Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to step to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: 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, you're doing it. You are a peasant in
Speaker 1: medieval England. All right, it's a 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 thin land. Okay. So there's some marshes all
Speaker 1: around you, and this is a time and place where
Speaker 1: for your life the world is sort of alive with
Speaker 1: magical beings. So who knows if there's a ferry or
Speaker 1: a goblin hiding under a rock or in a bush
Speaker 1: over by the side of the road. Who knows. There
Speaker 1: are lots of things out there that you just don't understand.
Speaker 1: It's a world lit only by fire. It's a demon
Speaker 1: haunted world. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a perfect way
Speaker 1: of putting it. Um. So you're out one night returning
Speaker 1: home from church, and dusk is coming on, and as
Speaker 1: you're walking your way through the path that winds along
Speaker 1: the marshlands at night, and the crickets are chirping and
Speaker 1: you hear the frogs. You suddenly see something kind of
Speaker 1: strange off off to your left, sort of in the right,
Speaker 1: at the edge of your field of vision. You see
Speaker 1: a bluish looking flame that's just hovering over the ground
Speaker 1: that that's sort of beyond where you can see exactly
Speaker 1: where it is. It's it's among some trees and some
Speaker 1: some marsh grasses. Now what do you do? Do you
Speaker 1: just continue on your path or do you walk over
Speaker 1: to see what it is? Who? What can I do? Uh?
Speaker 1: Let me do a perception check. Okay, Ah, well, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm seeing a basically a ghostly blue flame that's just
Speaker 1: hovering in the air. I'm thinking I'm gonna want to
Speaker 1: avoid anything to do with that, because if it's some
Speaker 1: sort of supernatural entity at night, Uh, it's probably up
Speaker 1: to no good. It's I'm probably better off to stick
Speaker 1: into the course and going straight home. Well, you're fantastic
Speaker 1: at resisting temptation. Congratulations, you're incurious, proud of it, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna live a live to a ripe old age
Speaker 1: in the solid knowledge that you just didn't check things out. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because I've probably heard enough stories like how
Speaker 1: does every weird horror story begin, every strange folklore against
Speaker 1: with that guy getting off the beaten path, moving out
Speaker 1: of the path and going into the wilderness and maybe
Speaker 1: following some sort of strange flame. Well, okay, let me
Speaker 1: try you again. Then let's say that we do the
Speaker 1: same scenario, but you've already gotten lost. You're on your
Speaker 1: way home from church, dusk is coming on, You've lost
Speaker 1: the path and suddenly you are lost in the marsh
Speaker 1: lands and you you can't find your way back to
Speaker 1: the path. But up ahead you do see a light. Uh,
Speaker 1: you see a flame bobbing that's just above the horizon
Speaker 1: ahead of you, and you're not quite sure what it is.
Speaker 1: Now do you go toward the light or not? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm lost, So that light might very well be somebody's
Speaker 1: camp buire. That might be there's a sign of humans
Speaker 1: out here, so I should Yeah, maybe I should head
Speaker 1: that way because either that either they're in the clear
Speaker 1: or maybe they can help me get out right. It
Speaker 1: could be a traveler's lantern could lead you back to
Speaker 1: the path and get you on your way home and
Speaker 1: out of this muck. So let's say you follow it
Speaker 1: for a while, but you can't ever seem to catch
Speaker 1: up with it, and you just keep going farther and
Speaker 1: farther along in the marsh, but it's always just out
Speaker 1: of where you can reach it or get a good
Speaker 1: look at exactly what it is. Do you keep following? Well,
Speaker 1: the more I follow, the more I'm probably gonna feel
Speaker 1: like I'm being manipulated. And this led on a winding
Speaker 1: goat trail to nowhere. So uh, which, granted, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's a perfect metaphor for life, but I'm probably gonna
Speaker 1: get a little frustrated. Yeah, but what other choice do
Speaker 1: you have right now? You're lost in the marsh, and
Speaker 1: you better keep following. Yeah, I can't go back. It's
Speaker 1: just as much trouble to go back as it is
Speaker 1: to push forward. And maybe if I hurry a little bit,
Speaker 1: I can actually catch that durn thing. Okay, So let's
Speaker 1: say you're trying to catch it. Unfortunately, you keep coming
Speaker 1: up on it, thinking you're just about to get to it,
Speaker 1: but it goes away and eventually you don't see it
Speaker 1: anymore at all, and you're there alone in the dark,
Speaker 1: stuck in some quicksand quicks in the marsh and what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do? Well, you're gonna stay still, struggle,
Speaker 1: You struggle, that's how you get out of quicksand. No,
Speaker 1: it's not, it's not at all. Do we have an
Speaker 1: episode on quicksand? I don't think we do yet, but
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating topic. Yeah, maybe we should explore that sometime. Well,
Speaker 1: if you ever find yourself trapped in quicksand, whether you're
Speaker 1: in a marsh and you have been led there by
Speaker 1: a ghost light or not, don't struggle. Oh that's why
Speaker 1: I have these sperrets in my backpack. They're gonna help
Speaker 1: me out. That'll just work you deeper into the into
Speaker 1: the muck. No, that's not what you want to do.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I've been describing a scenario that might sound
Speaker 1: kind of outlandish to your people at home, but I
Speaker 1: think this type of story was very common two people
Speaker 1: of say Europe in the Middle Ages, or actually it's
Speaker 1: too folklore all over the world in one form or another,
Speaker 1: that there will be stories that bear similarities to this,
Speaker 1: That there's a glowing entity or some kind of flame
Speaker 1: that looks like a lantern or like a blue luminescence
Speaker 1: that's just hovering out of your vision and if you
Speaker 1: if you try to get to it, you can never
Speaker 1: quite catch it. Yeah, what is this thing? It is
Speaker 1: the will of the wisp, that's right, and it goes
Speaker 1: by a number of names as well discussed, but it's
Speaker 1: it's it's that that false fire, right, that ignus fatus
Speaker 1: right and in fatuous fatuous, that's what I think. It's.
Speaker 1: It's ignie so fire yeah, and then f a t
Speaker 1: u u s that makes me think fatuous, like you're
Speaker 1: being fatuous, being foolish. Yes, so this is uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's the swamp light, the marshlight, the fairy light. It's
Speaker 1: this ghostly luminescence that appears typically in marshlands and swamp lands,
Speaker 1: by ways, fins, marshes, the lonely roads, the places that
Speaker 1: maybe you wouldn't want to be stuck at night, you'll
Speaker 1: see this strange glowing entity. Um, what is it? Is
Speaker 1: it a mischievous spirit? Yeah? Oftentimes it is. It's seen
Speaker 1: as this either a mischievous spirit or sometimes an outright
Speaker 1: demotic demonic entity that ends up leading humans astray. If
Speaker 1: you try and follow it, you can't quite catch it.
