The Proof is Out There TV - Jean Meldrum - Evelyn Murdoch - Clara Greenlee - James Tuck - John Stowe - Wilfrid de Fonvielle - Mail online - Weird or What? TV - Jay Babree - Jim Al-Khalili TV - Lee Trevino - Enoch 2:43:1-3 - Enoch 2:44 - Enoch 2:59:1-3 -Enoch 2:60:13-15 - Paul Thomas Anderson - The UnXplained with William Shatner TV - The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd TV -
For centuries people have reported seeing mysterious balls of electricity hovering in the air. The Proof is Out There s1e2, History 2021
I looked up because I heard this noise getting louder and louder and it was just like a ball of fire; it was like orange in the middle and it was luminous white round. And it rolled right along the side of the wall in the café, and it came to the window and it came out the window. And I lifted up the weight to have a look to see what this thing was and the thing came up the window and battered across the front of my chest and then it well like vanished ... I was sore for days after it; just there was nothing else to see after it was gone, and it was just like a ball of fire. Jean Meldrum, Crail nr Fife, Scotland
All of a sudden the whole kitchen that I was standing in just well lit up luminous white. I couldn’t understand it. It was very frightening. And then the screaming went on until the beach was empty. The café people had all ran out of the café; they ran out like lightning. Evelyn Murdoch
I see right outside the screen in that direction this little ball of lightning – I didn’t know what it was. Why, it appeared oh the size of a basketball, maybe a little larger. The cover of it was like orange more or less. It had like a halo around the edges of it ... It came in, and I hid down, and when I did, this ball of lighting it fell to the floor, rolled around a little, exploded and made a terrible sound like a shotgun. Clara Greenlee, Crystal River, Florida
This ball very characteristically floats through the air like this; the ball on the average is about a foot in diameter. Sometimes the people who say they’ve seen it, a yard in diameter, and there are some people who claim they’ve seen it say about the size of a walnut. It’s not very bright. About the brightness of a hundred watt lamp ... It’s said to make a fizzing buzzing noise. It lasts on the whole on the average about five seconds. Professor James Tuck, Los Alamos
There entered in at the west window of the church a dark unproportioned thing about the bigness of a football, and went along the wall on the pulpit side; and suddenly it seemed to break with no less sound than if a hundred cannons had been discharged at once; and therewithal came a most violent storm and tempest of lightning and thunder as if the church had been full of fire. John Stowe, Annals, church service Wells Somerset 1596
As we were coming thro’ the Gulf of Florida on the 29th of August, a large ball of fire fell from the Element and split our mast in Ten Thousand Pieces, if it were possible; split our Main Beam, also Three Planks of the Side, Under Water, and Three of the Deck; killed one man, another had his Hand carried of [sic], and had it not been for the violent rains, our Sails would have been of a Blast of Fire. John Howell, sloop Catherine and Mary
Globular lighting seems to be particularly attracted to metals; thus it will seek the railings of balconies, or else water or gas pipes etc. It has no peculiar tint of its own but will appear of any colour as the case may be ... at Coethen in the Duchy of Anhalt it appeared green. M Colon, Vice-President of the Geological Society of Paris, saw a ball of lightning descend slowly from the sky along the bark of a poplar tree; as soon as it touched the earth it bounced up again, and disappeared without exploding. On 10th of September 1845 a ball of lightning entered the kitchen of a house in the village of Salagnac in the valley of Correze. This ball rolled across without doing any harm to two women and a young man who were here; but on getting into an adjoining stable it exploded and killed a pig which happened to be shut up there, and which, knowing nothing about the wonders of thunder and lightning, dared to smell it in the most rude and unbecoming manner. Wilfrid de Fonvielle, Thunder and Lightning, 1875
It has been mistaken for UFOs, wreaked havoc on homes and eluded rational explanation for centuries.
But now ball lightning, a large, mysterious glow that appears during thunderstorms, has been captured on video for the first time.
Chinese researchers managed to accidentally record the elusive glowing orbs during a thunderstorm in Qinghai when they were mapping radiation. Mail online article 20th January 2014, ‘Great Balls of Fire!’
