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Speaker 1: learn more Thinking Sideways. I don't know stories of things.
Speaker 1: We simply don't know the answer too. Hey everybody, and
Speaker 1: welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I and Steve,
Speaker 1: of course, as always joined by Joe and Devin. And
Speaker 1: this week we have a phenomena. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about mysterious phenomena that this mystery sucks. I think it's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well listen here, let me tell these people before you
Speaker 1: you trod all over it, Joe, what what we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about? Maybe maybe not well, what we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about is we're gonna be talking about the men
Speaker 1: men lights uh, this which are for people who don't
Speaker 1: know they're a phenomena that has been witnessed in the
Speaker 1: Australian Outback. For the Australian Outback. Yeah, I don't have
Speaker 1: that accent, So thanks for thanks for the help, but
Speaker 1: not doing it. And that's not to be confused with
Speaker 1: the Australian back out It has been reportedly observed in
Speaker 1: the outback for hundreds of years, and the lights are
Speaker 1: described as well flora lamps. People see it now, they
Speaker 1: are They've been described as a lot of different things, uh,
Speaker 1: their behavior and their color, as well as any sound
Speaker 1: or smells that they may or may not make. Um
Speaker 1: it's ever changing from one wit this to a next,
Speaker 1: so they're kind of hard to pin down. The only
Speaker 1: thing that really connects all the various sightings is like mushrooms. No, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what connects them. I see mushrooms in this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see mushrooms in everything. Handled mushrooms well before. Before
Speaker 1: Joe gets us too off topic, I do want to
Speaker 1: say that this was a listeners suggestion. Uh. This was
Speaker 1: suggested by Alex quite a while ago, and I know
Speaker 1: that some other people have sent it to us since then.
Speaker 1: So thank you for the suggestion. Guys, Thanks Alex. Um.
Speaker 1: So let's get into trying to describe and explain the
Speaker 1: men Men lights. Simplest description is, like I said, their
Speaker 1: lights that are seen at night by people who are
Speaker 1: driving or camping in the outback. The most common description
Speaker 1: is that they're they're kind of a whitish colored round
Speaker 1: light unless they're not. Sometimes they're dim, sometimes they're bright.
Speaker 1: Usually there's one, but sometimes there can be multiple. Uh.
Speaker 1: They hover in the distance somewhere between three to twenty
Speaker 1: feet off of the ground, which would be one to
Speaker 1: six meters off of the ground. The general behavior of
Speaker 1: the minmn lights is that they keep their distance from people.
Speaker 1: So if a person sees it and tries to approach,
Speaker 1: the lights retreat. But on the flip side, if you
Speaker 1: try to retreat from the min min lights, they follow you,
Speaker 1: so they seem to keep the same distance from you. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's always a consistent distance from the viewer typically, and
Speaker 1: it's always like a fair distance, right, it's not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean some some people are reported them approaching kind
Speaker 1: of close. But then again, you know they might have
Speaker 1: been on mushrooms. I don't know, No, apparently that's the theory. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: so they know they tend to be a distance away.
Speaker 1: The lights have been seen by motors who have said
Speaker 1: that they've seen the lights while they were traveling at
Speaker 1: highway speeds so sixty miles or a hundred kilometers per hour,
Speaker 1: and the lights never fell behind if sometimes they actually
Speaker 1: appeared to gain some distance, so they actually caught up
Speaker 1: with people. But it seems like the description is always
Speaker 1: they imply that the lights are kind of playful. But
Speaker 1: I've also heard on the opposite side of the spectrum
Speaker 1: the stories that people who try to follow the lights
Speaker 1: never return, So there's that kind of danger aspect there um,
Speaker 1: which I honestly I gotta be telling, like, chalk that
Speaker 1: up to wandering around in the dark, staring at something
Speaker 1: ahead of you and not watching where you're walking, that's right,
Speaker 1: and then you fall, you knock your head and then
Speaker 1: the dingo eats you. Yeah, I mean, especially if you're
Speaker 1: staring at a light, right and it's dark everywhere else
Speaker 1: and you're kind of burning out your night vision and
Speaker 1: then you look for something and done spot on exactly. Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many people have actually been killed
Speaker 1: pursuing these lights. I don't know. Yeah, the number is
Speaker 1: not reported because they were never seen again. Because in
Speaker 1: Dango eas now, the descriptions that we've given here of
Speaker 1: the minimum lights probably sounds familiar because depending on where
Speaker 1: you are in the world, this kind of light has
Speaker 1: been described just about everywhere. You'll hear them called the
Speaker 1: jack o landard lights, willow whisps, ghost lights, ghost candles,
Speaker 1: and then there's like locales, so there's places where they
Speaker 1: actually get a local name, much like the minimon lights.
Speaker 1: So you hear the Marpha lights, the Yeah, we talked
Speaker 1: about one of those, didn't we know? We even talked
Speaker 1: about lights. We've talked about swamp gases and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: but not anyone particular. This is our first actual light
Speaker 1: phenomena that we've gone over. There's breaking new ground. Don't
Speaker 1: forget the Marborough lights. We don't ever talk about those either.
Speaker 1: So let's start off with something that's really easy to define,
Speaker 1: and that's the name of the lights. Because it turns
Speaker 1: out that they are primarily seen in one area, which
Speaker 1: is in Queensland, Australia, between the towns of Boola and Winton.
Speaker 1: Between those two there used to be a settlement called
Speaker 1: men Men and from what I've read, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty wild and raucous kind of place and kind of lawless,
Speaker 1: and they had it was kind of deadwood eskin that
Speaker 1: they had a pub and it apparently lived up to
Speaker 1: the reputation of the town as well. But before you
Speaker 1: get and go and try and book your next vacation
Speaker 1: there don't because it burned down at the turn of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, and I've heard that it might have
Speaker 1: been a case of arson. You know. I read that,
Speaker 1: but I didn't. I didn't really focus too much on it,
Speaker 1: so I don't know, you know. I mean, obviously it's
Speaker 1: easy to burn a place down accidentally. It happens all
Speaker 1: the time, especially when your main source of light is fired.
Speaker 1: That doesn't help. Yeah. Sorry, we're talking about the turn
Speaker 1: between the eighteenth and name teen cent correct between. It
Speaker 1: burned down in like nineteen ten or nineteen sixteen somewhere
Speaker 1: in there. Then, okay, yeah, I'm sorry. I said nineteen didn't.
Speaker 1: It's confusing, it is. I complained about this before. That's
Speaker 1: the worst. It's a bad system. We should get rid
Speaker 1: of it. Um. So talking about the phenomena itself, it's
Speaker 1: like I had mentioned a little bit earlier. It's not
Speaker 1: new to the area. According to the indigenous people's there's
Speaker 1: legends that talk about lights like this having been around
Speaker 1: for before the white man came to the continent. But
Speaker 1: the story is also they're a little confusing and conflicting
Speaker 1: because it it's there's some that say that the lights
Speaker 1: were observed before you know, settlers came. But then there's
Speaker 1: also stories that say that the sightings have increased since
Speaker 1: settlers came. And there's also stories that blame the lights
Speaker 1: on the settlers who have killed you know, indigenous people's.
