Nocturnal lights / historical descriptions

[Jeff Davis]

Thanks. I thought we'd discuss your sighting over in that thread, but we can also do it here. So did anything in the Alison Kruse videos remind you of your sighting, especially the "laser beam" and the lights changing color? Or do you think these vids are of something mundane?

In her videos, Kruse often decribes the color of the light objects as golden or orange, a color that also features prominently in the following historical descriptions:

Although many people still think they might really have been secret weapons, I'll include foo fighters here.

These descriptions are certainly historical and often seem to be of rather non-material nocturnal "balls of fire". During daytime, these descriptions often change to silvery disks or spheres, though. It seems that they have been shot at by gunners and pilots, but the projectiles didn't show any effect, which would support the non-material hypothesis.

Here's a video containing an eyewitness report:

And this is a collection of foo fighter reports from the Computer UFO Network:
Foo-Fighter Documents Provided by Barry Greenwood

Some excerpts (highlighting by me):

About 1910, between Rastatt and Bishwiller, encountered lights at 3000 ft., two sets of them, turned into them, one went out and the other went straight up 2-3000 ft, then went out. Turned back to base and looked back and saw lights in their original position again.

Halfway between Wissembourg and Landau sighted amber lights at 2000 feet. One light was 20 to 50 feet above the other and of about 30 seconds duration. Lights were about a foot in diameter, 1000 ft. away and following Beau. Lights disappeared when Beau turned into them."

The crew of plane #616 over FALA ISLAND, TRUK ATOLL, at 021802Z observed 2 airborne objects at their 11,000 foot altitude changing from a cherry red to an orange, and to a white light which would die out and then become cherry red again. These objects were out on either wing and not within range of caliber .50 machine guns. Both followed the B-24 through all types of evasive action.

In vicinity of Hagenau Saw 2 lights coming toward aircraft from ground. After reaching the altitude of the aircraft they leveled off and flew on the tail of Beau for 2 minutes and they peeled up and turned away.

8th mission - sighted 2 orange lights. One light sighted at 10,000 the other climbed until it disappeared.

1st patrol saw 2 sets of 3 red and white lights. One appeared on port side, the other on starboard at 1,000 to 2,000 feet to rear and closing in. Beau peeled off and lights went out, nothing on GCI (ground radar) at the time.

Observed lights suspended in air, moving slowly in no general direction and then disappeared. Lights were orange, and appeared singly and in pairs. These lights were observed 4 or 5 times throughout the period.

Well, if they were a "secret weapon", they were highly inefficient as such. That the germans or the japanese would have used aircraft that could trail, circle and outmanoeuver any of the allied airplanes without the slightest problem, as a means to destroy them, seems like a no-brainer to me.

Other than that I would say that the manoeuverability, changes in speed and color and the ability to disappear instantly showing up in the above descriptions, seems very much like more modern sighting reports and videos of light phenomena and like the reports of "fiery shields and arrows" in historical texts. Meaning (IMO) that "foo fighters" actually were nothing new when they turned up in WW II and probably never went away either. It's just that they get more "publicity" in times when people are "watching the skies".

Hey,
Sorry for my absence. Just a lot going on in my life right now. I did not get an opportunity to view those videos. Did you remove them?

 

[Polterwurst]

I did not get an opportunity to view those videos. Did you remove them?

No..? They work fine here.

Thanks for the information.

Thanks for your answers and thereby helping me to avoid double (triple, quadruple...) posts.

 

[Polterwurst]

...but sometimes multiple posts can't be avoided, I'm afraid.

Yesterday, while I was actually reading something totally unrelated, I stumbled over the mention of a report from 1922 by a member of the geological survey, called "Origin of the Brown Mountain Lights". So I googled the title and found a scanned version of a reprint of the report from the early 1970s.

I guess, anyone who considers going to Brown Mountain to "see the light" should read this as a warning, because the poor man apparently wasted two weeks recording nothing but train and car headlights. At least that's what he states in his conclusion. But judge for yourselves:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1971/0646/report.pdf

Following an earlier investigation (1913), in which the cause of the lights was determined as "train headlights" after only a few days, there had been new speculations when the lights refused to take a break during a flooding in 1916, when all rail traffic had been suspended. Finally, in 1922, the geological survey sent another investigator, George R. Mansfield, to settle the matter once and for all.

