Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. My name is Joe McCormick. Your other hosts,
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and Christian Seger are out of the office
Speaker 1: this week, so we decided to air an update to
Speaker 1: one of our October classics from last year, The Will
Speaker 1: of the Wisp. So first you're going to hear the
Speaker 1: original episode that Robert and I recorded last October about
Speaker 1: this very weird and wonderful historical phenomenon. And after that,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read some messages we received from listeners
Speaker 1: about their own reported experiences with the ghost fire of
Speaker 1: the Wilderness. So be sure to stick around at the
Speaker 1: end for more. And without further ado, let's follow the
Speaker 1: Light into the marsh. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your My my name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So, Robert, Yes,
Speaker 1: I want you to put yourself in a scenario. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, I'm doing it. You are a peasant in
Speaker 1: medieval England. All right, it's the place to start. But
Speaker 1: I'm with you. Yeah, it's so. I know it's rough,
Speaker 1: but you're a peasant in medieval England in in sort
Speaker 1: of the fen Land. Okay, So there there's some marshes
Speaker 1: all around you, and this is a time and place
Speaker 1: where for your life the world is sort of alive
Speaker 1: with magical beings. So who knows if there's a ferry
Speaker 1: or a goblin hiding under a rock or in a
Speaker 1: bush over by the side of the road. Who knows.
Speaker 1: There are lots of things out there that you just
Speaker 1: don't understand. It's a world that only by fire. It's
Speaker 1: a demon haunted world. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a
Speaker 1: perfect way of putting it. Um. So you're out one
Speaker 1: night returning home from church, and dusk is coming on,
Speaker 1: and as you're walking your way through the path that
Speaker 1: winds along the marshlands at night, and the crickets are
Speaker 1: chirping and you hear the frogs, you suddenly see something
Speaker 1: kind of strange off off to your left, sort of
Speaker 1: in the right, at the edge of your field of vision.
Speaker 1: You see a bluish looking flame that's just hovering over
Speaker 1: the ground that that's sort of beyond where you can
Speaker 1: see exactly where it is. It's it's among some trees
Speaker 1: and some some marsh grasses. Now, what do you do.
Speaker 1: Do you just continue on your path or do you
Speaker 1: walk over to see what it is? Who? What can
Speaker 1: I do? Uh? Let me do a perception check. Okay,
Speaker 1: roll your tenth. Well, I'm I'm seeing a basically a
Speaker 1: ghostly blue flame that's just hovering in the air. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking I'm gonna want to avoid anything to do with that,
Speaker 1: because if it's some sort of supernatural entity at night, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's probably up to no good. It's I'm probably better
Speaker 1: off to stick into the course and going straight home. Well,
Speaker 1: you're fantastic at resisting temptation. Congratulations, you're incurious, proud of it,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna live a live to a ripe old
Speaker 1: age in the solid knowledge that you just didn't check
Speaker 1: things out. Well, yeah, I mean, because I've probably heard
Speaker 1: enough stories like how does every weird horror story begin,
Speaker 1: every strange folklore? It begins with that guy getting off
Speaker 1: the beaten path, moving out of the path and going
Speaker 1: into the wilderness and maybe following some sort of strange flame. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: let me try you again. Then let's say that we
Speaker 1: do the same scenario, but you've already gotten lost. You're
Speaker 1: on your way home from church dusk is coming on.
Speaker 1: You've lost the path and suddenly you are lost in
Speaker 1: the marsh lands and you you can't find your way
Speaker 1: back to the path. But up ahead you do see
Speaker 1: a light. Uh, you see a flame bobbing that's just
Speaker 1: above the horizon ahead of you, and you're not quite
Speaker 1: sure what it is. Now do you go toward the
Speaker 1: light or not? Well, I'm lost, So that light might
Speaker 1: very well be somebody's camp fire. That might be as
Speaker 1: a sign of humans out here, so I should Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe I should head that way because either that either
Speaker 1: they're in the clear or maybe they can help me
Speaker 1: get out right. It could be a traveler's lantern, could
Speaker 1: lead you back to the path and get you on
Speaker 1: your way home and out of this muck. So let's
Speaker 1: say you follow it for a while, but you can't
Speaker 1: ever seem to catch up with it, and you just
Speaker 1: keep going farther and farther along in the marsh, but
Speaker 1: it's always just out of where you can reach it
Speaker 1: or get a good look at exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: Do you keep following? Well, the more I follow, the
Speaker 1: more I'm probably gonna feel like I'm being manipulated in
Speaker 1: this led on a winding goat trail to nowhere. So uh,
Speaker 1: which granted, and maybe that's a perfect metaphor for life,
Speaker 1: but I'm probably gonna get a little frustrated. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: what other choice do you have right now? You're lost
Speaker 1: in the marsh and you better keep following. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't go back. It's just as much trouble to go
Speaker 1: back as it is to push forward. And maybe if
Speaker 1: I hurry a little bit, I can actually catch that
Speaker 1: during thing. Okay, So let's say you're trying to catch it.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately you keep coming up on it, thinking you're just
Speaker 1: about to get to it, but it goes away and
Speaker 1: eventually you don't see it anymore at all, and you're
Speaker 1: there alone in the dark, stuck in some quicksands in
Speaker 1: the marsh. And what are you gonna do? Well, you're
Speaker 1: gonna stay struggle. You struggle. That's how you get add
Speaker 1: a quicksand. No, it's not, it's not at all. Do
Speaker 1: we have an episode on quicksand? I don't think we
Speaker 1: do yet, but it's a fascinating topic. Yeah, maybe we
Speaker 1: should explore that sometime. Well, if you ever find yourself
Speaker 1: trapped in quicksand, whether you're in a marsh and you
Speaker 1: have been led there by a ghost light or not.
Speaker 1: Don't struggle. Oh, that's why I have these ferrets in
Speaker 1: my backpack. They're gonna help me out. That'll just work
Speaker 1: you deeper into the into the muck. No, that's not
Speaker 1: what you want to do. But anyway, I've been describing
Speaker 1: a scenario that might sound kind of outlandish to you
Speaker 1: people at home, but I think this type of story
Speaker 1: was very common two people of say Europe in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, or actually to folklore all over the world
Speaker 1: old in one form or another, that there will be
Speaker 1: stories that bear similarities to this, That there's a glowing
Speaker 1: entity or some kind of flame that looks like a
Speaker 1: lantern or like a blue luminescence that's just hovering out
Speaker 1: of your vision and if you if you try to
Speaker 1: get to it, you can never quite catch it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what is this thing? It is the will of the wisp,
Speaker 1: that's right, And it goes by a number of names
Speaker 1: as well discussed, but it's the it's it's that that
Speaker 1: false fire right, that ignis fatus right and in fatuous, fatuous,
Speaker 1: and that's what I think. It's. It's ignie so fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then f A t U U s that makes
Speaker 1: me think fatuous, like you're being fatuous. Yes, so this
Speaker 1: is uh, it's it's the swamp light, the marsh light,
Speaker 1: fairy light. It's this ghostly luminescence that appears typically in
Speaker 1: marsh lands and swamp lands, by ways, fins, marshes, is
Speaker 1: the lonely roads, the places that maybe you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to be stuck at night, you'll see this strange glowing entity. Um,
Speaker 1: what is it? Is it a mischievous spirit? Yeah? Oftentimes
Speaker 1: it is. It's seen as this either a mischievous spirit
Speaker 1: or sometimes an outright demotic demonic entity that ends up
Speaker 1: leading humans astray. If you try and follow it, you
Speaker 1: can't quite catch it, and eventually you're gonna wind up
Speaker 1: in the quicksand just loft in the wilderness over a cliff,
Speaker 1: following off a cliff, walking straight into hell. Who knows what,
Speaker 1: but it's leading you off the path. Like I'm you
Speaker 1: made a great comparison. It's like a bad GPS system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you remember that In there an episode of the Office,
Speaker 1: the GPS tells them to drive the car across the lake.
Speaker 1: It's scenario because also sometimes you see motifs where it's
Speaker 1: the it's the light that's representing like fairy gold or something.
Speaker 1: So who I follow it, I'll get some riches and
Speaker 1: you can't reach it because it's like the other end
Speaker 1: of a rainbow, right. Yeah, And this lower comes from
Speaker 1: all across time, all over the world. It's very common.
Speaker 1: One common feature of the ghost light or the glowing
Speaker 1: entity will the whisp lower is that the lights tend
Speaker 1: to recede as you approach them. You can never quite
Speaker 1: get to them or get ahold of them, and they
Speaker 1: draw the traveler farther and farther off course as they go.
Speaker 1: Another common feature is the color. And this is interesting.
Speaker 1: So sometimes people just report various types of light, but
Speaker 1: it's very often described as blue or bluish green. And
Speaker 1: in the words of one scientist to study the phenomenon,
Speaker 1: Alan A. Mills, who were going to quote later in
Speaker 1: the episode, he called it quote an ephemeral bluish luminous
Speaker 1: exhalation associated with marshy places. That's his will of the
Speaker 1: whisp definition. So it's it's instantly identifiable as as something
Speaker 1: that's it's not a torch, it's not a lantern, it's
Speaker 1: something else, something for perhaps magical. Yeah, and so we
Speaker 1: have various names for this phenomenon. I'm not gonna run
Speaker 1: through all of them, but just some of them. For instance,
Speaker 1: in the English traditions, you have Dicko Tuesday. Um, Kinky Puck.
Speaker 1: Hinky Puck, by the way, is a key punk punk.
Speaker 1: Hinky punk is a sprite with only one leg and
Speaker 1: it carries a candle to mislead travelers. Yeah. Um, you
Speaker 1: have other names like corpse candle, l fire, hobb lantern,
Speaker 1: hobby lantern, fire drake, jack O lantern. So we're seeing
Speaker 1: a convergence here with like Will of the Whisp, Jacko Lantern. Uh,
Speaker 1: maybe Dicko Tuesday is something else, but anyway, anyway, that
Speaker 1: the idea here is that this first part is actually
Speaker 1: a name. It's like Jack or Will. These are characters
Speaker 1: who have emerged in the lore of people trying to
Speaker 1: explain what happens when they see these ghost lights in
Speaker 1: the marshes. But it's a character who carries some kind
Speaker 1: of light or torch with them. The whisp idea being
Speaker 1: like a wisp of sticks that would be a torch, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's the idea that there seems to be
Speaker 1: a consciousness behind it, a will behind it. It seems
Speaker 1: to be an entity of some sort. One that comes
Speaker 1: up a lot is Will the Smith. Not Will Smith,
Speaker 1: our beloved national treasure, but but rather the soul of
Speaker 1: a debauched human who has given, who has given a
Speaker 1: second chance at life in order to redeem his soul.