Speaker 1: And eventually you're gonna wind up in the quicksand just
Speaker 1: loft in the wilderness over a cliff, falling off a cliff,
Speaker 1: walking straight into hell who knows what, but it's leading
Speaker 1: you off the path. Like I'm you made a great comparison.
Speaker 1: It's like a bad GPS system. Yeah, do you remember
Speaker 1: that in there an episode of the Office, the g
Speaker 1: P s tells them to drive the car across the lake.
Speaker 1: Its 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 like
Speaker 1: and you can't reach it because it's like the other
Speaker 1: end of the rainbow, right. Yeah, And this lower comes
Speaker 1: from 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: ento the will the whisp lower is that the lights
Speaker 1: tend to recede as you approach them. You can never
Speaker 1: quite get to them or get ahold of them, and
Speaker 1: they draw the traveler farther and farther off course as
Speaker 1: they go. Another common feature is the color, and this
Speaker 1: is interesting, so sometimes people just report various types of light,
Speaker 1: but it's very often described as blue or bluish green.
Speaker 1: And 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 loo
Speaker 1: minas exhalation associated with Marshy places. That's his Will of
Speaker 1: the Whisp definition. So it's it's instantly identifiable as as
Speaker 1: something that's it's it's not a torch, it's not a lantern.
Speaker 1: It's something else, something 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. Yes,
Speaker 1: hinky punk is a sprite with only one leg and
Speaker 1: it carries a candle to miss Lee travelers. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: you know about the names like corpse, candle, l fire hob, lantern, hobby, lantern,
Speaker 1: fire drake, jack O lantern. Uh. So we're seeing a
Speaker 1: convergence here with like Will of the Wisp, 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 of
Speaker 1: being 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 him, stuff which he uses to lure other victims
Speaker 1: to his dinner, to their doom because he's just a
Speaker 1: horrible individual. So he's walking around with some hell fire
Speaker 1: in Marsh's trying to get revenge on humanity, right. And
Speaker 1: you see a number of different variations on will the Smith,
Speaker 1: where it's some sort of immortal wanderer, some sort of
Speaker 1: a spirit uh entity that can't get into heaven or hell. Um.
Speaker 1: You also have in Scotland the Spunkies. In Ireland you
Speaker 1: have fox Fire or William with the little Flame, which
Speaker 1: is essentially will the Smith. In Germany you have blood.
Speaker 1: You have the Dickie potent weight 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 lit 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 sandyand 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 their mischief there
Speaker 1: in the woods, and it's just disorienting. Yeah, like they're
Speaker 1: they're I imagine there's some elfin debauchery going on. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Tolkien doesn't get into it as much,
Speaker 1: but you know, they get up to some weird stuff. Uh.
Speaker 1: In Finland you have Likiko, which means 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 the
Speaker 1: one I ran across from the Penobscate to Native American
Speaker 1: tribe in the name for this issue date, there's also
Speaker 1: the Kanza perry uh. And this is something that exists
Speaker 1: in the folklore of the Cheermis and Mari people. That's
Speaker 1: a Finno, you grick ethnic group. You see. You also
Speaker 1: see it in the Amazon Basin in the form of betata. Oh,
Speaker 1: and this one's a really good one. This is in uh,
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's 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 hip to your your scheme here, and we'll
Speaker 1: probably lure you over the edge of a cliff instead. Oh,
Speaker 1: this fits the same stuff you would encounter in Europe
Speaker 1: about sometimes the will of the whisp being the guardian
Speaker 1: of a treasure. Yeah, not just luring you off the path,
Speaker 1: but like standing guard over where the gold is hidden. Exactly.
Speaker 1: And I and I wondered to what extent it's just
Speaker 1: a continuation of European beliefs in the New World there,
Speaker 1: I imagine that's very much the case. But there are
Speaker 1: also plenty of ghost lights in in Asian folklore. In
Speaker 1: Bengal traditions, you have Layah, which is the name given
Speaker 1: to unexplained strange um Marshall wood lights there. Okay, and
Speaker 1: then of course, uh, outside of folk folklore and folk tales,
Speaker 1: we have versions and are more recent media as well. Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I would call dungeons and dragons perfectly acceptable folklore. Yes,
Speaker 1: And you know, for a lot of people, this may
Speaker 1: be one's first encounter with with will of the whisp
Speaker 1: or will whisps as they're called there. Uh. In case
Speaker 1: your dungeon and dragons fan or have any a familiarity,
Speaker 1: their their alignment is chaotic evil. So they are bad news.
Speaker 1: They're not just a little mischievous. They're awful. If they
Speaker 1: were just a little mischievous, what would they be chaotic neutral? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they would be more I would I would
Speaker 1: say more chaotic neutral if that were the case. But
Speaker 1: they are just completely like evil, mischieous, mischievous. Uh. They
Speaker 1: have a challenge rating of two, so they're not too bad.
Speaker 1: But get this, they have a dexterity stat of twenty eight. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's like like generally eighteen is an exceedingly high level
Speaker 1: for a normal humanoid, so they have crazy dexterity to
Speaker 1: give them a plus nine and all dexterity sex and
Speaker 1: according to the most recent Monster manual UH, their quote
Speaker 1: the souls of evil beings that perished in anguish or
Speaker 1: misery as they wanted it, forsaken lands, permeated with magical powers,
Speaker 1: and they use the the usual lure people to their
Speaker 1: doom act in the game, plus, they can shock victims
Speaker 1: for two D eight damage, they can drain life, and
Speaker 1: sometimes in the Dungeon and Dragons the world, they align
Speaker 1: themselves with hags or black dragons or evil cultists in
Speaker 1: order to quote drink the agony of slaughter. So so
Speaker 1: they're pretty cool. I kind of want to buff one
Speaker 1: out in UH in my game. Now, well, that's great,
Speaker 1: and that does mirror some of the folkloric tradition, like
Speaker 1: the idea that they might be an unrighteous spirit that's
Speaker 1: left wandering the world. So they might be, you know,
Speaker 1: a person who's just rendered spiritually unclean, maybe by having
Speaker 1: died unbaptized in Christian tradition or something, or or maybe
Speaker 1: there are you know, a sinful person who can't get
Speaker 1: into heaven or hell. Like we talked to Uh, like
Speaker 1: we talked about with Will the Smith and the titular
Speaker 1: will intil the Whisp. But the will of the Whisp
Speaker 1: also shows up in in plenty of later literature. You know,
Speaker 1: in some classic English poetry, you'll get references to the
Speaker 1: Will of the Whisp, like in the Rhyme of the
Speaker 1: Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. Uh. There is there is a
Speaker 1: scene that describes ghost lights out on the sea that
Speaker 1: says about about in real and route the death fires
Speaker 1: danced at night the water like a witch's oils burnt
Speaker 1: green and blue and white. Yeah, I like that. There's
Speaker 1: Will the Wisp in Paradise Lost too, and John Milton's
Speaker 1: Paradise Lost. There is the scene where the snake in
Speaker 1: the Garden of Eden is it 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 wisp, So keep that in mind and talking about
Speaker 1: will of the whisp as a natural phenomenon, right, I
Speaker 1: mean he's describing a thing from a magical story in
Speaker 1: terms of the will of the whisp, meaning that the
Speaker 1: will of the Wisp must have been a thing that
Speaker 1: people were so intimately familiar with it could be used
Speaker 1: as a reference point. Yes, yeah, And I would think
Speaker 1: for modern people, you'd you'd be more likely to go
Speaker 1: the other way, like you'd compare the will of the
Speaker 1: Whisp to something in the Bible that people might be
Speaker 1: 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 Wisp throughout world literature, including
Speaker 1: scientific literature. For example, Isaac Newton mentions the will of
Speaker 1: the Whisp as if it were a commonplace occurrence in
Speaker 1: his third Book of Optics. He says, the ignis fatuous
Speaker 1: is a vapor shining without heat, and is there not
Speaker 1: the same difference between this vapor and flame as between
Speaker 1: rotten wood shining without heat and burning coals of fire?