While I do think that he was biased towards finding another, slightly more complex mundane explanation, there are a few interesting observations and descriptions in the report.

Btw., IMO, there doesn't really seem to be agreement on how the phenomenon can be defined, sometimes it's singular "the light", often plural "the lights", sometimes it has to be stationary, other times it should move to be considered the (or a) Brown mountain light and so on. Which I think could mean that there's indeed a lot of misinterpretation of mundane stuff going on.

The first description of a light, starting at the end of page 2, might be an indication why the investigators probably jumped to the conclusion of train headlights. I think it's not really a coincidence that Mansfield quotes it first:

"(...)seen just above the horizon almost every night (...) the light rises in a southeasterly direction from the point of observation just over the lower slope of Brown Mountain, first about 7:30 p.m. and again at 10 o'clock. It looks much like a toy fire balloon, a distinct ball, with no atmosphere about it. It is much smaller than the full moon, much larger than any star and very red. It rises in the far distance from beyond Brown Mountain, which is about 6 miles from Rattlesnake Knob, and after going up a short distance, wavers and goes out in less than 1 minute. It does not always appear in exactly the same place, but varies what must amount in the distance to several miles. The light is visible at all seasons, so Mr. Anderson Loven, an old and reliable resident testifies."

The nightly appearance at exact times makes the train explanation very likely, of course. Later on, Mansfield states that the given times can be correlated with trains going by in the distance. The question is why the lights should be above the horizon and colored red, though, but of course he has some explanations ready for this too (reflective air layers, mist or smoke particles etc.)

A second description is given on page 5. Some locals set out to determine the cause of the lights in early 1916 but "did not satisfactorily achieve their object":

"(...) about 11:52 his party saw two lights (floating globes), 'apparently about the size of ordinary street lamps (...) seen from the distance of about 1 mile, flash out among the trees on the east side of Brown Mountain about one-eighth of the distance down from the summit. These lights moved horizontally southeastward, floating in and out of the ravines, along the mountainside past a dead pine tree in Mr. Martin's line of sight for a distance estimated at 2 miles. Then they returned northwestward about half that distance, again passing the line of the dead tree. At 12:13 the lights disappeared as suddenly as they came.'"

Unfortunately, there's no mention of the color but the street lamp comparison might mean that it was more yellowish-white than red. This 20 minutes long observation is a bit harder to explain, and the main witness, Mr. Martin, who seems to have been quite a sceptic himself, apparently had a hard time to do so himself. He later seems to have gone so far as to resort to a "mirage" (which is improbable at night) or even a misinterpretation of a much closer and smaller lightsource, namely a firefly (reminds me of some forum reactions). I guess he just didn't want to sound like he was favoring a "supernatural explanation" and thereby expose himself to the ridicule. Interestingly, he seems to have objected to Mansfield's train-and-car-headlights conclusion by saying that Mansfield obviously hadn't seen the real "Brown Mountain Light".

A Colonel Harris, who als seems to have disagreed very much with the train headlights explanation, describes the light as follows:

"It is a pale white light, as one seen through a ground glass globe, and there is a faint, irregularly shaped halo around it. It is confined to a prescribed circle, appearing three or four times in quick succession, then disappearing for 20 minutes or half an hour, when it repeats within the same circle."

Another good but quite different description comes from a Professor W.G. Perry:

"We occupied a position on a high ridge. Across several intervening ridges rose Brown Mountain, some 8 miles away. After sunset we began to watch the Brown Mountain direction. Suddenly there blazed in the sky, apparently above the mountain, near one end of it, a steadily glowing ball of light. It appeared to be about 10° above the upper line of the mountain, blazed with a slightly yellow light, lasted about half a minute, and then abruptly disappeared. It was not unlike the "star" from a bursting sky rocket or Roman candle, though brighter.
(...)
Viewing the lights from a fixed position our estimate of their location was most inexact; the varying color (almost a white, yellowish, reddish) may have been due to mist in the atmosphere; the view of the lights was a direct one and not a reflection; there seemed to be no regularity in their time of appearance; they came suddenly into being, blazed steadily, and as suddenly disappeared; they appeared against the sky and not against the side of the mountain.

Others who have seen this phenomenon make very different reports of their observation; and some who have seen it several times report that they have seen it in varying fashion; sometimes the light appears stationary (as was uniformly the case when I saw it); sometimes it appears to move rapidly--upward, downward, horizontally."

