At the fringes of
luminous phenomena ranging from spook lights to freak lightning, there are
strange accounts for which there is no ready explanation. These involve lights
that show a particular interest in human beings – and not always to their
benefit.
Take what befell
12-year-old George Campbell and his father, E.W. Campbell. They were riding along
the ‘Eighty-foot Road’, north of the city of Sherman, Texas, on the night of 4
October 1898. Somewhat after nine o’clock that evening, the boy was witness to
a startling phenomenon:
He is a bright,
intelligent little fellow, who said he didn’t believe in ghosts; that his
parents had never scared him with spook stories, and he is one of the best-
behaved scholars in the fourth grade at the Franklin school building. His story
as told to a News reporter to-day is as follows: “Last night papa and I were
riding along the ‘Eighty-foot Road’, about two and a half miles [4km] north of town,
when all at once everything got very bright. We saw a great ball of fire coming
down toward the ground. It got within about three feet [90cm] of the ground and
seemed to rest for a while and then it went back up until it got clear out of
sight. There was a buzzing sound all the time.” George describes it as being
about 10 feet [3m] in diameter and that it hurt one’s eyes to look at it.
Although they were very close to it, he says that he did not feel any heat. [1]
It’s a puzzling tale, one
which nowadays might be interpreted as a UFO account.
Another encounter with a
mysterious fireball did not have such a fortunate outcome. Twenty-two years
previously, also in Texas, near the town of Palestine, another “intelligent
boy” appeared, out of breath and “as pale as he could be”. His story was that
he’d been trudging along a highway at night.
There was a negro woman
riding a horse in the direction the little coloured boy was going. The boy
appeared that night in Palestine… He said he saw a ball of fire come out of the
sky and strike the woman and set her ablaze. The horse ran away with the woman
afire on his back, and he ran to town to tell the people what had happened. The
people went to look after further particulars concerning this curious incident,
and they found the woman lying on the ground, her clothing burned off, but
enough of life in her to tell that she had been struck in the breast by a ball
of fire. She died the next day. The horse was afterwards found with his mane
singed. People here think that she was struck by a meteor. [2]
In contrast, there are
also numerous instances of death from above by freak lightning manifesting as
balls of fire. These incidents are no less outré, but in such cases we might
console ourselves with a natural explanation. In 1866, Miss Addie Murray, a
schoolteacher in Ross township, Vermillion county, Illinois, met her untimely
end in this way: “She was sitting in the schoolhouse with two pupils, when the
house was struck, and she was found sitting in the chair dead, with her
clothing nearly burned off, and the children severely stunned. The children
describe the scene as a ball of fire falling into the room.” [3] Something
similar struck John Whitton, a driver for a telegraph construction train in
Leavenworth that same year. “He had occasion to lift the telegraph line off
the ground, when a flash of lightning struck the line at that point, tearing it
into small pieces, and instantly killing him. The men who saw the accident
state that they saw a ball of fire as large as a man’s fist issue from
Whitton’s breast.” [4]
An unfortunate death by a
fireball in 1933 was accompanied by a curious premonition on the part of the
unfortunate victim. “In San Rocco, during a thunderstorm, a cleric was killed
by lightning. The priest was involved in a discussion with several of his
congregation in the village street, when quite slowly a one metre [40in] big,
orange-coloured fireball came floating through the air straight towards the
priest, which then erupted in his vicinity. The incident made quite an impression
on the superstitious farmers, more so, as the day before the priest had
presaged his own demise that was soon to come.” [5]
A different kind of
strange light, again attracted by the presence of a human being, was experienced
by Alec Campbell, working as a game warden in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
One night, Campbell was walking by an old burial ground when suddenly a bright
light appeared beside him. “The light turned into a ball of fire about the size
of a softball and moved along at Campbell’s speed, he said… he turned and
stared at the mysterious light. Immediately, the ball started advancing on
him.” Campbell remembered the tales that said that if one encountered such a
light, the best thing to do was to close one’s eyes, which would cause the
light to disappear. He did so, and the light vanished. [6]
Could there be lights not
only possessed of some sort of intelligence but which are capable of forming a
unique rapport with a person and even delivering painful stings when they so
choose?
This seems to have been
the case in Richmond, Indiana, in 1978. The bizarre incident involved local
resident Martha Grieswell, 46 at the time, whose house had been plagued by
“flashing pinpoints of light” ever since one had come into her bedroom one
night in early January that year. Grieswell described how it appeared to her
that she and the light were watching each other. The little light approached
her: “I said ‘No,’ and it stopped about one and half feet [45cm] away. Then I
held out my hand and it came right over and sat in my hand and turned my whole
hand a psychedelic purple. It glowed for a while, then shut down to a point of
light, then rose from my hand – then the others started to come in…”
Over the following nights,
dozens of the “floating, flashing lights”, mostly white and pinhead-sized,
entered her bedroom through the closed window; after that, they became her
constant companions as soon as evening fell. Grieswell also began to note some
of these lights during the daytime, although then they seemed less active. She
moved out of the upstairs bedroom, where the lights continued to manifest, and
began conducting experiments to try to ascertain what the lights might be. She
captured several in containers, including an aluminium cigarette case, and saw
them shining through the container walls. Grieswell also immersed the lights in
water, keeping them submerged for two days: “The lights were observed to ‘swim’
freely, and when released, to ‘fly’ free, their lights undimmed.” She got the
same results when she locked them up in a freezer. She was only able to conduct
these experiments when the lights were willing participants, since at other
times they simply escaped through the walls of the containers. Radiation tests and
an attempted chemical analysis turned up nothing. She did find out, though,
that one thing had an effect on the lights. When she touched one with a burning
cigarette, the light made “a crackling sound, as if you had wadded up
cellophane very rapidly in your hand”. She was unable to replicate that
experiment: “You can’t burn them any more. They move away too fast,” she
explained. It dawned upon Mrs Grieswell that the lights might learn from
experience and therefore might possess some kind of intelligence. When asked
why she wanted to get rid of them, she gave the unnerving answer: “Because they
bite.” At times, when the lights became more bright, they would sting or bite,
giving off a sensation like “the sting of a sweat bee”, and leaving a very
small welt. “They go through a tapping motion… When they land, they raise up,
then light again… they feel like bugs when they sit on you and that’s when they
burn.”
