Spooklights or “Earth lights” are seen all over the world in different reported locations. They’re reported usually as balls of light floating, sometimes moving, sometimes colored, sometimes white. Even with all these variations possible, they’re recognized by locals as spooklights. These were often times worked in Native American legends, long before car headlights and streetlights. Probably the most famous ones in America are the Brown Mountain Lights in North Carolina and the Marfa Lights in Texas. There are so many locations in the US for these interesting lights that you might check out this site that lists their locations around the US.
There are a lot of theories about these lights from a ghost’s lantern to ghosts trying to form to alien visitations to swamp gas. I am more of a mind to believe it’s an Earth phenomenon.
Consider these Earth phenomena we consider to be perfectly natural, but are actually quite powerful and unusual:
The mass of Earth keeps the moon in orbit around it
Lightning
Hurricanes and Typhoons
Tornadoes
Northern lights
Jets and sprites
Volcanoes
Gravity
Those beautiful and powerful things produced by the Earth are just the more cinematic displays, but in more subtle forms the earth does things all the way down to the microbial level that are interdependent and resulting in life. The evolution of life on the planet itself is an amazingly intricate dance of actions and reactions.
The dynamics of our planet includes things at the levels of geomagnetic, electrical, biologic, photosynthetic, molecular, hydroelectric, seismic, volcanic, geologic, and more. We all admit that these things are influenced by conditions, such as man heating up the planet and creating nastier hurricanes, droughts, and melting snow caps. They’re also influenced by tectonics, the pull of the moon, and flooding.
Given all these dynamics is it possible to that the Earth (a planet which can produce lightning strikes at 130,000 mph and 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit), can certainly create lesser but still impressive phenomenon?
In other words, if it can spit out lightning and start fires with it, couldn’t it create glowing spooklights reported in many locations around the world?
agree! although you know it's much more fun to scare yourself thinking it's ghosts!
ReplyDeleteHey Libby;
ReplyDeleteI've seen spooklights many times as a kid. The graveyard across from our summer home on the Chesapeake had the blue ball lights floating around. I watched them eagerly as a kid and came to the conclusion that, although they were in a cemetery, they were also in marshland. My father said it was swamp gas, but these were very well formed. I got a very peaceful feeling watching them, as if they were just as natural as snow or rain. They're seen in a variety of places, so no common ground can be found, but they do intrigue me to no end!
I don't know what I believe, but I also think that there is a lot of things that happen on our planet that are amazing. If you think about all of the energy that is created and doesn't dissipate...where does it go?
ReplyDeleteWaterrose;
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. I think there's a lot of phenomenon we just aren't aware of, don't have the senses to pick up. Imagine a blind person being told what things look like? They have no reference at all. So, imagine us perhaps lacking a sense that's necessary to detect the other worldly things around us. We could be beside and interacting with things all the time that we have no way of seeing/hearing/smelling/tasting/touching... It's exciting stuff.
Any chance it could be both? That is, is there any chance it could be an earth phenomenon as well as something paranormal/supernatural/metaphysical in its nature?
ReplyDeleteFor instance, I often have out-of-body experiences which, I believe, is my spirit disconnecting momentarily from my body. Many scientists who study OBEs do not believe in souls, so their research in the matter is much more biased than objective. I know personally I've heard many heated debates about whether OBEs are spiritual or neurological. I recently read this really good article about how scientists are coming closer to pinpointing the place in the brain that triggers OBE phenomena. If this research is correct, if they can prove OBEs are triggered Neurologically, does that mean it is not a spiritual event? Or is it possible that physical reactions (like a chemical reaction in the brain) can produce spiritual results (like an OBE)?
Autumnforest, you did some pretty good research a few months back when you considered what makes places haunted. I remember that many physical conditions like location and geology became serious factors.
When I think of spooklights it makes me wonder if its not in the same ballpark. Is something going on physically, making it purely an earth phenomenon? Maybe, but it seems like if it were 100% an earth phenomenon we, with all our science and technology, would be able to understand it by now (even Benjamin Franklin could understand basic lightning behavior more than 200 years ago and Tesla was generating artificial lightning more than 100 years ago). Surely it seems strange that a few lights would have us baffled today. Is something going on making it a purely 100% spiritual event? Maybe, but it is strange that we would be able to see something purely spiritual with our physical eyes.
On the other hand, if there is a physical earth phenomenon, it may trigger something we will never be aware of until science can come to grips with non-physical realities. Instead of studying the lights themselves, maybe someone should study the conditions that are causing the phenomenon.
Stephen;
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your input, as always. I have myself astrally projected. In fact, apparently a few weeks ago I actually met one of my bloggers in Greece. That was an enormous shock to me and to her. She was able to describe the encounter we had and that it was me she had talked to, even down to the detail that she was speaking slowly so I'd understand her accent, something I took note of, as well. That experience is perfectly in alignment with psychic experience I've had.
