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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Joe McCormick. Your other hosts,

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and Christian Seger are out of the office

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Speaker 1: this week, so we decided to air an update to

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Speaker 1: one of our October classics from last year, The Will

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Speaker 1: of the Wisp. So first you're going to hear the

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Speaker 1: original episode that Robert and I recorded last October about

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Speaker 1: this very weird and wonderful historical phenomenon. And after that,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to read some messages we received from listeners

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Speaker 1: about their own reported experiences with the ghost fire of

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Speaker 1: the Wilderness. So be sure to stick around at the

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Speaker 1: end for more. And without further ado, let's follow the

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Speaker 1: Light into the marsh. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 1: your My my name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So, Robert, Yes,

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Speaker 1: I want you to put yourself in a scenario. Okay,

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Speaker 1: all right, I'm doing it. You are a peasant in

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Speaker 1: medieval England. All right, it's the place to start. But

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Speaker 1: I'm with you. Yeah, it's so. I know it's rough,

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Speaker 1: but you're a peasant in medieval England in in sort

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Speaker 1: of the fen Land. Okay, So there there's some marshes

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Speaker 1: all around you, and this is a time and place

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Speaker 1: where for your life the world is sort of alive

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Speaker 1: with magical beings. So who knows if there's a ferry

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Speaker 1: or a goblin hiding under a rock or in a

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Speaker 1: bush over by the side of the road. Who knows.

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Speaker 1: There are lots of things out there that you just

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Speaker 1: don't understand. It's a world that only by fire. It's

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Speaker 1: a demon haunted world. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a

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Speaker 1: perfect way of putting it. Um. So you're out one

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Speaker 1: night returning home from church, and dusk is coming on,

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Speaker 1: and as you're walking your way through the path that

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Speaker 1: winds along the marshlands at night, and the crickets are

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Speaker 1: chirping and you hear the frogs, you suddenly see something

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Speaker 1: kind of strange off off to your left, sort of

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Speaker 1: in the right, at the edge of your field of vision.

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Speaker 1: You see a bluish looking flame that's just hovering over

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Speaker 1: the ground that that's sort of beyond where you can

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Speaker 1: see exactly where it is. It's it's among some trees

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Speaker 1: and some some marsh grasses. Now, what do you do.

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Speaker 1: Do you just continue on your path or do you

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Speaker 1: walk over to see what it is? Who? What can

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Speaker 1: I do? Uh? Let me do a perception check. Okay,

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Speaker 1: roll your tenth. Well, I'm I'm seeing a basically a

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Speaker 1: ghostly blue flame that's just hovering in the air. I'm

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Speaker 1: thinking I'm gonna want to avoid anything to do with that,

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Speaker 1: because if it's some sort of supernatural entity at night, Uh,

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Speaker 1: it's probably up to no good. It's I'm probably better

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Speaker 1: off to stick into the course and going straight home. Well,

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Speaker 1: you're fantastic at resisting temptation. Congratulations, you're incurious, proud of it,

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Speaker 1: and you're gonna live a live to a ripe old

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Speaker 1: age in the solid knowledge that you just didn't check

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Speaker 1: things out. Well, yeah, I mean, because I've probably heard

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Speaker 1: enough stories like how does every weird horror story begin,

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Speaker 1: every strange folklore? It begins with that guy getting off

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Speaker 1: the beaten path, moving out of the path and going

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Speaker 1: into the wilderness and maybe following some sort of strange flame. Well, okay,

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Speaker 1: let me try you again. Then let's say that we

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Speaker 1: do the same scenario, but you've already gotten lost. You're

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Speaker 1: on your way home from church dusk is coming on.

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Speaker 1: You've lost the path and suddenly you are lost in

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Speaker 1: the marsh lands and you you can't find your way

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Speaker 1: back to the path. But up ahead you do see

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Speaker 1: a light. Uh, you see a flame bobbing that's just

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Speaker 1: above the horizon ahead of you, and you're not quite

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Speaker 1: sure what it is. Now do you go toward the

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Speaker 1: light or not? Well, I'm lost, So that light might

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Speaker 1: very well be somebody's camp fire. That might be as

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Speaker 1: a sign of humans out here, so I should Yeah,

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Speaker 1: maybe I should head that way because either that either

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Speaker 1: they're in the clear or maybe they can help me

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Speaker 1: get out right. It could be a traveler's lantern, could

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Speaker 1: lead you back to the path and get you on

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Speaker 1: your way home and out of this muck. So let's

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Speaker 1: say you follow it for a while, but you can't

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Speaker 1: ever seem to catch up with it, and you just

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Speaker 1: keep going farther and farther along in the marsh, but

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Speaker 1: it's always just out of where you can reach it

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Speaker 1: or get a good look at exactly what it is.

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Speaker 1: Do you keep following? Well, the more I follow, the

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Speaker 1: more I'm probably gonna feel like I'm being manipulated in

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Speaker 1: this led on a winding goat trail to nowhere. So uh,

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Speaker 1: which granted, and maybe that's a perfect metaphor for life,

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Speaker 1: but I'm probably gonna get a little frustrated. Yeah, but

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Speaker 1: what other choice do you have right now? You're lost

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Speaker 1: in the marsh and you better keep following. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: can't go back. It's just as much trouble to go

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Speaker 1: back as it is to push forward. And maybe if

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Speaker 1: I hurry a little bit, I can actually catch that

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Speaker 1: during thing. Okay, So let's say you're trying to catch it.

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Speaker 1: Unfortunately you keep coming up on it, thinking you're just

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Speaker 1: about to get to it, but it goes away and

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Speaker 1: eventually you don't see it anymore at all, and you're

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Speaker 1: there alone in the dark, stuck in some quicksands in

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Speaker 1: the marsh. And what are you gonna do? Well, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna stay struggle. You struggle. That's how you get add

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Speaker 1: a quicksand. No, it's not, it's not at all. Do

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Speaker 1: we have an episode on quicksand? I don't think we

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Speaker 1: do yet, but it's a fascinating topic. Yeah, maybe we

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Speaker 1: should explore that sometime. Well, if you ever find yourself

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Speaker 1: trapped in quicksand, whether you're in a marsh and you

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Speaker 1: have been led there by a ghost light or not.

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Speaker 1: Don't struggle. Oh, that's why I have these ferrets in

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Speaker 1: my backpack. They're gonna help me out. That'll just work

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Speaker 1: you deeper into the into the muck. No, that's not

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Speaker 1: what you want to do. But anyway, I've been describing

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Speaker 1: a scenario that might sound kind of outlandish to you

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Speaker 1: people at home, but I think this type of story

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Speaker 1: was very common two people of say Europe in the

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Speaker 1: Middle Ages, or actually to folklore all over the world

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Speaker 1: old in one form or another, that there will be

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Speaker 1: stories that bear similarities to this, That there's a glowing

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Speaker 1: entity or some kind of flame that looks like a

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Speaker 1: lantern or like a blue luminescence that's just hovering out

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Speaker 1: of your vision and if you if you try to

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Speaker 1: get to it, you can never quite catch it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: what is this thing? It is the will of the wisp,

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Speaker 1: that's right, And it goes by a number of names

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Speaker 1: as well discussed, but it's the it's it's that that

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Speaker 1: false fire right, that ignis fatus right and in fatuous, fatuous,

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Speaker 1: and that's what I think. It's. It's ignie so fire. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and then f A t U U s that makes

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Speaker 1: me think fatuous, like you're being fatuous. Yes, so this

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Speaker 1: is uh, it's it's the swamp light, the marsh light,

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Speaker 1: fairy light. It's this ghostly luminescence that appears typically in

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Speaker 1: marsh lands and swamp lands, by ways, fins, marshes, is

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Speaker 1: the lonely roads, the places that maybe you wouldn't want

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Speaker 1: to be stuck at night, you'll see this strange glowing entity. Um,

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Speaker 1: what is it? Is it a mischievous spirit? Yeah? Oftentimes

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Speaker 1: it is. It's seen as this either a mischievous spirit

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Speaker 1: or sometimes an outright demotic demonic entity that ends up

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Speaker 1: leading humans astray. If you try and follow it, you

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Speaker 1: can't quite catch it, and eventually you're gonna wind up

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Speaker 1: in the quicksand just loft in the wilderness over a cliff,

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Speaker 1: following off a cliff, walking straight into hell. Who knows what,

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Speaker 1: but it's leading you off the path. Like I'm you

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Speaker 1: made a great comparison. It's like a bad GPS system. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: do you remember that In there an episode of the Office,

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Speaker 1: the GPS tells them to drive the car across the lake.

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Speaker 1: It's scenario because also sometimes you see motifs where it's

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Speaker 1: the it's the light that's representing like fairy gold or something.

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Speaker 1: So who I follow it, I'll get some riches and

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Speaker 1: you can't reach it because it's like the other end

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Speaker 1: of a rainbow, right. Yeah, And this lower comes from

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Speaker 1: all across time, all over the world. It's very common.

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Speaker 1: One common feature of the ghost light or the glowing

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Speaker 1: entity will the whisp lower is that the lights tend

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Speaker 1: to recede as you approach them. You can never quite

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Speaker 1: get to them or get ahold of them, and they

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Speaker 1: draw the traveler farther and farther off course as they go.

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Speaker 1: Another common feature is the color. And this is interesting.

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Speaker 1: So sometimes people just report various types of light, but

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Speaker 1: it's very often described as blue or bluish green. And

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Speaker 1: in the words of one scientist to study the phenomenon,

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Speaker 1: Alan A. Mills, who were going to quote later in

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Speaker 1: the episode, he called it quote an ephemeral bluish luminous

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Speaker 1: exhalation associated with marshy places. That's his will of the

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Speaker 1: whisp definition. So it's it's instantly identifiable as as something

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Speaker 1: that's it's not a torch, it's not a lantern, it's

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Speaker 1: something else, something for perhaps magical. Yeah, and so we

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Speaker 1: have various names for this phenomenon. I'm not gonna run

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Speaker 1: through all of them, but just some of them. For instance,

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Speaker 1: in the English traditions, you have Dicko Tuesday. Um, Kinky Puck.

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Speaker 1: Hinky Puck, by the way, is a key punk punk.

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Speaker 1: Hinky punk is a sprite with only one leg and

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Speaker 1: it carries a candle to mislead travelers. Yeah. Um, you

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Speaker 1: have other names like corpse candle, l fire, hobb lantern,

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Speaker 1: hobby lantern, fire drake, jack O lantern. So we're seeing

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Speaker 1: a convergence here with like Will of the Whisp, Jacko Lantern. Uh,

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Speaker 1: maybe Dicko Tuesday is something else, but anyway, anyway, that

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Speaker 1: the idea here is that this first part is actually

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Speaker 1: a name. It's like Jack or Will. These are characters

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Speaker 1: who have emerged in the lore of people trying to

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Speaker 1: explain what happens when they see these ghost lights in

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Speaker 1: the marshes. But it's a character who carries some kind

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Speaker 1: of light or torch with them. The whisp idea being

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Speaker 1: like a wisp of sticks that would be a torch, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's the idea that there seems to be

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Speaker 1: a consciousness behind it, a will behind it. It seems

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Speaker 1: to be an entity of some sort. One that comes

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Speaker 1: up a lot is Will the Smith. Not Will Smith,

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Speaker 1: our beloved national treasure, but but rather the soul of

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Speaker 1: a debauched human who has given, who has given a

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Speaker 1: second chance at life in order to redeem his soul.

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Speaker 1: Only he's screwed up again and so now he can't

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Speaker 1: get into heaven or hell, so he has to wander

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Speaker 1: the earth, and Satan gave him a glowing coal to

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Speaker 1: warm himself, which he uses to lure other victims to

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Speaker 1: his dinner, to their doom, because he's just a horrible individual.

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Speaker 1: So he's walking around with some hell fire in Marsh's

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Speaker 1: trying to get revenge on humanity, right. And you see

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Speaker 1: a number of different variations on Will the Smith, where

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Speaker 1: it's some sort of immortal wanderer, some sort of a

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Speaker 1: spirit uh entity that can't get into heaven or a

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Speaker 1: hell um. You also have in Scotland the Spunkies. In

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Speaker 1: Ireland you have fox Fire or William with the little Flame,

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Speaker 1: which is essentially Will the Smith. In Germany you have blood,

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Speaker 1: you have the Dickie potent. Wait, hold on blood just BLLD.

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Speaker 1: And then there is of course uh ear lickt uh

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Speaker 1: and this is uh, the ear lift is actually as

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Speaker 1: as the willow. The whisp in today is the subject

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Speaker 1: of an Arnold Bockland painting as well as the Cloth

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Speaker 1: Shool's album. So there you go. Um. And you see

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Speaker 1: a lot of accounts of this phenomenon from from Germany

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Speaker 1: for sure. Uh. In France there's a sanyand tad, which

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Speaker 1: in the folklore of Brittany is a type of elf,

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Speaker 1: and they dance together at night with candles on their fingertips,

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Speaker 1: each spinning independently, and any mortal who happens upon them

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Speaker 1: becomes disoriented and confused. So it's kind of like the

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Speaker 1: the the the example in the Hobbit right where they

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Speaker 1: see some fire in the woods and they follow it

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Speaker 1: out there and it's elves having their mischief there in

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Speaker 1: the woods, and it's just disorienting. Yeah, like they're they're

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Speaker 1: I imagine there's some elfin Debaucher, Are you going on? Yeah? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Tolkien didn't get into it as much,

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Speaker 1: but you know, they get to some weird stuff. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In Finland you have Likiko, which means that the flaming one.

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Speaker 1: And this is interesting because in this you have the

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Speaker 1: transformed soul of a child that's buried in the forest

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Speaker 1: and now wanders with a flame at night, but also

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Speaker 1: serves as a guardian of wild animals and plants that

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Speaker 1: are in the woods. So it's kind of almost like

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Speaker 1: a swamp thing vibe going on here, where it's the

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Speaker 1: spirit guardian of the environment. Um. You see a version.

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Speaker 1: You see versions in Native American traditions. You see, uh,

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Speaker 1: the one I ran across from the Penobscate Native American

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Speaker 1: tribe in the name for this issue date, there's also

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Speaker 1: Kanza perry uh. And this is something that exists in

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Speaker 1: the folklore of the Chairmis and Mari people. That's a

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Speaker 1: Finno you Greek ethnic group. You see. You also see

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Speaker 1: it in the Amazon Basin in the form of bakata. Oh.

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Speaker 1: And this one's a really good one. This is in

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Speaker 1: South America in Chile, the creature known as Alecanto. And

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Speaker 1: this is a night spirit in the shape of a

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Speaker 1: glowing metallic bird. Yeah. It lives in the mountains and

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Speaker 1: it said to feast upon gold and silver veins. So

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Speaker 1: if you glimpse its light at night and you're you know,

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Speaker 1: you're kind of a greedy individual. You might want to

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Speaker 1: follow it and find that rich mining deposit. But Alecanto,

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Speaker 1: uh is is hip to your your scheme here, and

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Speaker 1: we'll probably lure you over the edge of a cliff instead. Oh,

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Speaker 1: this fits with the same stuff you would encounter in

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Speaker 1: Europe about sometimes the will of the wisp being the

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Speaker 1: guardian of a treasure. Yeah, not just luring you off

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Speaker 1: the path, but like standing guard over where the gold

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Speaker 1: is hidden exactly. And I and I wondered to what

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Speaker 1: extent it's just a continuation of European beliefs in the

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Speaker 1: New World there, I imagine that's very much the case.