Lightning: a deadly force of Nature that annually kills around sixty people in the United States alone, injuring hundreds more. The odds of being struck are an estimated one in five-hundred thousand but vary geographically. In Oklahoma a seemingly impossible story may prove a frightening truth: could some people be more at risk than others? 46-year-old Carl Mize could be the unluckiest person on Earth: the Oklahoma resident has been struck by lightning more than once ... The only living person struck by lightning six times. Weird or What? s1e6: Chinese Columbus, Discovery 2010
In New York a man is struck by lightning and turns into a musical genius. Can our brains be rewired? Weird or What? More Medical Mysteries s3e9, Discovery 2012
Tony Cicoria: Not only can he play music, he discovers he can write it. ibid.
Apollo 12: This humongous vehicle generates its own bolt of lightning.’ Jay Barbree, NBC, Moon Landings Declassified, National Geographic 2019
Electricity is one of Nature’s most awesome phenomena. And the most powerful manifestation of it we ever see is lightning. Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity 1/3: Spark, BBC 2011
Franklin decided to use the power of reason to rationally explain what many considered a magical phenomenon: lightning. ibid.
If you are caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a one-iron. Not even God can hit a one-iron. Lee Trevino
And I saw other lightnings and the stars of heaven, and I saw how He called them all by their names and they hearkened unto Him. And I saw how they are weighed in a righteous balance according to their proportions of light: (I saw) the width of their spaces and the day of their appearing, and how their revolution produces lightning: and (I saw) their revolution according to the number of the angels, and (how) they keep faith with each other. Enoch 2:43:1-3
Also another phenomenon I saw in regard to the lightnings: how some of the stars arise and become lightnings and cannot part with their new form. Enoch 2:44
In those days mine eyes saw the secrets of the lightnings, and of the lights, and the judgements they execute their judgment: and they lighten for a blessing or a curse as the Lord of Spirits willeth. And there I saw the secrets of the thunder, and how when it resounds above in the heaven, the sound thereof is heard, and he caused me to see the judgements executed on the earth, whether they be for well-being and blessing, or for a curse according to the word of the Lord of Spirits. And after that all the secrets of the lights and lightnings were shown to me, and they lighten for blessing and for satisfying. Enoch 2:59:1-3
And the thunders according to the places where they fall, and all the divisions that are made among the lightnings that it may lighten, and their host that they may at once obey. For the thunder has places of rest (which) are assigned (to it) while it is waiting for its peal; and the thunder and lightning are inseparable, and although not one and undivided, they both go together through the spirit and separate not. For when the lightning lightens, the thunder utters its voice, and the spirit enforces a pause during the peal, and divides equally between them; for the treasury of their peals is like the sand, and each one of them as it peals is held in with a bridle, and turned back by the power of the spirit, and pushed forward according to the many quarters of the earth. Enoch 2:60:13-15
Have you ever been hit by lightning? It hurts. It doesn’t happen to everyone. It’s an electrical charge. It finds its way across the universe ... and it lands in your body, and your head! Paul Thomas Anderson, in Magnolia 1989
A lake bombarded by a thousand lightning bolts in a single hour. A never-ending fire that destroys an entire town. And bizarre humming noises that drive people insane … What happens when Nature is unnatural? The Unexplained with William Shatner s1e3: Unnatural Nature, History 2019
‘Some areas of the earth seems to be like lightning valleys, areas that are just inundated with lightning bolts on a given storm, and we’re not sure why.’ ibid. Michio Kaku
Lightning that follows you into your home; rain that falls like blood; and a single house spared total destruction. History is filled with tales of strange weather phenomenon: frogs falling from the sky, hail so large it can crush an automobile … The UnXplained with William Shatner s1e13: Extreme Weather Mysteries
‘Trying to understand ball lightning is trying to find the unicorn.’ ibid. Michio Kaku
Roy Sullivan: The chances of being struck by lightning seven different times are is one of of ten to the twenty-eighth power. The UnBelievable with Dan Aykroyd s1e6: Superhumans, History 2024