Truth Seekers Midlands member Richard W of Salisbury,
Wiltshire in the UK
posted his encounter on our group message board on October 14 2004.
He reported several strands of light , about 2 feet in length (
that were brighter in the middle ) hovering directly above his and another witnesses head, which seemed to follow them when
they moved. He passed his hands over both ends of the light to see if they were being done by a laser or if it was a spiders
web illuminated by street light. But it wasn`t.
I E-mailed Richard for more information on his strange encounter, he told
me They appeared whitetish/yellow with bright glowing centres but extremely thin maybe only 1mm and approximately 30-60cm
long.
It was in a semi-street lit park/pathway very early morning.
They watched them for at least 1/2 hour.
His friend noticed one over his head. Whilst looking at it and
attempting to touch it (it drifted upwards out of range and then returned overhead even if he moved)
He noticed one over his friends head. The same things happened
to that one. They thought it might be a laser as the area was built up and thought "someone might be playing a joke on
us". But there was at least 30m to the nearest building and there would have been a wobble on a beam.He said " We
thought they might be spider cobwebs in the wind but we could pass both hands over each end. We could not find any logical
reason for them to glow in the centre and to return directly overhead even if we walked away. It was not an optical effect
because once you had moved away you could watch it drift slowly over to your position and not always in the same path that
you had taken yourself ". " We just convinced ourselves that it was some sort of trick and wandered off home. It was
a clear sky past 12 at night about 4 weeks ago ".
Our Investigation:
Ive spoken to a few Ufo and Paranormal researchers on this subject, and a
few members of UFO Research Midlands have witnessed the same strange lights while out in the field.
Here is our theory:
ignis fatuus: The Foolish Fire :
A wide variety of spectral lights,whose alleged purpose is either to herald death or to play
tricks on travelers at night. "Ignis fatuus" literally means "the foolish fire" and is so named because anyone who follows
such a light is foolish.
(The Encyclopedia of Ghosts
and Spirits by Rosemary Ellen Guiley)
Spook Lights, also known as ghostlights
or earthlights. The lights are highly localized, reappearing over and over again in basically the same locations.
There
are many areas in the USA where people see these odd lights close to the ground at night. There are legends about such lights.
Some spooklights are seen near railroad tracks and and are said to be the ghostly lanterns of railroad workers who were killed
there. Some of the lights are said to be the spirits of long-dead Indians who once inhabited the area in which they are seen.
Many researchers theorize that the spook lights are caused by the same mechanism that generates earthquake lights.
The theory goes that there are seismic (or tectonic) stresses in the locations where the lights appear that are not strong
enough to cause an actual earthquake, but are enough to trigger the formation of the lights. The most often named mechanism
for generating the lights by tectonic stress is the "piezo-electric effect". This well-known effect is the generation of an
electric charge by quartz when the mineral is put under pressure.