The report then proceeds to detail the observations of Mansfield's own two week investigation. While he is quick to dismiss most of them as train or car headlights, some as bush fires etc., there is one observation which probably was a harder one to explain:

"The light on line 1, when viewed in the telescope of the alidade, was accompanied by one or two subordinate lights. Its position was unchanged throughout the evening, but it varied in brightness. At some times, for long periods, it was so dim that it was practically invisible to the naked eye, though it was faintly shown in the telescope. At other times it flared brightly, so that Joseph Loven pronounced it a true manifestation of the Brown Mountain light."

There's no mention of the actual duration of the observation but the words "throughout the evening" don't seem to fit at least the explanation of car or train lights. But even so, and although he had been told that the lights had probably been seen since before the Civil War, when there were no electric lights around, and although he states oddities like the seeming fact that whenever people camped out on the mountain to see if they could get a closer look at the lights, they just would't show up, in the end his conclusion is "nothing out of the ordinary, just headlights and bush fires".

It's really like a pocket version of Project Blue Book. In my opinion the whole investigation mainly had the objective of debunking the "mysterious air" that was building up around the lights. Science smiting superstion once again. IMO, like with Blue Book, this was not motivated by some deeper conspiracy, but only by his unwillingness to hurt his reputation as a scientist and, probably, by what he thought his peers expected from him: not to add further to the rumors and provide a "satisfactorily explanation" once and for all.

I would be interested to know how much of this report is still valid today, nearly a century later. Is it still true that whenever people are camping on Brown Mountain to see them from closer up, the lights won't show up? Seems unlikely. If anybody has inside knowledge, please share.

 

[Randall]

Because of my own sighting, there's no doubt in my mind that UFOs that present themselves as glowing highly maneuverable flying spheres are real. After my sighting I surmised that if I had seen one, I couldn't be the only one, and therefore at least some the numerous other reports of similar objects must also reflect genuine experiences. Although these objects are typically seen as glowing orbs at night, there are reports of daylight spheres ( analogous to daylight disks ) where the spherical structure of the orbs have been observed. Two that I recall were reportedly metallic and the third more translucent ( like smoked or frosted glass ).

It's not my personal belief that these UFOs are purely plasma. I think it's more likely that the illumination comes from a structured craft behind the glow, and the solid spheres seen during the day are what those craft look like. I watch airliners approach the city regularly at night and until they are close the fuselage and wings aren't visible. Only the lights are seen. Yet we don't assume that aircraft are simply made of light. Also, NL type UFOs have been known to behave in a manner that can only be reasonably explained by intelligent control, and that requires a guidance and control mechanism of some kind. Pure plasma isn't suited for that purpose.

Hypothetically, the apparent merging and separation of the spheres can be explained by proximity and alignment with respect to the observer, and that they don't actually separate or merge. For example, returning to the example of the airliners I see on a regular basis: As they approach the city, sometimes one is directly behind the other, and as they make their turn to get into their landing queues they move out of alignment, giving the illusion that one light has separated into two. Of course nothing of the sort has happened.

However, if we want to invoke exotic technology, perhaps they aren't single units, but a hive of small intelligent machines, perhaps even nanotech. Futurists like Kurzweil predict the evolution of such things. However plasma alone is too chaotic to form anything stable enough to be considered intelligent. It might be a component that is controlled intelligently, but I really doubt it is intelligent in and of itself. In cases where the orb doesn't seen like a random event ( e.g. Earthlights ), I can't help but think that there must be some sort of stable control mechanism behind it.

 

[Polterwurst]

Just found this poem by David Harris on poemhunter.com which I'm pretty sure is a report of a genuine ball of light sighting. Here's an excerpt (the bold highlights, as always, are my own):

"One night while I was living in Canada,
my parents, my sister and I were walking home,
after going to see a film at a local cinema.
We stopped for a moment to cross a road,
when out of the heavens a ball of light fell,
no larger than a baseball
and disappeared behind a garden wall.
At first we thought it to be a shooting star,
and was about to make a wish,
when the ball of light again appeared.
It now streaked upwards and disappeared
into the night sky among the stars."

I think this is a genuine sighting, without any fictionalization (which might seem somewhat surprising in a poem).