Speaker 1: This was like in the I think it was between
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties and eighteen eighties, there was a number
Speaker 1: of kind of slaughters and those were pointed to as well,
Speaker 1: those are the souls of those people. So it's it's
Speaker 1: it's I can never get a clear read on this
Speaker 1: is the story that was there before it morphed in. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the cool thing about legends is that, um,
Speaker 1: different groups of people can have different legends and so
Speaker 1: those could all be the original legends because you know,
Speaker 1: each group or tribe or whatever doesn't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: agree on when they don't have to exactly the same. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the flood legend. Yeah, that's the biblical flood.
Speaker 1: That legend has been through a whole bunch of cultures.
Speaker 1: So like angels, you know, there's flying beings from the
Speaker 1: Guy that a lot of cultures have, but like we
Speaker 1: all call them some different. Yeah, absolute next time, thinking
Speaker 1: stories are told around the campfire, and obviously they are
Speaker 1: going to diverge because don't talk to one another. In fact,
Speaker 1: they usually try to kill one another. And it's an
Speaker 1: oral most of them have the oral traditions. Stories are
Speaker 1: going to morph over time. So yeah, of course there's
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of reasons why they're not pinned
Speaker 1: down or not mating up. But interestingly enough, they do
Speaker 1: seem to occur, like, for example, the local the local
Speaker 1: Native Americans in our in our area, you know here
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest, they don't tell stories about mysterious lights,
Speaker 1: but they do in the outback, they do tell stories
Speaker 1: about mysterious lights. Something seems to be going on. Yeah
Speaker 1: it's conspiracy, Yeah probably yes, Okay, Um, So what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do here is is as I talked about, there's
Speaker 1: so many different descriptions of the lights that it makes
Speaker 1: it hard say exactly what's gonna go on or what
Speaker 1: they are, what they look like, how they act. So
Speaker 1: I'm going to go ahead and I'm gonna do something different.
Speaker 1: I'm going for me and I'm gonna do I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go through some accounts to help highlight some things, and
Speaker 1: we'll take this in chronological order, as Devon is about
Speaker 1: to burst an excitement because I'm winning. Do you see
Speaker 1: a single bullet point? No, but I don't have bullet
Speaker 1: points on my last one. My last one looked almost
Speaker 1: exactly like that with bullet points in it didn't. We're
Speaker 1: going to move into accountings, um, because there's a there's
Speaker 1: a number of them. I've picked a handful of them
Speaker 1: through time just to kind of help you. I have,
Speaker 1: I have absolutely have tailored it. Maybe there are a
Speaker 1: lot of sightings out there. Yes, yeah, And I'm glad
Speaker 1: you've paired it down somewhat because I don't want to
Speaker 1: bore the hell of our listeners. So let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and start with the first one. Uh, this is the
Speaker 1: first white guy story. This is the first story that
Speaker 1: is from a white person. And I actually I think
Speaker 1: almost all of these are, but that's not the point.
Speaker 1: The story comes from the early eight teen hundreds. We
Speaker 1: don't have an exact date. I've seen it listed eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty eight ten. It's all over the map, but it's
Speaker 1: the most common one because it references the stockman, which,
Speaker 1: if you don't know what a stockman is, that's a
Speaker 1: cattle herder version the stores. Yeah, yeah, at the local
Speaker 1: average Okay, now, okay, so there's a there's a stockman.
Speaker 1: He's working near the Men men's settlement, and sometime in
Speaker 1: the early evening he said he saw a glow app
Speaker 1: here in the local graveyard, but the draft away. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you mentioned that a lot of people
Speaker 1: got killed in Men because it was a wild West there. Yes,
Speaker 1: and they did have a little graveyard there, yes, they did. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so well as with every town in that time frame,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a graveyard because people are dying
Speaker 1: all the time. People are dying like flies, especially in
Speaker 1: a rough and tumble area. So he sees this light
Speaker 1: in the graveyard and he said it started to drift away,
Speaker 1: and he described it as being about the size of
Speaker 1: a watermelon, and this an American watermelon or an Australian watermelon.
Speaker 1: He said it was the size of a watermelon. At
Speaker 1: which point he decided that a watermelon sized light floating
Speaker 1: around was probably not something he wanted to be near,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to get away from itmelon. So he
Speaker 1: rode his horse towards the town of Booyum, and it
Speaker 1: followed him, and it wasn't until he got to town
Speaker 1: itself that the light disappeared. He went to the local
Speaker 1: police or constable, whatever the case may be, for that
Speaker 1: particular location, and he reported it, but of course they
Speaker 1: didn't believe him, in typical police fashion. Well, strangely enough,
Speaker 1: there were two more reports that came in, and again,
Speaker 1: as with stories like this, the time frames vary, but
Speaker 1: I'll just give you the second one, which is I
Speaker 1: think it happened a day or so later. There was
Speaker 1: a couple. Yeah, we'll see. That's that's the hard part,
Speaker 1: you know. But this couple came into the police and
Speaker 1: they said they had seen a light in the area
Speaker 1: and they had watched it. It got brighter and then
Speaker 1: it started to move away, so they decided, not very wisely,
Speaker 1: to to follow it. After a short bit, decided that
Speaker 1: was a bad idea and retrace their steps, at which
Speaker 1: point the light followed them. And the story doesn't say
Speaker 1: exactly when the light disappeared, but they got to town
Speaker 1: and then of course gave their story. So that's one
Speaker 1: of the earliest versions of the story. Their accountings. Well,
Speaker 1: then move forward to either June or July of nineteen twelve.
Speaker 1: I don't know which, And there is a guy by
Speaker 1: the name of Henry Lamond. Lemon said he was traveling
Speaker 1: in the early hours of the morning on horseback when
Speaker 1: he saw what he believed to be the headlights of
Speaker 1: a car somewhere between five or ten miles away. Uh.
Speaker 1: The thing to note here is that if you think
Speaker 1: about a car that far away, it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: single light far enough that the headlights are going to
Speaker 1: stand out as individual headlines. Yeah, I recall from his
Speaker 1: his account he thought they were a settling car headlights
Speaker 1: because he had a bit of greenish tinge to it. Yeah, apparently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: early car headlines were headlights were not just electric, you know,
Speaker 1: they had different methods of doing it. As as with
Speaker 1: a lot of things with cars in the very beginning,
Speaker 1: everybody was doing it their own way, and some were
Speaker 1: better than others. Um. But yeah, So he sees this
Speaker 1: car and he said the light was coming in his
Speaker 1: direction and then and he thought that it was moving
Speaker 1: about ten miles an hour, and there were two well,
Speaker 1: it was still one. And when it got close enough
Speaker 1: that he figured that if it was a car, they
Speaker 1: should have split. That's when he knew something was going
Speaker 1: on because it didn't split. The light was five to
Speaker 1: ten feet off of the ground, and they he and
Speaker 1: the light passed each other. I I understand that he
Speaker 1: believed the light was on the road. He however, it
Speaker 1: sounds like was not on the road because it wasn't
Speaker 1: like they passed, you know, close to one another. But
Speaker 1: he said the light traveled for about two hundred yards, uh,
Speaker 1: and then it just sort of faded away. So he
Speaker 1: was just off roading. I'm guessing that he he was
Speaker 1: because there was something to do with He was in
Speaker 1: the sheep trade, and I know he was going from
Speaker 1: one place to another. He'd left like four in the
Speaker 1: morning because he had to be their first light to
Speaker 1: start working. And I think it was shearing season if
Speaker 1: I remember right. And this this is totally from memory
Speaker 1: because his story is one of a bunch. But right, well,
Speaker 1: this is his stories significantly departs from the other stories
Speaker 1: because and the other almost all these stories you cannot
Speaker 1: catch up with the light, and in this one, he
Speaker 1: not only caught up with it, it passed him and
Speaker 1: went by him. He's not the only one that gets
Speaker 1: close to it, though. But I mean, but but this
Speaker 1: is this. I do this because this is a slice
Speaker 1: of different styles of stories. So I'm sorry, maybe I
Speaker 1: missed it. Did he have the impression that the car
Speaker 1: was heading towards him or it overtook him? It was
Speaker 1: head towards it direction they were heading towards each other
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, So we'll move forward just a
Speaker 1: year in time to n This is a very simple one.