Speaker 1: Only he's screwed up again and so now he can't
Speaker 1: get into heaven or hell, so he has to wander
Speaker 1: the earth, and Satan gave him a glowing coal to
Speaker 1: warm himself, which he uses to lure other victims to
Speaker 1: his dinner, to their doom, because he's just a horrible individual.
Speaker 1: So he's walking around with some hell fire in Marsh's
Speaker 1: trying to get revenge on humanity, right. And you see
Speaker 1: a number of different variations on Will the Smith, where
Speaker 1: it's some sort of immortal wanderer, some sort of a
Speaker 1: spirit uh entity that can't get into heaven or a
Speaker 1: hell um. You also have in Scotland the Spunkies. In
Speaker 1: Ireland you have fox Fire or William with the little Flame,
Speaker 1: which is essentially Will the Smith. In Germany you have blood,
Speaker 1: you have the Dickie potent. Wait, hold on blood just BLLD.
Speaker 1: And then there is of course uh ear lickt uh
Speaker 1: and this is uh, the ear lift is actually as
Speaker 1: as the willow. The whisp in today is the subject
Speaker 1: of an Arnold Bockland painting as well as the Cloth
Speaker 1: Shool's album. So there you go. Um. And you see
Speaker 1: a lot of accounts of this phenomenon from from Germany
Speaker 1: for sure. Uh. In France there's a sanyand tad, which
Speaker 1: in the folklore of Brittany is a type of elf,
Speaker 1: and they dance together at night with candles on their fingertips,
Speaker 1: each spinning independently, and any mortal who happens upon them
Speaker 1: becomes disoriented and confused. So it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: the the the example in the Hobbit right where they
Speaker 1: see some fire in the woods and they follow it
Speaker 1: out there and it's elves having their mischief there in
Speaker 1: the woods, and it's just disorienting. Yeah, like they're they're
Speaker 1: I imagine there's some elfin Debaucher, Are you going on? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Tolkien didn't get into it as much,
Speaker 1: but you know, they get to some weird stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Finland you have Likiko, which means that the flaming one.
Speaker 1: And this is interesting because in this you have the
Speaker 1: transformed soul of a child that's buried in the forest
Speaker 1: and now wanders with a flame at night, but also
Speaker 1: serves as a guardian of wild animals and plants that
Speaker 1: are in the woods. So it's kind of almost like
Speaker 1: a swamp thing vibe going on here, where it's the
Speaker 1: spirit guardian of the environment. Um. You see a version.
Speaker 1: You see versions in Native American traditions. You see, uh,
Speaker 1: the one I ran across from the Penobscate Native American
Speaker 1: tribe in the name for this issue date, there's also
Speaker 1: Kanza perry uh. And this is something that exists in
Speaker 1: the folklore of the Chairmis and Mari people. That's a
Speaker 1: Finno you Greek ethnic group. You see. You also see
Speaker 1: it in the Amazon Basin in the form of bakata. Oh.
Speaker 1: And this one's a really good one. This is in
Speaker 1: South America in Chile, the creature known as Alecanto. And
Speaker 1: this is a night spirit in the shape of a
Speaker 1: glowing metallic bird. Yeah. It lives in the mountains and
Speaker 1: it said to feast upon gold and silver veins. So
Speaker 1: if you glimpse its light at night and you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're kind of a greedy individual. You might want to
Speaker 1: follow it and find that rich mining deposit. But Alecanto,
Speaker 1: uh is is hip to your your scheme here, and
Speaker 1: we'll probably lure you over the edge of a cliff instead. Oh,
Speaker 1: this fits with the same stuff you would encounter in
Speaker 1: Europe about sometimes the will of the wisp being the
Speaker 1: guardian of a treasure. Yeah, not just luring you off
Speaker 1: the path, but like standing guard over where the gold
Speaker 1: is hidden exactly. And I and I wondered to what
Speaker 1: extent it's just a continuation of European beliefs in the
Speaker 1: New World there, I imagine that's very much the case.
Speaker 1: But there are also plenty of ghost lights in in
Speaker 1: Asian folklore. In Bengal traditions you have Layah, which is
Speaker 1: the name given to unexplained strange um marshal wood lights there. Okay,
Speaker 1: And then of course, uh, outside of folk folklores and
Speaker 1: folk tales, we have versions and are more recent media
Speaker 1: as well. Well. I mean I would call dungeons and
Speaker 1: dragons perfectly acceptable folklore. Yes, And you know, for a
Speaker 1: lot of people, this may be one's first encounter with
Speaker 1: with willow the whisp or willow whisps, as they've called there. Uh,
Speaker 1: in case your Dungeon and Dragons fan or have any
Speaker 1: a familiarity there, their alignment is chaotic evil, so they
Speaker 1: are bad news. They're not just a little mischievous. They
Speaker 1: are awful. If they were just a little mischievous, what
Speaker 1: would they be chaotic neutral? Yeah, I think they would
Speaker 1: be more I would I would say more chaotic neutral
Speaker 1: with that were the case. But they are just completely
Speaker 1: like evil, mischievous, mischievous. Uh. They have a challenge rating
Speaker 1: of two, so they're not too bad. But get this,
Speaker 1: they have a dexterity stat of twenty eight. Uh. That's
Speaker 1: like like generally eighteen is an exceedingly high level for
Speaker 1: a normal humanoid. So they have crazy dexterity because them
Speaker 1: a plus nine and all dexterity sets and according to
Speaker 1: the most recent Monster manual, uh their quote, the souls
Speaker 1: of evil beings that perished in anguish orm misery as
Speaker 1: they wanted and forsaken lands permeated with magical powers and
Speaker 1: they use the usual lure people to their doom act
Speaker 1: in the game. Plus, they can shock victims for two
Speaker 1: D eight damage. They can drain life and sometimes in
Speaker 1: the Dungeons and Dragons, the world they align themselves with
Speaker 1: hags or black dragons or evil occultists. Uh, in order
Speaker 1: to quote drink the agony of slaughter. So so they're
Speaker 1: pretty cool. I kind of want to bust one out
Speaker 1: in uh in my game. Now, well, that's great, and
Speaker 1: that does mirror some of the folkloric edition, like the
Speaker 1: idea that they might be an unrighteous spirit that's left
Speaker 1: wandering the world. So they might be, you know, a
Speaker 1: person who's just rendered spiritually unclean, maybe by having died
Speaker 1: unbaptized in Christian tradition or something. Or or maybe there
Speaker 1: are you know, a sinful person who can't get into
Speaker 1: heaven or hell, like we talked to h like we
Speaker 1: talked about with Will the Smith and the titular will
Speaker 1: and the will of the wisp. But the will of
Speaker 1: the Whisp also shows up in in plenty of later literature.
Speaker 1: You know, in some classic English poetry, you'll get references
Speaker 1: to the will of the Wisp, like in the Rhyme
Speaker 1: of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. Uh, there is there
Speaker 1: is a scene that describes ghost lights out on the
Speaker 1: sea that says about about in real and route the
Speaker 1: death fires danced at night the water like a witch's
Speaker 1: oils burnt green and blue and white. Yeah, I like that. There.
Speaker 1: There's Will the Wisp in Paradise Lost too, and John
Speaker 1: Milton's Paradise Lost. There is the scene where the snake
Speaker 1: in the garden of eden Is is attempting to tempt Eve.
Speaker 1: Attempting to tempt is trying to get Eve to come
Speaker 1: and eat of the fruit, you know, the forbidden fruit.
Speaker 1: And it compares the snake's temptation of Eve to a
Speaker 1: will of the Wisp in the sense that both would
Speaker 1: be leading someone astray. This is in book nine, starting
Speaker 1: around line and so it compares the snake too, as
Speaker 1: when a wandering fire compact of unctuous vapor with the
Speaker 1: night condenses and the cold environs round kindled through agitation
Speaker 1: to a flame, which oft they say, some evil spirit attends,
Speaker 1: hovering and blazing with delusive light, misleads the amazed night
Speaker 1: wanderer from his way to bogs and myers and off
Speaker 1: through pond or pool. They're swallowed up and lost from
Speaker 1: sucker far. Now this is this is interesting and I
Speaker 1: think potentially telling for later on in that um Milton
Speaker 1: is describing a supernatural entity by comparing it to willow
Speaker 1: the whisp. Yeah, so keep that in mind if talking
Speaker 1: about will of the whisp as a natural phenomenon, right,
Speaker 1: I mean he's describing a thing from a magical story
Speaker 1: in terms of the will of the whisp, meaning that
Speaker 1: the will of the wisp must have been a thing
Speaker 1: that people were so intimately familiar with it could be
Speaker 1: used as a reference point. Yes, Yeah, And I would
Speaker 1: think for modern people, you'd you'd be more likely to
Speaker 1: go the other way, like you'd compare the will of
Speaker 1: the Whisp to something in the Bible that people might
Speaker 1: be more familiar with. But he goes the other way around, Yeah,
Speaker 1: as if to say, this is the thing that the
Speaker 1: average reader will have a familiarity with and then can
Speaker 1: therefore use as a reference point for this mythic thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But of course it's not just the stuff of fairy
Speaker 1: tales and an ancient literature and fiction imagical storytelling. There
Speaker 1: are many like sober secular accounts of the ignis fatuous
Speaker 1: or the will of the Whisp throughout world literature, including
Speaker 1: scientific literature. For example, Isaac Newton mentions the world whisp
Speaker 1: as if it were a commonplace occurrence in his third
Speaker 1: book of optics. He says, the ignis fatuous is a
Speaker 1: vapor shining without heat, and is there not the same
Speaker 1: difference between this vapor and flame as between rotten wood
Speaker 1: shining without heat and burning coals of fire? Which is
Speaker 1: interesting because their newton is attempting to distinguish actual physical
Speaker 1: characteristics of the ignis fatuous, like it's not like flame
Speaker 1: because it lacks heat. So yeah, you'd get pretty often
Speaker 1: people making sort of secular material physical observations of these things,
Speaker 1: as if it's just a phenomenon that they were trying
Speaker 1: to catalog and understand. So very often you'd hear about
Speaker 1: this this sort of hovering blue flame near the ground.
Speaker 1: But some accounts differ that there are other types of
Speaker 1: appearances that people also categorized as well. The whisp one
Speaker 1: comes from a first stand account by the English folklorist
Speaker 1: Jabez Allies. I wonder if I'm saying that name right,
Speaker 1: But he had a treatise called Ignis Fatuous or Will
Speaker 1: of the Wisp and the Fairies from eighteen forty six,
Speaker 1: and I'm just going to read a piece of this.