It says in his bio that, although born in England, the author grew up in Canada. Secondly, unlike other "fringy" poems by him like Ghost, Invisible Guests or A Portal, this one is using more descriptive than poetic language. Thirdly, the poem is one of a series called "Strange but True". Obviously Mr Harris is somewhat of a psychic, at least that's the vibe I get from his poem called "My spooky Life". The other two poems in the "Strange but True" series describe haunting and clearvoyance type experiences.

Makes me wonder how many other people out there are dealing with these things regularly or at least occasionally. The bio doesn't seem to imply that he's gone "official" with these things, other than in his poems, and in the foto he doesn't look new agey or "esoterically touched" at all.

The sighting probably took place in the 1950s, as he seems to have gone back to England around the age of fourteen. As stated in the poem itself, the unusual part is the object coming back up again and "streaking" upwards, which would be "quite unusual" for a meteorite.

 

[Polterwurst]

...and here is the sighting I was actually looking for when I found the one cited above.

rigorousintuition.ca • View topic - W. B. Yeats UFO sighting, circa 1887

"We had stood for some few minutes, so far as I can recollect, looking over the fields full of stones and brambles and elder-bushes, when I saw a small bright light on the horizon, as it seemed, mounting up slowly towards the sky; then we saw other faint lights for a minute or two, and at last a bright flame like the flame of a torch moving rapidly over the river."

Be sure to read the whole excerpt from "The Celtic Twilight", though, because the sighting was preceded by another one and obviously was followed by haunting and Poltergeist like phenomena (which might be related or could have been something else entirely of course).

It seems that these experiences might have been the reason why W. B. Yeats later confessed to believing in fairies and that "Magic was his primary business", at least equal to poetry (he was with the Theosophists but apparently had a falling-out with Mme Blavatsky, and also a member of the "Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn").

Of course, one could argue that he was prone to "seeing things" because he had been an esoteric in the first place, but I tend to think that most people have to have at least a subjective experience that convinces them of the "paranormal" before wandering off into the "wild world of esotericism and occultism".

The sighting itself, from the description given by Yeats himself was not as impressive as I had hoped it to be. The small bright light moving up towards the sky might have been something like a "toy fire balloon" (which got mentioned in the geological survey - see above - in the 1920s, so I guess "chinese lanterns" were an explanation even in the 1880s, although not too probable), as there are no unusual movements described. At least electrical lights or car headlights are very unlikely in Ireland around 1887. Only the fast moving "flame" seems really unusual.

 

[Pigsinzen]

wher


The sighting probably took place in the 1950s, as he seems to have gone back to England around the age of fourteen. As stated in the poem itself, the unusual part is the object coming back up again and "streaking" upwards, which would be "quite unusual" for a meteorite.[/QUOTE]

Well, if these lights are not just natural phenomena and if it's true that they sometimes behave like they are intelligent, it could be that they avoid being recorded and show themselves only to people who aren't hoping to see anything, so don't be too disappointed if you don't see much.

Of course, if you do see something, please try to document and post your experiences here. I hereby declare you an official Paracast frontlines researcher
Not that I have any offical authority though...

And in case of abduction, remember what Mr Shermer says, try to nick a probe, a ballpoint pen or something and bring it back.

Very interesting thread.. As I have mentioned in previous threads I used to live in Lake Wales, FL and have had several instances where both myself & my wife witnessed orange balls of light flying over or in close proximity to our home. Rather than tell the story again I'll paste the first report of many that we made to nuforc below:

Occurred : 6/29/2013 21:38 (Entered as : 06/29/13 21:38)
Reported: 6/30/2013 10:12:02 AM 10:12
Posted: 7/3/2013
Location: Lake Wales, FL
Shape: Sphere
Duration:10 seconds
Orange, low flying & silent orb in bad weather

"At approximately 21:38 hours my wife & I stepped onto our covered back porch, which faces E/NE to have a cigarette. Immediately she called my attention to the part of the sky that is visible below the porch’s roofline and to a bright orange. From there we both witnessed it slowly and silently float toward the E/NE.

At the time the conditions outside were wet and very overcast. This orange orb traversed our field of view in approximately ten seconds, which led me to believe that it was not a Chinese lantern. In fact my first thought was that it could be a meteor however I feel that it moved to slowly.