Speaker 1: There was some folks who were um who were out
Speaker 1: in the evening hours, and they said they saw a
Speaker 1: ball of light traveling about five feet off the ground
Speaker 1: and it passed their buggy as if quote unquote it
Speaker 1: was controlled by something, but it didn't seem to be
Speaker 1: going just like Lamon's story. They thought it was maybe
Speaker 1: going about ten mine obviously obviously were they? I mean,
Speaker 1: was it? The impression I have of of Henry, right,
Speaker 1: is that it's a like a highway kind of situation. Right,
Speaker 1: as much as he's taken the track that on his
Speaker 1: horse and it's going down the main road, is that
Speaker 1: because I think that's what it is. Yeah, but the roads,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, it's just weird because then we've got
Speaker 1: buggies and but you've also got cars, and it's weird
Speaker 1: to me. Weird to me that somebody in that day
Speaker 1: and age would just assume like, that's a car, because
Speaker 1: cars are the only things at that time that are
Speaker 1: making lights bright enough. Yeah, I mean, that's that's what
Speaker 1: I was thinking to your cars were not that rare
Speaker 1: in Australia at the time, even in the outback. But
Speaker 1: it's funny to me, right that we're talking about like
Speaker 1: people who are not in cars saying well, that's a car, right,
Speaker 1: I mean if cars are so ubiquitous at this time,
Speaker 1: they were not ubiquitous at that time, right, but so
Speaker 1: they I mean, you know what it is, but that
Speaker 1: you would initially say like, it looks like a car
Speaker 1: to me, I don't know. I guess for me, it's
Speaker 1: just like a weird thing. I don't know. I get it,
Speaker 1: I get it. I don't know why it's weird. I
Speaker 1: don't know why it is. But sorry. So the next
Speaker 1: one that I've got for us is from the tenth
Speaker 1: of Februaryerable. Well, yeah, I had to because they're so
Speaker 1: many of you just have to jump them a time.
Speaker 1: So this is from a man named Mr C. Rhodes
Speaker 1: and Mr Rhodes standing first cecil. Is it? I have
Speaker 1: no idea? Okay, Mr Rhodes said that at about eight
Speaker 1: thirty at night, he saw the light hovering in the
Speaker 1: sky about fifteen ft in the air, and it was
Speaker 1: moving from east to west. Uh. And then as he
Speaker 1: described it, it moved about forty degrees, which I'm I'm
Speaker 1: assuming when he's saying the east and west, he's it
Speaker 1: traveled about forty degrees on the compass from true north
Speaker 1: to about north northwest right, yeah, um. And then he
Speaker 1: said once it did that, it then started to bounce
Speaker 1: up and down in the sky really fast, very quickly,
Speaker 1: at which point until it finally it stopped held steady.
Speaker 1: A cloud went by and it went behind the cloud.
Speaker 1: But he said he could see it bouncing up and down,
Speaker 1: peaking above and below the cloud, and then when the
Speaker 1: cloud eventually went by, it was static in its original
Speaker 1: position again, and then it's zipped away. I have a
Speaker 1: question for you. Isn't February in Australia summer? Would it
Speaker 1: have actually been dark at eight thirty pm in February?
Speaker 1: That's a good question. What's the latitude at this place?
Speaker 1: I don't know the latitude, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: time it gets dark there in February, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, just doesn't have the equivalent of pitch black.
Speaker 1: You see a light, a bright light in dusky condition.
Speaker 1: I'm just wondering, based on the next thing you're going
Speaker 1: to say, if maybe he wasn't seeing the sun, like okay,
Speaker 1: So here's here's what. Okay, I know what you're getting at.
Speaker 1: I have written down in my notes here that we're
Speaker 1: all looking at that maybe this guy had had too
Speaker 1: much to drink, and so I had checked lunar cow under,
Speaker 1: which showed me that the moon was at less than
Speaker 1: a quarter of a moon, So there was no way
Speaker 1: that it could have been the moon. You're getting it.
Speaker 1: And maybe it was the sun and he was in
Speaker 1: an altered state from mushrooms watching the sun bounce around.
Speaker 1: That's a I don't know that, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: good question. I didn't even think to look at when
Speaker 1: sunset was, so I just did a quick Google paused
Speaker 1: look at that where we do that occasionally, not often though,
Speaker 1: to stop asking, um when, yeah, okay, it could have
Speaker 1: been the moon, so it had to be a light.
Speaker 1: It could have been the sun, could have been a star,
Speaker 1: could could have been an airplane, could have been all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. So that is what this gentleman said
Speaker 1: he saw. That seems sorry, that's fine. It just seems
Speaker 1: like early or whatever. Okay, so we're gonna move on
Speaker 1: to nine four again. The month and day are not listed. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a farmer's working in his fields and he says
Speaker 1: that he heard a noise that evening while he was working,
Speaker 1: and the sound got louder and louder, and he described
Speaker 1: it like air escaping from a tire, that kind of
Speaker 1: high pitch. No it's the like, yeah, that kind of
Speaker 1: lovely noise. But that guy, this guy was working on
Speaker 1: a tractor, right, he was driving, but he heard it
Speaker 1: and he stopped and he got off the tractor and
Speaker 1: well that he started walking away because he's trying to
Speaker 1: figure out where this noise was coming from. And he
Speaker 1: decided that it was coming from behind the boulder. He
Speaker 1: went over and looked behind the boulder, and that's when
Speaker 1: he says he saw a bright orange light floating just
Speaker 1: above the ground close to him, close to him. Well,
Speaker 1: he tried to get near it, but he said he
Speaker 1: felt like there was pressure on him, similar to heat.
Speaker 1: You know, you feel pressure on your skin from heat.
Speaker 1: But there was no heat. Every time people do this,
Speaker 1: I always just think we really are just big monkeys.
Speaker 1: He grabbed a stick and he tried to poke it
Speaker 1: with a stick, but he couldn't poke it with the stick.