Speaker 1: Which is interesting because their Newton is attempting to distinguish
Speaker 1: actual physical characteristics of the Igney's fatuous, like it's not
Speaker 1: like flame because it lacks heat. So yeah, you'd get
Speaker 1: pretty often people making sort of secular material physical observations
Speaker 1: of these things, as if it's just a phenomenon that
Speaker 1: they were trying to catalog and understand. So very often
Speaker 1: you'd hear about this this sort of hovering blue flame
Speaker 1: near the ground, but some accounts differ that there are
Speaker 1: other types of appearances that people also categorized as will
Speaker 1: of the Wisp. One comes from a first hand account
Speaker 1: by the English folklorist Jabez Allies. I wonder if I'm
Speaker 1: saying that name right, But he had a treatise called
Speaker 1: Igny's Fatuous or Will of the Wisp and the Fairies,
Speaker 1: from eighteen forty six, and I'm just going to read
Speaker 1: a piece of this. In this story, he gives about
Speaker 1: how he witnessed the will of the wisp one night.
Speaker 1: He says, sometimes it was only like a flash in
Speaker 1: the pan on the ground. At other times it rose
Speaker 1: up several feet and fell to the earth and became extinguished.
Speaker 1: And many times it proceeded horizontally from fifty to one
Speaker 1: hundred yards in an undulating motion, like the flight of
Speaker 1: the green woodpecker, and about his rapid And once or
Speaker 1: twice it proceeded with considerable rapidity in a straight line
Speaker 1: upon or close to the ground. The light of this
Speaker 1: ignis fatuous, or rather of these ignace fatu i or
Speaker 1: fatui was very clear and strong, much bluer than that
Speaker 1: of a candle, and very like that of an electric spark,
Speaker 1: and some of them look larger and as bright as
Speaker 1: the star. Serious of course, they look dim when seen
Speaker 1: in ground fogs, but there was not any fog on
Speaker 1: the night in question. There was, however, a muddy closeness
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere and at the same time a considerable
Speaker 1: breeze from the southwest. These will of the wisps, which
Speaker 1: shot horizontally invariably proceeded before the wind towards the northeast.
Speaker 1: That's interesting because it's a very scientifically minded, um and
Speaker 1: practical response to viewing this. Yeah, he's describing it in
Speaker 1: terms of electricity, describing the color and sort of the position,
Speaker 1: and the motion and speed of motion, and then explaining
Speaker 1: that it follows the pattern of the wind. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I but I do love the fact that he's he's
Speaker 1: really standing back and taking a serious, calm approach to it.
Speaker 1: Because one of the accounts that I was looking at
Speaker 1: an earlier account from traveling German lawyer Hintsner Paul Hertzner,
Speaker 1: who wrote about his travels in England and Uh. He
Speaker 1: wrote the following about a journey from Canterbury to Dover.
Speaker 1: He said, quote, there were a great many jack o
Speaker 1: lanterns so that we were quite seized with horror and amazement. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course if you're seized with horror and amazement,
Speaker 1: you get into that whole realm of like what am
Speaker 1: I perceiving? How is my mind perceiving it? And then
Speaker 1: how am I recalling that memory and altering it? I mean,
Speaker 1: the you know, part and partial to any paranormal experience
Speaker 1: where the experience is valid, but they're varying mental factors
Speaker 1: that 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 to seeing things
Speaker 1: like this, Like I'm sure that our German traveler friend
Speaker 1: brought a magical interpretive lens to it, saying there's a
Speaker 1: spirit out here it wishes us harm. It might be
Speaker 1: that dungeons and dragons chaotic evil spirit. I need to
Speaker 1: stay away. Uh. Jabez Allies brought a more secular approach
Speaker 1: to it, he said at the end of his recollection
Speaker 1: of the different events that he witnessed, he says, from
Speaker 1: all the circumstances, stated it appears probable that these meteors
Speaker 1: rise in exhalations of electric and perhaps other matter out
Speaker 1: of the earth, particularly in or near the winter season,
Speaker 1: and that they generally occur a day or two after
Speaker 1: a considerable rain and on change from a cold to
Speaker 1: a warmer atmosphere. Now, whether all that is true, we
Speaker 1: don't know. It might not be the case that you're
Speaker 1: more likely to see it under those circumstances. But it's
Speaker 1: interesting that he's trying to narrow down the physical causes
Speaker 1: that that would create this, and he of course tries
Speaker 1: to blame it on electricity, which would make sense if
Speaker 1: you're writing in the eighteen thirties or eighteen forties, when
Speaker 1: you know electricity is a very interesting thing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's certainly that the difference between magic and electricity there's
Speaker 1: a lot of crossover and an understanding of it. Electricity
Speaker 1: is very much this uh, this this lofty uh partially
Speaker 1: understood concept. Yeah. And then there was another thing that
Speaker 1: I looked at. There was an article on ignis fatuous
Speaker 1: from the Scientific Monthly in nineteen nineteen, and it just
Speaker 1: made some observations. For example, the flames of the ignis
Speaker 1: fatuous used to appear very consistently in some locations, So
Speaker 1: there are places where you could just expect to see them,
Speaker 1: and if you went there, 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 lance and swamp
Speaker 1: plants 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 with a
Speaker 1: hot flame, you would expect it to set fire to something.
