Earth Lights & Ufology

[Paul_Exeter]

Earth lights advocate Paul Devereux has a new book out:

https://pauldevereux.co.uk/product/uk/book-powers-of-ancient-sacred-places.html

A great article based on this new book is linked below.

https://www.dailygrail.com/2022/03/...ns-associated-with-anomalous-light-phenomena/

The Hessdalen Project has provided some pretty compelling evidence to back up eyewitness accounts of earthlights. There was a lot of interest in this phenomenon back in the early-90s after Paul released his first book and there seemed to be a general acceptance that earth lights were responsible for many UFO sightings in certain areas. However, they rarely seem to get mentioned nowadays and yet we are still receiving 'lights-in-the-sky' UFO reports on a daily basis. Personally, I feel every account of lights in the sky should be cross-referenced against known geological faults in the area and yet I feel that they are ignored or overlooked as a possible solution by ufologists.

 

[Rappinghood]

Been a long time since I read about earthlights. It would be fascinating to look at data that could tie up sightings with geological faults or anomalies.

 

[bakelite brain]

There's a very interesting examination of earth lights by Professor Simon with an extensive interview with Paul Devereux here:

 

[BS3]

There are a couple of well known sightings where earthlights seem like a good line of enquiry. Kaikoura, 1978 (the 'Argosy' / film crew case) is one.

David Clarke collected a lot of information on the 'Longendale Lights', which could be a British example. Going back a bit further, the 'Egryn Lights' was a very earthlight-ish series of events connected with the Welsh Religious Revival of 1904-5 (classic, long multi part article by Kevin McClure starts here, with plenty of descriptions of strange luminous phenomena in part 2) - I see Devereux mentions McClure's study in the article above.

I suppose the difficulty is that earthlights are themselves a fleeting, questionable phenomenon. You have the same issue with the 'plasma' explanation toyed with by various people over the years, including I think Phil Klass (The Air Force actually suggested a 'plasma' being responsible for some phases of the series of sightings at Minot AFB in 1968).

 

[eburacum]

Many years ago my brother lived in Longendale; it is a weird place. Few streetlights up on the moors, so you get an opportunity to see natural phenomena you don't usually notice. David Clarke is a very good researcher, of course, but (as usual) every time an article like this appears you get lots of dubious corroborative accounts.

 

[BS3]

Many years ago my brother lived in Longdendale; it is a weird place. Few streetlights up on the moors, so you get an opportunity to see natural phenomena you don't usually notice. David Clarke is a very good researcher, of course, but (as usual) every time an article like this appears you get lots of dubious corroborative accounts.

Quite and they also shade off strongly into pure folklore. Clarke has collected examples of the latter outside Longendale too:

http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/Peakland.htm

The experience reported in Dovedale from 1993 is a bit of a classic of the genre.

 

[BS3]

Incidentally there is a tradition of odd lights in coastal Suffolk (eg the "Hobby Lantern") which might just have some bearing on the Rendlesham case.

Matt Salusbury has a great article on Mystery Lights of Suffolk. I really enjoy this sort of folkloric stuff.

 

[BS3]

Further 19th century, and earlier, reports of strange lights from Wales, e.g. from 1870s Pwllheli:

Some few days ago we witnessed here what we have never seen before—certain lights, eight in number, extending over, I should say, a distance of 8 miles; all seemed to keep their own ground, although moving in horizontal, perpendicular, and zigzag directions. Sometimes they were of a light blue colour, then like the bright light of a carriage lamp, then almost like an electric light, and going out altogether, in a few minutes would appear again dimly, and come up as before. One of my keepers, who is nearly 70 years of age, has not, nor has any one else in this vicinity, seen the same before.

These would no doubt be classed as UFO sightings in the present time.

 

[Kondoru]

The issue I find with Geological faults is that they are pretty much everywhere.

Obviously some are well known active (Great Glen) and others are very faulted.(West Pembrokeshire)

 

[BS3]

The issue I find with Geological faults is that they are pretty much everywhere.

Obviously some are well known active (Great Glen) and others are very faulted.(West Pembrokeshire)

Yes, it's a bit like ley lines - draw a line on a map and you will hit a few 'significant' sites eventually.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

The issue I find with Geological faults is that they are pretty much everywhere.

Obviously some are well known active (Great Glen) and others are very faulted.(West Pembrokeshire)

West Pembrokeshire being the site of numerous UFO sightings in 1976-79.

 

[BS3]

Another one Devereux has written about in the past was the series of sightings of anomalous lights around Fenny Compton, Warwickshire, in 1923-4. Fort himself mentioned these in Lo!

 

[BS3]

Here's the man himself in Lo!

London Daily Express, Feb. 15, and following issues, 1923 -- brilliant luminous things moving across fields, sometimes high in the air, at Fenny Compton, Warwickshire. They were "intense lights," like automobile headlights. Sometimes these luminous things, or beings, hovered over a farm house. It was a deserted farm house, according to the London Daily News, Feb. 13. About a year later, one of these objects, or whatever they were, returned, and was reported as "a swiftly moving light," by several persons, one of them Miss Olive Knight, a school teacher, of Fenny Compton (London Sunday News, Jan. 27, 1924).

"Or beings" is very Fort.

Judging by the following partial bibliography it was quite regularly discussed in local papers at the time:

Ghost on the Hills of Warwickshire, in "Evening Dispatch", Birmingham, February 12, 1923, p.1

Dancing "ghost". Radiant village spectre, in "The Daily Mail", London, February 13, 1923, p. 7

Will-o'-the-Wisp. Probable explanation of the Fenny Compton Ghost, in "The Birmingham Mail", Birmingham, February 15, 1923, p. 7

Elusive Hill Ghosts, in "Evening Dispatch", Birmingham, February 16, 1923, p.5

Burton Dassett "Ghost". A puzzling Phenomenon, in "Royal Leamington Spa Courier and Warwickshire Standard", February 16, 1923, p. 5

Tracking a Warwickshire village "Ghost", in "Birmingham Gazette", Birmingam, February 20, 1923

Devereux (and Clarke and Roberts, I think) have made the argument for possible earthlights, though I see a local author has more recently tried to argue a UFO interpretation. There was a small, near-forgotten UFO flap in the area in 1970ish (iirc) which might indicate a repeating natural phenomenon.

 

[BS3]

Another one for the impromptu gazetteer: Strange lights in County Fermanagh in 1912.

This light has been seen at intervals several times within the last six or seven years by ‘all sorts and conditions of men’ and women too. It is of a yellow colour, and in size and shape very much the same as a motor car lamp. It travels at a considerable pace along the top of the water – sometimes against the wind, at other times with it. It lights up all objects within a certain radius and disappears as quickly as it appears. It is mostly seen on stormy and wet nights rather than on fine ones.

 

[BS3]

I just had to add that the one sighting with a date given was...today, 112 years ago. A pleasing coincidence!

On Easter Eve,1910, about 4.30pm, I saw a light crossing the lake below the windows of Crom Castle. It was like a large motor car lamp, seemingly quite round, and about 2 ft. across, like the sun when it sets on a winter’s evening. Its colour was a deep yellow. Its peculiarity was that it threw no light behind, but in front there was a blaze: so much so that when it passed a small copse on the borders of the lake it lit up the trees, showing each trunk clear and hard. I saw at once from the pace it was going that it could not be a motor lamp. It disappeared behind the trees as quickly as it appeared.