Speaker 1: At it get back, get bad, He said. He was
Speaker 1: trying to poke it with the stick, but he could
Speaker 1: never get the stick to touch it or get close enough.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like it was magnetically being pushed
Speaker 1: away every time he went for it. I probably would
Speaker 1: have actually tried to poke it with a stick myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know to do big monkeys. We do it, and
Speaker 1: we're tool using apes. So at this point, after having
Speaker 1: tried to hit it with a stick, he said, that's
Speaker 1: the point that it started changing color. It turned to green.
Speaker 1: It then faded away, as did the sound, after which
Speaker 1: he said he smelled kind of a sickly sweet smell,
Speaker 1: which then also kind of quickly dissipated. Yeah, his story
Speaker 1: is one of the weird ones. But there's kinds of weird.
Speaker 1: They all vary quite a bit. Yeah, you ready for
Speaker 1: the next one? Quiet, I gotta just give me just
Speaker 1: a second here, hang on, okay, okay, okay, good, So
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to eighty This is one of the
Speaker 1: ones that I told you. Just kind of an outlier
Speaker 1: as well. When we're talking about getting close outliers. Two
Speaker 1: men were driving from the town of Badouri to Boolia
Speaker 1: when they saw a bright light on the side of
Speaker 1: the road. They pulled up next to it, at which
Speaker 1: point they said, the light took off, sprayed their car
Speaker 1: with gravel, and they watched it disappear through the trees.
Speaker 1: After it was gone, they got out of the car
Speaker 1: and they said that they saw a fine white powder
Speaker 1: on the ground, but nobody ever collected that to figure
Speaker 1: out what it was. Powder like maybe cocaine. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's true or not. I'm not sure. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think at that time, I
Speaker 1: don't think that would have been as much. But it
Speaker 1: is weird that this is they say there's this powder. Well,
Speaker 1: let's spurs recorded incidents, uh, of the light actually spraying
Speaker 1: somebody with gravel. I think maybe it was just somebody
Speaker 1: in a hot rod who just peeled out and just
Speaker 1: showered them with gravel. And I'm not going to disagree
Speaker 1: with that, Joe. Yeah, I've just I got to tell
Speaker 1: the story as as I find it. So but I
Speaker 1: can't disagree with you on that. But yeah, they had
Speaker 1: the lights. Normally, don't spray it with gravel. No, no,
Speaker 1: that's not normally what my lamp does. Um. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go to our next one. This is on the second
Speaker 1: of May, and the person in question is Detective Lyle Booth. Mr.
Speaker 1: Booth was camping outside of Booya near a dried up
Speaker 1: watering hole. Um. And just to kind of give a
Speaker 1: frame of reference for the light, the surrounding vegetation was
Speaker 1: short trees, so they would have been, you know, like
Speaker 1: fifteen highest. They weren't tall tall forests, probably less than that.
Speaker 1: He he said, in the middle of the night, he
Speaker 1: saw a light that he first thought was a headlight. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until he realized that the direction he
Speaker 1: was looking wasn't actually the main road, so it couldn't
Speaker 1: have been headlights from the road. And he says the light,
Speaker 1: which he watched for a while, was about fifteen two
Speaker 1: thousand meters away, and it moved in a straight line
Speaker 1: across the horizon, but it didn't of course get any
Speaker 1: farther away from him, and it was whitish in color.
Speaker 1: And then after moving for a bit it stopped and
Speaker 1: stayed in one place steadily for about half an hour,
Speaker 1: at which point he fell asleep. He woke up, I think,
Speaker 1: he said, he woke up like one o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: It was a couple of hours later. He woke up,
Speaker 1: and he said that the light had moved. It had
Speaker 1: now made its way over to the campsite of another
Speaker 1: person who was in his party. Uh, and that was
Speaker 1: maybe that it was a woman. Her campsite was about
Speaker 1: a thousand meter is away? Actually heard like six away?
Speaker 1: Well again again six hundred or thousand, it varies. That's
Speaker 1: just one of the things I wondered about in this story,
Speaker 1: that she's in the same party, but she's she's like
Speaker 1: a thousand meters away. Is that what it is? I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know a kilometer, I mean, you do
Speaker 1: a hundred feet that would probably do it. Well, you
Speaker 1: know what I've I've been camping and I've heard you snore,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I think six hundreds might be what it takes. Okay. No,
Speaker 1: I have no idea why she was so far away.
Speaker 1: I really don't. But you know, his his story goes on.
Speaker 1: He said the light had dimmed, it had gotten more yellowish,
Speaker 1: and it was now about three to six feet off
Speaker 1: of the ground, and it lit up the ground below it,
Speaker 1: meaning that it was casting light in her camp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's it actually is a little floating fireball
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, And he said he watched it
Speaker 1: for about five minutes, at which point it's suddenly just
Speaker 1: dropped to the ground and it went out. It dropped
Speaker 1: and disappeared. And again kind of like with um was
Speaker 1: booth or not? No, this is booth with Rhodes. I
Speaker 1: checked the lunar calendar and the new moon was on
Speaker 1: the sixth of that month, which was four days afterwards,
Speaker 1: which means there wouldn't have been but the barest sliver
Speaker 1: of moons. So again, this guy couldn't have been just
Speaker 1: staring at the moon. If it was six days after
Speaker 1: it would be a crescent moon. It wouldn't be, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be much of a crest now, it wouldn't. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be a half moon or anything like that now,
Speaker 1: but it would be a quarter moon something like that. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: listen that that's actually the last one that we're going
Speaker 1: to go through in terms of stories, because we could
Speaker 1: really keep this up all night. Yeah, there's lots of stories.
Speaker 1: There are tons and tons. People are chased by lives,
Speaker 1: people chase the lines, people shot at the lights, people
Speaker 1: are shot at by the lights. Well, okay, not quiet
Speaker 1: that what didn't happen? But no, it's it's been all
Speaker 1: kinds of colors. So it's been white, bluish, grayish, orangish, yellowish.
Speaker 1: It's steady, it's pulsed, it's moved towards people, away from people,
Speaker 1: parallel to the ground, bouncing up and down. It's been noisy,
Speaker 1: it's been smelly. It hasn't been smelly, it's been quiet.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's just all these things. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: human imagination, at least I'm not saying all lifes don't exist,
Speaker 1: but human imagination is drawn a few things any here. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: I've I've noticed in the stories in the lot, the
Speaker 1: stories from the last thirty years, that I think is
Speaker 1: a good example of what you're talking about things that
Speaker 1: have been added to it, is that radio and electrical
Speaker 1: interference have been added. So suddenly it's the light showed
Speaker 1: up in my radio went crazy and my car conked out,
Speaker 1: and I really feel like that is something that has
Speaker 1: made its way in from UFOs stories. Ufologists are going
Speaker 1: crazy over because now, oh well that got added in,
Speaker 1: so it must be an alien thing. That's that's what
Speaker 1: it is for sure. So it's it definitely has changed
Speaker 1: over time. I'm in total agreement with that. So with that,
Speaker 1: I guess it's time to go into theories mushrooms. Mushrooms
Speaker 1: are not on the theory list, but thank you for
Speaker 1: adding that one, Joe. Now that we've covered that, um,
Speaker 1: the first theory is I'm going to say the easiest
Speaker 1: to discredit, and that is that the lights are birds
Speaker 1: or insects. Yeah, well, let me let me explain it.