Speaker 1: So that's going to throw a wrench in a lot
Speaker 1: of the explanations that people have given for this. So
Speaker 1: the main point of giving all these stories about what
Speaker 1: people saw is that it's not just made up. I mean,
Speaker 1: clearly a lot of the explanation of what causes the
Speaker 1: will of the whisp is is magical thinking and and
Speaker 1: very fairy stories and things like that. But the phenomenon itself,
Speaker 1: I think we can be pretty confident is real. It
Speaker 1: was actually referring to a thing people witnessed firsthand. Because
Speaker 1: why would there be so many stories from so many
Speaker 1: different places, especially from varied commentators too. It's not just
Speaker 1: the religious or the folklore like, it's also scientifically minded
Speaker 1: individuals who are just talking about the lights in the
Speaker 1: woods that simply occur, and that everyone says, if everybody
Speaker 1: knows what you're talking about. And of course we'll get
Speaker 1: into this later, but one of the disconnects is that
Speaker 1: we don't see lights in the woods and strange lights
Speaker 1: in the marsh all the time like we apparently used to.
Speaker 1: So it's harder for us a to put ourselves in
Speaker 1: that world in that mindset and alsways, we'll discuss harder
Speaker 1: to go out and try and study something that doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be occurring anymore, or at least occurring with
Speaker 1: the same frequency. All right, on that note, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, and when we come back, we
Speaker 1: will look at some of the possible scientific explanations for
Speaker 1: this phenomena. All right, we're back discussing Willow the whisp,
Speaker 1: jack a lantern, will the smith, Uh, pinky punk, whatever
Speaker 1: you wanna call that strange glow in the marsh lands,
Speaker 1: in the woods, in the swamp. 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 have my
Speaker 1: son in the car, because you normally always call people uh,
Speaker 1: dumble doors or or use the word duck. Uh here there,
Speaker 1: But that's pretty good. But maybe hinky punk. We should
Speaker 1: make a list of the great insults that we come
Speaker 1: up with from our research on these podcasts, because when
Speaker 1: I was doing an episode a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: forward thinking, we came across the term aggregated diamond nano
Speaker 1: rods in a material science context. But man, what a
Speaker 1: great thing to call a person a nano rod. I've
Speaker 1: I've kept it with me ever since. And now hinky
Speaker 1: punk goes on the list as well. Look at that
Speaker 1: 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 descript options, because the will of
Speaker 1: the 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 useful for like a spectral analysis or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So we've been just trying to figure out ways to
Speaker 1: match people's descriptions of what they saw. And most of
Speaker 1: these description descriptions come from more than a hundred years ago.
Speaker 1: So already you're having a problem here because there's nothing
Speaker 1: direct you can compare your examples too. You just have
Speaker 1: to experiment and say, well, does this look like what
Speaker 1: people were talking about back then? Uh. Then there's another
Speaker 1: problem in scientific explanations of the will of the whisp,
Speaker 1: which is that it's possible that similar but different phenomena
Speaker 1: have sometimes been grouped together under the category of will
Speaker 1: of the whisp. So there could be lots of different
Speaker 1: types of ghost lights and various luminescent events that occurred
Speaker 1: in the marshes or in the wilderness in the past,
Speaker 1: and that people assumed, well, they're pretty similar, they're they're
Speaker 1: all the same thing, and that they weren't actually all
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah, I mean, especially if if the
Speaker 1: phenomenon that's occurring as a product of the environment, it
Speaker 1: seems entirely likely you would have a different phenomenon occurring,
Speaker 1: say in the mountains of Chile, as opposed to the
Speaker 1: swamplands um you know of of Italy yea uh. And
Speaker 1: 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 and it's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's not like like we're saying, it's not a photograph.
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 these 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 an 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 ignis 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: fireflies can explain all of these instances because they don't
Speaker 1: 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 traveler to an
Speaker 1: area where I've never seen a firefly before, and then
Speaker 1: there are these random pinpoints of light in the wilderness
Speaker 1: or potentially in the Asian model, because in in parts
Speaker 1: of the Asia you see fireflies that particularly Thailand, that
Speaker 1: that light up in unison in a way that we
Speaker 1: 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 and 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 Elassa Witz
Speaker 1: commented that sometimes, though probably not in most cases, but
Speaker 1: in some rare occasions, people might have even been talking
Speaker 1: about owls. Yeah, because on one hand, you know owl
Speaker 1: nocturnal flyer, very silent, very quiet, kind of ghostly. Just
Speaker 1: to perceive an owl even in the daytime, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's there's something slightly supernatural about it, So you can
Speaker 1: especially if the moonlight is catching gray or white plumage
Speaker 1: just right, or if the owl has trapped in the
Speaker 1: feathers in its wings, some rotting wood or a bioluminous
Speaker 1: at fungus, like if it's been rolling in the fungus
Speaker 1: and the fungus glows and then the owl swoops around
Speaker 1: in the dark. This may possibly explain some instances of
Speaker 1: what people are seeing, but it seems similar to other
Speaker 1: things we've been talking about so far, the fireflies and
Speaker 1: things like that. It might explain some cases that people
Speaker 1: map onto the existing cultural script of the Igney's fatuous,
Speaker 1: but it just doesn't sound very much like what people
Speaker 1: are usually describing. Yeah, it doesn't seem like a good excuse,
Speaker 1: universal excuse for what's going on, and it just doesn't
Speaker 1: seem really all that common now. And another version of
Speaker 1: this is, of course that they could just you could
Speaker 1: just be perceiving a reflected light from another source. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One great example of this is I was recently in
Speaker 1: in Big Ben National Park in Texas, and near that
Speaker 1: we went through the town of Marfa, Texas, which is
Speaker 1: famous for the Marfa ghost lights. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of these? Are these railroad related or they just are
Speaker 1: they not? That I know is there are a lot
Speaker 1: of traditions, I think, even around my own hometown in Tennessee,
Speaker 1: tales of ghostly lights out on the railroad tracks that
Speaker 1: are kind of a will of the Whist type of scenario,
Speaker 1: but I think are generally related to uh, reflected lights
Speaker 1: from other sources. Yeah, well, so the Marfa ghost lights
Speaker 1: are probably not the same phenomenon as well of the
Speaker 1: Whist because it's not Marti area, it's you know, desert,
Speaker 1: and they they seem to be a different kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They're not really what people are describing there either, but
Speaker 1: they are a type of ghost light that from what
Speaker 1: I've read, a common skeptical response to this is people
Speaker 1: are just seeing reflected car headlights from like their cars
Speaker 1: driving far out in the desert and they get reflected
Speaker 1: by the atmosphere in a certain way or somehow end
Speaker 1: up reflecting their light to people near the town of Marfa,
Speaker 1: and they're like, Wow, that's an amazing light I just
Speaker 1: saw in the desert. What could what could explain it?