As for the supernatural aspect of OBEs, obviously we cannot have an experience in our mind without body's presence unless the mind is interpreting this event. So, the place in the brain that produces OBEs is vital in that it tells us how we're able to make sense of these events. As far as the supernatural nature of OBEs, it could be a supernatural event, however, that's a very vague term for anything that we think is spiritual in nature. How did I travel to Greece in my sleep and meet someone I've never met and see her apartment and her boyfriend? It's as baffling as the ability to read objects. I do believe there is a "highway" of sorts in the natural world that we can pick up and ride on to get this information. How does my hand holding an object transfer info? By that means which is yet unexplained. I think even if we talk of things in a spiritual nature, that's part of science. It's all the same umbrella. Still, I have to ask myself...where does my soul go when I'm put to sleep for surgery? Why is it so mortal it too can be put under anesthesia? The mind is still the critical part of our experiences, both spiritual and "real world."
The spooklights, however, I have to put into a context of how and when it's seen. One thing we know is that where they're seen...they're seen just in that area. It's not a phenomenon that just randomly appears. It's generally exclusive to an area and so far they're all rural ones. The Brown Mountain lights were reported 800 years ago by the Native Americans which tells me it's more likely a natural phenomenon to that area, especially when we're discussing locations where no people have lived to create a haunting situation.
I suppose we could say they are supernatural because we haven't determined the cause of the lights, but eventually some smart researcher isn't going to be embarrassed to study the lights and take them seriously and will do the proper study of the area and its components to figure out how these lights form.
For now, my theory on spooklights is that they're earth-formed and not ghosts swinging lanterns on the mountainsides.
I agree about the spook lights, I think they are more accurately classified as 'unusual', than paranormal. It'd be interesting to know what causes the effect though, and if it can be artificially duplicated.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading the comments about you visiting one of the other bloggers (can't remember who), but I didn't realize you'll met astrally! How cool.
I've never experienced an OBE, at least not that I can recall (some people have suggested everyone experiences them, most people just can't recall them). But I've read enough about the subject to convince me that it is something more than just some neurologically induced fantasy. I think our mind consists of at least two selves, which may be called the conscious and subconscious, or as I like to think of them, the animal mind and the soul mind. In a situation where a person is under anesthesia, the animal mind is suppressed, and no longer interpreting information the soul mind may be taking in. That's an interesting point though, Autumnforest, why don't people recall things after being under anesthesia? I wonder if there are cases where people have recalled something under anesthesia...I may have to look that up later.
Of course, this is made all the more complex when you consider that people experience NDEs. If a 'dead' mind can recall events that happen after briefly dying and being revived, then why not an unconscious mind?
Jeff;
ReplyDeleteI can tell, I'm going to have to do a post on NDEs. My strange dream had a fairy tale quality and I was lucid enough in the dream to know it. It's the same quality my dreams get when I'm on a plane going down. Yes, I have airliner crash premonitions and I'm inside so I know what's happening, what it feels like, all the way to the conclusion--no wonder I hate to fly! In the dream, I realized it was like my plane ones. In those dreams, I know I can't be killed because I'm a witness and I don't interact. I simply watch. This dream was the same. I was in Greece, in an apartment, talking to a woman who had brown hair and beautiful skin and her boyfriend stood over behind her. I asked her about Athens and where the ruins were. I had in my mind that she lived near the ruins, but apparently she did not. Then, when she responded, I realized that she could see and hear me and that startled me so much that I woke up. It bothered me because the woman looked just like one of my followers and lived in Greece. So, I asked her if she had a strange dream and she said it sounded weird, but she thought I visited her and she was talking slowly so I'd understand her accent. I told her she had shiny soft hair and beautiful skin and she said that everyone compliments her on having her family's pretty skin. Very very weird. I often "travel" in my sleep and awake sometimes speaking a language I don't know quite fast and fluently and I feel exhausted, as if I had hopped planes all night. How is it done? This is probably what people would say is the seat of the soul. That with which we can't explain leaving our bodies in NDEs (near death experiences) and other times when our soul might slip from our body. I've never been a strong believer in the soul for the simple fact that without the brain to interpret the experience, the soul doesn't seem to exist, i.e. under anesthesia. The reason we don't remember anesthesia experiences is because we're given a medication that actually creates amnesia. I have woken up during surgery a couple times--horrifying--one time they were fixing my broken nose and chiseling! (gritting my teeth as I recall it). I have full recall of those waking moments because my brain was awake again. So far, I don't think I take a traditional stance on the soul, although I believe it's there. I don't know that I believe it's of a spiritual nature, but yet another form that life comes in that can supercede the need for a body vessel. I guess that's being picky but I see the scientific in most things and even the spiritual has to fall under the laws of spiritual nature. It intrigues me how you can have a spiritual experience and release endorphins and cause a reaction in the body or your prayer might seem to affect the outcome of someone's health, and to me that says that we are greater than our bodies and we use our flesh as an imaginary box that contains us when that's not necessarily true. My ability to read objects has to show that there is some transfer between two physical objects that we have yet to understand and I take that to be the supernatural highway of sorts. This is too much fun! I need to write an astral projection post!