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Speaker 1: But there are also plenty of ghost lights in in

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Speaker 1: Asian folklore. In Bengal traditions you have Layah, which is

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Speaker 1: the name given to unexplained strange um marshal wood lights there. Okay,

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Speaker 1: And then of course, uh, outside of folk folklores and

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Speaker 1: folk tales, we have versions and are more recent media

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Speaker 1: as well. Well. I mean I would call dungeons and

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Speaker 1: dragons perfectly acceptable folklore. Yes, And you know, for a

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Speaker 1: lot of people, this may be one's first encounter with

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Speaker 1: with willow the whisp or willow whisps, as they've called there. Uh,

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Speaker 1: in case your Dungeon and Dragons fan or have any

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Speaker 1: a familiarity there, their alignment is chaotic evil, so they

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Speaker 1: are bad news. They're not just a little mischievous. They

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Speaker 1: are awful. If they were just a little mischievous, what

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Speaker 1: would they be chaotic neutral? Yeah, I think they would

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Speaker 1: be more I would I would say more chaotic neutral

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Speaker 1: with that were the case. But they are just completely

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Speaker 1: like evil, mischievous, mischievous. Uh. They have a challenge rating

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Speaker 1: of two, so they're not too bad. But get this,

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Speaker 1: they have a dexterity stat of twenty eight. Uh. That's

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Speaker 1: like like generally eighteen is an exceedingly high level for

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Speaker 1: a normal humanoid. So they have crazy dexterity because them

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Speaker 1: a plus nine and all dexterity sets and according to

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Speaker 1: the most recent Monster manual, uh their quote, the souls

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Speaker 1: of evil beings that perished in anguish orm misery as

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Speaker 1: they wanted and forsaken lands permeated with magical powers and

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Speaker 1: they use the usual lure people to their doom act

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Speaker 1: in the game. Plus, they can shock victims for two

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Speaker 1: D eight damage. They can drain life and sometimes in

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Speaker 1: the Dungeons and Dragons, the world they align themselves with

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Speaker 1: hags or black dragons or evil occultists. Uh, in order

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Speaker 1: to quote drink the agony of slaughter. So so they're

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Speaker 1: pretty cool. I kind of want to bust one out

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Speaker 1: in uh in my game. Now, well, that's great, and

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Speaker 1: that does mirror some of the folkloric edition, like the

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Speaker 1: idea that they might be an unrighteous spirit that's left

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Speaker 1: wandering the world. So they might be, you know, a

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Speaker 1: person who's just rendered spiritually unclean, maybe by having died

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Speaker 1: unbaptized in Christian tradition or something. Or or maybe there

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Speaker 1: are you know, a sinful person who can't get into

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Speaker 1: heaven or hell, like we talked to h like we

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Speaker 1: talked about with Will the Smith and the titular will

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Speaker 1: and the will of the wisp. But the will of

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Speaker 1: the Whisp also shows up in in plenty of later literature.

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Speaker 1: You know, in some classic English poetry, you'll get references

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Speaker 1: to the will of the Wisp, like in the Rhyme

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Speaker 1: of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. Uh, there is there

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Speaker 1: is a scene that describes ghost lights out on the

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Speaker 1: sea that says about about in real and route the

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Speaker 1: death fires danced at night the water like a witch's

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Speaker 1: oils burnt green and blue and white. Yeah, I like that. There.

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Speaker 1: There's Will the Wisp in Paradise Lost too, and John

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Speaker 1: Milton's Paradise Lost. There is the scene where the snake

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Speaker 1: in the garden of eden Is is attempting to tempt Eve.

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Speaker 1: Attempting to tempt is trying to get Eve to come

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Speaker 1: and eat of the fruit, you know, the forbidden fruit.

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Speaker 1: And it compares the snake's temptation of Eve to a

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Speaker 1: will of the Wisp in the sense that both would

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Speaker 1: be leading someone astray. This is in book nine, starting

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Speaker 1: around line and so it compares the snake too, as

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Speaker 1: when a wandering fire compact of unctuous vapor with the

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Speaker 1: night condenses and the cold environs round kindled through agitation

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Speaker 1: to a flame, which oft they say, some evil spirit attends,

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Speaker 1: hovering and blazing with delusive light, misleads the amazed night

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Speaker 1: wanderer from his way to bogs and myers and off

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Speaker 1: through pond or pool. They're swallowed up and lost from

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Speaker 1: sucker far. Now this is this is interesting and I

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Speaker 1: think potentially telling for later on in that um Milton

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Speaker 1: is describing a supernatural entity by comparing it to willow

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Speaker 1: the whisp. Yeah, so keep that in mind if talking

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Speaker 1: about will of the whisp as a natural phenomenon, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean he's describing a thing from a magical story

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Speaker 1: in terms of the will of the whisp, meaning that

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Speaker 1: the will of the wisp must have been a thing

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Speaker 1: that people were so intimately familiar with it could be

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Speaker 1: used as a reference point. Yes, Yeah, And I would

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Speaker 1: think for modern people, you'd you'd be more likely to

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Speaker 1: go the other way, like you'd compare the will of

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Speaker 1: the Whisp to something in the Bible that people might

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Speaker 1: be more familiar with. But he goes the other way around, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: as if to say, this is the thing that the

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Speaker 1: average reader will have a familiarity with and then can

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Speaker 1: therefore use as a reference point for this mythic thing. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But of course it's not just the stuff of fairy

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Speaker 1: tales and an ancient literature and fiction imagical storytelling. There

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Speaker 1: are many like sober secular accounts of the ignis fatuous

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Speaker 1: or the will of the Whisp throughout world literature, including

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Speaker 1: scientific literature. For example, Isaac Newton mentions the world whisp

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Speaker 1: as if it were a commonplace occurrence in his third

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Speaker 1: book of optics. He says, the ignis fatuous is a

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Speaker 1: vapor shining without heat, and is there not the same

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Speaker 1: difference between this vapor and flame as between rotten wood

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Speaker 1: shining without heat and burning coals of fire? Which is

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Speaker 1: interesting because their newton is attempting to distinguish actual physical

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Speaker 1: characteristics of the ignis fatuous, like it's not like flame

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Speaker 1: because it lacks heat. So yeah, you'd get pretty often

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Speaker 1: people making sort of secular material physical observations of these things,

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Speaker 1: as if it's just a phenomenon that they were trying

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Speaker 1: to catalog and understand. So very often you'd hear about

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Speaker 1: this this sort of hovering blue flame near the ground.

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Speaker 1: But some accounts differ that there are other types of

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Speaker 1: appearances that people also categorized as well. The whisp one

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Speaker 1: comes from a first stand account by the English folklorist

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Speaker 1: Jabez Allies. I wonder if I'm saying that name right,

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Speaker 1: But he had a treatise called Ignis Fatuous or Will

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Speaker 1: of the Wisp and the Fairies from eighteen forty six,

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Speaker 1: and I'm just going to read a piece of this.

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Speaker 1: In this story, he gives about how he witnessed the

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Speaker 1: will of the wisp one night, he says, sometimes it

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Speaker 1: was only like a flash in the pan on the ground.

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Speaker 1: At other times it rose up several feet and fell

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Speaker 1: to the earth and became extinguished. And many times it

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Speaker 1: proceeded horizontally from fifty to one yards in an undulating

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Speaker 1: motion like the flight of the green woodpecker, and about

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Speaker 1: his rapid and once or twice it proceeded with considerable

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Speaker 1: rapidity in a straight line upon or close to the ground.

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Speaker 1: The light of this ignis fatuous, or rather of these

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Speaker 1: ignis fatui or fatui, was very clear and strong, much

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Speaker 1: bluer than that of a candle, and very like that

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Speaker 1: of an electric spark. And some of them looked larger

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Speaker 1: and as bright as the star Syria. Of course, they

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Speaker 1: look dim when seen in ground fogs, but there was

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Speaker 1: not any fog on the night in question. There was, however,

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Speaker 1: a muddy closeness of the atmosphere, and at the same

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Speaker 1: time a considerable breeze from the southwest. These will of

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Speaker 1: the whisps, which shot horizontally invariably proceeded before the wind

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Speaker 1: towards the northeast. That's interesting because it's a very scientifically

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Speaker 1: minded uh um and practical response to viewing this. Yeah,

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00:21:29,160 --> 00:21:32,919
Speaker 1: he's describing it in terms of electricity, uh, describing the

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Speaker 1: color and sort of the position and the motion and

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Speaker 1: speed of motion, and then explaining that it follows the

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Speaker 1: pattern of the wind. Yeah. And I but I do

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Speaker 1: love the fact that he's he's really standing back and

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Speaker 1: taking a serious, calm approach to it because one of

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Speaker 1: the accounts that I was looking at an earlier account

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Speaker 1: from traveling German lawyer Hintsner Paul Hertzner, who wrote about

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Speaker 1: his travels in England, and he wrote the following about

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Speaker 1: a journey from Canterbury to Dover. He said, quote, there

386
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Speaker 1: were a great many jack o lanterns, so that we

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00:22:06,400 --> 00:22:10,439
Speaker 1: were quite seized with horror and amazement. Um. And of

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Speaker 1: course if you're seized with horror and amazement, you get

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Speaker 1: into that whole realm of like what am I perceiving?

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Speaker 1: How is my mind perceiving it? And then how am

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Speaker 1: I recalling that memory and altering it? I mean, the

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Speaker 1: you know, part and partial to any paranormal experience where

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Speaker 1: the experience is valid, but they're varying mental factors that

394
00:22:31,600 --> 00:22:33,760
Speaker 1: are going to play into your interpretation of the event,

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Speaker 1: particularly if Englishmen have been telling you tales of the

396
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Speaker 1: strange lights in the in the in the swamp lands

397
00:22:40,560 --> 00:22:43,360
Speaker 1: and what they represent. Yeah, And of course everybody's got

398
00:22:43,400 --> 00:22:47,320
Speaker 1: an interpretive framework that they bring to seeing things like this,

399
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Speaker 1: Like I'm sure that our German traveler friend brought a

400
00:22:50,480 --> 00:22:53,760
Speaker 1: magical interpretive lens to it, saying there's a spirit out here.

401
00:22:53,800 --> 00:22:57,120
Speaker 1: It wishes us harm. It might be that dungeons and dragons,

402
00:22:57,160 --> 00:23:01,480
Speaker 1: chaotic evil spirit. I need to stay away. Uh. Jabez

403
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:05,600
Speaker 1: Allies brought a more secular approach to it, he said

404
00:23:05,680 --> 00:23:09,120
Speaker 1: at the end of his recollection of the different events

405
00:23:09,160 --> 00:23:12,199
Speaker 1: that he witnessed, he says, from all the circumstances, stated,

406
00:23:12,320 --> 00:23:16,359
Speaker 1: it appears probable that these meteors rise in exhalations of

407
00:23:16,400 --> 00:23:20,359
Speaker 1: electric and perhaps other matter out of the earth, particularly

408
00:23:20,440 --> 00:23:23,160
Speaker 1: in or near the winter season, and that they generally

409
00:23:23,200 --> 00:23:26,679
Speaker 1: occur a day or two after a considerable rain and

410
00:23:26,760 --> 00:23:30,000
Speaker 1: on change from a cold to a warmer atmosphere. Now,

411
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Speaker 1: whether all that is true, that we don't know. It

412
00:23:32,600 --> 00:23:34,760
Speaker 1: might not be the case that you're more likely to

413
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Speaker 1: see it under those circumstances, but it's interesting that he's

414
00:23:38,480 --> 00:23:42,879
Speaker 1: trying to narrow down the physical causes that that would

415
00:23:42,960 --> 00:23:45,040
Speaker 1: create this and he of course tries to blame it

416
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Speaker 1: on electricity, which would make sense if you're writing in

417
00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:50,960
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties or eighteen forties, when you know, electricity

418
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:53,760
Speaker 1: is a very interesting thing. Yeah, and it's certainly that

419
00:23:55,119 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 1: the difference between magic and electricity there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: cross over and understanding of it. Electricity is very much

421
00:24:00,680 --> 00:24:06,400
Speaker 1: this uh, this this lofty uh partially understood concept. Yeah.

422
00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:08,440
Speaker 1: And then there was another thing that I looked at.

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Speaker 1: There was an article on Igny's fatuous from the Scientific

424
00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:15,840
Speaker 1: Monthly in nineteen nineteen, and it just made some observations.

425
00:24:15,840 --> 00:24:19,960
Speaker 1: For example, the flames of the ignis fatuous used to

426
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:22,919
Speaker 1: appear very consistently in some locations, So there are places

427
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:25,880
Speaker 1: where you could just expect to see them, and if

428
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:28,560
Speaker 1: you went there, you you you would probably see them,

429
00:24:29,040 --> 00:24:32,360
Speaker 1: and that they gave off neither heat nor odor, and

430
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:35,360
Speaker 1: that they don't set fire to the things around them.

431
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,480
Speaker 1: Of course, granted you're talking about marsh lands and swap

432
00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:40,960
Speaker 1: lands in many situations here, so yeah, but I mean

433
00:24:40,960 --> 00:24:43,359
Speaker 1: there should be lots of dead grass and stuff like that.

434
00:24:43,400 --> 00:24:46,159
Speaker 1: I mean, it would seem like if you're dealing with

435
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:49,000
Speaker 1: a hot flame, you would expect it to set fire

436
00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:50,720
Speaker 1: to something. So that's going to throw a wrench in

437
00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:53,399
Speaker 1: a lot of the explanations that people have given for this.

438
00:24:55,000 --> 00:24:57,520
Speaker 1: So the main point of of giving all these stories

439
00:24:57,560 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 1: about what people saw is that it's not just made up.

440
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:04,520
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly, a lot of the explanation of what

441
00:25:04,760 --> 00:25:08,399
Speaker 1: causes the will of the whisp is magical thinking and

442
00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:11,840
Speaker 1: and fairy fairy stories and things like that. But the

443
00:25:11,840 --> 00:25:15,359
Speaker 1: phenomenon itself, I think we can be pretty confident is real.

444
00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:19,440
Speaker 1: It was actually referring to a thing people witnessed firsthand,

445
00:25:20,119 --> 00:25:22,679
Speaker 1: because why would there be so many stories from so

446
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:26,520
Speaker 1: many different places, especially varied commentators too. It's not just

447
00:25:26,640 --> 00:25:30,480
Speaker 1: the religious or the folklore like it's also hot, you know,

448
00:25:30,560 --> 00:25:34,160
Speaker 1: scientifically minded individuals who are just talking about the lights

449
00:25:34,160 --> 00:25:37,000
Speaker 1: in the woods that simply occur, and that everyone says,

450
00:25:37,040 --> 00:25:39,760
Speaker 1: if everybody knows what you're talking about. And of course

451
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:41,719
Speaker 1: we'll get into this later, but one of the disconnects

452
00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 1: is that we don't see lights in the woods and

453
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:47,400
Speaker 1: strange lights in the marsh all the time like we

454
00:25:48,119 --> 00:25:51,080
Speaker 1: apparently used to. So it's harder for us a to

455
00:25:51,119 --> 00:25:55,000
Speaker 1: put ourselves in that world, in that mindset and alsoys,

456
00:25:55,040 --> 00:25:57,280
Speaker 1: we'll discuss harder to go out and try and study

457
00:25:57,320 --> 00:26:00,360
Speaker 1: something that doesn't seem to be occurring anymore, at least

458
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:03,400
Speaker 1: occurring with the same frequency. All Right, on that note,

459
00:26:03,359 --> 00:26:04,840
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come

460
00:26:04,880 --> 00:26:08,119
Speaker 1: back we will look at some of the possible scientific

461
00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:18,600
Speaker 1: explanations of this phenomenal Alright, we're back discussing Willow the

462
00:26:18,600 --> 00:26:23,439
Speaker 1: whist jack o lantern, will the smith, Uh, hinky punk,

463
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:27,879
Speaker 1: whatever you wanna call that strange glow in the marsh lands,

464
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:30,119
Speaker 1: in the woods, in the squamp. Pinky punk is a

465
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:33,960
Speaker 1: really great personal insult that I've never heard used before. Yeah,

466
00:26:34,000 --> 00:26:36,119
Speaker 1: I might have to adopt it when I had my

467
00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:38,960
Speaker 1: son in the car, because you normally always call people

468
00:26:39,119 --> 00:26:44,880
Speaker 1: uh double doors or or use the word duck. Uh

469
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 1: here there, But that's pretty good. But maybe kinky punk.

470
00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 1: We should make a list of the great insults that

471
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:52,600
Speaker 1: we come up with from our research on these podcasts.

472
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:55,720
Speaker 1: Because when I was doing an episode a couple of

473
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:59,400
Speaker 1: years ago, forward thinking, we came across the term aggregated

474
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 1: diamond nano rods and a material science context. But man,

475
00:27:03,600 --> 00:27:06,119
Speaker 1: what a great thing to call a person a nano rod.