Speaker 1: Or it's can't fires? You know, I know, we're both
Speaker 1: familiar with the Chattanooga, Tennessee area. Oh yeah, I grew
Speaker 1: up there. Well, I've I've definitely driven through Chattanooga on
Speaker 1: like really dark nights before, and I'll see of what
Speaker 1: essentially car lights that are driving up on the hills
Speaker 1: and the mountains. But it's dark. It's so dark that
Speaker 1: for a split second, I see there's some sort of
Speaker 1: strange light. It must be a UFO or something. And
Speaker 1: then I realized, oh wait, that's that's a there's a
Speaker 1: mountain right there. How disappointed just the mountain people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so in our age, that is just so just full
Speaker 1: of ubiquitous artificial lighting screwing up our perception of nighttime. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of room for will of the whisps to
Speaker 1: emerge that way. Yeah. So electrical phenomenon, biolumin essence, or
Speaker 1: reflected lights, like we said, all of these may account
Speaker 1: for some small subset of of these historical sightings, but
Speaker 1: they don't really seem to fit the bill in terms
Speaker 1: of what people usually describe when they talk abut the
Speaker 1: ignis fatuous. So what's something that's closer to the traditional
Speaker 1: description and really seems to match. And here we get
Speaker 1: to the main event, which is marsh gas, good old,
Speaker 1: good old marsh gas, good old swamp gas. Unfortunately, as
Speaker 1: we'll see, this is not without problems of its own.
Speaker 1: But finally we're getting into the territory that that could
Speaker 1: really be a viable explanation. So, Robert, what happens when
Speaker 1: a body of a dead animal or a bunch of
Speaker 1: dead plant matter lies down to its final repose in
Speaker 1: a marsh or swamp. Oh, that's that's going to break down,
Speaker 1: and it may sink to the breakdown of organic matter.
Speaker 1: This is just part of the swamp marshland ecosystem, right,
Speaker 1: And so the decomposition of dead organic matter often happens
Speaker 1: underwater or under damp soil in these types of environments,
Speaker 1: and the swamp, in the marsh, in the bog and
Speaker 1: what we would call an anaeroba environment. So that's without
Speaker 1: access to air. Now, things can decompose with access to
Speaker 1: air too. You lay something on the ground in the forest,
Speaker 1: it'll have a chance for all this air to get
Speaker 1: at it. And that's a different kind of decomposition than
Speaker 1: anaerobic decomposition that happens without air. Decomposition that happens without
Speaker 1: air tends to produce gaseous byproducts, including methane and carbon dioxide.
Speaker 1: Methane is flammable, and if you get any of your
Speaker 1: home power from natural gas, this is a somewhat similar mixture.
Speaker 1: It's composed primarily of methane. That's what's burning with that
Speaker 1: nice blue flame. So many sources treat the matter of
Speaker 1: the scientifically known you know, skeptical latitude cause of Will
Speaker 1: of the Whisp as pretty much completely settled. It's spontaneous
Speaker 1: combustion of methane in marsh gas. Just one example is
Speaker 1: one we looked up together the Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase
Speaker 1: and Fable. The entry on ignis fatuous. It says, quote
Speaker 1: the will the Wisp or Friar's lantern a flamelike phosphorescence
Speaker 1: flitting over marshy ground due to the spontaneous combustion of
Speaker 1: gases from decaying vegetable matter and deluding people who attempt
Speaker 1: to follow it. Hence any delusive aim or object or
Speaker 1: some utopian scheme that is utterly impracticable. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a kind of a political stance from Brewers there. But anyway,
Speaker 1: but it sounds possible, right, Yeah, it's but it also
Speaker 1: the way it's the way it presents it is. This
Speaker 1: is not just one hypothesis that has been offered, but
Speaker 1: it acts as if this is a settled matter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the spontaneous combustion of marsh gas. Another example would
Speaker 1: be one scientific paper I found that said the following quote,
Speaker 1: the once widespread sightings of will of the wisp also
Speaker 1: known as ignice fatuous on northern European peat lands, were
Speaker 1: probably the result of methane abiliations ignited by lanterns or
Speaker 1: other ignition sources formerly used for nighttime illumination. So again
Speaker 1: they treated as pretty much settled. It's marsh gas being
Speaker 1: set on fire, and that's what the will of the
Speaker 1: whisp is. But I don't know, that seems kind of
Speaker 1: weird to me. I mean, wouldn't people have noticed it
Speaker 1: had to be set on fire with sparks or lanterns? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you think the stories would revolve more around some individual
Speaker 1: wandering out with it with his or her lantern and
Speaker 1: in poof a willow whisp you know, suddenly pops into
Speaker 1: being right next to you, as opposed to seeing one
Speaker 1: in the distance. Right, And so the story I think
Speaker 1: is not nearly as settled as many of these older
Speaker 1: sources would seem to indicate because of this big question,
Speaker 1: what is the source of ignition? Is it really fair
Speaker 1: to assume that the people who saw these things were
Speaker 1: constantly inadvertently setting fire to methane bubbles around them without
Speaker 1: realizing they were doing so. Maybe, Again, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like some of the other things. Maybe in some weird cases,
Speaker 1: but it kind of seems like a stretch to say
Speaker 1: this is the primary phenomenon being described. So here we
Speaker 1: get to some chemistry where the answer could possible lie,
Speaker 1: because what you're starting to look for is what could
Speaker 1: be a chemical spark in the natural environment that could
Speaker 1: naturally ignite methane gases escaping from a marsh a marsh land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the only thing that comes to mind off hand
Speaker 1: top pose front. Let's see, you have lightning strikes, you
Speaker 1: have spontaneous combustion, which is a possibility with anaerobic situations
Speaker 1: such as say a hay bale yah, but like if
Speaker 1: the heat builds up in it, it gets really hot. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Aside from that, the only thing that comes to mind
Speaker 1: is like a wolf that that that that somebody's tied
Speaker 1: fire to its tail or, if you know, something of
Speaker 1: that matter. But yeah, otherwise, maybe put some flints to
Speaker 1: its teeth, so every time it chomps, it strikes sparks,
Speaker 1: a rock falling off a cliff and just happening to
Speaker 1: somehow spark on the way down. A guy traveling from
Speaker 1: the future and the time machine with a flamethrower, yes,
Speaker 1: or just a cigarette. He's just he's just traveling through time,
Speaker 1: stops for a smoke in a medieval and then continues.
Speaker 1: But and then, oh the butterfly effect. Now the future
Speaker 1: we all have frog frog tongues. So in other words,
Speaker 1: it sounds a little sketchy, right, I mean, yeah, we
Speaker 1: need we need a better ignition system than that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so the ignition system that has long been proposed
Speaker 1: by people trying to explain the will of the whisp
Speaker 1: has been phosphorus compounds. So instead of being lit up
Speaker 1: by a lantern, marsh gas leaking from the ground could
Speaker 1: be ignited in the presence of oxygen if there were
Speaker 1: phosphorus compounds in play, for example phosphene or pH three.
Speaker 1: You could also call that hydrogen phosphied or die phosphine
Speaker 1: P two H four. So phosphine is a highly toxic
Speaker 1: gas In fact, I saw this mentioned online and I
Speaker 1: went back and revisited it. You know, if you go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning of Breaking Bad, right right at
Speaker 1: the start, there's a scene where Walter White uses a
Speaker 1: chemical reaction producing phosphine gas to poise in a couple
Speaker 1: of gangsters. Okay, now, yeah, now that you mentioned it,
Speaker 1: I do though. I've actually read chemists looking at that
Speaker 1: and saying the chemistry of that seems a little bit wrong,
Speaker 1: but but it is true that phosphine is highly toxic. Well,
Speaker 1: it was a similar theme though that we're seeing here.