I had an addendum thought about this while I was out walking. Maybe the reason people don't remember OBEs when their under anesthesia is because the soul never leaves the body. Unlike a NDE where the soul seems to jump out of the body because of trauma, being under anesthesia isn't traumatic, so maybe the soul just stays put.
ReplyDeleteI just did a quick google search on OBEs while under anesthesia to see what came up, and it does appear some people have reported them while being under anesthesia. So maybe it just varies person to person.
Jeff;
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you checked that out. I have hard of people having OBEs while under anesthesia, but then that's a very vulnerable time to have someone explain what happened to them. The time this would be most likely is like for my septoplasty or wisdom teeth extraction when you're put under a lighter sedation, you might become conscious as I did. Deeper sedations for more in-depth surgery does include an amnesia component, but there are people who have reported waking up during a traumatic surgery and felt the pain but were in the sleep paralysis mode where they couldn't scream or communicate. Truly horrifying! At least when I woke up during the chiseling, I was talking and driving the doctor nuts so they gave me more anesthesia. I think our biggest obstacle is still that it takes our brain and its components for us to understand what happened to us, so some part of our brain has to be working for the experience to register. Admittedly, when my father died for 4-6 minutes and they brought him back with the paddles, if the brain was shooting off random activity, the thought patterns would not be clear and cohesive and storytelling as the NDEs explain. There has to be a moment at which time the soul departs the body, but that the soul shows no self awareness when the brain is shut down baffles me. I do definitely believe we live beyond the limits of our body and its physical boundaries, and it is in that place that I believe also that residual hauntings can occur, as if an action that once occurred by a physical form can continue on and on under the right conditions. It is in this "supernatural highway" that I've focused my attention in ghost hunting theories. I want to find out what the pathway is for which supernatural/spiritual/soul/out of body experiences travel/psychic information travel. I suppose the best way would be to try and find out in what instances they don't occur and look for similarities. I hope to come up with some thoughts on the subject soon because as I do more and more studying of the conditions for a haunting, I'm left with wondering about the one I've asked myself my whole life--how can I read objects? I'm a very logic-minded person and it scares and baffles me as much as the next person. Usually, when I do a read, it scares me more than the owner of the object. I put the skill away for some time, but I think I'm ready to pull it out of the closet and work with it again to try and describe just what the process is like. In fact, my next post should probably be devoted to how I read objects...Somewhere in that info, I suspect we might find clues to what this supernatural highway is.
I wish I could tell you the name of an awesome documentary I watched about such phenomenon. It mostly had to do with crop circles in England and how balls of light often appear in conjunction (or right before) a crop circle appears. They even had caught one on tape. (A ball of light that is)
ReplyDeleteI didn't really know what to think of them before all this, but when I saw that footage...it changed my mind. Something is up with the lights. They mean something. What I don't know, but that video made a believer out of me.
Oh, and it was caught in the daytime too. The people were in a field, saw it, someone ran to grab the video camera, the light was still there and they lucked out getting it. The way it moved and behaved was unlike ANYTHING I've ever seen before. It was so stumpivating that they had several experts examining the footage for being a fraud, etc. But all of them verified they couldn't explain it or see how the tape had been doctored or tampered with. And when they went on to talk about markings in the hills that had been there for who knows how long...like maybe thousands of years and how they were meant to be seen from above --long before any kind of aircraft that we know of had been around-- and the balls of light had been described as happening back then too...I started thinking of them as more extraterrestial. Not sure what they are, but they're neat. Great post!
Courtney;
ReplyDeleteI saw that documentary too, wasn't it a few spheres dancing around while the crop circle formed? I doubt I'd put them in the same category with spooklights which are seen in the dark and have a more fuzzy quality and less sharp look, but I found that film unsettling like I did the flying humanoids. I would love to have more info to really form an opinion on the crop circle thing. In fact, I'd like to do a post on them. I've never taken them seriously, but I wouldn't mind doing a bit more research to see what has been verified so I can form a conclusion. I swear, with some of this stuff, even with a bunch of cops, a psychiatrist, and the Pope there, it's still just witness accounts and people just dismiss them, but the crazy thing is that witness reports put people in jail and under capital punishment, so it can't be so easily tossed aside.
I will admit that I have never seen anything like these anywhere I've been. I have heard and read about them, but just never have witnessed these "Lights" that are described.
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying that they don't exist, but I'd like to see them for myself. Also, if these things really do exist, why do they go away when you approach them? Why do they simply vanish?
Interesting Post
Les
Les;
ReplyDeletePeople do report not being able to get close to them, others say the come towards them. I think it's really a matter of perspective. It's probably something like jets and sprites that we didn't know about until we viewed them from space. They have some in PA in Bucks County called the Hansell lights. I still can't figure out how to make this a link in a comment, but here's the address to copy and paste to see more about Hansell lights. Might make a great adventure for you.
http://books.google.com/books?id=G5VdDdAd5rMC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=hansell+light+bucks+county+pa&source=bl&ots=_avjSUXFlS&sig=NZv5e4e8QF-IMxhnmncf5zKWKAc&hl=en&ei=_MfwSuGpJIfyMcWx3ZUH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBoQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false