476
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:08,840
Speaker 1: I've I've kept it with me ever since, and now

477
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:11,719
Speaker 1: Hinky Punk goes on the list as well. Look at

478
00:27:11,720 --> 00:27:16,199
Speaker 1: that person driving like a complete hinky punk nano rod. Okay,

479
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:18,080
Speaker 1: but now we need to bring it back to talk

480
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:22,440
Speaker 1: about what on earth could be the actual scientific material

481
00:27:22,600 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 1: cause of all these phenomenon that people have called will

482
00:27:27,119 --> 00:27:29,119
Speaker 1: of the wisp. And there are a couple of things

483
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:32,879
Speaker 1: that make this part of the discussion difficult. One of

484
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:36,480
Speaker 1: the problems is that, unfortunately, most research into will of

485
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:39,879
Speaker 1: the Whisp has been coming up with physical explanations that

486
00:27:40,000 --> 00:27:44,720
Speaker 1: try to match historical descriptions, because the will of the

487
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:49,440
Speaker 1: Whisp has never, to my knowledge, been captured, sampled, measured,

488
00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:54,000
Speaker 1: really or even satisfactorily recorded on film in any useful way.

489
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 1: I think there's some claims that some people sort of

490
00:27:56,760 --> 00:27:59,560
Speaker 1: got a photograph of one, but not in any way

491
00:27:59,600 --> 00:28:03,000
Speaker 1: that's you full for, like a spectral analysis or anything

492
00:28:03,040 --> 00:28:06,120
Speaker 1: like that. So we've been just trying to figure out

493
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:10,119
Speaker 1: ways to match people's descriptions of what they saw. And

494
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:12,760
Speaker 1: most of these description descriptions come from more than a

495
00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, So already you're having a problem here

496
00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:21,440
Speaker 1: because there's nothing direct you can compare your examples too.

497
00:28:21,800 --> 00:28:24,320
Speaker 1: You just have to experiment and say, well, does this

498
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 1: look like what people were talking about back then? Uh.

499
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:32,680
Speaker 1: Then there's another problem in scientific explanations of the will

500
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:36,640
Speaker 1: of the whisp, which is that it's possible that similar

501
00:28:36,800 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 1: but different phenomena have sometimes been grouped together under the

502
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:43,320
Speaker 1: category of will of the whisp. So there could be

503
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:48,200
Speaker 1: lots of different types of ghost lights and various luminescent

504
00:28:48,280 --> 00:28:51,120
Speaker 1: events that occurred in the marshes or in the wilderness

505
00:28:51,120 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 1: in the past, and that people assumed, well, they're pretty similar,

506
00:28:55,320 --> 00:28:57,479
Speaker 1: they're they're all the same thing, and that they weren't

507
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:00,200
Speaker 1: actually all the same thing. Yeah. I mean, especially if

508
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:03,360
Speaker 1: the phenomenon that's occurring as a product of the environment,

509
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 1: it seems entirely likely you would have a different phenomenon occurring,

510
00:29:06,640 --> 00:29:09,840
Speaker 1: say in the mountains of Chile, as opposed to the

511
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 1: swamp lands um you know of of Italy. Yeah. Uh.

512
00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 1: And another aspect, and this is my read on it too,

513
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:20,680
Speaker 1: is that so many of these explanations are taking meticulous

514
00:29:20,720 --> 00:29:25,800
Speaker 1: care with chemical or physical properties that maybe in play,

515
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:30,320
Speaker 1: without taking into account, of course, the mental aspects of it,

516
00:29:30,360 --> 00:29:33,800
Speaker 1: the psychological aspects. And again some of the problems with

517
00:29:33,880 --> 00:29:37,680
Speaker 1: memory and perception that I mentioned earlier. So you're which

518
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:39,520
Speaker 1: is part of it. You know, you're you're just looking

519
00:29:39,560 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 1: at a possible physical chemical, uh reaction that's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

520
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:47,720
Speaker 1: So it's not like like we're saying, it's not a photograph, right,

521
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:51,240
Speaker 1: I mean, there's it's not objectively recorded. Even by people

522
00:29:51,280 --> 00:29:54,200
Speaker 1: who are trying to bring a scientific or skeptical mindset

523
00:29:54,240 --> 00:29:57,840
Speaker 1: to these things, they're they're still sort of interpreting with

524
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:02,280
Speaker 1: a cultural script like you're saying, or a framework that

525
00:30:02,320 --> 00:30:04,800
Speaker 1: they're working from. They know this is a phenomenon people

526
00:30:04,840 --> 00:30:09,520
Speaker 1: have observed before. It usually is described to look like X.

527
00:30:09,560 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 1: So they're already bringing that to the table when they're

528
00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:15,000
Speaker 1: seeing it. All right, Well, let's let's roll through some

529
00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:18,240
Speaker 1: of them. Let's start with electricity. We mentioned electricity earlier. Yeah,

530
00:30:18,280 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 1: that was in in Jabez Allies account. He suggested quote

531
00:30:21,760 --> 00:30:26,960
Speaker 1: these meteors rise in exhalations electric h of electric matter

532
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:29,120
Speaker 1: out of the earth. And some people have tried to

533
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:33,120
Speaker 1: offer the hypothesis of like ball lightning or other aberrant

534
00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: electrical phenomena to explain what's going on when you see

535
00:30:37,600 --> 00:30:41,560
Speaker 1: lights in the marsh Alessandro Volta, according to one source,

536
00:30:41,600 --> 00:30:44,600
Speaker 1: apparently thought that the Igney's fatuous could be explained by

537
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 1: way of interaction between electrical currents and what he called

538
00:30:48,320 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 1: inflammable air, which I think is referring to methane, which

539
00:30:52,440 --> 00:30:55,880
Speaker 1: we will definitely get to in a minute here. But

540
00:30:56,560 --> 00:30:59,440
Speaker 1: this I think has been rejected by modern people who

541
00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:02,320
Speaker 1: have looked into the phenomenon. Alan A. Mills, who wrote

542
00:31:02,320 --> 00:31:05,000
Speaker 1: a couple of papers on this on the subject of

543
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:09,120
Speaker 1: Will of the Whisp, didn't think that the electrical explanations

544
00:31:09,200 --> 00:31:13,120
Speaker 1: really fit what people were describing when they saw will

545
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:15,920
Speaker 1: of the Wisp and saw and explained what they saw.

546
00:31:16,200 --> 00:31:18,200
Speaker 1: It just doesn't sound like the same kind of thing

547
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 1: right now. As far as the next idea, bioluminescence goes,

548
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:27,880
Speaker 1: there's some interesting ideas here, some more plausible than others. Right. So, bioluminescence,

549
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: of course, is the natural illumination of animals or of

550
00:31:32,200 --> 00:31:34,720
Speaker 1: of life forms, and not necessarily just animals. It could

551
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:39,360
Speaker 1: be microbial life. So fireflies or bioluminescence. They can light

552
00:31:39,480 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 1: up in the dark, and I can definitely see that.

553
00:31:42,360 --> 00:31:45,160
Speaker 1: There may have been some cases in the past where

554
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 1: people saw fireflies and then they had a pre existing

555
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:54,040
Speaker 1: cultural script of Igny's fatuous and they say I saw it,

556
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:56,000
Speaker 1: I saw the light in the marsh when they were

557
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 1: really seeing fireflies. That's possible, but it doesn't seem like

558
00:31:59,520 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 1: firefly as can explain all of these instances because they

559
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 1: don't really closely enough match what people are usually describing. Um,

560
00:32:08,920 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: And it just seems like that could maybe explain some instances,

561
00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:14,880
Speaker 1: but probably not most. Yeah. Also, if you're used to

562
00:32:14,920 --> 00:32:17,280
Speaker 1: seeing the fireflies, you know, it seems like they would

563
00:32:17,280 --> 00:32:19,040
Speaker 1: maybe make more sense if you were a traveler to

564
00:32:19,080 --> 00:32:21,240
Speaker 1: an area where, oh, I've never seen a firefly before,

565
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 1: and then there are these random pinpoints of light in

566
00:32:24,200 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 1: the wilderness or potentially in the Asian model, because in

567
00:32:29,440 --> 00:32:32,520
Speaker 1: in parts of the Asia you see fireflies, particularly entail end.

568
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:35,680
Speaker 1: I believe that that light up in Unison in a

569
00:32:35,720 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 1: way that we don't see so much in the United States. Yeah. Um,

570
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:43,960
Speaker 1: there's also fungus, right, Yes, there are in particular type

571
00:32:43,960 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: of fungus that keeps up popping up in these uh

572
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:50,000
Speaker 1: these theories is our malaria. This is a parasitic kind

573
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:52,760
Speaker 1: of fun guy that's also known as honey fungus. Oh,

574
00:32:52,800 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 1: that's a cuter name. It sounds delicious, a little tangy

575
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:59,040
Speaker 1: and sweet. Um, So this could be responsible for some

576
00:32:59,120 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 1: of these apparitions. Some species of our malaria are bioluminescent,

577
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:07,120
Speaker 1: and you know, growing in just the right place and

578
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:11,240
Speaker 1: perceived in just the right atmosphere could be seen as

579
00:33:11,280 --> 00:33:12,960
Speaker 1: a will of the whist. Now. One of the people

580
00:33:12,960 --> 00:33:17,200
Speaker 1: writing on this subject that we read, Jan's Elassawitz, commented

581
00:33:17,280 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 1: that sometimes, though probably not in most cases, but in

582
00:33:21,760 --> 00:33:27,080
Speaker 1: some rare occasions, people might have even been talking about owls. Yeah,

583
00:33:27,280 --> 00:33:31,680
Speaker 1: because on one hand, you know owl nocturnal flyer, very silent,

584
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: very quiet, kind of ghostly. Just to perceive an owl

585
00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 1: even in the daytime, it's it's it's something slightly supernatural

586
00:33:39,240 --> 00:33:42,080
Speaker 1: about it. So you can especially if the moonlight is

587
00:33:42,120 --> 00:33:46,200
Speaker 1: catching gray or white plumage just right, or if the

588
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:49,720
Speaker 1: owl has trapped in the feathers in its wings, some

589
00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:53,520
Speaker 1: rotting wood or bioluminescent fungus, like if it's been rolling

590
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:56,480
Speaker 1: in the fungus and the fungus glows and then the

591
00:33:56,520 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 1: owl swoops around in the dark. This may pow possibly

592
00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:03,960
Speaker 1: explain some instances of what people are seeing, but it

593
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:06,760
Speaker 1: seems similar to other things we've been talking about so far,

594
00:34:06,880 --> 00:34:10,200
Speaker 1: the fireflies and things like that. It might explain some

595
00:34:10,280 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 1: cases that people map onto the existing cultural script of

596
00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:17,279
Speaker 1: the Igney's fatuous, but it just doesn't sound very much

597
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:21,000
Speaker 1: like what people are usually describing. Yeah, it doesn't seem

598
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:23,759
Speaker 1: like a good excuse, universal excuse for what's going on,

599
00:34:23,880 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't seem really all that common. Now.

600
00:34:28,239 --> 00:34:30,919
Speaker 1: Another version of this is, of course, that they could

601
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 1: just you could just be perceiving a reflected light from

602
00:34:33,000 --> 00:34:35,800
Speaker 1: another source. Yeah. One great example of this is I

603
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:39,839
Speaker 1: was recently in in BigBen National Park in Texas, and

604
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:42,680
Speaker 1: near that we went through the town of Marfa, Texas,

605
00:34:43,000 --> 00:34:45,759
Speaker 1: which is famous for the Marfa ghost lights. Have you

606
00:34:45,760 --> 00:34:48,480
Speaker 1: ever heard of these? Are these railroad related or they

607
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:50,600
Speaker 1: just are they? Not? That I know is there are

608
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:53,440
Speaker 1: a lot of traditions, I think, even around my own

609
00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:56,920
Speaker 1: hometown in Tennessee, tales of ghostly lights out on the

610
00:34:57,000 --> 00:34:59,719
Speaker 1: railroad tracks that are kind of a will of the

611
00:34:59,760 --> 00:35:02,200
Speaker 1: whis type of scenario, but I think are generally related

612
00:35:02,239 --> 00:35:06,000
Speaker 1: to uh, reflected lights from other sources. Yeah, well, so

613
00:35:06,040 --> 00:35:08,799
Speaker 1: the Marfa ghost lights are probably not the same phenomenon

614
00:35:08,840 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 1: as well. The whist because it's not marshy area, it's

615
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:14,840
Speaker 1: you know, desert, and they they seem to be a

616
00:35:14,840 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 1: different kind of thing. They're not really what people are

617
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: describing there either, but they are a type of ghost

618
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:24,000
Speaker 1: light that from what I've read, a common skeptical response

619
00:35:24,160 --> 00:35:27,520
Speaker 1: to this is people are just seeing reflected car headlights

620
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:30,800
Speaker 1: from like their cars driving far out in the desert

621
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:33,000
Speaker 1: and they get reflected by the atmosphere in a certain

622
00:35:33,000 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 1: way or somehow end up reflecting their light to people

623
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:38,839
Speaker 1: near the town of Marfa, and they're like, Wow, that's

624
00:35:38,840 --> 00:35:40,680
Speaker 1: an amazing light I just saw in the desert. What

625
00:35:40,760 --> 00:35:44,239
Speaker 1: could what could explain it? Or it's campfires? You know.

626
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:47,240
Speaker 1: I know we're both familiar with the Chattanooga, Tennessee area.

627
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:49,759
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I grew up there. Yeah, well I've I've

628
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:53,800
Speaker 1: definitely driven through Chattanooga on like really dark nights before

629
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:58,719
Speaker 1: and I'll see of what essentially car lights that are

630
00:35:58,840 --> 00:36:02,360
Speaker 1: driving up in the the hills and the mountains. It's dark.

631
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 1: It's so dark that for a split second I see

632
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:07,719
Speaker 1: there's some sort of strange light. It must be a

633
00:36:07,800 --> 00:36:09,759
Speaker 1: UFO or something. And then I realized, oh wait, that's

634
00:36:09,800 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 1: that's a there's a mountain right there, how disappointed just

635
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:16,279
Speaker 1: the mountain people. Yeah, so in our age that is

636
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:20,319
Speaker 1: just so just full of ubiquitous artificial lighting, screwing up

637
00:36:20,760 --> 00:36:24,400
Speaker 1: our perception of nighttime. Uh, there's plenty of room for

638
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:27,479
Speaker 1: a will of the whisps to emerge that way. Yeah.

639
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:32,080
Speaker 1: So electrical phenomenon, bioluminescence or reflected lights. Like we said,

640
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:36,040
Speaker 1: all of these may account for some small subset of

641
00:36:36,040 --> 00:36:38,560
Speaker 1: of these historical sightings, but they don't really seem to

642
00:36:38,600 --> 00:36:42,120
Speaker 1: fit the bill in terms of what people usually describe

643
00:36:42,160 --> 00:36:45,400
Speaker 1: when they talk about the ignese fatuous. So what's something

644
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:50,040
Speaker 1: that's closer to the traditional description and really seems to match.

645
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:53,000
Speaker 1: And here we get to the main event, which is

646
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:56,480
Speaker 1: marsh gas. Uh, good old, good old marsh gas, good

647
00:36:56,480 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 1: old swamp gas. Unfortunately, as we'll see, this is not

648
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:03,320
Speaker 1: with out problems of its own. But finally we're getting

649
00:37:03,320 --> 00:37:07,480
Speaker 1: into the territory that that could really be a viable explanation.

650
00:37:08,280 --> 00:37:12,760
Speaker 1: So Robert, Yes, what happens when a body of a

651
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:17,320
Speaker 1: dead animal or a bunch of dead plant matter lies

652
00:37:17,400 --> 00:37:21,279
Speaker 1: down to its final repose in a marsh or swamp? Oh,

653
00:37:21,440 --> 00:37:23,640
Speaker 1: that's that's gonna break down, and it may seek to

654
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:26,239
Speaker 1: the breakdown of organic matter that is just part of

655
00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:30,400
Speaker 1: the swamp marshland ecosystem, right, And so the decomposition of

656
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:35,640
Speaker 1: dead organic matter often happens underwater or under damp soil

657
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:38,120
Speaker 1: in these types of environments, in the swamp, in the marsh,

658
00:37:38,200 --> 00:37:43,480
Speaker 1: in the bog and what we would call an anaerobic environment.