Speaker 1: People sort of shuffle the explanations off to the realm
Speaker 1: of chemistry, and for most people that's sufficient. Okay, it's
Speaker 1: a matter of chemistry. I don't really understand all the
Speaker 1: ins and outs of chemistry, but it seems like a
Speaker 1: realm where everything is possible. Everything in the world hinges
Speaker 1: on chemistry. So well enough, but then when the chemists
Speaker 1: start breaking it apart, these problems emerged. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: phosphine is extremely extremely flammable. It can totally catch on
Speaker 1: fire at a moment's notice. And then this other compound,
Speaker 1: the die phosphine P two H four is a liquid
Speaker 1: that will ignite just spontaneously combust when it's exposed to
Speaker 1: the air. So you get this stuff out of its
Speaker 1: anaerobic environment up to the surface where air comes into
Speaker 1: contact with it, and it just erupts with fire and
Speaker 1: this ignites the phosphine or the methane itself. Phosphine igniting
Speaker 1: ignites the methane and then boom, you've got fire in
Speaker 1: the gas escaping from the marsh. It's been utilized in
Speaker 1: weapons before, um, kind of hillacious weapons that we tend
Speaker 1: to shy away from. Oh really, I didn't know. Because
Speaker 1: it burns in the air. That's gross. Oh I guess
Speaker 1: like phosphorus based incendiary weapons. That's horrible. But anyway, the
Speaker 1: idea is that the dead, decaying organic matter down under
Speaker 1: the marsh releases these gases. It releases phosphine, diphosphene, 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, And so
Speaker 1: it's It is apparently true that some microbial life forms
Speaker 1: can produce these types of phosphorus compounds through the process
Speaker 1: of decomposition, going to work on on bones and other
Speaker 1: organic materials that might be buried down in the swamp.
Speaker 1: They can release the phosphorus compounds that we've talked about,
Speaker 1: But other sources have contested the idea of straight up
Speaker 1: combustion of methane and other gases, including the phosphine match
Speaker 1: or the phosphorus based ignition systems, And there are a
Speaker 1: few things to consider. One of them is that methane,
Speaker 1: if ignited by fire, will burn with a what one
Speaker 1: of the people we read described as a brief, hot,
Speaker 1: bright flame, which really goes opposite to how people usually
Speaker 1: describe the will of the whisp, but that's more often
Speaker 1: described as having a cool blue luminessence that does not
Speaker 1: seem to produce any heat or much heat at least
Speaker 1: depending on the source. Yeah. If the situation is not
Speaker 1: that Will the Smith lit a fart in the night,
Speaker 1: is that Will the Smith has some sort of ghostly
Speaker 1: illumination that is seems to be pretty constant 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 Whisp, descriptions, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that would be a whole other thing. Right. You
Speaker 1: can imagine the tails would revolve around, oh, there was
Speaker 1: a campfire in the woods of mist, and there's clearly
Speaker 1: fairies or elves that hadn't know it's there's no mention
Speaker 1: of the smoke. Other questions would be that why is
Speaker 1: the willow wisp often reported to run away when you
Speaker 1: approach it or then follow you when you don't. The
Speaker 1: best explanations that I ran across had to do with
Speaker 1: just complex fluid dynamics of the situation, disturbing the mixture
Speaker 1: of gases in the air as you approach, and you
Speaker 1: just kind of make it waffed away by their movements,
Speaker 1: like trying to catch up a stray bit of cat
Speaker 1: hair floating in the in the room you know you
Speaker 1: never can get. Yeah, And I think that's a perhaps
Speaker 1: good explanation. But then there's another big one that I
Speaker 1: think is kind of important. If this is ordinary hot combustion,
Speaker 1: just like hot flames, like the fire, we normally know,
Speaker 1: why doesn't the flame spread, like why doesn't it catch
Speaker 1: fire to surrounding dead grass and vegetation. Well, my response
Speaker 1: to that would be, in many cases this is a
Speaker 1: bog or a marsh land. And when's the last time
Speaker 1: you heard about a bog burning down? Right? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's still possible for the for the dead
Speaker 1: plant matter that's above you know, whatever kind of damp
Speaker 1: soil or is there what's poking out above the ground.
Speaker 1: That seems like that could catch fire. But potentially yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, but just the damp environment tends to
Speaker 1: make me give less credence to that. But but I agree,
Speaker 1: it seems like there would still be the potential for
Speaker 1: something to catch on fire. Yeah. So there's actually a
Speaker 1: geologist named Alan A. Mills who who wrote a couple
Speaker 1: of papers on the subject of the ignis fatuous or
Speaker 1: the will of the wisp, and explained that he based
Speaker 1: on some analysis he did and some experiments he conducted,
Speaker 1: he didn't think that the marsh gas explanation cut it.
Speaker 1: It just didn't really work, he claimed. He tried it.
Speaker 1: He didn't experiment with putting a bunch of stuff into
Speaker 1: a container of damp garden soil, peat and rotten compost,
Speaker 1: and he tried to incubate it in the dark. He
Speaker 1: did get methane marsh gas out of it, but it
Speaker 1: did not spontaneously combust And then he also he tried
Speaker 1: adding phosphine phosphine generating compounds, and that apparently this produced
Speaker 1: a great stink, but it did not It did not
Speaker 1: create a spontaneous luminescence. So he could produce march gas,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't find a natural way to get it
Speaker 1: ignited like that. And whatever the cause of the ignition,
Speaker 1: it seems like the traditional sightings of the ignis fatuous
Speaker 1: really must not have featured hot flames. Now you're probably wondering, Okay,
Speaker 1: what's the opposite of hot flames? What would the DLB
Speaker 1: with cold points? What cold flames? Um? Cold flames are
Speaker 1: produced by ether or carbon disulfide, when he did just
Speaker 1: below the ignition point, so they're not exactly cold, but
Speaker 1: they're not as hot as flames usually are. So you
Speaker 1: heat certain substances up to the point where they're almost
Speaker 1: about to catch on fire, but they don't, and they
Speaker 1: produce this, uh, this sort of halo. Yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: it described as that luminescent precombustion halo um. Again, right,
Speaker 1: when the various compounds are heated, it just below the
Speaker 1: ignition points. So and again this perhaps this would be
Speaker 1: due to a natural um This would be a natural
Speaker 1: product of the decay in the swamp. Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: is a possibility that a few people have explored in
Speaker 1: some experiments. And then there is also a parallel possibility.