Speaker 1: In this story, he gives about how he witnessed the
Speaker 1: will of the wisp one night, he says, sometimes it
Speaker 1: was only like a flash in the pan on the ground.
Speaker 1: At other times it rose up several feet and fell
Speaker 1: to the earth and became extinguished. And many times it
Speaker 1: proceeded horizontally from fifty to one yards in an undulating
Speaker 1: motion like the flight of the green woodpecker, and about
Speaker 1: his rapid and once or twice it proceeded with considerable
Speaker 1: rapidity in a straight line upon or close to the ground.
Speaker 1: The light of this ignis fatuous, or rather of these
Speaker 1: ignis fatui or fatui, was very clear and strong, much
Speaker 1: bluer than that of a candle, and very like that
Speaker 1: of an electric spark. And some of them looked larger
Speaker 1: and as bright as the star Syria. Of course, they
Speaker 1: look dim when seen in ground fogs, but there was
Speaker 1: not any fog on the night in question. There was, however,
Speaker 1: a muddy closeness of the atmosphere, and at the same
Speaker 1: time a considerable breeze from the southwest. These will of
Speaker 1: the whisps, which shot horizontally invariably proceeded before the wind
Speaker 1: towards the northeast. That's interesting because it's a very scientifically
Speaker 1: minded uh um and practical response to viewing this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's describing it in terms of electricity, uh, describing the
Speaker 1: color and sort of the position and the motion and
Speaker 1: speed of motion, and then explaining that it follows the
Speaker 1: pattern of the wind. Yeah. And I but I do
Speaker 1: love the fact that he's he's really standing back and
Speaker 1: taking a serious, calm approach to it because one of
Speaker 1: the accounts that I was looking at an earlier account
Speaker 1: from traveling German lawyer Hintsner Paul Hertzner, who wrote about
Speaker 1: his travels in England, and he wrote the following about
Speaker 1: a journey from Canterbury to Dover. He said, quote, there
Speaker 1: were a great many jack o lanterns, so that we
Speaker 1: were quite seized with horror and amazement. Um. And of
Speaker 1: course if you're seized with horror and amazement, you get
Speaker 1: into that whole realm of like what am I perceiving?
Speaker 1: How is my mind perceiving it? And then how am
Speaker 1: I recalling that memory and altering it? I mean, the
Speaker 1: you know, part and partial to any paranormal experience where
Speaker 1: the experience is valid, but they're varying mental factors that
Speaker 1: are going to play into your interpretation of the event,
Speaker 1: particularly if Englishmen have been telling you tales of the
Speaker 1: strange lights in the in the in the swamp lands
Speaker 1: and what they represent. Yeah, And of course everybody's got
Speaker 1: an interpretive framework that they bring to seeing things like this,
Speaker 1: Like I'm sure that our German traveler friend brought a
Speaker 1: magical interpretive lens to it, saying there's a spirit out here.
Speaker 1: It wishes us harm. It might be that dungeons and dragons,
Speaker 1: chaotic evil spirit. I need to stay away. Uh. Jabez
Speaker 1: Allies brought a more secular approach to it, he said
Speaker 1: at the end of his recollection of the different events
Speaker 1: that he witnessed, he says, from all the circumstances, stated,
Speaker 1: it appears probable that these meteors rise in exhalations of
Speaker 1: electric and perhaps other matter out of the earth, particularly
Speaker 1: in or near the winter season, and that they generally
Speaker 1: occur a day or two after a considerable rain and
Speaker 1: on change from a cold to a warmer atmosphere. Now,
Speaker 1: whether all that is true, that we don't know. It
Speaker 1: might not be the case that you're more likely to
Speaker 1: see it under those circumstances, but it's interesting that he's
Speaker 1: trying to narrow down the physical causes that that would
Speaker 1: create this and he of course tries to blame it
Speaker 1: on electricity, which would make sense if you're writing in
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties or eighteen forties, when you know, electricity
Speaker 1: is a very interesting thing. Yeah, and it's certainly that
Speaker 1: the difference between magic and electricity there's a lot of
Speaker 1: cross over and understanding of it. Electricity is very much
Speaker 1: this uh, this this lofty uh partially understood concept. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there was another thing that I looked at.
Speaker 1: There was an article on Igny's fatuous from the Scientific
Speaker 1: Monthly in nineteen nineteen, and it just made some observations.
Speaker 1: For example, the flames of the ignis fatuous used to
Speaker 1: appear very consistently in some locations, So there are places
Speaker 1: where you could just expect to see them, and if
Speaker 1: you went there, you you you would probably see them,
Speaker 1: and that they gave off neither heat nor odor, and
Speaker 1: that they don't set fire to the things around them.
Speaker 1: Of course, granted you're talking about marsh lands and swap
Speaker 1: lands in many situations here, so yeah, but I mean
Speaker 1: there should be lots of dead grass and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would seem like if you're dealing with
Speaker 1: a hot flame, you would expect it to set fire
Speaker 1: to something. So that's going to throw a wrench in
Speaker 1: a lot of the explanations that people have given for this.
Speaker 1: So the main point of of giving all these stories
Speaker 1: about what people saw is that it's not just made up.
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly, a lot of the explanation of what
Speaker 1: causes the will of the whisp is magical thinking and
Speaker 1: and fairy fairy stories and things like that. But the
Speaker 1: phenomenon itself, I think we can be pretty confident is real.
Speaker 1: It was actually referring to a thing people witnessed firsthand,
Speaker 1: because why would there be so many stories from so
Speaker 1: many different places, especially varied commentators too. It's not just
Speaker 1: the religious or the folklore like it's also hot, you know,
Speaker 1: scientifically minded individuals who are just talking about the lights
Speaker 1: in the woods that simply occur, and that everyone says,
Speaker 1: if everybody knows what you're talking about. And of course
Speaker 1: we'll get into this later, but one of the disconnects
Speaker 1: is that we don't see lights in the woods and
Speaker 1: strange lights in the marsh all the time like we
Speaker 1: apparently used to. So it's harder for us a to
Speaker 1: put ourselves in that world, in that mindset and alsoys,
Speaker 1: we'll discuss harder to go out and try and study
Speaker 1: something that doesn't seem to be occurring anymore, at least
Speaker 1: occurring with the same frequency. All Right, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come
Speaker 1: back we will look at some of the possible scientific
Speaker 1: explanations of this phenomenal Alright, we're back discussing Willow the
Speaker 1: whist jack o lantern, will the smith, Uh, hinky punk,
Speaker 1: whatever you wanna call that strange glow in the marsh lands,
Speaker 1: in the woods, in the squamp. Pinky punk is a
Speaker 1: really great personal insult that I've never heard used before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I might have to adopt it when I had my
Speaker 1: son in the car, because you normally always call people
Speaker 1: uh double doors or or use the word duck. Uh
Speaker 1: here there, But that's pretty good. But maybe kinky punk.
Speaker 1: We should make a list of the great insults that
Speaker 1: we come up with from our research on these podcasts.
Speaker 1: Because when I was doing an episode a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, forward thinking, we came across the term aggregated
Speaker 1: diamond nano rods and a material science context. But man,
Speaker 1: what a great thing to call a person a nano rod.
Speaker 1: I've I've kept it with me ever since, and now
Speaker 1: Hinky Punk goes on the list as well. Look at
Speaker 1: that person driving like a complete hinky punk nano rod. Okay,
Speaker 1: but now we need to bring it back to talk
Speaker 1: about what on earth could be the actual scientific material
Speaker 1: cause of all these phenomenon that people have called will
Speaker 1: of the wisp. And there are a couple of things
Speaker 1: that make this part of the discussion difficult. One of
Speaker 1: the problems is that, unfortunately, most research into will of
Speaker 1: the Whisp has been coming up with physical explanations that
Speaker 1: try to match historical descriptions, because the will of the
Speaker 1: Whisp has never, to my knowledge, been captured, sampled, measured,
Speaker 1: really or even satisfactorily recorded on film in any useful way.
Speaker 1: I think there's some claims that some people sort of
Speaker 1: got a photograph of one, but not in any way
Speaker 1: that's you full for, like a spectral analysis or anything
Speaker 1: like that. So we've been just trying to figure out
Speaker 1: ways to match people's descriptions of what they saw. And
Speaker 1: most of these description descriptions come from more than a
Speaker 1: hundred years ago, So already you're having a problem here
Speaker 1: because there's nothing direct you can compare your examples too.
Speaker 1: You just have to experiment and say, well, does this
Speaker 1: look like what people were talking about back then? Uh.
Speaker 1: Then there's another problem in scientific explanations of the will
Speaker 1: of the whisp, which is that it's possible that similar
Speaker 1: but different phenomena have sometimes been grouped together under the
Speaker 1: category of will of the whisp. So there could be
Speaker 1: lots of different types of ghost lights and various luminescent
Speaker 1: events that occurred in the marshes or in the wilderness
Speaker 1: in the past, and that people assumed, well, they're pretty similar,
Speaker 1: they're they're all the same thing, and that they weren't
Speaker 1: actually all the same thing. Yeah. I mean, especially if
Speaker 1: the phenomenon that's occurring as a product of the environment,
Speaker 1: it seems entirely likely you would have a different phenomenon occurring,
Speaker 1: say in the mountains of Chile, as opposed to the
Speaker 1: swamp lands um you know of of Italy. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And another aspect, and this is my read on it too,
Speaker 1: is that so many of these explanations are taking meticulous
Speaker 1: care with chemical or physical properties that maybe in play,
Speaker 1: without taking into account, of course, the mental aspects of it,
Speaker 1: the psychological aspects. And again some of the problems with
Speaker 1: memory and perception that I mentioned earlier. So you're which
Speaker 1: is part of it. You know, you're you're just looking
Speaker 1: at a possible physical chemical, uh reaction that's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's not like like we're saying, it's not a photograph, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's it's not objectively recorded. Even by people
Speaker 1: who are trying to bring a scientific or skeptical mindset
Speaker 1: to these things, they're they're still sort of interpreting with
Speaker 1: a cultural script like you're saying, or a framework that
Speaker 1: they're working from. They know this is a phenomenon people
Speaker 1: have observed before. It usually is described to look like X.