659
00:37:43,520 --> 00:37:46,880
Speaker 1: So that's without access to air. Now, things can decompose

660
00:37:47,000 --> 00:37:48,880
Speaker 1: with access to air. To you lay something on the

661
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:52,080
Speaker 1: ground in the forest, it'll have a chance for all

662
00:37:52,120 --> 00:37:54,680
Speaker 1: this air to get at it. And that's a different

663
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:59,879
Speaker 1: kind of decomposition than anaerobic decomposition that happens without air.

664
00:38:00,200 --> 00:38:04,640
Speaker 1: Decomposition that happens without air tends to produce gaseous byproducts,

665
00:38:04,680 --> 00:38:10,680
Speaker 1: including methane and carbon dioxide. Methane is flammable, and if

666
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 1: you get any of your home power from natural gas,

667
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 1: this is a somewhat similar mixture. It's composed primarily of methane.

668
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:21,560
Speaker 1: That's what's burning with that nice blue flame. So many

669
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:25,799
Speaker 1: sources treat the matter of the scientifically known you know,

670
00:38:25,880 --> 00:38:29,000
Speaker 1: skeptical latitude cause of will of the whisp as pretty

671
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:34,840
Speaker 1: much completely settled. It's spontaneous combustion of methane in marsh gas.

672
00:38:34,880 --> 00:38:38,160
Speaker 1: Just one example is one we looked up together the

673
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 1: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. The entry on ignis fatuous.

674
00:38:42,120 --> 00:38:44,920
Speaker 1: It says, quote the will of the Whisp or Friar's

675
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:49,759
Speaker 1: lantern a flame like phosphorescence flitting over marshy ground due

676
00:38:49,800 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: to the spontaneous combustion of gases from decaying vegetable matter,

677
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:57,160
Speaker 1: and deluding people who attempt to follow it. Hence any

678
00:38:57,239 --> 00:39:00,279
Speaker 1: delusive aim or object or some utopian ski team that

679
00:39:00,400 --> 00:39:03,560
Speaker 1: is utterly impracticable. It's kind of a kind of a

680
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 1: political stance from Brewers there. But anyway, but it sounds possible, right, Yeah.

681
00:39:08,600 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 1: But it also the way it's the way it presents

682
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:14,319
Speaker 1: it is this is not just one hypothesis that has

683
00:39:14,360 --> 00:39:16,520
Speaker 1: been offered, but it acts as if this is a

684
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:20,120
Speaker 1: settled matter. Yeah, it's the spontaneous combustion of marsh gas.

685
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 1: Another example would be one scientific paper I found that

686
00:39:25,120 --> 00:39:28,799
Speaker 1: said the following quote. The once widespread sightings of will

687
00:39:28,840 --> 00:39:32,480
Speaker 1: of the Wisp, also known as ignice fatuous on northern

688
00:39:32,520 --> 00:39:36,840
Speaker 1: European peat lands were probably the result of methane abiliations

689
00:39:36,880 --> 00:39:40,640
Speaker 1: ignited by lanterns or other ignition sources formerly used for

690
00:39:40,760 --> 00:39:45,040
Speaker 1: nighttime illumination. So again they treat it as pretty much settled.

691
00:39:45,080 --> 00:39:47,799
Speaker 1: It's marsh gas being set on fire, and that's what

692
00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:50,680
Speaker 1: the will of the whisp is. But I don't know.

693
00:39:50,760 --> 00:39:52,640
Speaker 1: That seems kind of weird to me. I mean, wouldn't

694
00:39:52,680 --> 00:39:55,120
Speaker 1: people have noticed it had to be set on fire

695
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:57,759
Speaker 1: with sparks or lanterns? Yeah, you think the stories would

696
00:39:57,800 --> 00:40:01,719
Speaker 1: revolve more around some individual wandering out with it with

697
00:40:01,840 --> 00:40:04,560
Speaker 1: his or her lantern and in poof a willow wits,

698
00:40:05,480 --> 00:40:07,800
Speaker 1: you know, suddenly pops into being right next to you,

699
00:40:07,880 --> 00:40:10,040
Speaker 1: as opposed to seeing one in the distance right. And

700
00:40:10,080 --> 00:40:12,560
Speaker 1: so the story I think is not nearly as settled

701
00:40:12,600 --> 00:40:15,280
Speaker 1: as many of these older sources would seem to indicate

702
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:19,400
Speaker 1: because of this big question, what is the source of ignition?

703
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:21,879
Speaker 1: Is it really fair to assume that the people who

704
00:40:21,880 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 1: saw these things were constantly inadvertently setting fire to methane

705
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:29,480
Speaker 1: bubbles around them without realizing they were doing so. Maybe again,

706
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:31,280
Speaker 1: it's kind of like some of the other things, maybe

707
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 1: in some weird cases, but it kind of seems like

708
00:40:33,560 --> 00:40:37,520
Speaker 1: a stretch to say this is the primary phenomenon being described.

709
00:40:37,880 --> 00:40:42,000
Speaker 1: So here we get to some chemistry where the answer

710
00:40:42,120 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 1: could possibly lie, because what you're starting to look for

711
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:50,000
Speaker 1: is what could be a chemical spark in the natural

712
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:54,880
Speaker 1: environment that could naturally ignite methane gases escaping from a

713
00:40:54,960 --> 00:40:57,640
Speaker 1: marsh a marsh land. Yeah, but the only thing that

714
00:40:57,640 --> 00:40:59,520
Speaker 1: comes to mind off hand opposed front. Let's see, you

715
00:40:59,560 --> 00:41:04,600
Speaker 1: have lightning strikes. Yeah, you have spontaneous combustion, which is

716
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:10,320
Speaker 1: a possibility with anaerobic situations such as say a hay bale. Yeah,

717
00:41:10,400 --> 00:41:12,719
Speaker 1: but like if the heat builds up in it, it

718
00:41:12,719 --> 00:41:15,080
Speaker 1: gets really hot. Yeah. Aside from that, the only thing

719
00:41:15,080 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is like a wolf that that

720
00:41:18,920 --> 00:41:21,719
Speaker 1: that that somebody's tied fire to its tail or if

721
00:41:21,760 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 1: you know, something of that matter. But yeah, otherwise, maybe

722
00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: put some flints to its teeth so every time it chomps,

723
00:41:27,960 --> 00:41:30,920
Speaker 1: it strikes sparks a rock falling off a cliff and

724
00:41:31,040 --> 00:41:33,560
Speaker 1: just happening to somehow spark on the way down. A

725
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:36,759
Speaker 1: guy traveling from the future and the time machine with

726
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:40,239
Speaker 1: a flamethrower, yes, or just a cigarette. He's just he's

727
00:41:40,280 --> 00:41:42,360
Speaker 1: just traveling through time, stops for a smoke in a

728
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:46,000
Speaker 1: medieval bog and then continues. But then oh, the butterfly effect.

729
00:41:46,080 --> 00:41:49,680
Speaker 1: Now the future we all have frog frog tongues. Yeah.

730
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: So in other words, it sounds a little sketchy, right,

731
00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:56,480
Speaker 1: I mean, we need we need a better ignition system

732
00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:59,120
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah. And so the ignition system that has

733
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:02,440
Speaker 1: long been for posed by people trying to explain the

734
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:06,280
Speaker 1: will of the whisp has been phosphorus compounds. So instead

735
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,160
Speaker 1: of being lit up by a lantern, marsh gas leaking

736
00:42:09,160 --> 00:42:11,360
Speaker 1: from the ground could be ignited in the presence of

737
00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:15,640
Speaker 1: oxygen if there were phosphorus compounds in play, for example,

738
00:42:15,800 --> 00:42:20,360
Speaker 1: phosphene or pH three. You could also call that hydrogen

739
00:42:20,400 --> 00:42:25,920
Speaker 1: phosphied or die phosphine P two H four. So phosphine

740
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:30,080
Speaker 1: is a highly toxic gas. In fact, I saw this

741
00:42:30,239 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: mentioned online and I went back and revisited it. You know,

742
00:42:33,719 --> 00:42:35,520
Speaker 1: if you go back to the beginning of Breaking Bad,

743
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:38,360
Speaker 1: right right at the start, there's a scene where Walter

744
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:42,840
Speaker 1: White uses a chemical reaction producing phosphine gas to poison

745
00:42:42,880 --> 00:42:45,440
Speaker 1: a couple of gangsters, do you okay, now, yeah, now

746
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:47,600
Speaker 1: that you mentioned it, I do. Though. I've actually read

747
00:42:48,360 --> 00:42:50,600
Speaker 1: chemists looking at that and saying the chemistry of that

748
00:42:50,640 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 1: scenes a little bit wrong. But but it is true

749
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:55,440
Speaker 1: that phosphine is highly toxic. Well, it was this some

750
00:42:55,520 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 1: more theme though that we're saying here. People sort of

751
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:02,400
Speaker 1: shuffle the explanations off to the realm of chemistry, and

752
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:05,160
Speaker 1: for most people that's sufficient. Okay, it's a matter of chemistry.

753
00:43:05,160 --> 00:43:07,400
Speaker 1: I don't really understand all the ins and outs of chemistry,

754
00:43:07,480 --> 00:43:10,040
Speaker 1: but it seems like a realm where everything is possible.

755
00:43:10,080 --> 00:43:13,439
Speaker 1: Everything in the world hinges on chemistry. So well enough,

756
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:17,080
Speaker 1: but then when a chemist start breaking it apart, these

757
00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:22,880
Speaker 1: problems emerging. Yeah, and so phosphine is extremely, extremely flammable.

758
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:25,520
Speaker 1: It can totally catch on fire at a moment's notice.

759
00:43:25,800 --> 00:43:30,200
Speaker 1: And then this other compound, the diphosphine P to H

760
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:35,760
Speaker 1: four is a liquid that will ignite, just spontaneously combust

761
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:38,799
Speaker 1: when it's exposed to the air. So you get this

762
00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:41,880
Speaker 1: stuff out of its anaerobic environment up to the surface

763
00:43:41,920 --> 00:43:44,759
Speaker 1: where air comes into contact with it, and it just

764
00:43:45,080 --> 00:43:48,279
Speaker 1: erupts with fire and this ignites the phosphine or the

765
00:43:48,320 --> 00:43:52,240
Speaker 1: methane itself. Phosphine igniting ignites the methane and then boom,

766
00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:55,200
Speaker 1: you've got fire in the gas escaping from the marsh.

767
00:43:55,360 --> 00:43:58,840
Speaker 1: It's been utilized in weapons before. Um kind of hillacious

768
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:01,080
Speaker 1: weapons that we tend to shot away from. Oh really,

769
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:05,080
Speaker 1: I didn't know, because it burns in the air. That's gross.

770
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:10,200
Speaker 1: Oh I guess like phosphorus based incendiary weapons. That's horrible.

771
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:15,320
Speaker 1: But anyway, the idea is that the dead, decaying organic

772
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:24,239
Speaker 1: matter down under the marsh releases these gases. It releases phosphine, diphosphine, methane,

773
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 1: and the reaction with the air causes ignition. The methane

774
00:44:28,080 --> 00:44:32,080
Speaker 1: catches on fire. Is this plausible, Well, I think the

775
00:44:32,120 --> 00:44:36,440
Speaker 1: answer is sort of, but maybe not entirely so. It's

776
00:44:36,600 --> 00:44:39,799
Speaker 1: it is apparently true that some microbial life forms can

777
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:44,200
Speaker 1: produce these types of phosphorus compounds through the process of decomposition.

778
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: Going to work on on bones and other organic materials

779
00:44:48,320 --> 00:44:51,040
Speaker 1: that might be buried down in the swamp, they can

780
00:44:51,080 --> 00:44:54,200
Speaker 1: release the phosphorus compounds that we've talked about. But other

781
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:58,520
Speaker 1: sources have contested the idea of straight up combustion of

782
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:02,000
Speaker 1: methane and other gas is including the phosphine match or

783
00:45:02,000 --> 00:45:05,319
Speaker 1: the phosphorus based ignition systems, And there are a few

784
00:45:05,360 --> 00:45:09,040
Speaker 1: things to consider. One of them is that methane, if

785
00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:13,319
Speaker 1: ignited by fire, will burn with a what one of

786
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:17,080
Speaker 1: the people we read described as a brief, hot, bright flame,

787
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:21,239
Speaker 1: which really goes opposite to how people usually describe the

788
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:23,279
Speaker 1: will of the Whisp, But that's more often described as

789
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:27,040
Speaker 1: having a cool blue luminessence that does not seem to

790
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:30,480
Speaker 1: produce any heat or much heat at least depending on

791
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 1: the source. Yeah, if the situation is not that Will

792
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:36,279
Speaker 1: the Smith lit a fart in the night, is that

793
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:39,640
Speaker 1: Will the Smith has some sort of ghostly illumination that

794
00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:43,520
Speaker 1: is seems to be pretty constant though though moving. Yeah.

795
00:45:43,560 --> 00:45:46,120
Speaker 1: Another thing is that people have found that the ignition

796
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:50,360
Speaker 1: of phosphine gas mixed with methane results in acrid smoke.

797
00:45:50,719 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 1: This is not a common feature of Will of the

798
00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:55,640
Speaker 1: Whisp descriptions, right, Yeah, because that would be a whole

799
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:58,759
Speaker 1: other thing, right. You can imagine the tails would revolve around, Oh,

800
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:01,320
Speaker 1: there was a camp fire the woods of Misty, and

801
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:03,959
Speaker 1: there's clearly fairies or elves that hadn't know It's there's

802
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:07,200
Speaker 1: no no mention of the smoke. Yeah. Um. Other questions

803
00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:10,120
Speaker 1: would be that why is the willow Wisp often reported

804
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:12,680
Speaker 1: to run away when you approach it, or then follow

805
00:46:12,719 --> 00:46:15,239
Speaker 1: you when you don't. The best explanations that I ran

806
00:46:15,280 --> 00:46:18,440
Speaker 1: across had to do with just complex fluid dynamics in

807
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 1: the situation, disturbing the mixture of gases in the air

808
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 1: as you approach, and you just kind of make it

809
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:26,719
Speaker 1: waffed away by their movements, like trying to catch up

810
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:29,800
Speaker 1: a stray bit of cat hair floating in the in

811
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:33,360
Speaker 1: the room. Yeah, you never can can Yeah, And I

812
00:46:33,400 --> 00:46:35,920
Speaker 1: think that's a perhaps good explanation. But then there's another

813
00:46:36,200 --> 00:46:38,480
Speaker 1: big one that I think is kind of important. If

814
00:46:38,520 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 1: this is ordinary hot combustion, just like hot flames, like

815
00:46:42,239 --> 00:46:45,240
Speaker 1: the fire we normally know, why doesn't the flame spread?

816
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:48,480
Speaker 1: Like why doesn't it catch fire to surrounding dead grass

817
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 1: and vegetation. Well, my answer response to that would be,

818
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:54,359
Speaker 1: in many cases, this is a bog or a marsh land.

819
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 1: And when's the last time you heard about a bog

820
00:46:56,600 --> 00:46:59,239
Speaker 1: burning down? Right? I mean it's I think it's still

821
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:02,920
Speaker 1: possible for for the dead plant matter that's above you know,

822
00:47:03,040 --> 00:47:06,160
Speaker 1: whatever kind of damp soil or is there what's poking

823
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:08,160
Speaker 1: out above the ground that seems like that could catch fire.

824
00:47:08,320 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 1: But potentially yeah, I mean yeah, but just the damp

825
00:47:12,160 --> 00:47:16,400
Speaker 1: environment tends to make me give less credence to that.

826
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:18,640
Speaker 1: But but I agree. It seems like there would still

827
00:47:18,680 --> 00:47:20,759
Speaker 1: be the potential for something to catch on fire. Yeah.