Speaker 1: In fact, the cold flames might even be an example
Speaker 1: of this. But the broader concept is chemo luminescence, which
Speaker 1: would mean glowing or light created by a chemical reaction.
Speaker 1: So it's not exactly fire, but it is chemicals reacting
Speaker 1: in a way that produces light. For example, the oxidation
Speaker 1: of those phosphorus compounds we were talking about creating a
Speaker 1: chemo luminescent glow. This seems likely too. It's kind of
Speaker 1: the bioluminescent model, except without the without the direct involvement
Speaker 1: of an organism. Yeah, and so Alan A. Mills. This
Speaker 1: one researcher described how he put together an experiment where
Speaker 1: he created a glow just by exposing different gases to
Speaker 1: each other. So he says that he found experimentally quote
Speaker 1: that the entrainment of crude phosphene into natural gas at
Speaker 1: low concentrations insufficient to cause ignition did result in a cool,
Speaker 1: glowing cloud visible in the dark. However, its color was
Speaker 1: green like the glow associated with aerial oxidation of yellow
Speaker 1: phosphorus rather than blue. So he's saying that just by
Speaker 1: mixing together the phosphorus compounds and the natural gas in
Speaker 1: the dark in the right concentrations, he got it to glow,
Speaker 1: even though it didn't catch five air. Okay, but it does.
Speaker 1: It does seem to lend cred into the possibility that
Speaker 1: a different type of chemical reaction could be taking place.
Speaker 1: We just maybe don't know all the ingredients that are
Speaker 1: they're involved. Yeah, yeah. And then there was also another
Speaker 1: experiment I read about that was done by some Italian
Speaker 1: researchers more recently, I think it was just seven or
Speaker 1: eight years ago. So they just had a container of
Speaker 1: phosphine gas phosphene vapor that they fed with a stream
Speaker 1: of air and nitrogen and when they did that, just
Speaker 1: righte a like they described, a faint, pale greenish light
Speaker 1: could be seen in the dark. And I think, as
Speaker 1: far as most scientists who have looked into this are concerned,
Speaker 1: the chemo lumin essence is probably the most viable answer
Speaker 1: to the question today, though it still doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: fit perfectly. Though maybe we should just never expect anything
Speaker 1: to fit perfectly, especially given the the uncertain shape that
Speaker 1: has been presented by these these very historical accounts, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because ultimately we're being held back here by the lack
Speaker 1: of observation of this phenomenon today. And that's another really
Speaker 1: interesting aspect of the Will of the Whisp. Claimed sightings
Speaker 1: of will of the Whisp, for some reason, have drastically
Speaker 1: dropped off in the past century or so, almost to
Speaker 1: the point of some people saying that the Will of
Speaker 1: the Whisp, whatever it was, is now extinct or or
Speaker 1: endangered in near extinction. And I think it's really interesting
Speaker 1: to imagine what could be the cause of this, because,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about, it's widespread enough that we think
Speaker 1: it is referring to a real thing. It's not just
Speaker 1: people imagining it. But what could the thing have been
Speaker 1: if people generally don't see it anymore? And I do
Speaker 1: want to point out that, you know what, we're not
Speaker 1: saying that they've completely vanished, but clearly they used to.
Speaker 1: They used to be more prevalent than they are today. Um.
Speaker 1: I know, 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 had to do with the UFOs
Speaker 1: and possible explanations for UFOs. One major explanation presented by
Speaker 1: Jay Alan Heineck, and that was that, particularly in the
Speaker 1: rural Michigan area, swamp lights might be the reason for
Speaker 1: that people were 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 if there's a little overlap.
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 to discuss here, though, in terms of why the
Speaker 1: willow wisp phenomenon would have faded away, is just to
Speaker 1: first of all, look at where it's occurring. Most of
Speaker 1: these accounts have to do with wetlands, marshlands boss and
Speaker 1: what has happened to our marshlands in uh in the
Speaker 1: last cuple over the last couple of centuries. Right, If
Speaker 1: a lot of this folklore is coming out of the
Speaker 1: marshes of Europe, the marshes of Europe have largely been
Speaker 1: transformed into places where agriculture happens or in the cities,
Speaker 1: or they've been drained, they've been bliced 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 in
Speaker 1: VI and then it's reduced to a small wetland environment
Speaker 1: a few centuries later, it seems like you would haven't
Speaker 1: even rarer occurrences that whatever is causing it be it
Speaker 1: an organism, be at a particular chemical build up, the
Speaker 1: potential for that to to happen is going to be
Speaker 1: far less because we've essentially terraformed our our planet. We've
Speaker 1: we've we've more than doubled the nitrogen cycle. We've we've
Speaker 1: we've we've decided to pick and choose what organisms are
Speaker 1: going to flourish, which ones we're going to do our
Speaker 1: best to eradicate without even knowing that we're doing it
Speaker 1: right at the time. Yeah, And and marshlands and wet lands,
Speaker 1: I mean that is there. They've been a real rallying
Speaker 1: point of in recent history of us trying to say, ho,
Speaker 1: slow down, these are actually important ecosystems, and we don't
Speaker 1: just need to, you know, push them out to the
Speaker 1: edge of existence. So we've lost a number of species
Speaker 1: already that have made their home in wetlands. Is it
Speaker 1: possible that we've also exterminated or nearly exterminated something that
Speaker 1: produces the willowest phenomenon? Yeah, I mean we may have
Speaker 1: just been watching too many times the documentary Man Versus Nature,
Speaker 1: The Road to Victory, But yeah, it's essentially along the
Speaker 1: same lines as something that people have brought up with
Speaker 1: the idea of terraforming Mars. We think that Mars probably
Speaker 1: doesn't have any life forms on it today. Probably it
Speaker 1: may have had some in the past, but whether it
Speaker 1: currently has any strange microbial life surviving anywhere, or ever
Speaker 1: had it in the past. What if by terraforming Mars
Speaker 1: in the future, by turning it into a suitable earthlike environment,
Speaker 1: we destroy whatever pockets of existing life or evidence of
Speaker 1: past life we're already there. Yeah, that's one of the
Speaker 1: big arguments against terraforming and uh and indeed it's it's
Speaker 1: one that we have already encountered with a certain degree
Speaker 1: here on this planet. And I think the under line
Speaker 1: concept here is one that several scientists we referred to
Speaker 1: have alluded to, which is that the the will of
Speaker 1: the whisp phenomenon may have a sort of species based origin,
Speaker 1: like that there might be a particular kind of microbial
Speaker 1: life form or microbial life ecosystem that produces it. There
Speaker 1: are tiny creatures in the ground that are responsible for
Speaker 1: the will of the whisps people used to see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the articles out there floating around is from
Speaker 1: Howell G. M. Edwards titled Will of the Whisp, an
Speaker 1: ancient mystery with extreme aphile origins question mark and uh yeah.