Speaker 1: So this is this is what the theory says. Is
Speaker 1: it says that us, there are a swarm of bugs
Speaker 1: that have eaten a naturally bioluminescent plant or fungus of
Speaker 1: some kind, or are naturally bioluminescent themselves, or a bird
Speaker 1: that has eaten a bunch of bioluminescent bugs, or a
Speaker 1: bird that might be bioluminescent. Is what these people are seeing, right,
Speaker 1: And so none of these things actually exist, right, None
Speaker 1: of the things have ever been found. The whole idea
Speaker 1: that a bird could ingest a bunch of say, like
Speaker 1: you know, blowing nats or fireflies, fireflies and then start
Speaker 1: glowing those itself is like ridiculous. Yeah, okay, but that
Speaker 1: assumes that it's a natural occurrence, right. I mean there's
Speaker 1: a TV show used to watch where they engineered like
Speaker 1: chipmunks to be bioluminescent. They just like found the gene
Speaker 1: and switched on. They've done those things, So we're assuming
Speaker 1: that this would be the natural. I mean, it's possible
Speaker 1: that Australian scientists near min Men were ago yeah around
Speaker 1: ye okay, I'm not explaining, but maybe as as recent
Speaker 1: as fifty years ago, maybe even as recent as a
Speaker 1: hundred years Probably not, but it would be like time
Speaker 1: travel too. I mean, you know, you know BELLI and
Speaker 1: I did do a lot of research. Scientists have traveled
Speaker 1: back in time with bioluminescent chipmunks to create these lights
Speaker 1: or birds. I mean, it doesn't have to be chipmunks, right,
Speaker 1: it's just anything. I like the idea of chipmunks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I guess that's just assuming, right. I'm
Speaker 1: not I hate the theory too, I agree, but I
Speaker 1: just feel like I have to pitch in for the
Speaker 1: fact that, like, scientists could have created a bioluminescent bird. Fine,
Speaker 1: they could and it could have as they were, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell anyone, Yeah, but yeah, but
Speaker 1: birds scientists that swear protected by luminescent birds, as birds
Speaker 1: don't usually stick together in a tight little ball when
Speaker 1: they fly, no insects neither. Yeah. Birds are pretty bad
Speaker 1: at night anyway. So the next theory that we have
Speaker 1: is swamp gas, which is also known as ignis fatuous.
Speaker 1: That seems silly, Okay, yeah, I know, I know, it's
Speaker 1: it's they say it like a hundred times in every
Speaker 1: Men in Black movie. There are many swamps near this area,
Speaker 1: only hundreds and maybe thousands of miles away. So swamp
Speaker 1: gas is and is actually the common name for biogas,
Speaker 1: which typically forms in a wetland environment. Those gases are
Speaker 1: primarily methane with hydrogen and some carbon dioxide in them.
Speaker 1: Um and they it is truly, it does actually happen
Speaker 1: because there's all that organic material and waters and it
Speaker 1: it rots and then as the gas is released, it
Speaker 1: can create that can be enough heat to cause a
Speaker 1: spontaneous ignition. If you've ever watched Princess Bride and you
Speaker 1: look at the fire swamp, you know that all of
Speaker 1: the explosions constantly. That's the Hollywood amped up version of
Speaker 1: what swamp gas can do. And interestingly, there's there's quite
Speaker 1: a few reachers researchers who have seen these fireballs and
Speaker 1: they seem to have been spontaneously combusting in these swamps.
Speaker 1: One thing that is noted is the fact that when
Speaker 1: and these are researchers, not necessarily today, but some of
Speaker 1: these are in the eighteen hundreds, they would try to
Speaker 1: approach the fire. So they would see this gas starting
Speaker 1: to ignite, they would try to approach it, and it
Speaker 1: would retreat from them. It's believed that the reason is
Speaker 1: is that because these people are moving forward, they're causing
Speaker 1: an air current and that is pushing this fuel source,
Speaker 1: the gas forward as well, which is why the fire
Speaker 1: seems to move away. So that's that's that's some older
Speaker 1: research on swamp gas. But you know the thing about
Speaker 1: it is is we're talking to like people are saying
Speaker 1: that they're at a distance of say a thousand meters
Speaker 1: in this light and then moving towards it is and
Speaker 1: it's moving away from them. Yep, that that that is
Speaker 1: in doesn't follow along with this. But one of the
Speaker 1: things you can think about, right, is that even so
Speaker 1: they've estimated what they how bright they think that light is,
Speaker 1: and how big they think that light is, and that
Speaker 1: they think it is that distance. But we know, like
Speaker 1: there's there's such thing as an optical illusion, right, so
Speaker 1: it may be a dimmer, smaller light than the brain
Speaker 1: is perceiving. Therefore, it may be much closer to that
Speaker 1: person than they are anticipating, right, And that's reasonable to Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's absolutely true. That's fair. Although you're you know,
Speaker 1: we do have two eyes, which gives us kind of
Speaker 1: like you know, but it's also dark and you're looking
Speaker 1: at a light, and you know, if you're thinking it's
Speaker 1: much brighter. I've done this before. I thought, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: that car behind me has a headlight out, and then
Speaker 1: suddenly it's like, no, that's a motorcycle right behind me.
Speaker 1: Oh god, what you know? That happens You're laying in
Speaker 1: the dark and you see what looks like a light
Speaker 1: way far away, only to realize that it's actually something
Speaker 1: that's only a couple of feet away, but very you know,
Speaker 1: very dim it's just it's a perspective thing. Or sometimes
Speaker 1: it's something that's like stuck to your glasses. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that that could for you be it. Yeah probably,
Speaker 1: But but generally speaking, that you're gonna move around a
Speaker 1: little bit, you're gonna just not it's not just the
Speaker 1: three inches or porches between your eyes. You're gonna actually
Speaker 1: be moving around side to side. You've got a really
Speaker 1: good idea that this is this thing. Not always but
Speaker 1: but that's you know, I understand where you're going. But
Speaker 1: that's that's not a percent, especially in a dark environment. Um.
Speaker 1: Something about swamp gas that I did want to point
Speaker 1: out that I found that was really interesting is that
Speaker 1: there was a researcher in two thousand. He was a
Speaker 1: British guy. Um, he suggested that And by the way,
Speaker 1: the fun note is this is after his failure for
Speaker 1: twenty years in a controlled environment to create swamp gas
Speaker 1: to create the fireballs that the lights were what's called
Speaker 1: cold flames. And I don't know if you guys have
Speaker 1: ever heard this before. It's uh so I don't I
Speaker 1: don't completely understand the science behind it, but it's that
Speaker 1: gases that are neararing their ignition point will put out
Speaker 1: some light and that maybe what it is. So there
Speaker 1: it's warm enough that they should they're almost going to ignite,
Speaker 1: but they don't actually, but they're creating then this luminescence problem.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know, for all of for the entire
Speaker 1: swamp gas issue is the location is Joe very very
Speaker 1: wisely pointed out in the very beginning of this, which
Speaker 1: is it's not swampy. This is known as channel Country,
Speaker 1: which if you look at it from the aerials, it
Speaker 1: is nothing but just fingers of rivers and creeks going uphills.