828
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:24,640
Speaker 1: So there's actually a geologist named Alan A. Mills who

829
00:47:24,719 --> 00:47:27,360
Speaker 1: did who wrote a couple of papers on the subject

830
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:30,360
Speaker 1: of the ignis fatuous or the will of the wisp,

831
00:47:30,480 --> 00:47:34,839
Speaker 1: and explained that he based on some analysis he did

832
00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:38,480
Speaker 1: and some experiments he conducted, he didn't think that the

833
00:47:38,520 --> 00:47:42,560
Speaker 1: marsh gas explanation cut it. It just didn't really work.

834
00:47:42,960 --> 00:47:45,879
Speaker 1: He claimed that he tried it. He didn't experiment with

835
00:47:46,560 --> 00:47:50,080
Speaker 1: putting a bunch of stuff into a container of damp

836
00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:54,040
Speaker 1: garden soil, peat and rotten compost, and he tried to

837
00:47:54,120 --> 00:47:57,560
Speaker 1: incubate it in the dark. He did get methane marsh

838
00:47:57,560 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 1: gas out of it, but it did not spontaneously and bust.

839
00:48:01,040 --> 00:48:05,960
Speaker 1: And then he also he tried adding phosphine phosphine generating

840
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 1: compounds and that apparently this produced a great stink, but

841
00:48:10,600 --> 00:48:13,879
Speaker 1: it did not It did not create the spontaneous luminescence.

842
00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:16,640
Speaker 1: So he could produce march gas, but he couldn't find

843
00:48:16,640 --> 00:48:19,960
Speaker 1: a natural way to get it ignited like that. And

844
00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:22,480
Speaker 1: whatever the cause of the ignition, it seems like the

845
00:48:22,520 --> 00:48:27,719
Speaker 1: traditional sightings of the ignis fatuous really must not have

846
00:48:27,840 --> 00:48:32,000
Speaker 1: featured hot flames. Now you're probably wondering, Okay, what's the

847
00:48:32,000 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 1: opposite of hot flames? What would the dalb with cold points?

848
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:38,760
Speaker 1: But cold flames? Um? Cold flames are produced by ether

849
00:48:39,040 --> 00:48:43,000
Speaker 1: or carbon disulfide. When he did just below the ignition

850
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:46,799
Speaker 1: point yea, So they're not exactly cold, but they're not

851
00:48:46,880 --> 00:48:50,320
Speaker 1: as hot as flames usually are. So you heat certain

852
00:48:50,360 --> 00:48:52,960
Speaker 1: substances up to the point where they're almost about to

853
00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:56,439
Speaker 1: catch on fire, but they don't, and they produced this, uh,

854
00:48:56,520 --> 00:48:58,960
Speaker 1: this sort of halo. Yeah, I can described as that

855
00:48:59,120 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 1: luminescent recombustion halo um. Again, right, when the various compounds

856
00:49:05,560 --> 00:49:08,560
Speaker 1: are heated, it just below the ignition points. So and

857
00:49:08,600 --> 00:49:11,200
Speaker 1: again this perhaps this would be due to a natural

858
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 1: um if this would be a natural product of the

859
00:49:13,600 --> 00:49:16,120
Speaker 1: decay in the swamp. Yeah, so this is a possibility

860
00:49:16,160 --> 00:49:19,400
Speaker 1: that a few people have explored in some experiments. And

861
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:24,200
Speaker 1: then there is also a parallel possibility. In fact, cold

862
00:49:24,200 --> 00:49:26,480
Speaker 1: flames might even be an example of this. But the

863
00:49:26,480 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 1: broader concept is chemo luminescence, which would mean glowing or

864
00:49:32,560 --> 00:49:36,760
Speaker 1: light created by a chemical reaction. So it's not exactly fire,

865
00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:40,560
Speaker 1: but it is chemicals reacting in a way that produces light.

866
00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:45,520
Speaker 1: For example, the oxidation of those phosphorus compounds, we were

867
00:49:45,520 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 1: talking about creating a chemo luminescent glow. Okay, but this

868
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:53,680
Speaker 1: seems likely too. It's kind of the bioluminescent model, except

869
00:49:54,000 --> 00:49:58,360
Speaker 1: without the without the direct involvement with an organism. Yeah,

870
00:49:58,400 --> 00:50:02,279
Speaker 1: and so Alan A. Mills. This one researcher described how

871
00:50:02,520 --> 00:50:06,200
Speaker 1: he put together an experiment where he created a glow

872
00:50:06,960 --> 00:50:10,400
Speaker 1: just by exposing different gases to each other. So he

873
00:50:10,480 --> 00:50:14,279
Speaker 1: says that he found experimentally quote that the entrainment of

874
00:50:14,360 --> 00:50:19,040
Speaker 1: crude phosphine into natural gas at low concentrations insufficient to

875
00:50:19,040 --> 00:50:24,160
Speaker 1: cause ignition did result in a cool, glowing cloud visible

876
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:27,360
Speaker 1: in the dark. However, its color was green, like the

877
00:50:27,360 --> 00:50:31,720
Speaker 1: glow associated with aerial oxidation of yellow phosphorus, rather than blue.

878
00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:34,920
Speaker 1: So he's saying that just by mixing together the phosphorus

879
00:50:34,960 --> 00:50:38,879
Speaker 1: compounds and the natural gas in the dark in the

880
00:50:38,960 --> 00:50:42,680
Speaker 1: right concentrations, he got it to glow, even though it

881
00:50:42,719 --> 00:50:46,400
Speaker 1: didn't catch fire. Okay, but it does. It does seem

882
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 1: to lend cred into the possibility that a different type

883
00:50:49,239 --> 00:50:52,359
Speaker 1: of chemical reaction could be taking place. We just maybe

884
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:55,319
Speaker 1: don't know all the ingredients that they're involved. Yeah. Yeah.

885
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:57,919
Speaker 1: And then there was also another experiment I read about

886
00:50:57,960 --> 00:51:00,680
Speaker 1: that was done by some Italian researcher is more recently,

887
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:02,160
Speaker 1: I think it was just seven or eight years ago.

888
00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:06,400
Speaker 1: So they just had a container of phosphine gas phosphine

889
00:51:06,440 --> 00:51:11,320
Speaker 1: vapor that they fed with a stream of air and nitrogen.

890
00:51:11,800 --> 00:51:14,920
Speaker 1: And when they did that just right a like they described,

891
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:18,640
Speaker 1: a faint, pale greenish light could be seen in the dark.

892
00:51:19,280 --> 00:51:22,120
Speaker 1: And I think, as far as most scientists who have

893
00:51:22,200 --> 00:51:24,720
Speaker 1: looked into this are concerned, to the chemo lumin essence

894
00:51:24,840 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 1: is probably the most viable answer to the question today,

895
00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:34,040
Speaker 1: though it still doesn't seem to fit perfectly. Though maybe

896
00:51:34,080 --> 00:51:38,120
Speaker 1: we should just never expect anything to fit perfectly, yeah,

897
00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:42,160
Speaker 1: especially given the the uncertain shape that has been presented

898
00:51:42,200 --> 00:51:46,520
Speaker 1: by these these varying historical accounts. Right, yeah, because ultimately

899
00:51:46,600 --> 00:51:49,960
Speaker 1: we're being held back here by the lack of observation

900
00:51:50,080 --> 00:51:53,320
Speaker 1: of this phenomenon today. And that's another really interesting aspect

901
00:51:54,080 --> 00:51:57,040
Speaker 1: of the will of the wisp. Claimed sightings of will

902
00:51:57,080 --> 00:52:00,000
Speaker 1: of the wisp, for some reason, have drastically dropped off

903
00:52:00,000 --> 00:52:02,480
Speaker 1: in the past century or so, almost to the point

904
00:52:02,480 --> 00:52:04,440
Speaker 1: of some people saying that the will of the Whisp,

905
00:52:04,560 --> 00:52:08,719
Speaker 1: whatever it was, is now extinct or or endangered in

906
00:52:08,840 --> 00:52:12,880
Speaker 1: near extinction. And I think it's really interesting to imagine

907
00:52:12,920 --> 00:52:14,839
Speaker 1: what could be the cause of this, because, as we've

908
00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:17,759
Speaker 1: talked about, it's widespread enough that we think it is

909
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:21,040
Speaker 1: referring to a real thing. It's not just people imagining it.

910
00:52:21,560 --> 00:52:24,960
Speaker 1: But what could the thing have been if people generally

911
00:52:25,080 --> 00:52:27,680
Speaker 1: don't see it anymore? And I do want to point

912
00:52:27,719 --> 00:52:29,560
Speaker 1: out that, you know what, we're not saying that they've

913
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:33,000
Speaker 1: completely vanished, but clearly they used to. They used to

914
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:35,960
Speaker 1: be more prevalent than they are today. UM. I know,

915
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:38,880
Speaker 1: for instance, I was looking around and the U. S.

916
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:41,680
Speaker 1: Air Forces Project, a blue book that came out in

917
00:52:41,680 --> 00:52:44,600
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, um I had to do with the

918
00:52:44,719 --> 00:52:49,520
Speaker 1: UFOs and possible explanations for UFOs. One major explanation presented

919
00:52:49,560 --> 00:52:53,840
Speaker 1: by Jay Alan Heineck in that was that, particularly in

920
00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:57,560
Speaker 1: the rural Michigan area, swamp lights might be the reason

921
00:52:57,600 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 1: for that people are claiming to see UFOs. But then again,

922
00:53:03,239 --> 00:53:07,120
Speaker 1: UFO sidings are also down today compared to what they

923
00:53:07,160 --> 00:53:10,640
Speaker 1: were in the in the previous century, So I don't know.

924
00:53:10,680 --> 00:53:14,160
Speaker 1: Maybe that also plays into this gradual disappearance of the

925
00:53:14,200 --> 00:53:18,120
Speaker 1: swamp lights. That's interesting because you see UFO sightings suddenly

926
00:53:18,200 --> 00:53:21,520
Speaker 1: come into the picture in the twentieth century, right at

927
00:53:21,520 --> 00:53:24,840
Speaker 1: the time when these the will of the Wisp sightings

928
00:53:24,840 --> 00:53:29,160
Speaker 1: seem to largely disappear. Yet they're probably not the same

929
00:53:29,239 --> 00:53:34,040
Speaker 1: thing because they I mean, they're described in vastly different ways. Yeah,

930
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:37,120
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't be surprised that there's a little overlape

931
00:53:37,120 --> 00:53:39,160
Speaker 1: and again we're falling into the potential trap of trying

932
00:53:39,160 --> 00:53:43,279
Speaker 1: to explain a whole host of different phenomena with one explanation. Yeah.

933
00:53:43,320 --> 00:53:45,160
Speaker 1: I think that's the most important thing to keep in

934
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:48,120
Speaker 1: mind is again, like we said, the will the whisp

935
00:53:48,239 --> 00:53:50,719
Speaker 1: might not be just one thing. It might be a

936
00:53:50,800 --> 00:53:54,399
Speaker 1: sort of center of the road script that a lot

937
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:58,360
Speaker 1: of different phenomena are mapped onto. One of the big

938
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:00,920
Speaker 1: things that to discuss here though, in terms of why

939
00:54:00,960 --> 00:54:03,799
Speaker 1: the willow wist phenomenon would have faded away, is just

940
00:54:03,840 --> 00:54:05,960
Speaker 1: to first of all, look at where it's occurring. Most

941
00:54:05,960 --> 00:54:09,360
Speaker 1: of these accounts have to do with wetlands, marshlands, boss

942
00:54:09,400 --> 00:54:13,680
Speaker 1: and what has happened to our marshlands in uh in

943
00:54:13,719 --> 00:54:15,839
Speaker 1: the last Cuple over the last couple of centuries, right,

944
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:17,680
Speaker 1: if a lot of this folklore is coming out of

945
00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:21,000
Speaker 1: the marshes of Europe. The marshes of Europe have largely

946
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:24,920
Speaker 1: been transformed into places where agriculture happens, or in the cities,

947
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:28,920
Speaker 1: or they've been drained, they've been sliced up. They are

948
00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:32,440
Speaker 1: no longer the ecosystem that they once were. Yeah, So

949
00:54:32,480 --> 00:54:34,719
Speaker 1: if you think of if you think of of the

950
00:54:34,719 --> 00:54:38,719
Speaker 1: willowist phenomenon as being a phenomenon that naturally occurs though

951
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:43,719
Speaker 1: as something of a rarity in a large wetland environment,

952
00:54:43,800 --> 00:54:46,880
Speaker 1: and then it's reduced to a small wetland environment a

953
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:50,200
Speaker 1: few centuries later, it seems like you would haven't even

954
00:54:50,680 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 1: rarer occurrences. That whatever is causing it, be at an organism,

955
00:54:55,239 --> 00:54:58,040
Speaker 1: be at a particular chemical build up, the potential for

956
00:54:58,080 --> 00:55:00,760
Speaker 1: that to happen is going to be far less because

957
00:55:00,760 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 1: we've essentially terraformed our our planet. We've we've we've more

958
00:55:04,920 --> 00:55:09,160
Speaker 1: than doubled the nitrogen cycle. We've we've we've we've decided

959
00:55:09,160 --> 00:55:13,040
Speaker 1: to pick and choose what organisms are going to flourish,

960
00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:15,640
Speaker 1: which ones we're going to do our best to eradicate

961
00:55:15,760 --> 00:55:18,399
Speaker 1: without even knowing that we're doing it right at the time. Yeah.

962
00:55:18,440 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 1: And and marshlands and wetlands, I mean that is they've

963
00:55:21,480 --> 00:55:24,920
Speaker 1: been a real rallying point of in recent history of

964
00:55:25,040 --> 00:55:28,880
Speaker 1: us trying to say, ho, slow down, these are actually

965
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:32,920
Speaker 1: important ecosystems and we don't just need to, you know,

966
00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:34,919
Speaker 1: push them out to the edge of existence. So we've

967
00:55:34,960 --> 00:55:38,960
Speaker 1: lost a number of species already that have made their

968
00:55:38,960 --> 00:55:44,200
Speaker 1: home in wetlands. Is it possible that we've also exterminated

969
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:49,080
Speaker 1: or nearly exterminated, uh, something that produces the willow weest phenomenon. Yeah.

970
00:55:49,160 --> 00:55:51,799
Speaker 1: I mean we may have just been watching too many

971
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:56,840
Speaker 1: times the documentary Man Versus Nature, The Road to Victory,

972
00:55:58,320 --> 00:56:02,400
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's essentially along the same lines as something

973
00:56:02,520 --> 00:56:05,200
Speaker 1: that people have brought up with the idea of terraforming Mars.

974
00:56:06,120 --> 00:56:09,400
Speaker 1: We think that Mars probably doesn't have any life forms

975
00:56:09,400 --> 00:56:12,560
Speaker 1: on it today. Probably it may have had some in

976
00:56:12,600 --> 00:56:17,680
Speaker 1: the past, but whether it currently has any strange microbial

977
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:20,640
Speaker 1: life surviving anywhere, or ever had it in the past.

978
00:56:21,040 --> 00:56:24,280
Speaker 1: What if by terraforming Mars in the future, by turning

979
00:56:24,280 --> 00:56:29,360
Speaker 1: it into a suitable earthlike environment, we destroy whatever pockets

980
00:56:29,360 --> 00:56:34,080
Speaker 1: of existing life or evidence of past life. We're already there. Yeah,

981
00:56:34,120 --> 00:56:37,520
Speaker 1: that's one of the big arguments against terraforming and uh

982
00:56:37,760 --> 00:56:40,880
Speaker 1: and indeed it's it's one that we have already encountered

983
00:56:40,880 --> 00:56:42,840
Speaker 1: with a certain degree here on this planet. And I

984
00:56:42,880 --> 00:56:46,080
Speaker 1: think the underlying concept here is one that several scientists

985
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:49,600
Speaker 1: we referred to have alluded to, which is that the

986
00:56:49,600 --> 00:56:52,440
Speaker 1: the will of the whist phenomenon may have a sort

987
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:57,880
Speaker 1: of species based origin, like that there might be a

988
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:03,719
Speaker 1: particular kind of microbial life form or microbial life ecosystem

989
00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:07,400
Speaker 1: that produces it. There are tiny creatures in the ground

990
00:57:07,920 --> 00:57:10,440
Speaker 1: that are responsible for the will of the whisps people

991
00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:13,600
Speaker 1: used to see. Yeah, one of the articles out there

992
00:57:13,640 --> 00:57:17,640
Speaker 1: floating around is from Howell G. M. Edwards titled Will

993
00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:20,800
Speaker 1: of the Whisp An Ancient Mystery with extreme aphile Origins

994
00:57:20,840 --> 00:57:24,360
Speaker 1: question mark and uh, yeah. This basically the basic concept

995
00:57:24,400 --> 00:57:27,360
Speaker 1: here seems to be that that either the bioluminescence or

996
00:57:27,400 --> 00:57:31,400
Speaker 1: the biologically discharged gas resulting of it maybe resulting from

997
00:57:31,440 --> 00:57:34,880
Speaker 1: an extreme a file organism that previously carved out of

998
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:39,600
Speaker 1: fragile niche lifestyle and swamps and marches marshes, but has

999
00:57:39,680 --> 00:57:43,880
Speaker 1: since snuffed it due to its delicate positioning in the ecosystem.