Speaker 1: So they're already bringing that to the table when they're
Speaker 1: seeing it. All right, Well, let's let's roll through some
Speaker 1: of them. Let's start with electricity. We mentioned electricity earlier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was in in Jabez Allies account. He suggested quote
Speaker 1: these meteors rise in exhalations electric h of electric matter
Speaker 1: out of the earth. And some people have tried to
Speaker 1: offer the hypothesis of like ball lightning or other aberrant
Speaker 1: electrical phenomena to explain what's going on when you see
Speaker 1: lights in the marsh Alessandro Volta, according to one source,
Speaker 1: apparently thought that the Igney's fatuous could be explained by
Speaker 1: way of interaction between electrical currents and what he called
Speaker 1: inflammable air, which I think is referring to methane, which
Speaker 1: we will definitely get to in a minute here. But
Speaker 1: this I think has been rejected by modern people who
Speaker 1: have looked into the phenomenon. Alan A. Mills, who wrote
Speaker 1: a couple of papers on this on the subject of
Speaker 1: Will of the Whisp, didn't think that the electrical explanations
Speaker 1: really fit what people were describing when they saw will
Speaker 1: of the Wisp and saw and explained what they saw.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't sound like the same kind of thing
Speaker 1: right now. As far as the next idea, bioluminescence goes,
Speaker 1: there's some interesting ideas here, some more plausible than others. Right. So, bioluminescence,
Speaker 1: of course, is the natural illumination of animals or of
Speaker 1: of life forms, and not necessarily just animals. It could
Speaker 1: be microbial life. So fireflies or bioluminescence. They can light
Speaker 1: up in the dark, and I can definitely see that.
Speaker 1: There may have been some cases in the past where
Speaker 1: people saw fireflies and then they had a pre existing
Speaker 1: cultural script of Igny's fatuous and they say I saw it,
Speaker 1: I saw the light in the marsh when they were
Speaker 1: really seeing fireflies. That's possible, but it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: firefly as can explain all of these instances because they
Speaker 1: don't really closely enough match what people are usually describing. Um,
Speaker 1: And it just seems like that could maybe explain some instances,
Speaker 1: but probably not most. Yeah. Also, if you're used to
Speaker 1: seeing the fireflies, you know, it seems like they would
Speaker 1: maybe make more sense if you were a traveler to
Speaker 1: an area where, oh, I've never seen a firefly before,
Speaker 1: and then there are these random pinpoints of light in
Speaker 1: the wilderness or potentially in the Asian model, because in
Speaker 1: in parts of the Asia you see fireflies, particularly entail end.
Speaker 1: I believe that that light up in Unison in a
Speaker 1: way that we don't see so much in the United States. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: there's also fungus, right, Yes, there are in particular type
Speaker 1: of fungus that keeps up popping up in these uh
Speaker 1: these theories is our malaria. This is a parasitic kind
Speaker 1: of fun guy that's also known as honey fungus. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's a cuter name. It sounds delicious, a little tangy
Speaker 1: and sweet. Um, So this could be responsible for some
Speaker 1: of these apparitions. Some species of our malaria are bioluminescent,
Speaker 1: and you know, growing in just the right place and
Speaker 1: perceived in just the right atmosphere could be seen as
Speaker 1: a will of the whist. Now. One of the people
Speaker 1: writing on this subject that we read, Jan's Elassawitz, commented
Speaker 1: that sometimes, though probably not in most cases, but in
Speaker 1: some rare occasions, people might have even been talking about owls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because on one hand, you know owl nocturnal flyer, very silent,
Speaker 1: very quiet, kind of ghostly. Just to perceive an owl
Speaker 1: even in the daytime, it's it's it's something slightly supernatural
Speaker 1: about it. So you can especially if the moonlight is
Speaker 1: catching gray or white plumage just right, or if the
Speaker 1: owl has trapped in the feathers in its wings, some
Speaker 1: rotting wood or bioluminescent fungus, like if it's been rolling
Speaker 1: in the fungus and the fungus glows and then the
Speaker 1: owl swoops around in the dark. This may pow possibly
Speaker 1: explain some instances of what people are seeing, but it
Speaker 1: seems similar to other things we've been talking about so far,
Speaker 1: the fireflies and things like that. It might explain some
Speaker 1: cases that people map onto the existing cultural script of
Speaker 1: the Igney's fatuous, but it just doesn't sound very much
Speaker 1: like what people are usually describing. Yeah, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like a good excuse, universal excuse for what's going on,
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't seem really all that common. Now.
Speaker 1: Another version of this is, of course, that they could
Speaker 1: just you could just be perceiving a reflected light from
Speaker 1: another source. Yeah. One great example of this is I
Speaker 1: was recently in in BigBen National Park in Texas, and
Speaker 1: near that we went through the town of Marfa, Texas,
Speaker 1: which is famous for the Marfa ghost lights. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of these? Are these railroad related or they
Speaker 1: just are they? Not? That I know is there are
Speaker 1: a lot of traditions, I think, even around my own
Speaker 1: hometown in Tennessee, tales of ghostly lights out on the
Speaker 1: railroad tracks that are kind of a will of the
Speaker 1: whis type of scenario, but I think are generally related
Speaker 1: to uh, reflected lights from other sources. Yeah, well, so
Speaker 1: the Marfa ghost lights are probably not the same phenomenon
Speaker 1: as well. The whist because it's not marshy area, it's
Speaker 1: you know, desert, and they they seem to be a
Speaker 1: different kind of thing. They're not really what people are
Speaker 1: describing there either, but they are a type of ghost
Speaker 1: light that from what I've read, a common skeptical response
Speaker 1: to this is people are just seeing reflected car headlights
Speaker 1: from like their cars driving far out in the desert
Speaker 1: and they get reflected by the atmosphere in a certain
Speaker 1: way or somehow end up reflecting their light to people
Speaker 1: near the town of Marfa, and they're like, Wow, that's
Speaker 1: an amazing light I just saw in the desert. What
Speaker 1: could what could explain it? Or it's campfires? You know.
Speaker 1: I know we're both familiar with the Chattanooga, Tennessee area.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I grew up there. Yeah, well I've I've
Speaker 1: definitely driven through Chattanooga on like really dark nights before
Speaker 1: and I'll see of what essentially car lights that are
Speaker 1: driving up in the the hills and the mountains. It's dark.
Speaker 1: It's so dark that for a split second I see
Speaker 1: there's some sort of strange light. It must be a
Speaker 1: UFO or something. And then I realized, oh wait, that's
Speaker 1: that's a there's a mountain right there, how disappointed just
Speaker 1: the mountain people. Yeah, so in our age that is
Speaker 1: just so just full of ubiquitous artificial lighting, screwing up
Speaker 1: our perception of nighttime. Uh, there's plenty of room for
Speaker 1: a will of the whisps to emerge that way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So electrical phenomenon, bioluminescence or reflected lights. Like we said,
Speaker 1: all of these may account for some small subset of
Speaker 1: of these historical sightings, but they don't really seem to
Speaker 1: fit the bill in terms of what people usually describe
Speaker 1: when they talk about the ignese fatuous. So what's something
Speaker 1: that's closer to the traditional description and really seems to match.
Speaker 1: And here we get to the main event, which is
Speaker 1: marsh gas. Uh, good old, good old marsh gas, good
Speaker 1: old swamp gas. Unfortunately, as we'll see, this is not
Speaker 1: with out problems of its own. But finally we're getting
Speaker 1: into the territory that that could really be a viable explanation.
Speaker 1: So Robert, Yes, what happens when a body of a
Speaker 1: dead animal or a bunch of dead plant matter lies
Speaker 1: down to its final repose in a marsh or swamp? Oh,
Speaker 1: that's that's gonna break down, and it may seek to
Speaker 1: the breakdown of organic matter that is just part of
Speaker 1: the swamp marshland ecosystem, right, And so the decomposition of
Speaker 1: dead organic matter often happens underwater or under damp soil
Speaker 1: in these types of environments, in the swamp, in the marsh,
Speaker 1: in the bog and what we would call an anaerobic environment.
Speaker 1: So that's without access to air. Now, things can decompose
Speaker 1: with access to air. To you lay something on the
Speaker 1: ground in the forest, it'll have a chance for all
Speaker 1: this air to get at it. And that's a different
Speaker 1: kind of decomposition than anaerobic decomposition that happens without air.
Speaker 1: Decomposition that happens without air tends to produce gaseous byproducts,
Speaker 1: including methane and carbon dioxide. Methane is flammable, and if
Speaker 1: you get any of your home power from natural gas,
Speaker 1: this is a somewhat similar mixture. It's composed primarily of methane.
Speaker 1: That's what's burning with that nice blue flame. So many
Speaker 1: sources treat the matter of the scientifically known you know,
Speaker 1: skeptical latitude cause of will of the whisp as pretty
Speaker 1: much completely settled. It's spontaneous combustion of methane in marsh gas.
Speaker 1: Just one example is one we looked up together the
Speaker 1: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. The entry on ignis fatuous.
Speaker 1: It says, quote the will of the Whisp or Friar's
Speaker 1: lantern a flame like phosphorescence flitting over marshy ground due
Speaker 1: to the spontaneous combustion of gases from decaying vegetable matter,
Speaker 1: and deluding people who attempt to follow it. Hence any
Speaker 1: delusive aim or object or some utopian ski team that
Speaker 1: is utterly impracticable. It's kind of a kind of a
Speaker 1: political stance from Brewers there. But anyway, but it sounds possible, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But it also the way it's the way it presents
Speaker 1: it is this is not just one hypothesis that has
Speaker 1: been offered, but it acts as if this is a
Speaker 1: settled matter. Yeah, it's the spontaneous combustion of marsh gas.
Speaker 1: Another example would be one scientific paper I found that
Speaker 1: said the following quote. The once widespread sightings of will
Speaker 1: of the Wisp, also known as ignice fatuous on northern
Speaker 1: European peat lands were probably the result of methane abiliations
Speaker 1: ignited by lanterns or other ignition sources formerly used for
Speaker 1: nighttime illumination. So again they treat it as pretty much settled.
Speaker 1: It's marsh gas being set on fire, and that's what
Speaker 1: the will of the whisp is. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: That seems kind of weird to me. I mean, wouldn't
Speaker 1: people have noticed it had to be set on fire
Speaker 1: with sparks or lanterns? Yeah, you think the stories would
Speaker 1: revolve more around some individual wandering out with it with
Speaker 1: his or her lantern and in poof a willow wits,
Speaker 1: you know, suddenly pops into being right next to you,
Speaker 1: as opposed to seeing one in the distance right. And
Speaker 1: so the story I think is not nearly as settled
Speaker 1: as many of these older sources would seem to indicate
Speaker 1: because of this big question, what is the source of ignition?