As I mentioned the weather was poor and the clouds were low but I can’t say for certain what altitude the orb was traveling at. If I were to guess I would say 300 to 500 feet. At our horizon, which due to our house being at the bottom of a hill was only maybe 100 yards from us, is a grouping of trees. The orb passed over these trees and for a few seconds we could still see it through the branches and leaves on the other side. Then it was gone. We came inside and noted that the time was 21:38.

As a side note the evening before this sighting my wife and I saw an unusual light over a mile to the east. It moved very slowly and in our opinion was either a helicopter, though we heard no sound or a balloon, though it moved quicker than I feel a balloon would. " NUFORC REPORT ENDS HERE.......

All told we witnessed these balls of light on 4 or 5 occasions (maybe more) each traveling in different directions at different speeds. They did not change direction at any time rather they seemed to move slowly at low altitude without diverting from its path, The balls of light were always orange & did not flash or make any sound that we could detect. Only on one occasion did I get the impression that the ball of light was spinning. I do not recall if it was spinning clockwise or counter clockwise but I recall that this particular BOL was at a very low altitude (maybe 30 to 40 feet). These BOL's did not look like stars. They did not appear to be at a high altitude. I always felt as if I could've thrown a baseball and hit one they were so low. I've listened to Ted Phillips speak about his investigations of Marley Woods and some of the BOL phenomena he's spoken about sounds familiar however his seem to make turns and change speed which I never witnessed in my case.

Our house was at the bottom of a ridge on a lake (Lake Wales). The largest phosphorite or rock phosphate deposits in North America lie in the Bone Valley region of central Florida. Lake Wales is right in the middle of Bone Valley (called such because of the fossil content). I mention this in case anyone else has discovered a correlation between area's rich in phospate & BOL phenomena. While we lived in this house we experienced several instances of poltergeist activity. Mostly banging sounds coming from the guest room and items turning up missing only to be found in unusual places. The only time we were concerned or slightly frightened was when all of the burners on our range were turned on to high when neither myself nor my wife had touched, cleaned or bumped into them. This was the type of range where you have to manually twist the knobs to turn the range on. We do not have children living at home & only my wife & I were home when this occurred.

The other event worth mentioning occurred during a sighting of one of these orange BOL's. I hesitate mentioning it because it has a bit of the woo-woo factor to it. My wife & I were sitting on our back porch one evening and it was quite late. We both smoked cigarettes at that time and didn't like to smoke inside the house so we would always venture outside to our porch. (we have both quit smoking since. yay us!!) While outside my wife called my attention to one of the orange BOL's. This one stands out for two reasons. One being that this BOL was moving directly over our house and two because it was moving very slowly. Much slower than any other we'd seen. We watched it move toward the top of the ridge and finally out of sight at which point we immediately witnessed a large white dog/canine of some variety walk from over the top of the ridge toward our neighbors house (thankfully) and eventually out of sight. We looked at each other and very quietly got up and went inside the house. Once inside we both shook our heads and said WTF? Early on I thought perhaps we were seeing something like what is witnessed in Hessdalen. Hessdalen light - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We lived in that house for two years from 2012 to 2014 and we knew most of our neighbors very well. We also grew accustomed to their pets & were familiar with the wildlife in the area which was made up of mostly rabbits, squirrels, and some feral cats (lots of cats). We had never seen any large white dogs & the timing was well quite strange. We moved out of that house and that area in April of 2014. We've experienced nothing out of the ordinary since moving.

 

[Polterwurst]

Wow, thanks for taking the time and coming out with the possible poltergeist activity and "cryptid dog sighting". Please edit the post so that people are sure to read your account and don't think it belongs to the quotes, though. This is priceless.

Have you followed the "Skinwalker Ranch" case? It's got all of the details mentioned in your post. Strange balls of light, Poltergeist activity in the ranch and high strange animal sightings outsde of it (including a huge white wolf-like creature). Seems like Bone Valley might be another "portal area" (which both Hessdalen and the Uintah basin with the Skinwlker ranch have been called for the amount of anomalous sightings).

I don't know if Phosphorite was mentioned in the Hessdalen "battery valley" theory. I'll try to look that up. This observation is also relevant to the question @Burnt State asked in the other thread, so I'll tag him here. I have no idea why unusual minerals should influence these things, but then, I'm no geologist. Maybe the "charged up atmosphere" has a role to play in terms of where the energy necessary to ionize the BOLs comes from.