1000
00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:46,560
Speaker 1: So again it comes down to the fact that this

1001
00:57:46,640 --> 00:57:50,240
Speaker 1: is something out there and maybe it's uh in its

1002
00:57:50,240 --> 00:57:53,800
Speaker 1: place in the world is fragile, and then when we

1003
00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:57,600
Speaker 1: start eradicating and cutting down this environment, it all that

1004
00:57:57,680 --> 00:58:00,360
Speaker 1: goes away. It makes me wonder what kinds of strange

1005
00:58:00,360 --> 00:58:03,800
Speaker 1: phenomena other than the will of the whisp could go

1006
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 1: extinct in the future. What are the things people see

1007
00:58:06,720 --> 00:58:10,520
Speaker 1: today that we might class as paranormal that maybe will

1008
00:58:10,560 --> 00:58:12,880
Speaker 1: mostly disappear in the future, and we might not know

1009
00:58:12,960 --> 00:58:15,200
Speaker 1: why because we might not know what caused it to

1010
00:58:15,240 --> 00:58:17,680
Speaker 1: begin with. What if we enter a future, can you

1011
00:58:17,720 --> 00:58:22,120
Speaker 1: imagine a world where people don't see UFOs anymore? Well,

1012
00:58:22,120 --> 00:58:23,920
Speaker 1: we kind of, we kind of live in it already.

1013
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:27,000
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like looking at these cases we

1014
00:58:27,080 --> 00:58:29,440
Speaker 1: presented here, you could say that, all right, take the UFO.

1015
00:58:29,720 --> 00:58:33,720
Speaker 1: There are varying reasons why one might see a UFO UH.

1016
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:36,440
Speaker 1: Some of them involve sleep paralysis, some of them involve

1017
00:58:36,600 --> 00:58:41,520
Speaker 1: mental illness, some of them involve a sleep deprivation, etcetera.

1018
00:58:41,560 --> 00:58:44,520
Speaker 1: You can make a long list of them, and if

1019
00:58:45,040 --> 00:58:49,840
Speaker 1: if a certain type of swamp gas phenomenon is on

1020
00:58:49,880 --> 00:58:53,920
Speaker 1: that list, and that becomes eradicated due to environmental change,

1021
00:58:54,440 --> 00:58:57,600
Speaker 1: then yeah, that changes how it is perceived. It becomes

1022
00:58:57,680 --> 00:59:00,720
Speaker 1: less than an object of nature in more of a

1023
00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:04,640
Speaker 1: mental uh existence, more of a mental animal as opposed

1024
00:59:04,640 --> 00:59:07,960
Speaker 1: to a chemical one. Yeah. Yeah, And that is interesting

1025
00:59:08,000 --> 00:59:10,600
Speaker 1: because the will of the whisp seems to have largely

1026
00:59:10,640 --> 00:59:14,280
Speaker 1: gone away, but the phenomenon of seeing lights has not.

1027
00:59:15,160 --> 00:59:17,720
Speaker 1: I mean we people still see lights. Yeah, We've always

1028
00:59:17,760 --> 00:59:20,160
Speaker 1: seen them, and we're going to continue to see strange

1029
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:22,959
Speaker 1: lights that we can't explain, but try to our brain

1030
00:59:23,040 --> 00:59:25,360
Speaker 1: ends up trying to explain them in the form of

1031
00:59:25,400 --> 00:59:28,640
Speaker 1: hallucination and then also in the form of various cultural

1032
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:31,480
Speaker 1: scripts to apply to it in retrospect. Okay, but Robert,

1033
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:33,800
Speaker 1: I want to bring you back to the place we started. Yes,

1034
00:59:34,400 --> 00:59:36,840
Speaker 1: I want to change everything and say you're not a

1035
00:59:36,840 --> 00:59:40,520
Speaker 1: medieval peasant. You are not out on the fens of

1036
00:59:40,640 --> 00:59:45,240
Speaker 1: medieval England. You are yourself and you are currently out,

1037
00:59:45,320 --> 00:59:49,120
Speaker 1: let's say, hiking in a US National park. You have

1038
00:59:49,280 --> 00:59:51,240
Speaker 1: do you have a favorite national park? Well, you know what,

1039
00:59:51,280 --> 00:59:53,480
Speaker 1: Let's say, let's say state park. Let's go with Stark

1040
00:59:54,080 --> 00:59:56,640
Speaker 1: Pinocchi in here in Georgia, because it's a swamp and

1041
00:59:56,640 --> 00:59:59,840
Speaker 1: it's a swamp where people have claim to have seen

1042
01:00:00,120 --> 01:00:03,000
Speaker 1: uh marsh lights in the past. Perfect. Okay, So you're

1043
01:00:03,080 --> 01:00:06,240
Speaker 1: you're out walking in the Oki Pinoki. You realize you've

1044
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:08,760
Speaker 1: you've hiked too far in the late afternoon, and suddenly

1045
01:00:08,840 --> 01:00:10,720
Speaker 1: dusk is coming on. You need to head back in

1046
01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:12,840
Speaker 1: the other direction to get back to the visitor center

1047
01:00:12,880 --> 01:00:15,880
Speaker 1: in your car. But on the way, you see some

1048
01:00:15,960 --> 01:00:19,480
Speaker 1: blue lights that are just out of just beyond range,

1049
01:00:19,640 --> 01:00:23,480
Speaker 1: out off the path. Would you go and investigate, really,

1050
01:00:23,840 --> 01:00:28,000
Speaker 1: knowing what I know now, yeah, I would probably not,

1051
01:00:29,440 --> 01:00:31,640
Speaker 1: But I feel like I would stop and watch and

1052
01:00:31,640 --> 01:00:35,560
Speaker 1: and hopefully I would watch this phenomenon with the presence

1053
01:00:35,600 --> 01:00:39,880
Speaker 1: of mind that what I'm observing is a rarity. Whatever

1054
01:00:40,000 --> 01:00:42,320
Speaker 1: is causing it has become scarce in the world, be

1055
01:00:42,480 --> 01:00:46,200
Speaker 1: it an organism that is dying out, a chemical uh

1056
01:00:46,320 --> 01:00:50,000
Speaker 1: scenario under the soil that is less prevalent, or you know,

1057
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:53,440
Speaker 1: fairies that are leaving the world, or a certain damned

1058
01:00:53,440 --> 01:00:56,640
Speaker 1: individual who somehow weasel his way back into hell. Man,

1059
01:00:56,720 --> 01:00:58,320
Speaker 1: I feel like I have the I must have the

1060
01:00:58,360 --> 01:01:01,400
Speaker 1: horrible curiosity at half to go. Why would there You're

1061
01:01:01,400 --> 01:01:03,960
Speaker 1: gonna die? Well, no, I'm not. No, that's exactly why

1062
01:01:04,000 --> 01:01:05,840
Speaker 1: I brought it to the modern day. So you don't

1063
01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 1: think that there's ahinky punk out there who's gonna lead

1064
01:01:08,240 --> 01:01:11,000
Speaker 1: you off a cliff or into into Quicksand do you

1065
01:01:11,040 --> 01:01:14,440
Speaker 1: think this is probably some kind of natural occurrence. It's

1066
01:01:14,480 --> 01:01:17,440
Speaker 1: something that maybe gas, maybe something you can touch. Maybe

1067
01:01:17,480 --> 01:01:20,200
Speaker 1: you could be the person who has the insight onto

1068
01:01:20,320 --> 01:01:23,000
Speaker 1: into what is causing this, because you can finally get

1069
01:01:23,040 --> 01:01:24,800
Speaker 1: close and get a good look and catch some in

1070
01:01:24,800 --> 01:01:27,520
Speaker 1: a jar. Yeah, but this is but as we've discussed,

1071
01:01:27,520 --> 01:01:30,040
Speaker 1: this is not happening in the city. This is happening

1072
01:01:30,040 --> 01:01:32,840
Speaker 1: in the wild and in humans. And despite despite all

1073
01:01:32,840 --> 01:01:36,600
Speaker 1: of our GPS technology, we can still die in the wilderness,

1074
01:01:36,760 --> 01:01:39,200
Speaker 1: and we can, we can, we can do so fairly easily.

1075
01:01:39,240 --> 01:01:42,320
Speaker 1: They're still alligators in the okathin Okey. There's still bears

1076
01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:45,040
Speaker 1: and other national parks, and there's still things to fall

1077
01:01:45,080 --> 01:01:47,400
Speaker 1: off of and you know, have to cut your own

1078
01:01:47,480 --> 01:01:49,800
Speaker 1: leg off and that sort of thing. Yeah, and that's

1079
01:01:49,800 --> 01:02:04,160
Speaker 1: what Willow Wis wants to happen. So there you have it.

1080
01:02:04,280 --> 01:02:06,960
Speaker 1: That was our original will of the Whisp episode. And

1081
01:02:07,000 --> 01:02:11,720
Speaker 1: now welcome to this special October coda. We have received

1082
01:02:11,840 --> 01:02:15,240
Speaker 1: lots of really interesting messages over the months in response

1083
01:02:15,280 --> 01:02:17,680
Speaker 1: to that show, and some of them made it onto

1084
01:02:17,680 --> 01:02:21,160
Speaker 1: previous listener mail episodes, some didn't, but I wanted to

1085
01:02:21,160 --> 01:02:23,080
Speaker 1: collect them all in one place so we can get

1086
01:02:23,080 --> 01:02:27,240
Speaker 1: a sense of how this ancient phenomenon appears today. So

1087
01:02:27,520 --> 01:02:33,880
Speaker 1: here we go. This message is from Glenn and it

1088
01:02:33,920 --> 01:02:37,400
Speaker 1: came in via email. Hey guys, my name is Glenn.

1089
01:02:37,520 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 1: I just listened to your Will of the Whisp podcast

1090
01:02:39,720 --> 01:02:42,120
Speaker 1: and I wanted to share an experience I recently had

1091
01:02:42,160 --> 01:02:46,640
Speaker 1: with you. It's mid October, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I'm on

1092
01:02:46,680 --> 01:02:48,760
Speaker 1: a date with a girl I was seeing at the time,

1093
01:02:49,200 --> 01:02:51,480
Speaker 1: and I decided to take her to this spot just

1094
01:02:51,600 --> 01:02:55,800
Speaker 1: southeast of Milwaukee and St. Francis. There's a condominium development

1095
01:02:55,840 --> 01:02:58,880
Speaker 1: along the lake shore as a footpath running along the

1096
01:02:58,920 --> 01:03:02,880
Speaker 1: backside of the cons following the shore. At the northernmost

1097
01:03:02,960 --> 01:03:05,800
Speaker 1: end of the path, there's a man made pond that's

1098
01:03:05,840 --> 01:03:08,960
Speaker 1: on a hill which is surrounded by breakwater that's been

1099
01:03:09,040 --> 01:03:12,360
Speaker 1: rocked off and diverted, so out to end it goes

1100
01:03:12,480 --> 01:03:16,840
Speaker 1: lake rocks, lakewater, than the hill and then the pond.

1101
01:03:17,000 --> 01:03:20,160
Speaker 1: So it's fairly marshy as far as man made landscapes go.

1102
01:03:20,920 --> 01:03:22,920
Speaker 1: At the edge of the pond, there are some benches

1103
01:03:22,960 --> 01:03:27,040
Speaker 1: that overlook the entire cityscape, great view, so I take

1104
01:03:27,080 --> 01:03:29,880
Speaker 1: her there and as we're relaxing taking in the site,

1105
01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:33,280
Speaker 1: we can see a blue pulsating light down the hill,

1106
01:03:33,360 --> 01:03:36,320
Speaker 1: hovering just along the water line of the lake. It's

1107
01:03:36,320 --> 01:03:39,800
Speaker 1: a fairly intense light, almost comparable to a small, flashing

1108
01:03:39,880 --> 01:03:42,920
Speaker 1: blue led. At first glance, I thought it might have

1109
01:03:42,960 --> 01:03:45,520
Speaker 1: been a person's cell phone, but this theory was quickly

1110
01:03:45,560 --> 01:03:48,280
Speaker 1: disproved when the light began to rise maybe five to

1111
01:03:48,320 --> 01:03:51,480
Speaker 1: six feet up off the ground and started to float

1112
01:03:51,520 --> 01:03:54,720
Speaker 1: its way up the hill toward us. It was very small,

1113
01:03:54,800 --> 01:03:58,800
Speaker 1: a little bigger than say, your standard issue firefly, but

1114
01:03:58,880 --> 01:04:01,080
Speaker 1: the light was much more dents and moved in a

1115
01:04:01,160 --> 01:04:04,160
Speaker 1: much different way than fireflies do, and it didn't share

1116
01:04:04,160 --> 01:04:06,800
Speaker 1: the yellow glow that a firefly has. It was a

1117
01:04:06,880 --> 01:04:10,240
Speaker 1: very true blue. It gets to the top of the

1118
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:13,600
Speaker 1: hill and then begins to float in an undulating motion

1119
01:04:13,720 --> 01:04:16,439
Speaker 1: on a straight course from the west toward the lake

1120
01:04:16,480 --> 01:04:19,360
Speaker 1: to the east, about two yards away at eye level

1121
01:04:19,720 --> 01:04:22,240
Speaker 1: before it gets over the lake and it's out of vision.

1122
01:04:22,920 --> 01:04:25,240
Speaker 1: So anyway, he says, they got a little scared. They

1123
01:04:25,280 --> 01:04:28,160
Speaker 1: decided to leave and then he said, actually another one

1124
01:04:28,320 --> 01:04:30,480
Speaker 1: rose up out of some brush off the side of

1125
01:04:30,520 --> 01:04:33,800
Speaker 1: the path as they were leaving. But anyway, he concludes

1126
01:04:33,840 --> 01:04:36,200
Speaker 1: by saying, I've been searching for an explanation to this

1127
01:04:36,240 --> 01:04:39,160
Speaker 1: scene since that day, and after hearing your podcast and

1128
01:04:39,280 --> 01:04:42,200
Speaker 1: fairly certain that I saw what these accounts claimed you

1129
01:04:42,200 --> 01:04:45,720
Speaker 1: have also witnessed. I've returned to the location several times,

1130
01:04:45,720 --> 01:04:47,880
Speaker 1: but have never been lucky enough to see them again.

1131
01:04:48,240 --> 01:04:50,320
Speaker 1: Sorry to the length the email, I have a renewed

1132
01:04:50,360 --> 01:04:52,600
Speaker 1: excitement now. It would seem there has to be some

1133
01:04:52,760 --> 01:04:55,840
Speaker 1: substance to what we saw that night. I will add

1134
01:04:55,880 --> 01:04:58,640
Speaker 1: that it did indeed rain a couple of days previous

1135
01:04:58,680 --> 01:05:03,560
Speaker 1: to my story, so maybe they is a correlation. Really interesting, Glenn,

1136
01:05:03,600 --> 01:05:07,200
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing another ghost light phenomenon, this one

1137
01:05:07,240 --> 01:05:10,600
Speaker 1: a little bit different. This comes from our listener Kelly,

1138
01:05:10,680 --> 01:05:13,840
Speaker 1: and Kelly writes over email to say, Hey, guys, I

1139
01:05:13,960 --> 01:05:17,200
Speaker 1: experienced something on the mysterious side in the mid nineties

1140
01:05:17,280 --> 01:05:20,240
Speaker 1: that this episode reminded me of. To set the stage,

1141
01:05:20,280 --> 01:05:23,440
Speaker 1: it occurred near my home in the Okanagan Valley, a

1142
01:05:23,520 --> 01:05:27,040
Speaker 1: desert like valley known for its orchards, vineyards, and tourism.