Speaker 1: It's all dry. It's it's in the out back. They
Speaker 1: I looked up the rainfall and they get on average
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty eight millimeters of rain a year,
Speaker 1: which is about seven and a half inches. Compare that
Speaker 1: to a place like say western Oregon, where we get
Speaker 1: two hundred inches a year. That's five meters of water.
Speaker 1: If you look at southern California they're at they're kind
Speaker 1: of in a bad, bad decade. They are averaging about
Speaker 1: twenty three inches a year with and this is and
Speaker 1: they're getting way up and above. You actually have to
Speaker 1: go to a place here in the States like Arizona,
Speaker 1: which is a desert to get the same levels of
Speaker 1: minimal rainfall swamps in this area. No, there's not enough
Speaker 1: constant water to create the the rot to then create
Speaker 1: the gas. It dries out, the gas would escape on
Speaker 1: top of that, it's like swamp gas. You know, it
Speaker 1: can rise epic and it can sup ignite, but it
Speaker 1: can't just chase a car or run away from a car. No,
Speaker 1: not really, absolutely not. So let's move on to our
Speaker 1: next one. Because we've obviously none of us are in
Speaker 1: love with swamp gas smelling theory. We're gonna go to
Speaker 1: one that I know, devil like Aliens. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: obviously Actually unfortunately for this one, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: as see. I actually like Aliens for this one, just
Speaker 1: because it ties together some of the inconsistencies and I
Speaker 1: find a lot of humor in it. I really I
Speaker 1: would love this to be a situation where there's some
Speaker 1: race that has decided that the outback is the best
Speaker 1: place that they need to do air version of Mario
Speaker 1: Kart at night and they're awesome, glowing a little spaceships.
Speaker 1: I mean, it makes it's like a very realistically right
Speaker 1: this is a country where there's a strong history of documentation,
Speaker 1: versus like say Africa, where it's all like a lot
Speaker 1: of it is still oral tradition has been like so
Speaker 1: like there's people who are like have this written history, right,
Speaker 1: it's white people, and like everybody loves to mess with
Speaker 1: white people. It's also like this great landing ground where
Speaker 1: it seems like if you were coming to Earth, you
Speaker 1: were like, there's kind of a smaller place that we
Speaker 1: can still land at, that we can be like self container.
Speaker 1: We can like you know, land without being observed. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Here's why I don't like the aliens.
Speaker 1: Thing is because they stand down these little drones or
Speaker 1: whatever to to observe and gather information, and yet they
Speaker 1: make they make them glow hugely. I mean, wouldn't you
Speaker 1: want a stealthier little drone? Maybe they don't have um,
Speaker 1: you know, night vision technology. Yeah, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: What like you have literally no way of perceiving how
Speaker 1: different technologies in this universe have evolved. Let's be fair,
Speaker 1: right if they don't even have to be carbon based entities.
Speaker 1: But yeah, seriously, why would their little drones or their
Speaker 1: little spacecraft low? Maybe they perceive light a different way
Speaker 1: than we do. Okay, now that that I will accept
Speaker 1: as a possible reason of why they glow if they
Speaker 1: see on a different spectrum or they just create different
Speaker 1: I mean, there are there life forms on Earth that
Speaker 1: are in a different spectrum than our human eyes can
Speaker 1: even perceive. So like, yeah, but if they're let's let's
Speaker 1: presume these these are advanced, fairly smart aliens, so they
Speaker 1: know they understand the whole electromagnetic spectrum, and they recognize
Speaker 1: that if they're down here to observe us stealthily, they
Speaker 1: will know that they shouldn't be mitting in the visible
Speaker 1: light range. They would know that they should. But they
Speaker 1: also might be like humans and so self important where
Speaker 1: they're like they won't notice they're dump. But it also
Speaker 1: could be just you know, like we think we are
Speaker 1: so smart as humans that like aliens would be smart.
Speaker 1: But if we, you know, if there were a race
Speaker 1: that we're smarter than us, they might be like, all
Speaker 1: these guys are freaking idiots, Like, well, we're gonna screw
Speaker 1: with them. That's my favorite theory, right, is that like
Speaker 1: aliens just messing with you, right, But also it could
Speaker 1: be like they won't notice, Yeah, they don't notice like
Speaker 1: they're not the other I could sort of sort of
Speaker 1: kind of see that in this in the sense that
Speaker 1: you know, there was this dumb, bureaucratic mindset mentality. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe I guess, but it just seems to me like
Speaker 1: at least one alien scientists would have said, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: they might perceive electromagnetic radiation in this bandwidth which we
Speaker 1: can't perceive, but maybe they can, so maybe we should
Speaker 1: like not yeah, but like put that in and but no,
Speaker 1: I know what happened then was he was taking before
Speaker 1: a special committee and accused of crabs against the state
Speaker 1: and executed. So I think, like my argument against that is,
Speaker 1: like put that in our terms, right, think if like
Speaker 1: we discovered aliens and like one scientist at NASA was like,
Speaker 1: but wait, they might perceive sound in this way, so
Speaker 1: we have to make our spaceships that are going to
Speaker 1: go investigate this silent. Obviously everyone would be like, no,
Speaker 1: that's too expensive, we're not doing that. And also they
Speaker 1: don't perceive that. There's no way they purceive sound like that.
Speaker 1: That's insane, So we wouldn't do it. And then we would,
Speaker 1: like you know, have a bunch of alien stories, lore
Speaker 1: of people being like the it's weird you just hear
Speaker 1: this abound and that they may not I mean something
Speaker 1: that you hinted at earlier in that is that they
Speaker 1: may not perceive light in the same way. It's like,
Speaker 1: there's that what is that crazy shrimp that breake um aquariums,
Speaker 1: and they have figured out that they see a million
Speaker 1: more colors than we do. So it's they may not
Speaker 1: have ever figured it out, but we've labored that enough.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I like we should talk about aliens
Speaker 1: probably soon, but well, for this, I don't I like
Speaker 1: the idea that it's aliens messing with people, but I
Speaker 1: also don't think it's the strongest theory. So this that
Speaker 1: we we're going to go to the next one, which
Speaker 1: is related, which is that these lights are actually from
Speaker 1: some sort of dimensional rift. In other words, there's something
Speaker 1: that is on another plane of existence that is trying
Speaker 1: to either is leaking through or trying to come through
Speaker 1: into our dimension, at which point it may or may
Speaker 1: not be an intentional set of lights. No. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's it's debated by a lot of people how
Speaker 1: this works, not by me because I don't really buy it.
Speaker 1: But that's another theory that you see out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like the idea of a dimensional rift. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think that you wouldn't just see lights coming through.
Speaker 1: You would see dude, would see cars, cars, houses, large rocks.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, I mean, you'd see all kinds of
Speaker 1: crap coming you would think, but you would think, but
Speaker 1: not just lights. Okay, well let's move to the next
Speaker 1: theory after that, which is ball lightning. So I remember
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, this is it's understan it's believed,
Speaker 1: it's a thing. We know it's a thing now, but
Speaker 1: I still remember ball lightning being kind of a myth
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, and it's it's always I
Speaker 1: thought ball lightning was always kind of proven to you know,
Speaker 1: they didn't really prove ball lightning was actually a true
Speaker 1: thing until I think about twenty or thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: like or no, No, it was in the No, I'm lying,
Speaker 1: I'm making that data. It was in the mid sixties.