Speaker 1: Is it really fair to assume that the people who
Speaker 1: saw these things were constantly inadvertently setting fire to methane
Speaker 1: bubbles around them without realizing they were doing so. Maybe again,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like some of the other things, maybe
Speaker 1: in some weird cases, but it kind of seems like
Speaker 1: a stretch to say this is the primary phenomenon being described.
Speaker 1: So here we get to some chemistry where the answer
Speaker 1: could possibly lie, because what you're starting to look for
Speaker 1: is what could be a chemical spark in the natural
Speaker 1: environment that could naturally ignite methane gases escaping from a
Speaker 1: marsh a marsh land. Yeah, but the only thing that
Speaker 1: comes to mind off hand opposed front. Let's see, you
Speaker 1: have lightning strikes. Yeah, you have spontaneous combustion, which is
Speaker 1: a possibility with anaerobic situations such as say a hay bale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but like if the heat builds up in it, it
Speaker 1: gets really hot. Yeah. Aside from that, the only thing
Speaker 1: that comes to mind is like a wolf that that
Speaker 1: that that somebody's tied fire to its tail or if
Speaker 1: you know, something of that matter. But yeah, otherwise, maybe
Speaker 1: put some flints to its teeth so every time it chomps,
Speaker 1: it strikes sparks a rock falling off a cliff and
Speaker 1: just happening to somehow spark on the way down. A
Speaker 1: guy traveling from the future and the time machine with
Speaker 1: a flamethrower, yes, or just a cigarette. He's just he's
Speaker 1: just traveling through time, stops for a smoke in a
Speaker 1: medieval bog and then continues. But then oh, the butterfly effect.
Speaker 1: Now the future we all have frog frog tongues. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in other words, it sounds a little sketchy, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we need we need a better ignition system
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah. And so the ignition system that has
Speaker 1: long been for posed by people trying to explain the
Speaker 1: will of the whisp has been phosphorus compounds. So instead
Speaker 1: of being lit up by a lantern, marsh gas leaking
Speaker 1: from the ground could be ignited in the presence of
Speaker 1: oxygen if there were phosphorus compounds in play, for example,
Speaker 1: phosphene or pH three. You could also call that hydrogen
Speaker 1: phosphied or die phosphine P two H four. So phosphine
Speaker 1: is a highly toxic gas. In fact, I saw this
Speaker 1: mentioned online and I went back and revisited it. You know,
Speaker 1: if you go back to the beginning of Breaking Bad,
Speaker 1: right right at the start, there's a scene where Walter
Speaker 1: White uses a chemical reaction producing phosphine gas to poison
Speaker 1: a couple of gangsters, do you okay, now, yeah, now
Speaker 1: that you mentioned it, I do. Though. I've actually read
Speaker 1: chemists looking at that and saying the chemistry of that
Speaker 1: scenes a little bit wrong. But but it is true
Speaker 1: that phosphine is highly toxic. Well, it was this some
Speaker 1: more theme though that we're saying here. People sort of
Speaker 1: shuffle the explanations off to the realm of chemistry, and
Speaker 1: for most people that's sufficient. Okay, it's a matter of chemistry.
Speaker 1: I don't really understand all the ins and outs of chemistry,
Speaker 1: but it seems like a realm where everything is possible.
Speaker 1: Everything in the world hinges on chemistry. So well enough,
Speaker 1: but then when a chemist start breaking it apart, these
Speaker 1: problems emerging. Yeah, and so phosphine is extremely, extremely flammable.
Speaker 1: It can totally catch on fire at a moment's notice.
Speaker 1: And then this other compound, the diphosphine P to H
Speaker 1: four is a liquid that will ignite, just spontaneously combust
Speaker 1: when it's exposed to the air. So you get this
Speaker 1: stuff out of its anaerobic environment up to the surface
Speaker 1: where air comes into contact with it, and it just
Speaker 1: erupts with fire and this ignites the phosphine or the
Speaker 1: methane itself. Phosphine igniting ignites the methane and then boom,
Speaker 1: you've got fire in the gas escaping from the marsh.
Speaker 1: It's been utilized in weapons before. Um kind of hillacious
Speaker 1: weapons that we tend to shot away from. Oh really,
Speaker 1: I didn't know, because it burns in the air. That's gross.
Speaker 1: Oh I guess like phosphorus based incendiary weapons. That's horrible.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the idea is that the dead, decaying organic
Speaker 1: matter down under the marsh releases these gases. It releases phosphine, diphosphine, methane,
Speaker 1: and the reaction with the air causes ignition. The methane
Speaker 1: catches on fire. Is this plausible, Well, I think the
Speaker 1: answer is sort of, but maybe not entirely so. It's
Speaker 1: it is apparently true that some microbial life forms can
Speaker 1: produce these types of phosphorus compounds through the process of decomposition.
Speaker 1: Going to work on on bones and other organic materials
Speaker 1: that might be buried down in the swamp, they can
Speaker 1: release the phosphorus compounds that we've talked about. But other
Speaker 1: sources have contested the idea of straight up combustion of
Speaker 1: methane and other gas is including the phosphine match or
Speaker 1: the phosphorus based ignition systems, And there are a few
Speaker 1: things to consider. One of them is that methane, if
Speaker 1: ignited by fire, will burn with a what one of
Speaker 1: the people we read described as a brief, hot, bright flame,
Speaker 1: which really goes opposite to how people usually describe the
Speaker 1: will of the Whisp, But that's more often described as
Speaker 1: having a cool blue luminessence that does not seem to
Speaker 1: produce any heat or much heat at least depending on
Speaker 1: the source. Yeah, if the situation is not that Will
Speaker 1: the Smith lit a fart in the night, is that
Speaker 1: Will the Smith has some sort of ghostly illumination that
Speaker 1: is seems to be pretty constant though though moving. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing is that people have found that the ignition
Speaker 1: of phosphine gas mixed with methane results in acrid smoke.
Speaker 1: This is not a common feature of Will of the
Speaker 1: Whisp descriptions, right, Yeah, because that would be a whole
Speaker 1: other thing, right. You can imagine the tails would revolve around, Oh,
Speaker 1: there was a camp fire the woods of Misty, and
Speaker 1: there's clearly fairies or elves that hadn't know It's there's
Speaker 1: no no mention of the smoke. Yeah. Um. Other questions
Speaker 1: would be that why is the willow Wisp often reported
Speaker 1: to run away when you approach it, or then follow
Speaker 1: you when you don't. The best explanations that I ran
Speaker 1: across had to do with just complex fluid dynamics in
Speaker 1: the situation, disturbing the mixture of gases in the air
Speaker 1: as you approach, and you just kind of make it
Speaker 1: waffed away by their movements, like trying to catch up
Speaker 1: a stray bit of cat hair floating in the in
Speaker 1: the room. Yeah, you never can can Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that's a perhaps good explanation. But then there's another
Speaker 1: big one that I think is kind of important. If
Speaker 1: this is ordinary hot combustion, just like hot flames, like
Speaker 1: the fire we normally know, why doesn't the flame spread?
Speaker 1: Like why doesn't it catch fire to surrounding dead grass
Speaker 1: and vegetation. Well, my answer response to that would be,
Speaker 1: in many cases, this is a bog or a marsh land.
Speaker 1: And when's the last time you heard about a bog
Speaker 1: burning down? Right? I mean it's I think it's still
Speaker 1: possible for for the dead plant matter that's above you know,
Speaker 1: whatever kind of damp soil or is there what's poking
Speaker 1: out above the ground that seems like that could catch fire.
Speaker 1: But potentially yeah, I mean yeah, but just the damp
Speaker 1: environment tends to make me give less credence to that.
Speaker 1: But but I agree. It seems like there would still
Speaker 1: be the potential for something to catch on fire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there's actually a geologist named Alan A. Mills who
Speaker 1: did who wrote a couple of papers on the subject
Speaker 1: of the ignis fatuous or the will of the wisp,
Speaker 1: and explained that he based on some analysis he did
Speaker 1: and some experiments he conducted, he didn't think that the
Speaker 1: marsh gas explanation cut it. It just didn't really work.
Speaker 1: He claimed that he tried it. He didn't experiment with
Speaker 1: putting a bunch of stuff into a container of damp
Speaker 1: garden soil, peat and rotten compost, and he tried to
Speaker 1: incubate it in the dark. He did get methane marsh
Speaker 1: gas out of it, but it did not spontaneously and bust.
Speaker 1: And then he also he tried adding phosphine phosphine generating
Speaker 1: compounds and that apparently this produced a great stink, but
Speaker 1: it did not It did not create the spontaneous luminescence.
Speaker 1: So he could produce march gas, but he couldn't find
Speaker 1: a natural way to get it ignited like that. And
Speaker 1: whatever the cause of the ignition, it seems like the
Speaker 1: traditional sightings of the ignis fatuous really must not have
Speaker 1: featured hot flames. Now you're probably wondering, Okay, what's the
Speaker 1: opposite of hot flames? What would the dalb with cold points?
Speaker 1: But cold flames? Um? Cold flames are produced by ether
Speaker 1: or carbon disulfide. When he did just below the ignition
Speaker 1: point yea, So they're not exactly cold, but they're not
Speaker 1: as hot as flames usually are. So you heat certain
Speaker 1: substances up to the point where they're almost about to
Speaker 1: catch on fire, but they don't, and they produced this, uh,
Speaker 1: this sort of halo. Yeah, I can described as that
Speaker 1: luminescent recombustion halo um. Again, right, when the various compounds
Speaker 1: are heated, it just below the ignition points. So and
Speaker 1: again this perhaps this would be due to a natural
Speaker 1: um if this would be a natural product of the
Speaker 1: decay in the swamp. Yeah, so this is a possibility
Speaker 1: that a few people have explored in some experiments. And
Speaker 1: then there is also a parallel possibility. In fact, cold
Speaker 1: flames might even be an example of this. But the
Speaker 1: broader concept is chemo luminescence, which would mean glowing or
Speaker 1: light created by a chemical reaction. So it's not exactly fire,
Speaker 1: but it is chemicals reacting in a way that produces light.
Speaker 1: For example, the oxidation of those phosphorus compounds, we were
Speaker 1: talking about creating a chemo luminescent glow. Okay, but this
Speaker 1: seems likely too. It's kind of the bioluminescent model, except
Speaker 1: without the without the direct involvement with an organism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so Alan A. Mills. This one researcher described how
Speaker 1: he put together an experiment where he created a glow
Speaker 1: just by exposing different gases to each other. So he
Speaker 1: says that he found experimentally quote that the entrainment of
Speaker 1: crude phosphine into natural gas at low concentrations insufficient to
Speaker 1: cause ignition did result in a cool, glowing cloud visible
Speaker 1: in the dark. However, its color was green, like the
Speaker 1: glow associated with aerial oxidation of yellow phosphorus, rather than blue.