I see why the NUFORC report would have been explained as ball lightning, with the bad weather and rather short duration. But personally I think that especially the last account in your post points to something much more out of the ordinary. Makes me wonder what other people in the area might be experiencing. Did your neighbors mention anything about similar occurences or make ominous remarks while you lived there?

And, although I suppose, you didn't find it too funny at the time, I had to grin at the fact that the banging sounds came from the guest room. Maybe it was communicating that it was just passing through. Where you ever in the room when the sounds occured, so that you could determine wether they came from the walls, the furniture etc.? Did you check for possible natural causes? I guess so, becuse you wouldn't have mentioned the bangs if you had found an explanation.

 

[Pigsinzen]

Wow, thanks for taking the time and coming out with the possible poltergeist activity and "cryptid dog sighting". Please edit the post so that people are sure to read your account and don't think it belongs to the quotes, though. This is priceless.

Have you followed the "Skinwalker Ranch" case? It's got all of the details mentioned in your post. Strange balls of light, Poltergeist activity in the ranch and high strange animal sightings outsde of it (including a huge white wolf-like creature). Seems like Bone Valley might be another "portal area" (which both Hessdalen and the Uintah basin with the Skinwlker ranch have been called for the amount of anomalous sightings).

I don't know if Phosphorite was mentioned in the Hessdalen "battery valley" theory. I'll try to look that up. This observation is also relevant to the question @Burnt State asked in the other thread, so I'll tag him here. I have no idea why unusual minerals should influence these things, but then, I'm no geologist. Maybe the "charged up atmosphere" has a role to play in terms of where the energy necessary to ionize the BOLs comes from.

I see why the NUFORC report would have been explained as ball lightning, with the bad weather and rather short duration. But personally I think that especially the last account in your post points to something much more out of the ordinary. Makes me wonder what other people in the area might be experiencing. Did your neighbors mention anything about similar occurences or make ominous remarks while you lived there?

And, although I suppose, you didn't find it too funny at the time, I had to grin at the fact that the banging sounds came from the guest room. Maybe it was communicating that it was just passing through. Where you ever in the room when the sounds occured, so that you could determine wether they came from the walls, the furniture etc.? Did you check for possible natural causes? I guess so, becuse you wouldn't have mentioned the bangs if you had found an explanation.

Glad you enjoyed the post. It was an interesting place to live & had a very spooky feel to it especially at night. One of the best parts of living in that area is the lack of light pollution compared to the rest of the state of Florida. This provided a great view of the heavens. In fact when we first moved to that area we were shocked at how easily we could see satellites & the ISS as they passed overhead. That was originally why we began to watch the sky on a regular basis which led to our sightings of the BOL's.

I had read George Knapp & Colm Kelleher's book "The Hunt for the Skinwalker" prior to the canine/BOL sighting and admittedly that may have colored my perception of the event. It was after we moved to Lake Wales that I began to research these topics in more detail which led me to the Paracast show and ultimately this forum. I think anyone who would have seen what we witnessed would've thought it highly strange although an experienced investigator would've been better prepared and would've I'm sure approached it differently. We did the best we could with the very limited experience we had and I'm glad we at least documented the sightings while fresh in our memories ( whatever that's worth ). My neighbors were terrific people and a blast to talk too, but they never mentioned anything unusual to us & we never broached the subject with them. I would periodically look through nuforc's database looking for others in my area who were reporting UFO sightings but never found a community of people to discuss my interests with until I landed here.

You said you're not a geologist and neither am I, but my belief is that there are many, many strange processes that we're totally unaware of, that color our experience here on Earth. Chris surprised the hell out of me on last weeks show when he said that he's of the belief that the Earth is a sentient being. Perhaps there is something to what he said. I stumbled across an article on Micah Hank's Gralien Report today that talked about a potential explanation behind the Taos hum & other locations that exhibit strange humming sounds. The Mysterious Earth Hums: Have Geophysicists Solved The Mystery? Have a look if you like!

 

[Polterwurst]

Previously on this thread: the Brown Mountain Lights

Yesterday, while I was actually reading something totally unrelated, I stumbled over the mention of a report from 1922 by a member of the geological survey, called "Origin of the Brown Mountain Lights". So I googled the title and found a scanned version of a reprint of the report from the early 1970s.