One night, a light got in
her eye, which was a painful experience. The next day, she noticed that the eye
was bloodshot and the corner crusted. When the lights were not stinging her,
they had a tendency to land and crawl over her during the night. They also
stung her husband, who wasn’t able to see them. This might be a significant
detail; some of the many curious people who visited her house were able to see
the lights, yet others were not.
Trying to escape the
lights for a while, Mrs Grieswell went to her mother in Decatur, but on the
third night after her arrival the lights came in through the window and were
also seen by her mother. Perhaps, she reasoned, they had been able to follow
her or had hidden themselves in her clothing or luggage. She got the impression
that the lights meant to say that she could not flee from them. She sought
help, and consulted scientists, ufologists and psychic researchers, but to
little avail. As she said to the reporter who visited her (he wasn’t able to
see the lights): “I’ve just made up my mind that I’m not going to get rid of
them.” [7]
One of the psychic
researchers whom Grieswell contacted offered as explanation that she might be
“experiencing a stage of consciousness preliminary to becoming a psychic
medium”. A plausible suggestion, coming from a psychic researcher, as puzzling
luminous phenomena manifest themselves often around mediums, and are well known
in the field of parapsychology. It is said that Helène Smith experienced the
manifestation of mysterious globes or lights in her studio where she had taken
up painting, long after her association and ensuing break-up with Theodore
Flournoy: “The visions were accompanied by luminous phenomena. They began with
a ball of light which expanded and filled the room. This was not a subjective
phenomenon. Helène Smith exposed photographic plates which indeed registered
strong luminous effects.” [8]
Then there is the case of
Ada Bessinet, a Toledo medium of the 1920s. Denounced as a subconscious fraud
by Professor Hyslop, who had investigated her during 70 sittings between 1909
and 1910, she clearly made more of an impression on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He
wrote, describing a séance with her: “Brilliant lights are part of the medium’s
power, and even before she had sunk into a trance, they were flying up in
graceful curves as high as the ceiling and circling back on us. One nearly
rested on my hand. It seems to be a cold light, and its nature has never been
determined, but perhaps the cold, vital light of the firefly may be an
analogy.” [9] Hereward Carrington was another who was not impressed, but he did
state that he observed some very curious lights at a 1922 séance which, “on
request, hovered for a few moments over exposed photographic plates and that
the plates, when developed, showed unusual markings which he failed to obtain
by artificial means”. [10]
Originally published in Fortean Times 266, September 2010
Notes
1 “Aerial Phenomena in Texas”, Dallas
Morning News, Texas, 5 Oct 1898; “Aerial Phenomena In Texas”, Galveston
Daily News, Texas, 6 Oct 1898.
2 “Burned To Death By A Meteor”, Burlington
Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, 23 Mar 1876; “Burned To Death By A Meteor”, Ohio
Democrat, New Philadelphia, Ohio, 30 Mar 1876; “Burned To Death By A Meteor”,
Decatur Daily Republican, Decatur, Illinois, 11 April 1876.
3 The North-West, Freeport,
Illinois, 23 Aug 1866.
4 Bangor Daily Whig And
Courier, Bangor, Maine, 26 June 1866.
5 “Vuurbol Doodt Een
Priester”, De Gelderlander, ed. Nijmegen, Netherlands, 18 Aug 1933.
6 Sanford Spillman: “Strange To
Relate”, Winnipeg Free Press, Canada, 2 Aug 1969.
7 Barry Wood: “What Lights Through
Yonder Window Broke?” and Barry Wood: “Others Say They’ve Seen The Lights At
Mrs Grieswell’s House”, both in the Palladium-Item, Richmond, Indiana,
20 Aug 1978; also summarised in the Logansport Pharos-Tribune,
Logansport, Indiana, 28 Aug 1978. An account of Martha Grieswell’s ordeal was
also published in Wonders, Dec 1995, as “Life As We Know It Not”, by
Mark A Hall, pp109–118.
8 Nandor Fodor: Encyclopedia of
Psychic Science, University Books, 1966, 3rd printing 1969, p350.
9 Walter B. Gibson: “Human Enigmas
That Still keep the World Guessing, No. 14 – Ada Besinnet”, Lethbridge Daily
Herald, Lethbridge, Canada, 13 Jan 1925.
10 Fodor: Encyclopedia of Psychic
Science, p30.