Speaker 1: So he's saying that just by mixing together the phosphorus
Speaker 1: compounds and the natural gas in the dark in the
Speaker 1: right concentrations, he got it to glow, even though it
Speaker 1: didn't catch fire. Okay, but it does. It does seem
Speaker 1: to lend cred into the possibility that a different type
Speaker 1: of chemical reaction could be taking place. We just maybe
Speaker 1: don't know all the ingredients that they're involved. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then there was also another experiment I read about
Speaker 1: that was done by some Italian researcher is more recently,
Speaker 1: I think it was just seven or eight years ago.
Speaker 1: So they just had a container of phosphine gas phosphine
Speaker 1: vapor that they fed with a stream of air and nitrogen.
Speaker 1: And when they did that just right a like they described,
Speaker 1: a faint, pale greenish light could be seen in the dark.
Speaker 1: And I think, as far as most scientists who have
Speaker 1: looked into this are concerned, to the chemo lumin essence
Speaker 1: is probably the most viable answer to the question today,
Speaker 1: though it still doesn't seem to fit perfectly. Though maybe
Speaker 1: we should just never expect anything to fit perfectly, yeah,
Speaker 1: especially given the the uncertain shape that has been presented
Speaker 1: by these these varying historical accounts. Right, yeah, because ultimately
Speaker 1: we're being held back here by the lack of observation
Speaker 1: of this phenomenon today. And that's another really interesting aspect
Speaker 1: of the will of the wisp. Claimed sightings of will
Speaker 1: of the wisp, for some reason, have drastically dropped off
Speaker 1: in the past century or so, almost to the point
Speaker 1: of some people saying that the will of the Whisp,
Speaker 1: whatever it was, is now extinct or or endangered in
Speaker 1: near extinction. And I think it's really interesting to imagine
Speaker 1: what could be the cause of this, because, as we've
Speaker 1: talked about, it's widespread enough that we think it is
Speaker 1: referring to a real thing. It's not just people imagining it.
Speaker 1: But what could the thing have been if people generally
Speaker 1: don't see it anymore? And I do want to point
Speaker 1: out that, you know what, we're not saying that they've
Speaker 1: completely vanished, but clearly they used to. They used to
Speaker 1: be more prevalent than they are today. UM. I know,
Speaker 1: for instance, I was looking around and the U. S.
Speaker 1: Air Forces Project, a blue book that came out in
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, um I had to do with the
Speaker 1: UFOs and possible explanations for UFOs. One major explanation presented
Speaker 1: by Jay Alan Heineck in that was that, particularly in
Speaker 1: the rural Michigan area, swamp lights might be the reason
Speaker 1: for that people are claiming to see UFOs. But then again,
Speaker 1: UFO sidings are also down today compared to what they
Speaker 1: were in the in the previous century, So I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe that also plays into this gradual disappearance of the
Speaker 1: swamp lights. That's interesting because you see UFO sightings suddenly
Speaker 1: come into the picture in the twentieth century, right at
Speaker 1: the time when these the will of the Wisp sightings
Speaker 1: seem to largely disappear. Yet they're probably not the same
Speaker 1: thing because they I mean, they're described in vastly different ways. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't be surprised that there's a little overlape
Speaker 1: and again we're falling into the potential trap of trying
Speaker 1: to explain a whole host of different phenomena with one explanation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's the most important thing to keep in
Speaker 1: mind is again, like we said, the will the whisp
Speaker 1: might not be just one thing. It might be a
Speaker 1: sort of center of the road script that a lot
Speaker 1: of different phenomena are mapped onto. One of the big
Speaker 1: things that to discuss here though, in terms of why
Speaker 1: the willow wist phenomenon would have faded away, is just
Speaker 1: to first of all, look at where it's occurring. Most
Speaker 1: of these accounts have to do with wetlands, marshlands, boss
Speaker 1: and what has happened to our marshlands in uh in
Speaker 1: the last Cuple over the last couple of centuries, right,
Speaker 1: if a lot of this folklore is coming out of
Speaker 1: the marshes of Europe. The marshes of Europe have largely
Speaker 1: been transformed into places where agriculture happens, or in the cities,
Speaker 1: or they've been drained, they've been sliced up. They are
Speaker 1: no longer the ecosystem that they once were. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: if you think of if you think of of the
Speaker 1: willowist phenomenon as being a phenomenon that naturally occurs though
Speaker 1: as something of a rarity in a large wetland environment,
Speaker 1: and then it's reduced to a small wetland environment a
Speaker 1: few centuries later, it seems like you would haven't even
Speaker 1: rarer occurrences. That whatever is causing it, be at an organism,
Speaker 1: be at a particular chemical build up, the potential for
Speaker 1: that to happen is going to be far less because
Speaker 1: we've essentially terraformed our our planet. We've we've we've more
Speaker 1: than doubled the nitrogen cycle. We've we've we've we've decided
Speaker 1: to pick and choose what organisms are going to flourish,
Speaker 1: which ones we're going to do our best to eradicate
Speaker 1: without even knowing that we're doing it right at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and marshlands and wetlands, I mean that is they've
Speaker 1: been a real rallying point of in recent history of
Speaker 1: us trying to say, ho, slow down, these are actually
Speaker 1: important ecosystems and we don't just need to, you know,
Speaker 1: push them out to the edge of existence. So we've
Speaker 1: lost a number of species already that have made their
Speaker 1: home in wetlands. Is it possible that we've also exterminated
Speaker 1: or nearly exterminated, uh, something that produces the willow weest phenomenon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we may have just been watching too many
Speaker 1: times the documentary Man Versus Nature, The Road to Victory,
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's essentially along the same lines as something
Speaker 1: that people have brought up with the idea of terraforming Mars.
Speaker 1: We think that Mars probably doesn't have any life forms
Speaker 1: on it today. Probably it may have had some in
Speaker 1: the past, but whether it currently has any strange microbial
Speaker 1: life surviving anywhere, or ever had it in the past.
Speaker 1: What if by terraforming Mars in the future, by turning
Speaker 1: it into a suitable earthlike environment, we destroy whatever pockets
Speaker 1: of existing life or evidence of past life. We're already there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of the big arguments against terraforming and uh
Speaker 1: and indeed it's it's one that we have already encountered
Speaker 1: with a certain degree here on this planet. And I
Speaker 1: think the underlying concept here is one that several scientists
Speaker 1: we referred to have alluded to, which is that the
Speaker 1: the will of the whist phenomenon may have a sort
Speaker 1: of species based origin, like that there might be a
Speaker 1: particular kind of microbial life form or microbial life ecosystem
Speaker 1: that produces it. There are tiny creatures in the ground
Speaker 1: that are responsible for the will of the whisps people
Speaker 1: used to see. Yeah, one of the articles out there
Speaker 1: floating around is from Howell G. M. Edwards titled Will
Speaker 1: of the Whisp An Ancient Mystery with extreme aphile Origins
Speaker 1: question mark and uh, yeah. This basically the basic concept
Speaker 1: here seems to be that that either the bioluminescence or
Speaker 1: the biologically discharged gas resulting of it maybe resulting from
Speaker 1: an extreme a file organism that previously carved out of
Speaker 1: fragile niche lifestyle and swamps and marches marshes, but has
Speaker 1: since snuffed it due to its delicate positioning in the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: So again it comes down to the fact that this
Speaker 1: is something out there and maybe it's uh in its
Speaker 1: place in the world is fragile, and then when we
Speaker 1: start eradicating and cutting down this environment, it all that
Speaker 1: goes away. It makes me wonder what kinds of strange
Speaker 1: phenomena other than the will of the whisp could go
Speaker 1: extinct in the future. What are the things people see
Speaker 1: today that we might class as paranormal that maybe will
Speaker 1: mostly disappear in the future, and we might not know
Speaker 1: why because we might not know what caused it to
Speaker 1: begin with. What if we enter a future, can you
Speaker 1: imagine a world where people don't see UFOs anymore? Well,
Speaker 1: we kind of, we kind of live in it already.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like looking at these cases we
Speaker 1: presented here, you could say that, all right, take the UFO.
Speaker 1: There are varying reasons why one might see a UFO UH.
Speaker 1: Some of them involve sleep paralysis, some of them involve
Speaker 1: mental illness, some of them involve a sleep deprivation, etcetera.
Speaker 1: You can make a long list of them, and if
Speaker 1: if a certain type of swamp gas phenomenon is on
Speaker 1: that list, and that becomes eradicated due to environmental change,
Speaker 1: then yeah, that changes how it is perceived. It becomes
Speaker 1: less than an object of nature in more of a
Speaker 1: mental uh existence, more of a mental animal as opposed
Speaker 1: to a chemical one. Yeah. Yeah, And that is interesting
Speaker 1: because the will of the whisp seems to have largely
Speaker 1: gone away, but the phenomenon of seeing lights has not.
Speaker 1: I mean we people still see lights. Yeah, We've always
Speaker 1: seen them, and we're going to continue to see strange
Speaker 1: lights that we can't explain, but try to our brain
Speaker 1: ends up trying to explain them in the form of
Speaker 1: hallucination and then also in the form of various cultural
Speaker 1: scripts to apply to it in retrospect. Okay, but Robert,
Speaker 1: I want to bring you back to the place we started. Yes,
Speaker 1: I want to change everything and say you're not a
Speaker 1: medieval peasant. You are not out on the fens of
Speaker 1: medieval England. You are yourself and you are currently out,
Speaker 1: let's say, hiking in a US National park. You have
Speaker 1: do you have a favorite national park? Well, you know what,
Speaker 1: Let's say, let's say state park. Let's go with Stark
Speaker 1: Pinocchi in here in Georgia, because it's a swamp and
Speaker 1: it's a swamp where people have claim to have seen
Speaker 1: uh marsh lights in the past. Perfect. Okay, So you're
Speaker 1: you're out walking in the Oki Pinoki. You realize you've
Speaker 1: you've hiked too far in the late afternoon, and suddenly
Speaker 1: dusk is coming on. You need to head back in
Speaker 1: the other direction to get back to the visitor center
Speaker 1: in your car. But on the way, you see some
Speaker 1: blue lights that are just out of just beyond range,
Speaker 1: out off the path. Would you go and investigate, really,
Speaker 1: knowing what I know now, yeah, I would probably not,
Speaker 1: But I feel like I would stop and watch and
Speaker 1: and hopefully I would watch this phenomenon with the presence
Speaker 1: of mind that what I'm observing is a rarity. Whatever
Speaker 1: is causing it has become scarce in the world, be
Speaker 1: it an organism that is dying out, a chemical uh
Speaker 1: scenario under the soil that is less prevalent, or you know,
Speaker 1: fairies that are leaving the world, or a certain damned
Speaker 1: individual who somehow weasel his way back into hell. Man,
Speaker 1: I feel like I have the I must have the
Speaker 1: horrible curiosity at half to go. Why would there You're
Speaker 1: gonna die? Well, no, I'm not. No, that's exactly why
Speaker 1: I brought it to the modern day. So you don't
Speaker 1: think that there's ahinky punk out there who's gonna lead
Speaker 1: you off a cliff or into into Quicksand do you
Speaker 1: think this is probably some kind of natural occurrence. It's
Speaker 1: something that maybe gas, maybe something you can touch. Maybe
Speaker 1: you could be the person who has the insight onto
Speaker 1: into what is causing this, because you can finally get
Speaker 1: close and get a good look and catch some in
Speaker 1: a jar. Yeah, but this is but as we've discussed,
Speaker 1: this is not happening in the city. This is happening
Speaker 1: in the wild and in humans. And despite despite all
Speaker 1: of our GPS technology, we can still die in the wilderness,
Speaker 1: and we can, we can, we can do so fairly easily.