...and here's a nice little piece I just found, which has a very short summary of the geological surveys as well as pictures of the people involved:

There is also a photograph made in 2001 of a genuine Brown Mountain Light and a reconstruction of its flight (starting at 16:43). I really don't think this is a reflection of a train or car headlight. Probably a natural phenomenon (plasma ball / ball lightning), but I still wonder about the strange "behavior" that gets reported from time time. Not much with this one, but it does describe a sharp turn. They don't say anything about it, but I wonder how the flightpath (sharp turn followed by a straight line) fits in with the geomagnetic / piezoelectrical theories?

 

[Polterwurst]

After following up on Mr Davenport's advice in the recent paracast to look up some "fireball" type sightings on his NUFORC site, I did find a wealth of sighting reports which fit the purposes of this thread. So here are three modern (2015 / 2016) reports of "fireballs" or "orange orbs" featuring anomalous movement or behaviour (which make a mistaken "sighting" of sky lanterns rather improbable):

Source: National UFO Reporting Center

I went in the kitchen and happened to glance out the window and I saw these fire like orbs floating from the ground up and left into the sky behind the mouse house daycare city corner across the street...
At first I saw 3 one behind the other and one by one they went up into the sky and disappeared ... I kept watching and then more kept coming from the same location and each one disappeared into the sky...
They kept on coming at 1 or 2 second intervals there was about 13 all together... Then I didn't see any more but and each one appeared to be dropping 1 or 2 pieces of fire from them that disappeared as they floated towards the ground...
As the fire balls went up into the sky they changed from fire orbs to an orange color before they disappeared ...

...orange orb. 3/4 mile high. Moved from East to West over the ocean, half a mile off shore. Silent.
Steady motion forward, then skipped forward a little distance (too fast to see) and carried on moving as before, then it stopped in the air and turned toward the sea on its axis. After a while it moved toward the sea at the same slow speed. Then disappeared.

Was on the phone looking across the park behind my home. Looking southeast toward Twin Falls, ID, when I noticed an orange orb. I didn't pay much attention to it at first because of the high volume of air traffic.
It grabbed my full attention when the single sphere split into 4 smaller spheres. Once my brain registered what I witnessed they vanished with no sound, or any type of visual evidence. What a strange occurence.

More to follow, especially if I should find video material which clearly shows anomalous behaviour.

The sightings cited above don't have estimated sizes, but I think we are dealing with the "standard" sphere or orb, mostly no larger than one or two feet in diameter, and of yellowish to reddish color, a description which I think has been reported for centuries (in various ways of expression, for example "fiery spears, shields and arrows" instead of points and orbs or circles of orange light). Although Mr Davenport seems to believe that at least large groups of these fireballs are a modern phenomenon, I personally think they are much older, even in large groups or "flotillas" but that's just my opinion, of course.

 

[Polterwurst]

As mentioned in another thread, I recently "found" a mythical creature that I think might be related to the "balls of light" phenomena. It's the firebird of slavic mythology and it came up in a "myths and legends podcast" episode (Nr. 27, called "15-Slavic Folklore: Bad Wolf"). If you'd rather not listen to the podcast, you can google the firebird or read about it here.

As with the historical accounts in this thread, it's probably generally not too good an idea to present a tale outside its historical and mythological context. And to try and compare it to alleged paranormal encounters is probably an even bigger mistake. After all, you don't consider immortal sorcerors, talking horses or witches that live in chicken-legged huts (also parts of slavic mythology) as being based on actual observations or witness reports, too. Which is why I was hesitant to post anything about the firebird in this thread at first.

But then, there is already lots of speculation in this thread, so what the heck, and secondly, why shouldn't unusual observations turn up or be "explained" in legends and fairy-tales, along with (probably) purely made-up stuff like unicorns and mermaids? After all, for some medieval peasant, seeing whirling lights in the night sky would probably not seem much less miraculous and fairy-tale-like than having Baba Yaga's hut march by.

So here is why I think the "firebird" might be a very old attempt at explaining "nocturnal light" or (to be more specific) "orange fireball" style sightings (the legend stems at least from medieval times), which people in eastern europe and Russia came up with.

The Firebird is a miraculous bird whose plumage shines with fiery colors. It travels secretly by night and few beholders had the chance to witness this bird’s mysterious whereabouts. (...) The Firebird is usually the reason for sending heroes to difficult journeys, but is sometimes heroic itself, throwing pearls from its beak to the poor peasants.
(quote from the "meet the slavs" site linked above)

As for the size, this wikipedia entry decribes it as being a smallish peacock-like bird (in the legends they mostly seem to have long and beautiful tail feathers, whch is probably the reason why this comparison came up).