Speaker 1: This basically the basic concept here seems to be that
Speaker 1: that either the biolumin essence or the biologically discharged gas
Speaker 1: resulting it may be resulting from an extreme file organism
Speaker 1: that previously carved out of fragile niche lifestyle and swamps
Speaker 1: and marches marches, but has since snuffed it due to
Speaker 1: its delicate positioning in the eCos system. So again it
Speaker 1: comes down to the fact that this is it's something
Speaker 1: out there and maybe it's in its place in the
Speaker 1: world is fragile, and then when we start eradicating and
Speaker 1: cutting down this environment, it all that goes away. It
Speaker 1: makes me wonder what kinds of strange phenomena other than
Speaker 1: the will of the whisp could go extinct in the future.
Speaker 1: What are the things people see today that we might
Speaker 1: class as paranormal that maybe will mostly disappear in the future,
Speaker 1: and we might not know why because we might not
Speaker 1: know what caused it to begin with. What if we
Speaker 1: enter a future, can you imagine a world where people
Speaker 1: don't see UFOs anymore? Well, we kind of, we kind
Speaker 1: of live in it already. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: looking at these cases we presented here, you could say that,
Speaker 1: all right, take the UFO. There are varying reasons why
Speaker 1: one might see a UFO. Uh. Some of them involve
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis, some of them involve mental illness, some of
Speaker 1: them involve um a, sleep deprivation, etcetera. You can make
Speaker 1: a long list of them. And and if if a
Speaker 1: certain type of swamp gas phenomenon is on that list
Speaker 1: and that becomes eradicated due to environmental change, then yeah,
Speaker 1: that changes how it is perceived. It becomes less than
Speaker 1: an object of nature and more of a mental uh existence,
Speaker 1: more of a mental animal as opposed to a chemical one. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that is interesting because the will of the whisp
Speaker 1: seems to have largely gone away, but the phenomenon of
Speaker 1: seeing lights has not. I mean, we people still see lights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've always seen them, and we're going to continue to
Speaker 1: see strange lights that we can't explain, but try to
Speaker 1: Our brain ends up trying to explain them in the
Speaker 1: form of hallucination, and then it also in the form
Speaker 1: of various cultural scripts to apply to it in retrospect. Okay,
Speaker 1: but Robert, I want to bring you back to the
Speaker 1: place we started. Yes, I want to change everything and
Speaker 1: say you're not a medieval peasant. You are not out
Speaker 1: on the fens of medieval England. You are yourself and
Speaker 1: you are currently out, let's say, hiking in a US
Speaker 1: national park. If you ever, do you have a favorite
Speaker 1: national park? Well, you know what, Let's say, let's say
Speaker 1: state park. Let's go with with ok Finoki in here
Speaker 1: in Georgia, because it's a swamp, and it's a swamp
Speaker 1: where people have claim to have seen marsh lights in
Speaker 1: the past. Perfect. Okay, So you're you're out walking in
Speaker 1: the okay, Finoki. You realize you've you've hiked too far
Speaker 1: in the late afternoon, and suddenly dusk is coming on.
Speaker 1: You need to head back in the other direction to
Speaker 1: get back to the visitor center in your car. But
Speaker 1: on the way, you see some blue lights that are
Speaker 1: just out of just beyond range, out off the path.
Speaker 1: Would you go and investigate? Really, knowing what I know now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would probably not, but I feel like I would
Speaker 1: stop and watch and and hopefully I would watch this
Speaker 1: phenomenon with the presence of mind that what I'm observing
Speaker 1: is a rarity. Whatever is causing it has become scarce
Speaker 1: in the world, be it and a organism that is
Speaker 1: dying out, a chemical scenario under the soil that is
Speaker 1: less prevalent, or you know, fairies that are leaving the world,
Speaker 1: or a certain damned individual who somehow weasel his way
Speaker 1: back into hell. Man, I feel like I have the
Speaker 1: I must have the horrible curiosity i'd have to go
Speaker 1: to you're gonna die? Well, no, I'm not. No, That's
Speaker 1: exactly why I brought it to the modern day. So
Speaker 1: you don't think that there's a hankkeey punk out there
Speaker 1: who's gonna lead you off a cliff or into into
Speaker 1: Quicksand do you think this is probably some kind of
Speaker 1: natural occurrence. It's something that maybe gas, maybe something you
Speaker 1: can touch. Maybe you could be the person who has
Speaker 1: the insight onto into what is causing this because you
Speaker 1: can finally get close and get a good look and
Speaker 1: catch some in a jar. Yeah, but this is but
Speaker 1: as we've discussed, this is not happening in the city.
Speaker 1: This is happening in the wild and humans and despite
Speaker 1: despite all of our GPS technology, we can still die
Speaker 1: in the wilderness, and we can we can, we can
Speaker 1: do so fairly easily. They're still alligators in the okafin Oky,
Speaker 1: there's still bears in other national parks, and there's still
Speaker 1: things to fall off of, and you know, have to
Speaker 1: cut your own leg off and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And that's what the willow Wisp wants to happen. But
Speaker 1: sometimes you gotta walk through some alligator infested waters to
Speaker 1: achieve your terrible purpose, the terrible purpose, terrible purpose, as
Speaker 1: palm wad Deep might say, Yeah, yeah, he'd probably walk
Speaker 1: out and see what they were doing. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: there you have it, Willow the wisp, uh, hinky punk,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call this particular scenario, marsh lights,
Speaker 1: self light, fairy fire. What was the answer in the end?
Speaker 1: I guess it was the best one was chemo lumin essence,
Speaker 1: but we still don't really know for sure. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think the lassa what's kept describing it as a quote
Speaker 1: chemical animal, and I really like that idea that it's
Speaker 1: it's not it'sself an organism, but it's kind of a
Speaker 1: chemical manifestation linked to organisms, certainly linked to organisms, either
Speaker 1: by some unknown extreme of file microbe in the in
Speaker 1: the soil or just the breakdown of other organic organisms unknown.
Speaker 1: It's almost like a shadow organism in that sense. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like those are the best explanations out there,
Speaker 1: all right. Yeah, so hey, we'd of course, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from anybody out there who has seen anything
Speaker 1: like this. If you are one of the rare individuals
Speaker 1: who has glimpsed ferry fire in this modern age, we
Speaker 1: want to know about it. You can get in touch
Speaker 1: with us a number of ways. First of all, always
Speaker 1: get a head on over to stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. That's our mothership. That's we'll find blog post,
Speaker 1: toppin list, galleries, uh links out to social media accounts, etcetera.
Speaker 1: It's all there, and you can find us on social
Speaker 1: media on Facebook, on Twitter. We're blow the Mind on.
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Speaker 1: Tumbler and Joe how can they get in touch with
Speaker 1: your field fashion went ah. Well, if you'd like to
Speaker 1: write to us on email and let us know about
Speaker 1: your experience with Will of the Whisp, ignis Fatuous or
Speaker 1: any other types of ghost lights, you can email us
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
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