Speaker 1: They're still alligators in the okathin Okey. There's still bears
Speaker 1: and other national parks, and there's still things to fall
Speaker 1: off of and you know, have to cut your own
Speaker 1: leg off and that sort of thing. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: what Willow Wis wants to happen. So there you have it.
Speaker 1: That was our original will of the Whisp episode. And
Speaker 1: now welcome to this special October coda. We have received
Speaker 1: lots of really interesting messages over the months in response
Speaker 1: to that show, and some of them made it onto
Speaker 1: previous listener mail episodes, some didn't, but I wanted to
Speaker 1: collect them all in one place so we can get
Speaker 1: a sense of how this ancient phenomenon appears today. So
Speaker 1: here we go. This message is from Glenn and it
Speaker 1: came in via email. Hey guys, my name is Glenn.
Speaker 1: I just listened to your Will of the Whisp podcast
Speaker 1: and I wanted to share an experience I recently had
Speaker 1: with you. It's mid October, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I'm on
Speaker 1: a date with a girl I was seeing at the time,
Speaker 1: and I decided to take her to this spot just
Speaker 1: southeast of Milwaukee and St. Francis. There's a condominium development
Speaker 1: along the lake shore as a footpath running along the
Speaker 1: backside of the cons following the shore. At the northernmost
Speaker 1: end of the path, there's a man made pond that's
Speaker 1: on a hill which is surrounded by breakwater that's been
Speaker 1: rocked off and diverted, so out to end it goes
Speaker 1: lake rocks, lakewater, than the hill and then the pond.
Speaker 1: So it's fairly marshy as far as man made landscapes go.
Speaker 1: At the edge of the pond, there are some benches
Speaker 1: that overlook the entire cityscape, great view, so I take
Speaker 1: her there and as we're relaxing taking in the site,
Speaker 1: we can see a blue pulsating light down the hill,
Speaker 1: hovering just along the water line of the lake. It's
Speaker 1: a fairly intense light, almost comparable to a small, flashing
Speaker 1: blue led. At first glance, I thought it might have
Speaker 1: been a person's cell phone, but this theory was quickly
Speaker 1: disproved when the light began to rise maybe five to
Speaker 1: six feet up off the ground and started to float
Speaker 1: its way up the hill toward us. It was very small,
Speaker 1: a little bigger than say, your standard issue firefly, but
Speaker 1: the light was much more dents and moved in a
Speaker 1: much different way than fireflies do, and it didn't share
Speaker 1: the yellow glow that a firefly has. It was a
Speaker 1: very true blue. It gets to the top of the
Speaker 1: hill and then begins to float in an undulating motion
Speaker 1: on a straight course from the west toward the lake
Speaker 1: to the east, about two yards away at eye level
Speaker 1: before it gets over the lake and it's out of vision.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he says, they got a little scared. They
Speaker 1: decided to leave and then he said, actually another one
Speaker 1: rose up out of some brush off the side of
Speaker 1: the path as they were leaving. But anyway, he concludes
Speaker 1: by saying, I've been searching for an explanation to this
Speaker 1: scene since that day, and after hearing your podcast and
Speaker 1: fairly certain that I saw what these accounts claimed you
Speaker 1: have also witnessed. I've returned to the location several times,
Speaker 1: but have never been lucky enough to see them again.
Speaker 1: Sorry to the length the email, I have a renewed
Speaker 1: excitement now. It would seem there has to be some
Speaker 1: substance to what we saw that night. I will add
Speaker 1: that it did indeed rain a couple of days previous
Speaker 1: to my story, so maybe they is a correlation. Really interesting, Glenn,
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing another ghost light phenomenon, this one
Speaker 1: a little bit different. This comes from our listener Kelly,
Speaker 1: and Kelly writes over email to say, Hey, guys, I
Speaker 1: experienced something on the mysterious side in the mid nineties
Speaker 1: that this episode reminded me of. To set the stage,
Speaker 1: it occurred near my home in the Okanagan Valley, a
Speaker 1: desert like valley known for its orchards, vineyards, and tourism.
Speaker 1: It's in the southern British Columbia interior, just above the border,
Speaker 1: so above the forty ninth parallel. I was driving one
Speaker 1: night along Okanagan Lake from Penticton to Kelowna, and often
Speaker 1: the distance there was this eerie greenish glow. It was
Speaker 1: clear across the lake and on Okanagan Mountain, an area
Speaker 1: with no development. I didn't think much of it, but
Speaker 1: I did enjoy its glow for maybe about half an hour,
Speaker 1: also known as thirty minutes in metric. Thank you for
Speaker 1: the conversion, Kelly. I just thought it was the northern
Speaker 1: lights giving me a show, but never looked into it.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if the Aurora borealis could explain away some
Speaker 1: of these experiences. Anyways, as always, keep up the great work.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Kelly. That that is interesting. I
Speaker 1: know people have invoked the aurora to try to explain it,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't really seem to match a lot of
Speaker 1: the reports. You hear about a more distinct bluish lights
Speaker 1: hovering near the ground, but that may have something to
Speaker 1: do with the this sort of larger glow that you
Speaker 1: claim to have seen. Next our listener Megan Hutchinson writes
Speaker 1: in to say that she enjoyed the original Will of
Speaker 1: the Whisp episode, but also to let us know that
Speaker 1: she drew and co created a graphic novel called Will
Speaker 1: of the Wisp with a writer named Tom Hammock. And
Speaker 1: I won't read her full message because it contains spoilers
Speaker 1: for the plot, but this story is set in some
Speaker 1: of the watery places of Louisiana and it involves a
Speaker 1: girl who's got to solve a mystery behind a local
Speaker 1: Will of the Wisp. And I will say that lately
Speaker 1: I have been dying for some swamp fiction, to sort
Speaker 1: of dive into a satan in a haunted swamp with
Speaker 1: wrathful spirit adventures, and it looks like this book is
Speaker 1: exactly what I've been hoping for, so I actually ordered
Speaker 1: a copy. And if you're in the mood for a
Speaker 1: similar type of wicked thing, especially from the pen of
Speaker 1: another stuff to blow your mind listener, you might want
Speaker 1: to look up Megan's graphic novel to see if it
Speaker 1: catches your eye. It's called Will of the Wisp, so
Speaker 1: check it out if you're interested. Darren writes to us
Speaker 1: on Facebook with a great message in which he says
Speaker 1: some very nice things about the show, he corrects our
Speaker 1: abysmal pronunciation of Scottish towns and cities, and then recounts
Speaker 1: some strange experiences of his own. So Darren says, particularly
Speaker 1: wanted to tell you off a Will of the Whisp
Speaker 1: type situation I experienced last year in Corfu, that's a
Speaker 1: Greek island. My fiance and I were walking along a
Speaker 1: beach about ten pm and I noticed a fire snake
Speaker 1: side winding across the water. I naturally freaked out. My fiance,
Speaker 1: who is Polish, laughed at my fear and told me
Speaker 1: they were common, she had seen them all the time. Emboldened,
Speaker 1: I decided to take a picture of the beast. The
Speaker 1: moment the flash went off, the flame snake headed straight
Speaker 1: towards me. Now, I'm from Scotland and we don't have
Speaker 1: illuminated sea creatures very much. As this creature is heading
Speaker 1: towards me, I'm getting pretty scared. When it leaves the
Speaker 1: water hovers into a tree, and I think I can
Speaker 1: see a pair of glowing eyes looking at me. Well, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: I don't mind telling you. My feet didn't touch the
Speaker 1: floor until I was back at my hotel. My fiance's
Speaker 1: mocking laughter following me, and I still don't believe her
Speaker 1: explanation that it was a firefly. I know I saw
Speaker 1: a fire snake. Man Um. I'm not quite sure that
Speaker 1: fits into the Will of the Whisp tradition, but it's
Speaker 1: it's close enough that it's worth mentioning. So thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Darren Joshua contacts us via email with a
Speaker 1: bunch of thoughts. I'm going to read some of his
Speaker 1: comments that relate to the Will of the Wisp. Joshua says,
Speaker 1: I have a Wisp story for you. I was a
Speaker 1: teenager around oh six oh seven, either junior or senior year.
Speaker 1: I was in the Pennsylvania area around Jamison, Pennsylvania, in
Speaker 1: a development place called Stover Mill, where my two friends
Speaker 1: lived at the time, and he says, it's around the Doylestown,
Speaker 1: Philadelphia area. At that time in my life, I was
Speaker 1: a bit of an arrogant philosopher slash atheist who, seemingly
Speaker 1: in contradiction, believed in the supernatural world of magic. I
Speaker 1: was with two friends, one who felt she had direct
Speaker 1: connections to dark forces in the world and another one
Speaker 1: who just kind of identified himself as a punk. I
Speaker 1: had experimented with supernatural stuff like what I thought at
Speaker 1: the time was meditation and the like. So I was
Speaker 1: a bit cocky in the way only a teenager could be.