1143
01:05:27,280 --> 01:05:30,760
Speaker 1: It's in the southern British Columbia interior, just above the border,

1144
01:05:31,080 --> 01:05:34,520
Speaker 1: so above the forty ninth parallel. I was driving one

1145
01:05:34,600 --> 01:05:39,040
Speaker 1: night along Okanagan Lake from Penticton to Kelowna, and often

1146
01:05:39,080 --> 01:05:41,880
Speaker 1: the distance there was this eerie greenish glow. It was

1147
01:05:41,960 --> 01:05:45,200
Speaker 1: clear across the lake and on Okanagan Mountain, an area

1148
01:05:45,280 --> 01:05:48,040
Speaker 1: with no development. I didn't think much of it, but

1149
01:05:48,080 --> 01:05:50,760
Speaker 1: I did enjoy its glow for maybe about half an hour,

1150
01:05:51,280 --> 01:05:54,000
Speaker 1: also known as thirty minutes in metric. Thank you for

1151
01:05:54,040 --> 01:05:56,840
Speaker 1: the conversion, Kelly. I just thought it was the northern

1152
01:05:56,920 --> 01:05:59,000
Speaker 1: lights giving me a show, but never looked into it.

1153
01:05:59,120 --> 01:06:02,200
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if the Aurora borealis could explain away some

1154
01:06:02,320 --> 01:06:05,680
Speaker 1: of these experiences. Anyways, as always, keep up the great work.

1155
01:06:06,120 --> 01:06:08,880
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Kelly. That that is interesting. I

1156
01:06:08,920 --> 01:06:11,880
Speaker 1: know people have invoked the aurora to try to explain it,

1157
01:06:11,880 --> 01:06:15,200
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really seem to match a lot of

1158
01:06:15,240 --> 01:06:18,240
Speaker 1: the reports. You hear about a more distinct bluish lights

1159
01:06:18,280 --> 01:06:21,560
Speaker 1: hovering near the ground, but that may have something to

1160
01:06:21,600 --> 01:06:24,720
Speaker 1: do with the this sort of larger glow that you

1161
01:06:24,840 --> 01:06:29,240
Speaker 1: claim to have seen. Next our listener Megan Hutchinson writes

1162
01:06:29,280 --> 01:06:31,360
Speaker 1: in to say that she enjoyed the original Will of

1163
01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:33,480
Speaker 1: the Whisp episode, but also to let us know that

1164
01:06:33,840 --> 01:06:38,320
Speaker 1: she drew and co created a graphic novel called Will

1165
01:06:38,360 --> 01:06:41,320
Speaker 1: of the Wisp with a writer named Tom Hammock. And

1166
01:06:41,360 --> 01:06:44,760
Speaker 1: I won't read her full message because it contains spoilers

1167
01:06:44,760 --> 01:06:47,320
Speaker 1: for the plot, but this story is set in some

1168
01:06:47,400 --> 01:06:50,600
Speaker 1: of the watery places of Louisiana and it involves a

1169
01:06:50,640 --> 01:06:53,000
Speaker 1: girl who's got to solve a mystery behind a local

1170
01:06:53,040 --> 01:06:55,440
Speaker 1: Will of the Wisp. And I will say that lately

1171
01:06:55,520 --> 01:06:58,680
Speaker 1: I have been dying for some swamp fiction, to sort

1172
01:06:58,680 --> 01:07:01,360
Speaker 1: of dive into a satan in a haunted swamp with

1173
01:07:01,760 --> 01:07:04,680
Speaker 1: wrathful spirit adventures, and it looks like this book is

1174
01:07:04,720 --> 01:07:07,000
Speaker 1: exactly what I've been hoping for, so I actually ordered

1175
01:07:07,000 --> 01:07:08,960
Speaker 1: a copy. And if you're in the mood for a

1176
01:07:09,040 --> 01:07:12,000
Speaker 1: similar type of wicked thing, especially from the pen of

1177
01:07:12,040 --> 01:07:14,240
Speaker 1: another stuff to blow your mind listener, you might want

1178
01:07:14,280 --> 01:07:17,360
Speaker 1: to look up Megan's graphic novel to see if it

1179
01:07:17,400 --> 01:07:20,680
Speaker 1: catches your eye. It's called Will of the Wisp, so

1180
01:07:21,040 --> 01:07:25,480
Speaker 1: check it out if you're interested. Darren writes to us

1181
01:07:25,480 --> 01:07:28,000
Speaker 1: on Facebook with a great message in which he says

1182
01:07:28,040 --> 01:07:30,320
Speaker 1: some very nice things about the show, he corrects our

1183
01:07:30,440 --> 01:07:35,280
Speaker 1: abysmal pronunciation of Scottish towns and cities, and then recounts

1184
01:07:35,560 --> 01:07:39,480
Speaker 1: some strange experiences of his own. So Darren says, particularly

1185
01:07:39,520 --> 01:07:42,280
Speaker 1: wanted to tell you off a Will of the Whisp

1186
01:07:42,360 --> 01:07:45,720
Speaker 1: type situation I experienced last year in Corfu, that's a

1187
01:07:45,840 --> 01:07:49,280
Speaker 1: Greek island. My fiance and I were walking along a

1188
01:07:49,320 --> 01:07:52,640
Speaker 1: beach about ten pm and I noticed a fire snake

1189
01:07:52,920 --> 01:07:57,800
Speaker 1: side winding across the water. I naturally freaked out. My fiance,

1190
01:07:57,920 --> 01:08:00,360
Speaker 1: who is Polish, laughed at my fear and told me

1191
01:08:00,400 --> 01:08:03,840
Speaker 1: they were common, she had seen them all the time. Emboldened,

1192
01:08:03,880 --> 01:08:06,440
Speaker 1: I decided to take a picture of the beast. The

1193
01:08:06,480 --> 01:08:09,320
Speaker 1: moment the flash went off, the flame snake headed straight

1194
01:08:09,360 --> 01:08:12,200
Speaker 1: towards me. Now, I'm from Scotland and we don't have

1195
01:08:12,320 --> 01:08:15,720
Speaker 1: illuminated sea creatures very much. As this creature is heading

1196
01:08:15,760 --> 01:08:18,800
Speaker 1: towards me, I'm getting pretty scared. When it leaves the

1197
01:08:18,800 --> 01:08:21,720
Speaker 1: water hovers into a tree, and I think I can

1198
01:08:21,760 --> 01:08:25,080
Speaker 1: see a pair of glowing eyes looking at me. Well, gentlemen,

1199
01:08:25,160 --> 01:08:27,240
Speaker 1: I don't mind telling you. My feet didn't touch the

1200
01:08:27,240 --> 01:08:30,280
Speaker 1: floor until I was back at my hotel. My fiance's

1201
01:08:30,320 --> 01:08:33,320
Speaker 1: mocking laughter following me, and I still don't believe her

1202
01:08:33,320 --> 01:08:36,160
Speaker 1: explanation that it was a firefly. I know I saw

1203
01:08:36,200 --> 01:08:41,080
Speaker 1: a fire snake. Man Um. I'm not quite sure that

1204
01:08:41,080 --> 01:08:43,679
Speaker 1: fits into the Will of the Whisp tradition, but it's

1205
01:08:43,760 --> 01:08:46,519
Speaker 1: it's close enough that it's worth mentioning. So thank you

1206
01:08:46,640 --> 01:08:50,800
Speaker 1: very much. Darren Joshua contacts us via email with a

1207
01:08:50,800 --> 01:08:52,400
Speaker 1: bunch of thoughts. I'm going to read some of his

1208
01:08:52,479 --> 01:08:55,800
Speaker 1: comments that relate to the Will of the Wisp. Joshua says,

1209
01:08:55,960 --> 01:08:58,559
Speaker 1: I have a Wisp story for you. I was a

1210
01:08:58,560 --> 01:09:02,400
Speaker 1: teenager around oh six oh seven, either junior or senior year.

1211
01:09:02,920 --> 01:09:06,559
Speaker 1: I was in the Pennsylvania area around Jamison, Pennsylvania, in

1212
01:09:06,600 --> 01:09:10,040
Speaker 1: a development place called Stover Mill, where my two friends

1213
01:09:10,080 --> 01:09:13,280
Speaker 1: lived at the time, and he says, it's around the Doylestown,

1214
01:09:13,360 --> 01:09:16,600
Speaker 1: Philadelphia area. At that time in my life, I was

1215
01:09:16,640 --> 01:09:20,320
Speaker 1: a bit of an arrogant philosopher slash atheist who, seemingly

1216
01:09:20,439 --> 01:09:24,880
Speaker 1: in contradiction, believed in the supernatural world of magic. I

1217
01:09:24,920 --> 01:09:27,559
Speaker 1: was with two friends, one who felt she had direct

1218
01:09:27,600 --> 01:09:30,880
Speaker 1: connections to dark forces in the world and another one

1219
01:09:30,960 --> 01:09:34,160
Speaker 1: who just kind of identified himself as a punk. I

1220
01:09:34,160 --> 01:09:37,320
Speaker 1: had experimented with supernatural stuff like what I thought at

1221
01:09:37,320 --> 01:09:40,000
Speaker 1: the time was meditation and the like. So I was

1222
01:09:40,040 --> 01:09:42,760
Speaker 1: a bit cocky in the way only a teenager could be.

1223
01:09:44,000 --> 01:09:46,320
Speaker 1: So all three of us were hanging out very late

1224
01:09:46,320 --> 01:09:48,679
Speaker 1: at night, if not early morning, in a well lit

1225
01:09:48,720 --> 01:09:52,519
Speaker 1: neighborhood slash development. That kind of orange light, I know

1226
01:09:52,600 --> 01:09:55,360
Speaker 1: what light you're talking about. In the center of this

1227
01:09:55,479 --> 01:09:58,840
Speaker 1: development was one of those big water collecting areas with

1228
01:09:58,920 --> 01:10:01,880
Speaker 1: tall grass with it. Now, I can't be certain if

1229
01:10:01,880 --> 01:10:04,240
Speaker 1: it had rained recently, but I'm pretty sure the basin

1230
01:10:04,360 --> 01:10:07,719
Speaker 1: was dry because we had walked the path earlier. So

1231
01:10:07,800 --> 01:10:10,160
Speaker 1: as we were on the curb and just talking, we

1232
01:10:10,240 --> 01:10:13,320
Speaker 1: see a bobbing light, almost as if someone were very

1233
01:10:13,400 --> 01:10:16,719
Speaker 1: slowly skipping. The light was less than half a football

1234
01:10:16,760 --> 01:10:19,280
Speaker 1: field away. When I first saw it, I took a

1235
01:10:19,280 --> 01:10:21,760
Speaker 1: second glance because it looked like the blue light of

1236
01:10:21,840 --> 01:10:24,280
Speaker 1: someone on their cell phone. Only too right. That's the

1237
01:10:24,360 --> 01:10:27,799
Speaker 1: second cell phone comparison I've heard. But anyway, Joshua continues,

1238
01:10:28,200 --> 01:10:31,280
Speaker 1: and in my pants down awareness, I quickly went through

1239
01:10:31,280 --> 01:10:33,479
Speaker 1: my list of what I was seeing, like, oh, it's

1240
01:10:33,520 --> 01:10:36,400
Speaker 1: someone on a cell phone in the tall grass, which

1241
01:10:36,479 --> 01:10:39,360
Speaker 1: was replaced by oh, wait, I don't see a body,

1242
01:10:39,520 --> 01:10:42,120
Speaker 1: nor do I hear anyone. In the silence of the night,

1243
01:10:42,760 --> 01:10:45,080
Speaker 1: me and my friends, in our Scooby Doo fashion, hit

1244
01:10:45,120 --> 01:10:47,439
Speaker 1: the ground and inch closer to try and figure out

1245
01:10:47,439 --> 01:10:50,880
Speaker 1: what we were seeing. Uh. It was strolling along through

1246
01:10:50,880 --> 01:10:54,000
Speaker 1: the grass, first away from us. Then it changed directions

1247
01:10:54,040 --> 01:10:56,960
Speaker 1: and started heading our way at its slow pace. I

1248
01:10:57,040 --> 01:10:59,559
Speaker 1: was excited because it meant I could get a closer look.

1249
01:10:59,800 --> 01:11:02,719
Speaker 1: So only the light went out and all stared in silence,

1250
01:11:02,760 --> 01:11:05,960
Speaker 1: waiting to see, and it appeared again about half the

1251
01:11:06,000 --> 01:11:08,920
Speaker 1: distance it was closer to us, to which in our

1252
01:11:08,920 --> 01:11:11,559
Speaker 1: teenage fashion, we ditched and ran out of fear of

1253
01:11:11,600 --> 01:11:14,120
Speaker 1: a ball of light that seemed to come right at us.

1254
01:11:14,920 --> 01:11:16,960
Speaker 1: And then he goes on later in his note to

1255
01:11:17,360 --> 01:11:20,840
Speaker 1: talk about the concept of blue energy. He says there

1256
01:11:20,880 --> 01:11:24,520
Speaker 1: is a book called Megas of Java or Majus of Java,

1257
01:11:24,640 --> 01:11:27,679
Speaker 1: which refers to a person named John Chang. I believe

1258
01:11:27,720 --> 01:11:30,639
Speaker 1: from a nineteen eighty eight documentary called Ring of Fire.

1259
01:11:31,000 --> 01:11:33,920
Speaker 1: The documentary is really enjoyable, but the book basically goes

1260
01:11:33,960 --> 01:11:37,320
Speaker 1: into an explanation of martial arts in a fantastical way.

1261
01:11:37,720 --> 01:11:40,439
Speaker 1: It actually sounds a bit cultish to me. A person

1262
01:11:40,520 --> 01:11:43,679
Speaker 1: who stays open to many portrayals of reality as part

1263
01:11:43,680 --> 01:11:46,600
Speaker 1: of my philosophic works. But in one chapter there's a

1264
01:11:46,640 --> 01:11:51,040
Speaker 1: demonstration of quote yang energy that apparently always appears blue.

1265
01:11:51,120 --> 01:11:55,120
Speaker 1: Another interesting point of reference to some mystical blue light. Mcguffin,

1266
01:11:55,640 --> 01:11:59,840
Speaker 1: that is interesting. Thank you, Joshua. Our listener Eric writes

1267
01:11:59,880 --> 01:12:03,519
Speaker 1: a by email. He says, hey, gentlemen, you ask for

1268
01:12:03,560 --> 01:12:05,960
Speaker 1: anyone who's seen the elusive will of the Wisp. I

1269
01:12:06,040 --> 01:12:08,880
Speaker 1: have had an experience with such an entity. I live

1270
01:12:08,920 --> 01:12:12,360
Speaker 1: in upstate New York, Chinango County. I love to hike

1271
01:12:12,400 --> 01:12:14,920
Speaker 1: on the mini finger like trails, or any trail that

1272
01:12:15,000 --> 01:12:18,240
Speaker 1: spreads across the woods. The area of land behind where

1273
01:12:18,240 --> 01:12:21,720
Speaker 1: I grew up had several pond marshy areas connected by

1274
01:12:21,760 --> 01:12:25,519
Speaker 1: a series of streams, generally just a wet place, no

1275
01:12:25,680 --> 01:12:29,160
Speaker 1: bog or swamp. Though at the age of fourteen eight

1276
01:12:29,240 --> 01:12:32,000
Speaker 1: years back or so, I was several miles from home

1277
01:12:32,040 --> 01:12:34,960
Speaker 1: when darkness fell. I know all the woods there pretty

1278
01:12:34,960 --> 01:12:38,320
Speaker 1: well from my copious times wandering through them. It's also

1279
01:12:38,439 --> 01:12:40,760
Speaker 1: hard to get lost. If you walk in any any

1280
01:12:40,800 --> 01:12:43,559
Speaker 1: direction for a little while, you will find a road,

1281
01:12:43,800 --> 01:12:47,240
Speaker 1: not a vast wilderness, for sure. I was casually walking

1282
01:12:47,280 --> 01:12:49,800
Speaker 1: on a trail back with the moon is the only light.

