 1967.

More Lights

The following anomalous and non-anomalous lightforms are not the primary subject of this site, but they're peripherally related and very interesting of their own accord, especially to people interested in luminous phenomena:

• St. Elmo's Fire - a discharge phenomenon associated with masts and spires
• Foxfire - luminescent fungi that light travelers' ways in the forest
• Transient Lunar Phenomena

For a complete contents and to see which files have changed recently, see the directory list. Some works in progress:

• Mysterylights Group
• Site Images
• General Notes - newspaper clippings, &c.

Why Anomalous Lightforms?

This site started out in 2000 as mysterylights.com, and is still available at that domain name. Back at the start of the millennium, there wasn't much information available online in the field of anomalous lightforms; there still isn't. As one of the few sites dedicated to the spooklight phenomenon at the time said (a site which has now disappeared), there are plenty of sites about specific places and sightings, but very little bringing it all together.

Hence the aim of this site: to bring lots of information about anomalous light forms together in one place. It serves to bring awareness of these phenomena to the public's attention. In general, this site mainly covers earth lights (i.e. spooklights, ghost lights, nocturnal lights, amber gamblers, geophysical meteors), and the Will-o'-the-wisp (i.e. the ignus fatuus, the foolish fire). Earthquake lights are also covered, along with some other rare phenomena such as foxfire, St. Elmo's Fire, and so on, but these are really sidelines to the main theme.

Comments?

Have you seen some anomalous lights yourself? Do you have some comments on any of the details on this site? If so, please feel free to email me, or send a message using the form. By default all correspondence will be kept in the strictest confidence, but please do give permission to post feedback to this site if you're willing to.