Speaker 1: They had really they knew. But we still don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how it happens. It's probably electricity like lightning. We've
Speaker 1: got to capture some of those balls and interrogate the
Speaker 1: problem is we have never been able to do that
Speaker 1: they've been observed in nature. But that's it. But interestingly,
Speaker 1: for this particular story for the men Men lights, there
Speaker 1: are some similar descriptions for ball lightning as there are
Speaker 1: for the lights. I'm just gonna go through this list here, um,
Speaker 1: and you'll see some of the similarities. There's the ones
Speaker 1: that are completely dissimilar, but I've prune those out. I
Speaker 1: just want to make these little connections. Uh So. The
Speaker 1: similarities are moves erratically or slowly, up and down or
Speaker 1: left and right, can cover in place. Generally spherical, though
Speaker 1: sometimes pear shaped with fuzzy edges, which I feel like
Speaker 1: that sometimes. Um. The diameter is anywhere from one to
Speaker 1: one centimeters, which is half an inch to forty inches.
Speaker 1: They range in color from red, orange, and yellow. Yellow
Speaker 1: is the most common. They are rarely reported creating any heat,
Speaker 1: though sometimes when they disappear they can cause heat or
Speaker 1: a bit of an explosion. And they do tend to
Speaker 1: have a smell associated with them, which is the smell
Speaker 1: of ozone. Um makes sense, but yeah, it totally makes sense. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, the problem with ball lightning is there's never
Speaker 1: any storms reported. I mean, it's good weather. That's why
Speaker 1: people are out exactly ball lightning. There has to be
Speaker 1: a lightning storm, right, yes, thunderstorm usually yes, not always usually,
Speaker 1: but this would be a like statistically improbable amount of
Speaker 1: ball lightning without storm. Yeah, there would have to be
Speaker 1: some It's almost it would have to be there's some
Speaker 1: kind of catalyst to cause it, which is actually something
Speaker 1: that's in a later theory. Next theory of the seventeen
Speaker 1: thousand theories that I have listed here for real is
Speaker 1: um settle in that you might want to go to
Speaker 1: the back right now. So our next one is, Joe,
Speaker 1: how do you pronounce this? You've said this word thank you? Okay,
Speaker 1: so fati morgana there I got it right once. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's this series put out there by Professor Jack
Speaker 1: Pettigrew who's observed the minmn lights many many times, um,
Speaker 1: and he's done some actually some really good research into it.
Speaker 1: And just so we know the how do I say
Speaker 1: this word again? Thank you? That thing is a type
Speaker 1: of mirage or a light reflection, and it's typically seen
Speaker 1: on the horizon or high up in the clouds sometimes
Speaker 1: and it's usually at the horizon. So if anybody remembers
Speaker 1: last year, there was all that stuff going around the
Speaker 1: internet of that Chinese city in the clouds. I remember
Speaker 1: that that was That was pretty awesome. That was really cool.
Speaker 1: That's what this this phenomena is. I gotta say, if
Speaker 1: I looked up at the clouds and I saw a
Speaker 1: city up there, I'll crap my pants. I would be
Speaker 1: very very curious. Is what was going on? What was
Speaker 1: about to come down? Um? Well, okay, so what what
Speaker 1: it's caused by is it's caused by a temperature in
Speaker 1: version where cold, dense air is trapped next to the
Speaker 1: ground under a layer of warmer air. And depending on
Speaker 1: they say, the shape, so I'm guessing it's the mass
Speaker 1: or the density, and how far of an area covers
Speaker 1: of that inversion. Light near the ground can be refracted
Speaker 1: and sent through that cold So light normal normally travels
Speaker 1: in straight line or the curvature of the Earth. Eventually
Speaker 1: it's going to go away and the farther way you
Speaker 1: are over the horizon, you're not going to see it.
Speaker 1: If this cold air is covering that area, the light
Speaker 1: can then travel through it, so light actually bends and
Speaker 1: follows the curvature of the Earth because the air is
Speaker 1: trapped next to it. Yeah. Well, what it is is
Speaker 1: like you know, I imagine your eyeglasses and they refract.
Speaker 1: That's how they correct your vision. Is because the glass
Speaker 1: is a different density than the air around it, and
Speaker 1: the same thing with that, I mean hot air versus
Speaker 1: cool air, different density. Had that sharp lair, it's going
Speaker 1: to bend that light just the way the lenses in
Speaker 1: your eyeglasses. And yeah, that's how it works, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's a very similar set of conditions to what
Speaker 1: I still feel is my favorite theory for sky quakes. Right,
Speaker 1: it's the same. It's the visual version of the audio
Speaker 1: version of what you were saying for skyquakes exactly. Um
Speaker 1: And and normally this happens over water because that's where
Speaker 1: you get a good inversion of air temperatures, because the
Speaker 1: water temperature itself is going to help cause that. But
Speaker 1: according to Pedigrew, the channel country of the outback is
Speaker 1: also a really good I mean I would assume I
Speaker 1: would I would guess that the outback is kind of
Speaker 1: the opposite of a cool, watery area, right, It's a dry,
Speaker 1: hot area, so it may create an opposite inversion, which
Speaker 1: I guess I don't know enough about science to say.
Speaker 1: One way that version is like the same either way. Well,
Speaker 1: it's because of the fact that a channel country, so
Speaker 1: it's a lot of ravines and valleys and so which
Speaker 1: cold air can get trapped in there. So that's that's
Speaker 1: how I understand here talking a small version the land.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to be Essentially, the land has been
Speaker 1: bombarded by sunlight all day. It's hot, it's hot, and
Speaker 1: then the atmosphere cools down barely rapidly, but especially there's
Speaker 1: no ozone. Yeah, and the land is still still warm,
Speaker 1: still re radiating, and everything has still got warmed. But
Speaker 1: but and that's when that temperature verst occurs, you know.
Speaker 1: And so but it's the same either way. Right, if
Speaker 1: it's hot on the bottom or cold on the bottom,
Speaker 1: the inversion creates a similar effect. I think it's gotta
Speaker 1: be gotta be cold on the bottom. No, that's gotta
Speaker 1: be cold on the top and warm on the bottom.
Speaker 1: Cold air is trapped next to the ground under a
Speaker 1: layer of war were air, So it is cold air
Speaker 1: on the bottom. So cold are close to the ground.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, you're not gonna have a layer
Speaker 1: like this high. It's gonna be cold air that it's
Speaker 1: gonna be warm warm ground, cold air for god knows how,
Speaker 1: and then and then warm air above it. Is that
Speaker 1: kind of what you're thinking, Well, I mean that's the
Speaker 1: way it's described as this cold air trapd next to ground.