Small peacocks are about 3 ft in size. So when imagining the palace guards looking up at the still faraway firebird in the night sky (in the myths and legends podcast episode mentioned above), I was 'seeing' a ball of light flying by in the distance, color changing from yellow to orange and red, probably going in a straight line (compare the orange fireballs), but now and then swooping down to the ground (the bird coming down to steal "the golden apples in the king's garden"). The bird itself would not be discernible, because the glow is said to be quite intense (a single feather would light up a room). Being asked about it's size, the guards (if they were good observers and had a chance to see it against a backdrop of something like trees or towers) would probably have estimated it at about two to three feet in diameter.

Which of course sounds very much like many of the descriptions of balls of light in this thread so far. There is not much in terms of unusual flight manoeuvers etc., but one thing that comes up in many desriptions is the "pearls" which the firebird lets fall from its beak, which of course reminded me of reports of bigger lights dropping smaller ones, sometimes compared to a string of pearls. I couldn't find anything about the pearls being light objects themselves, and why a bird should carry pearls at all (if you have an idea, please post), but it is said that the feathers, when coming loose from the bird, keep on glowing brightly, so that a bird shedding feathers in the air would probably look similar to a big light shooting off sparks or splitting up into smaller ones.

The "bird explanation" would also account for the swirling, dispersing and "going at" each other which is often reported, making the lights look like living creatures "fooling around". A flock of birds (although probably smaller than peacocks) would behave similarly, so that might be why the bird explanation came up in the first place.

One last oddity in the podcast episode was that the legend also features a grey wolf that is the size of about three normal wolves, who is intelligent and actually, as it seems, a shape-shifter. It has no problems to kill and devour the hero's horse at first but then, instead of doing the same with said hero, it gets a bad conscience about the horse and actually helps him instead.

We don't find out if it's bulletproof because firearms probably weren't invented when the story was first told, but I guess this does sound a bit familiar. While the huge wolf-like creature that allegedly attacked the Shermans' cattle didn't speak and surely was not very helpful afterwards, it didn't seem to be interested in attacking the human inhabitants of the ranch, either (at least I really hope it wasn't).

Okay, that might be taking it a step too far. Giant talking wolves probably belong to the dragons and unicorns department, but it is a bit strange that something like that should be in the same story as something that might be an attempt at explaining BOLs, because the "Skinwalker Ranch" case of course features BOLs and huge wolf-like things too. And, as many researchers now believe, strange sightings and events might be rare, but when they do occur, they probably won't be singular but have other strange things happen around them (in what is called a portal area).

Btw.: if you happen to know an old folk- or fairytale that might be related to "ball of light" type encounters or other paranormal phenomena, please share. If you don't want to post it here, send me a message.

 

[Polterwurst]

So I've just been listening to this interview with the author Keith McCloskey about the tragic story of the Dyatlov pass incident:

The Dyatlov Pass Incident with Keith McCloskey - January 7, 2017

McCloskey seems to be rather down-to-earth and genuinely interested in getting to the truth, but he is also not too closed-minded to look into the stranger aspects of the case. In other words, my kind of researcher. Like Chris, he has the hands-on approach to the things he writes about, which is why he actually went to Dyatlov pass.

What I hadn't known about the incident, is that our old friends in this thread, the orange fireballs, seem to have had a role in what happened. In the night of the incident, the unfortunate ski hikers obviously made several photos of lights and objects in the sky. It also seems that the area has a reputation for this kind of thing, maybe similar to Hessdalen, Brown Mountain or the Marfa lights.

Some of the negatives are said to be missing, but the remaing ones are rather baffling (although you actually don't see much):

Valentin Yakimenko's Study of the Group's Negatives

In the interview, McClosky says that the actual photos looked quite black, so these are probably enhanced.

I have to say that I actually hope that whatever drove these people out of the safety of their tent that night had nothing to do with the light phenomena they seem to have photographed. No way to tell now, of course. But up to now, these things didn't seem potentially harmful. Maybe you know different stories, though.

OK, more to come when I have the time. Right now, I'm feeling like going there myself and asking the locals about lights in the sky. Particularly the Mansi (indigenous) people. I bet they have similar accounts to native americans about these things.