Speaker 1: So all three of us were hanging out very late
Speaker 1: at night, if not early morning, in a well lit
Speaker 1: neighborhood slash development. That kind of orange light, I know
Speaker 1: what light you're talking about. In the center of this
Speaker 1: development was one of those big water collecting areas with
Speaker 1: tall grass with it. Now, I can't be certain if
Speaker 1: it had rained recently, but I'm pretty sure the basin
Speaker 1: was dry because we had walked the path earlier. So
Speaker 1: as we were on the curb and just talking, we
Speaker 1: see a bobbing light, almost as if someone were very
Speaker 1: slowly skipping. The light was less than half a football
Speaker 1: field away. When I first saw it, I took a
Speaker 1: second glance because it looked like the blue light of
Speaker 1: someone on their cell phone. Only too right. That's the
Speaker 1: second cell phone comparison I've heard. But anyway, Joshua continues,
Speaker 1: and in my pants down awareness, I quickly went through
Speaker 1: my list of what I was seeing, like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: someone on a cell phone in the tall grass, which
Speaker 1: was replaced by oh, wait, I don't see a body,
Speaker 1: nor do I hear anyone. In the silence of the night,
Speaker 1: me and my friends, in our Scooby Doo fashion, hit
Speaker 1: the ground and inch closer to try and figure out
Speaker 1: what we were seeing. Uh. It was strolling along through
Speaker 1: the grass, first away from us. Then it changed directions
Speaker 1: and started heading our way at its slow pace. I
Speaker 1: was excited because it meant I could get a closer look.
Speaker 1: So only the light went out and all stared in silence,
Speaker 1: waiting to see, and it appeared again about half the
Speaker 1: distance it was closer to us, to which in our
Speaker 1: teenage fashion, we ditched and ran out of fear of
Speaker 1: a ball of light that seemed to come right at us.
Speaker 1: And then he goes on later in his note to
Speaker 1: talk about the concept of blue energy. He says there
Speaker 1: is a book called Megas of Java or Majus of Java,
Speaker 1: which refers to a person named John Chang. I believe
Speaker 1: from a nineteen eighty eight documentary called Ring of Fire.
Speaker 1: The documentary is really enjoyable, but the book basically goes
Speaker 1: into an explanation of martial arts in a fantastical way.
Speaker 1: It actually sounds a bit cultish to me. A person
Speaker 1: who stays open to many portrayals of reality as part
Speaker 1: of my philosophic works. But in one chapter there's a
Speaker 1: demonstration of quote yang energy that apparently always appears blue.
Speaker 1: Another interesting point of reference to some mystical blue light. Mcguffin,
Speaker 1: that is interesting. Thank you, Joshua. Our listener Eric writes
Speaker 1: a by email. He says, hey, gentlemen, you ask for
Speaker 1: anyone who's seen the elusive will of the Wisp. I
Speaker 1: have had an experience with such an entity. I live
Speaker 1: in upstate New York, Chinango County. I love to hike
Speaker 1: on the mini finger like trails, or any trail that
Speaker 1: spreads across the woods. The area of land behind where
Speaker 1: I grew up had several pond marshy areas connected by
Speaker 1: a series of streams, generally just a wet place, no
Speaker 1: bog or swamp. Though at the age of fourteen eight
Speaker 1: years back or so, I was several miles from home
Speaker 1: when darkness fell. I know all the woods there pretty
Speaker 1: well from my copious times wandering through them. It's also
Speaker 1: hard to get lost. If you walk in any any
Speaker 1: direction for a little while, you will find a road,
Speaker 1: not a vast wilderness, for sure. I was casually walking
Speaker 1: on a trail back with the moon is the only light.
Speaker 1: Went off to my right. About three hundred feet into
Speaker 1: the woods, I see a bobbing, whitish blue light. I walked,
Speaker 1: keeping an eye on it, thinking if there were any
Speaker 1: houses out that way. There were not. Not only that,
Speaker 1: but it seemed to be moving parallel to me. I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, I'm not starving or near dehydration. I'm
Speaker 1: not delirious or mad. But I had a profound skeptical
Speaker 1: curiosity in the supernatural. I thought it might be a ghost.
Speaker 1: My neighbor liked to tell ghost stories about people getting
Speaker 1: lost in the woods by following a large white buck
Speaker 1: during deer season, or a girl in distress that they
Speaker 1: could never seem to find. I think he just liked
Speaker 1: to scare me. Anyways, I followed it off the trail,
Speaker 1: taking note of where I was. I followed it, never
Speaker 1: seeming to be able to get closer than a hundred
Speaker 1: feet or so from it. But it looked like a
Speaker 1: dim blue flame, bobbing and swaying in the dark, dancing
Speaker 1: around trees, egging me on to follow it. Prevaricating my
Speaker 1: worst thoughts, I kept following and meandered through the woods.
Speaker 1: I had to walk over many little streams and around
Speaker 1: wet areas where it became hard to pass through. This
Speaker 1: went on for about an hour before I lost sight.
Speaker 1: I walked to where it was, and it was the
Speaker 1: edge of one of the old farmer's fields. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of old fields that are not near any
Speaker 1: roads or anything, just isolated in the woods. I saw
Speaker 1: the bobbing light on the other side of the field.
Speaker 1: I knew exactly where I was and had had enough
Speaker 1: and decided to walk home. The road was only a
Speaker 1: little less than a mile from where I was. I
Speaker 1: followed the edge of the field to a path at
Speaker 1: one of the corners, and the light followed me. But
Speaker 1: at some point during this time it split off into
Speaker 1: three smaller bobbing lights. They never went too far from
Speaker 1: each other. One would get ahead and the others would
Speaker 1: quickly catch up. But they went parallel to me till
Speaker 1: I got to the path and I couldn't see them
Speaker 1: in the woods anymore. But I glanced back and saw
Speaker 1: them at the end of the path after I had
Speaker 1: walked a little ways in. At this point I began
Speaker 1: to walk fast, getting more and more unnerved. They never
Speaker 1: seemed to catch up. Even after I started to run
Speaker 1: and ran out of breath and stopped to grab my breath,
Speaker 1: they didn't seem to get any closer, even though I
Speaker 1: wasn't moving. A few minutes later, I got to the road,
Speaker 1: I turned back to see if they were still following me.
Speaker 1: I could still see them, but way farther off than
Speaker 1: they had been the entire time. I watched them fade
Speaker 1: back into the woods, behind the trees and the brush.
Speaker 1: I walked home, haunted by what I saw. I never
Speaker 1: told many people about it because it obviously sounds crazy.
Speaker 1: I researched it and came across the term will of
Speaker 1: the Wisp in later weeks, but had never seen anything
Speaker 1: saying there were any sightings in the area. I never
Speaker 1: saw them again, despite many night hikes since then. Well,
Speaker 1: I thought you guys would enjoy one of the more
Speaker 1: horrifying memories from my confusing, angst filled adolescence, battling with
Speaker 1: the existential dread of wondering about life after death and
Speaker 1: other planes of existence. Anyway, you guys are the best.
Speaker 1: I enjoy listening to you and other house stuff Works podcasts.
Speaker 1: You feed the nerd in me. Well, I'm glad we
Speaker 1: could do that, Eric. But Eric's message is one that
Speaker 1: we actually covered in a previous listener mail episode, and
Speaker 1: when we did that, we wondered what Eric himself made
Speaker 1: of the experience. So he wrote us again to respond,
Speaker 1: and this is eric se and message. I have to say,
Speaker 1: I agree. It's the product of a life form that's endangered.
Speaker 1: I played with this idea a bit and thought how
Speaker 1: about how it acted. I think it could be a
Speaker 1: swarm of small bioluminescent insects, gnats, or some other small
Speaker 1: fly that become illuminated while they're eating. So maybe they're
Speaker 1: having a feeding frenzy on microbial life that I or
Speaker 1: other life forms are kicking up as they get disturbed.
Speaker 1: In wet areas, think about it. Bats fly near our
Speaker 1: heads when we walked to eat the bugs we stir
Speaker 1: up and attract, So maybe this is a similar instance.
Speaker 1: Possibly a small curious animal was in the woods and
Speaker 1: staying near me. I've had this happen with foxes and
Speaker 1: the occasional coyote. Perhaps I was in the right circumstance
Speaker 1: to see these small bugs going on a feeding frenzy
Speaker 1: following a small animal. So when I started to follow it.
Speaker 1: The animal was spooked, so the bugs followed the animal.
Speaker 1: When I turned and went back, the animal followed me again,
Speaker 1: with me kicking up my own microbial cloud causing them
Speaker 1: to break off. So there were small are groups, So
Speaker 1: in a way, there's a fluid dynamic thing going on.
Speaker 1: I have to admit this doesn't have any basis in science,
Speaker 1: just my creative mind trying to form a hypothesis to
Speaker 1: something intangible. Ha, let me know what you guys think.
Speaker 1: I do think it's some sort of product of a
Speaker 1: life form that is slowly disappearing. Well, Eric, I know
Speaker 1: that's been one of the scientific hypotheses that's been offered,
Speaker 1: but I guess it's hard to really know. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: somewhat convinced. I think by the chemoluminescence hypothesis, the the
Speaker 1: idea that it is a chemical reaction going on with
Speaker 1: with gases being released from the ground, But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: hard to know. I think there there could possibly be
Speaker 1: bioluminessence explanation for some of the sightings, and and as
Speaker 1: we talked about, I think in the original episode, there
Speaker 1: could be different types of phenomenon that are being combined
Speaker 1: under the will of the wisp explanatory rubric that are
Speaker 1: Actually they have different causes, so that's what I think,
Speaker 1: but I don't really know. Oh, it's still an interesting
Speaker 1: thing to investigate in any case, Thanks to all of
Speaker 1: you who wrote in. These were great messages to read
Speaker 1: and and a lot of fun to hear about the
Speaker 1: various forms of foolish and spiritual fire that seemed to
Speaker 1: emerge in the outdoors. Anyway, one last thing. If you're
Speaker 1: a fan of this show, you know how much we
Speaker 1: love all manner of monsters, ghosts, wraiths, grave ghouls, golems,
Speaker 1: alligator kings, psychic spider lords, earth rim roamers, sabretooth witches,
Speaker 1: smoke wolves, blooms of stidgy and algae. So we're dwelling
Speaker 1: vampire magi, wandering blood, mushrooms, lead skin, desert worms, beholders,
Speaker 1: wasp holders, sentient emerald fog, cybernetic mummies, and so on
Speaker 1: and around here. We take every advantage every October to
Speaker 1: spend some time talking about the science of all things
Speaker 1: cursed and monstrous. So if you keep up with our
Speaker 1: new releases, we're going to be getting into the October
Speaker 1: spirit with plenty of original Halloween themed episodes later this month.
Speaker 1: Sharpen your fangs and make yourselves ready. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: check out all of the latest work at stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com, where you can find great
Speaker 1: stuff like Robert's delightful, long running monster of the Week series.
Speaker 1: I love it every time he does one of those,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure he'll have some more good creatures coming
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