1283
01:12:50,080 --> 01:12:52,400
Speaker 1: Went off to my right. About three hundred feet into

1284
01:12:52,400 --> 01:12:56,320
Speaker 1: the woods, I see a bobbing, whitish blue light. I walked,

1285
01:12:56,439 --> 01:12:58,559
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on it, thinking if there were any

1286
01:12:58,600 --> 01:13:02,320
Speaker 1: houses out that way. There were not. Not only that,

1287
01:13:02,360 --> 01:13:05,240
Speaker 1: but it seemed to be moving parallel to me. I

1288
01:13:05,280 --> 01:13:08,559
Speaker 1: thought to myself, I'm not starving or near dehydration. I'm

1289
01:13:08,560 --> 01:13:12,120
Speaker 1: not delirious or mad. But I had a profound skeptical

1290
01:13:12,200 --> 01:13:15,719
Speaker 1: curiosity in the supernatural. I thought it might be a ghost.

1291
01:13:16,040 --> 01:13:18,599
Speaker 1: My neighbor liked to tell ghost stories about people getting

1292
01:13:18,600 --> 01:13:21,280
Speaker 1: lost in the woods by following a large white buck

1293
01:13:21,400 --> 01:13:24,240
Speaker 1: during deer season, or a girl in distress that they

1294
01:13:24,240 --> 01:13:26,880
Speaker 1: could never seem to find. I think he just liked

1295
01:13:26,880 --> 01:13:30,040
Speaker 1: to scare me. Anyways, I followed it off the trail,

1296
01:13:30,160 --> 01:13:32,960
Speaker 1: taking note of where I was. I followed it, never

1297
01:13:33,000 --> 01:13:35,200
Speaker 1: seeming to be able to get closer than a hundred

1298
01:13:35,280 --> 01:13:37,519
Speaker 1: feet or so from it. But it looked like a

1299
01:13:37,560 --> 01:13:40,960
Speaker 1: dim blue flame, bobbing and swaying in the dark, dancing

1300
01:13:41,000 --> 01:13:44,720
Speaker 1: around trees, egging me on to follow it. Prevaricating my

1301
01:13:44,840 --> 01:13:48,559
Speaker 1: worst thoughts, I kept following and meandered through the woods.

1302
01:13:48,720 --> 01:13:51,280
Speaker 1: I had to walk over many little streams and around

1303
01:13:51,280 --> 01:13:54,559
Speaker 1: wet areas where it became hard to pass through. This

1304
01:13:54,600 --> 01:13:57,160
Speaker 1: went on for about an hour before I lost sight.

1305
01:13:57,640 --> 01:13:59,680
Speaker 1: I walked to where it was, and it was the

1306
01:13:59,800 --> 01:14:02,519
Speaker 1: edge of one of the old farmer's fields. There are

1307
01:14:02,520 --> 01:14:04,439
Speaker 1: a lot of old fields that are not near any

1308
01:14:04,560 --> 01:14:07,840
Speaker 1: roads or anything, just isolated in the woods. I saw

1309
01:14:07,880 --> 01:14:09,960
Speaker 1: the bobbing light on the other side of the field.

1310
01:14:10,080 --> 01:14:12,479
Speaker 1: I knew exactly where I was and had had enough

1311
01:14:12,520 --> 01:14:15,000
Speaker 1: and decided to walk home. The road was only a

1312
01:14:15,080 --> 01:14:17,760
Speaker 1: little less than a mile from where I was. I

1313
01:14:17,800 --> 01:14:19,840
Speaker 1: followed the edge of the field to a path at

1314
01:14:19,840 --> 01:14:22,880
Speaker 1: one of the corners, and the light followed me. But

1315
01:14:22,960 --> 01:14:25,719
Speaker 1: at some point during this time it split off into

1316
01:14:25,800 --> 01:14:29,320
Speaker 1: three smaller bobbing lights. They never went too far from

1317
01:14:29,360 --> 01:14:31,840
Speaker 1: each other. One would get ahead and the others would

1318
01:14:31,920 --> 01:14:34,720
Speaker 1: quickly catch up. But they went parallel to me till

1319
01:14:34,760 --> 01:14:36,680
Speaker 1: I got to the path and I couldn't see them

1320
01:14:36,680 --> 01:14:39,519
Speaker 1: in the woods anymore. But I glanced back and saw

1321
01:14:39,560 --> 01:14:41,479
Speaker 1: them at the end of the path after I had

1322
01:14:41,479 --> 01:14:44,240
Speaker 1: walked a little ways in. At this point I began

1323
01:14:44,280 --> 01:14:47,439
Speaker 1: to walk fast, getting more and more unnerved. They never

1324
01:14:47,479 --> 01:14:50,040
Speaker 1: seemed to catch up. Even after I started to run

1325
01:14:50,080 --> 01:14:52,880
Speaker 1: and ran out of breath and stopped to grab my breath,

1326
01:14:53,200 --> 01:14:55,559
Speaker 1: they didn't seem to get any closer, even though I

1327
01:14:55,600 --> 01:14:58,679
Speaker 1: wasn't moving. A few minutes later, I got to the road,

1328
01:14:58,960 --> 01:15:01,200
Speaker 1: I turned back to see if they were still following me.

1329
01:15:01,640 --> 01:15:04,519
Speaker 1: I could still see them, but way farther off than

1330
01:15:04,560 --> 01:15:07,400
Speaker 1: they had been the entire time. I watched them fade

1331
01:15:07,400 --> 01:15:10,000
Speaker 1: back into the woods, behind the trees and the brush.

1332
01:15:10,520 --> 01:15:13,120
Speaker 1: I walked home, haunted by what I saw. I never

1333
01:15:13,160 --> 01:15:16,240
Speaker 1: told many people about it because it obviously sounds crazy.

1334
01:15:16,760 --> 01:15:19,360
Speaker 1: I researched it and came across the term will of

1335
01:15:19,400 --> 01:15:22,240
Speaker 1: the Wisp in later weeks, but had never seen anything

1336
01:15:22,360 --> 01:15:25,000
Speaker 1: saying there were any sightings in the area. I never

1337
01:15:25,040 --> 01:15:28,880
Speaker 1: saw them again, despite many night hikes since then. Well,

1338
01:15:28,920 --> 01:15:30,880
Speaker 1: I thought you guys would enjoy one of the more

1339
01:15:30,920 --> 01:15:35,599
Speaker 1: horrifying memories from my confusing, angst filled adolescence, battling with

1340
01:15:35,640 --> 01:15:38,960
Speaker 1: the existential dread of wondering about life after death and

1341
01:15:39,040 --> 01:15:42,400
Speaker 1: other planes of existence. Anyway, you guys are the best.

1342
01:15:42,439 --> 01:15:45,200
Speaker 1: I enjoy listening to you and other house stuff Works podcasts.

1343
01:15:45,280 --> 01:15:47,040
Speaker 1: You feed the nerd in me. Well, I'm glad we

1344
01:15:47,040 --> 01:15:50,000
Speaker 1: could do that, Eric. But Eric's message is one that

1345
01:15:50,040 --> 01:15:53,880
Speaker 1: we actually covered in a previous listener mail episode, and

1346
01:15:53,960 --> 01:15:56,760
Speaker 1: when we did that, we wondered what Eric himself made

1347
01:15:56,760 --> 01:15:59,040
Speaker 1: of the experience. So he wrote us again to respond,

1348
01:15:59,080 --> 01:16:02,040
Speaker 1: and this is eric se and message. I have to say,

1349
01:16:02,080 --> 01:16:05,400
Speaker 1: I agree. It's the product of a life form that's endangered.

1350
01:16:05,479 --> 01:16:07,679
Speaker 1: I played with this idea a bit and thought how

1351
01:16:07,720 --> 01:16:10,200
Speaker 1: about how it acted. I think it could be a

1352
01:16:10,200 --> 01:16:14,479
Speaker 1: swarm of small bioluminescent insects, gnats, or some other small

1353
01:16:14,520 --> 01:16:18,200
Speaker 1: fly that become illuminated while they're eating. So maybe they're

1354
01:16:18,240 --> 01:16:21,120
Speaker 1: having a feeding frenzy on microbial life that I or

1355
01:16:21,200 --> 01:16:23,960
Speaker 1: other life forms are kicking up as they get disturbed.

1356
01:16:23,960 --> 01:16:27,120
Speaker 1: In wet areas, think about it. Bats fly near our

1357
01:16:27,160 --> 01:16:29,280
Speaker 1: heads when we walked to eat the bugs we stir

1358
01:16:29,400 --> 01:16:32,519
Speaker 1: up and attract, So maybe this is a similar instance.

1359
01:16:33,040 --> 01:16:35,880
Speaker 1: Possibly a small curious animal was in the woods and

1360
01:16:36,000 --> 01:16:39,160
Speaker 1: staying near me. I've had this happen with foxes and

1361
01:16:39,160 --> 01:16:42,440
Speaker 1: the occasional coyote. Perhaps I was in the right circumstance

1362
01:16:42,560 --> 01:16:45,400
Speaker 1: to see these small bugs going on a feeding frenzy

1363
01:16:45,520 --> 01:16:49,040
Speaker 1: following a small animal. So when I started to follow it.

1364
01:16:49,200 --> 01:16:52,000
Speaker 1: The animal was spooked, so the bugs followed the animal.

1365
01:16:52,360 --> 01:16:55,040
Speaker 1: When I turned and went back, the animal followed me again,

1366
01:16:55,160 --> 01:16:58,240
Speaker 1: with me kicking up my own microbial cloud causing them

1367
01:16:58,280 --> 01:17:00,920
Speaker 1: to break off. So there were small are groups, So

1368
01:17:01,000 --> 01:17:03,479
Speaker 1: in a way, there's a fluid dynamic thing going on.

1369
01:17:03,880 --> 01:17:06,559
Speaker 1: I have to admit this doesn't have any basis in science,

1370
01:17:06,640 --> 01:17:10,280
Speaker 1: just my creative mind trying to form a hypothesis to

1371
01:17:10,520 --> 01:17:13,800
Speaker 1: something intangible. Ha, let me know what you guys think.

1372
01:17:13,920 --> 01:17:15,760
Speaker 1: I do think it's some sort of product of a

1373
01:17:15,800 --> 01:17:19,519
Speaker 1: life form that is slowly disappearing. Well, Eric, I know

1374
01:17:19,640 --> 01:17:22,960
Speaker 1: that's been one of the scientific hypotheses that's been offered,

1375
01:17:23,000 --> 01:17:25,479
Speaker 1: but I guess it's hard to really know. I'm I'm

1376
01:17:25,640 --> 01:17:30,160
Speaker 1: somewhat convinced. I think by the chemoluminescence hypothesis, the the

1377
01:17:30,200 --> 01:17:34,120
Speaker 1: idea that it is a chemical reaction going on with

1378
01:17:34,120 --> 01:17:37,599
Speaker 1: with gases being released from the ground, But yeah, it's

1379
01:17:37,600 --> 01:17:40,360
Speaker 1: hard to know. I think there there could possibly be

1380
01:17:40,680 --> 01:17:44,360
Speaker 1: bioluminessence explanation for some of the sightings, and and as

1381
01:17:44,479 --> 01:17:47,320
Speaker 1: we talked about, I think in the original episode, there

1382
01:17:47,320 --> 01:17:51,080
Speaker 1: could be different types of phenomenon that are being combined

1383
01:17:51,320 --> 01:17:54,920
Speaker 1: under the will of the wisp explanatory rubric that are

1384
01:17:54,920 --> 01:17:58,280
Speaker 1: Actually they have different causes, so that's what I think,

1385
01:17:58,439 --> 01:18:01,280
Speaker 1: but I don't really know. Oh, it's still an interesting

1386
01:18:01,320 --> 01:18:04,439
Speaker 1: thing to investigate in any case, Thanks to all of

1387
01:18:04,479 --> 01:18:07,160
Speaker 1: you who wrote in. These were great messages to read

1388
01:18:07,280 --> 01:18:09,040
Speaker 1: and and a lot of fun to hear about the

1389
01:18:09,360 --> 01:18:12,920
Speaker 1: various forms of foolish and spiritual fire that seemed to

1390
01:18:12,960 --> 01:18:17,360
Speaker 1: emerge in the outdoors. Anyway, one last thing. If you're

1391
01:18:17,360 --> 01:18:19,880
Speaker 1: a fan of this show, you know how much we

1392
01:18:20,000 --> 01:18:24,560
Speaker 1: love all manner of monsters, ghosts, wraiths, grave ghouls, golems,

1393
01:18:24,560 --> 01:18:29,240
Speaker 1: alligator kings, psychic spider lords, earth rim roamers, sabretooth witches,

1394
01:18:29,960 --> 01:18:33,479
Speaker 1: smoke wolves, blooms of stidgy and algae. So we're dwelling

1395
01:18:33,520 --> 01:18:38,360
Speaker 1: vampire magi, wandering blood, mushrooms, lead skin, desert worms, beholders,

1396
01:18:38,600 --> 01:18:43,120
Speaker 1: wasp holders, sentient emerald fog, cybernetic mummies, and so on

1397
01:18:43,640 --> 01:18:47,439
Speaker 1: and around here. We take every advantage every October to

1398
01:18:47,600 --> 01:18:50,120
Speaker 1: spend some time talking about the science of all things

1399
01:18:50,200 --> 01:18:53,559
Speaker 1: cursed and monstrous. So if you keep up with our

1400
01:18:53,600 --> 01:18:56,360
Speaker 1: new releases, we're going to be getting into the October

1401
01:18:56,439 --> 01:19:00,360
Speaker 1: spirit with plenty of original Halloween themed episodes later this month.

1402
01:19:00,840 --> 01:19:04,519
Speaker 1: Sharpen your fangs and make yourselves ready. In the meantime,

1403
01:19:04,640 --> 01:19:06,640
Speaker 1: check out all of the latest work at stuff to

1404
01:19:06,680 --> 01:19:09,320
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com, where you can find great

1405
01:19:09,360 --> 01:19:13,120
Speaker 1: stuff like Robert's delightful, long running monster of the Week series.

1406
01:19:13,160 --> 01:19:14,680
Speaker 1: I love it every time he does one of those,

1407
01:19:14,720 --> 01:19:16,960
Speaker 1: and I'm sure he'll have some more good creatures coming

1408
01:19:17,040 --> 01:19:19,439
Speaker 1: up soon. Also, you can get in touch with us

1409
01:19:19,439 --> 01:19:21,960
Speaker 1: on social media if you look up blow the Mind

1410
01:19:22,080 --> 01:19:24,719
Speaker 1: or stuff to Blow your Mind, or some variation thereof

1411
01:19:24,720 --> 01:19:28,440
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all of those all find places

1412
01:19:28,479 --> 01:19:31,880
Speaker 1: for the eyes that stare through the darkness with no form.

1413
01:19:31,920 --> 01:19:33,880
Speaker 1: If you like the podcast, one way you can help

1414
01:19:33,920 --> 01:19:35,960
Speaker 1: us out is to leave a rating and review on

1415
01:19:36,000 --> 01:19:39,160
Speaker 1: iTunes or whatever platform you listen on. And as always,

1416
01:19:39,200 --> 01:19:41,320
Speaker 1: if you want to talk to us directly to give

1417
01:19:41,400 --> 01:19:43,599
Speaker 1: us feedback on this episode or any other, you can

1418
01:19:43,640 --> 01:19:46,400
Speaker 1: email us at blow the Mind at how stuff Works

1419
01:19:46,520 --> 01:19:58,519
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.

1420
01:19:58,680 --> 01:20:11,880
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff Work? Stopp m about the biggest

1421
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Speaker 1: far