Speaker 1: The exact the exact amount we're laboring. The point is
Speaker 1: is that this seems to be the place that it
Speaker 1: happens a lot um. Now. I could see it in
Speaker 1: an arid environment, you know, dry and you know you're
Speaker 1: not gonna see it in the temperate environment like we
Speaker 1: have here in Oregon. But in arid environment or at
Speaker 1: sea or like down around see Antarctica, I can see
Speaker 1: it happening all the time. Yeah. Well, and and here's
Speaker 1: what Pettigrew did. He and six observers. They parked a
Speaker 1: car and they left the headlights on, and then they
Speaker 1: drove ten kilometers away, which is six miles, and so
Speaker 1: that means that of course, put some high ground between
Speaker 1: them and the car. They then and they went out
Speaker 1: obviously at a time that they expected this to take place,
Speaker 1: so they knew the conditions were right, and they parked
Speaker 1: and they waited, and sure enough, in those conditions they
Speaker 1: could see the headlights of the car that they had
Speaker 1: parked several miles away. They actually they put out a
Speaker 1: set of really awesome photos as well, because that morning
Speaker 1: there was the inversion was still there and a mountain
Speaker 1: range that was a plateau range that was over the
Speaker 1: horizon was projected up and you can see in the
Speaker 1: images as it's as the temperature is inversion is eliminated,
Speaker 1: it looks like that mountain range sinks back into the horizon.
Speaker 1: So it's really cool. And then they went back to
Speaker 1: the car they left there and they found the battery
Speaker 1: run flat and they didn't bring I'm surprised the car
Speaker 1: was still there. But my main problem with with this theory.
Speaker 1: What he has done makes total sense to me. What
Speaker 1: it doesn't clarify or fix for me is that when
Speaker 1: we're driving cars around that are generating very very bright lights.
Speaker 1: I get it, but two hundred years ago, the brightest
Speaker 1: light at night was a campfire or the mood. So
Speaker 1: it's and you would think that you would probably recognize
Speaker 1: some of this, So I don't think that they would
Speaker 1: be bright enough, and it doesn't work for me. I
Speaker 1: have a problem with it. It's only when we have
Speaker 1: this technology. Here's the deal is that you know when
Speaker 1: when the Aborigines were occupying Australia, you lived in a
Speaker 1: fairly confined area that you ranged in and at night
Speaker 1: you look over you look over that direction, and you
Speaker 1: know there's not the hillside up there that somebody can
Speaker 1: build a fire on. Right, there's no there's no campfire
Speaker 1: on the hillside because that's just open flat range. But
Speaker 1: if this, if this phenomenon is occurring, if there's somebody
Speaker 1: over the horizon kind of up on the hillside that
Speaker 1: built built themselves a nice, big, bright campfire and you're
Speaker 1: seeing it, and you know that that cannot possibly be
Speaker 1: where you're looking at because there ain't no hillside there.
Speaker 1: I could see why that would give you the will
Speaker 1: And I will add on to that that, like I
Speaker 1: understand your whole it would be like you would be
Speaker 1: able to see, like that's a fire looking at those
Speaker 1: images from China for instance, right, you see, yeah, that
Speaker 1: kind of looks like a city. Oh weird. But if
Speaker 1: it's a campfire, and I'll agree with you with the
Speaker 1: like brightness trying whatever is right, But I think that
Speaker 1: like the shape, it's a light well, but I also
Speaker 1: but I question how often they would be building big,
Speaker 1: old bonfires. But but in fairness, it's not like the
Speaker 1: Aborigines reported this like as a constant occurrence. It's something
Speaker 1: that has been reported more and more with the more
Speaker 1: technology in Australia, the preence of brighter lights. I understand that.
Speaker 1: I still I like the the It just it doesn't
Speaker 1: solve it all for me. If you if you read
Speaker 1: the older accountings, it's especially the ones where it's you know,
Speaker 1: moves towards and pass somebody. That's when I'm really like, way,
Speaker 1: what the hell that doesn't that doesn't work? If indeed
Speaker 1: it does pass somebody. Yeah, and I agree with that.
Speaker 1: I think that I look at this phenomena basically being
Speaker 1: kind of like a rainbow. Yeah, it's an optical illusion.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a refraction, same thing. Actually a rainbow
Speaker 1: is just refraction also, but you know, try to catch
Speaker 1: the end of a rainbow, can't you? But you can't. Really.
Speaker 1: The other thing that this can't do is it can't
Speaker 1: cast light at a specific point. In other words, if
Speaker 1: you see it, it's an optical illusion. It's ways away.
Speaker 1: It's not going to light up the ground underneath where
Speaker 1: you see it, which people have said they have seen
Speaker 1: it lighting up the area around it. So again that
Speaker 1: there's there's something that either his theory is is bogus
Speaker 1: or these people's accounts are bogus one of the two. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to go onto theory number twenty seven. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something like that. This theory is natural electrical discharges,
Speaker 1: which I kind of discount um, And I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I I don't completely understand the science behind this, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and explain it anyway. So the
Speaker 1: theory is that there are certain minerals in the area
Speaker 1: that are undergoing some sort of mechanical stress, and that
Speaker 1: stress is, as a result, creating an electrical charge, and
Speaker 1: these things are able to retain that charge rather than
Speaker 1: immediately dissipating it right back away, which I find hard
Speaker 1: to believe. And it's at night that those charges are
Speaker 1: then being let go, and that's what people are seeing.
Speaker 1: And this, this process of things building up an electrical
Speaker 1: charge through some form of mechanical action is known as
Speaker 1: piezo electricity. I believe it's how you say it. And
Speaker 1: that stress can be according to what I've read a
Speaker 1: lot of different things. Um, it can be people say
Speaker 1: it's tectonic forces, it's magnetic forces, it's vibrations caused by
Speaker 1: sound or the striking of objects against one another, so
Speaker 1: like sand against the rock and the wind maybe, and
Speaker 1: it can be a lot of different materials, but apparently
Speaker 1: they have to have some sort of crystalline structure to
Speaker 1: them to be able to retain the charge. So it's
Speaker 1: really kind of interesting, is that this theory, or this
Speaker 1: this piezoelectricity, this is pretty common. It's actually what the
Speaker 1: igniter on your barbecue does. That's how it works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. It's pretty cool. Um, So, like
Speaker 1: I said, it's it's the theory is that there are
Speaker 1: multiple things building up charge in the day and then
Speaker 1: at night they're letting it go, and that's what people
Speaker 1: are seeing. The problem is that nobody has ever been
Speaker 1: able to make but the smallest of sparks with this process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's silly, no, it is. It's it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the idea that you can you can apply like like
Speaker 1: put two wires on a light bulb, cause the light
Speaker 1: bulb to light up, and then lift the light bulb
Speaker 1: off of those wires and float it through the air,
Speaker 1: and the light bulb is going to stay lit up somehow.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's basically what this series says. Yeah, yeah, yeah, essentially, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's ludicrous. Yeah, so it's it's luminescent bugs. Yeah. Next
Speaker 1: theory is awesome because it had to be made in
Speaker 1: the seventies, and that is psychic influence. And the theory,
Speaker 1: if I understand it, which honestly I don't, is that
Speaker 1: the viewer is psychically projecting their thoughts ahead of them
Speaker 1: and they are seeing that maybe and that's what this causing.
Speaker 1: Doesn't really explain how they're like passing in the night. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: I mean that's just the Freudian thing that explains it
Speaker 1: better than the other theories, because if it's all in
Speaker 1: your head, then sure the lights can go wherever they want.
Speaker 1: That's all in your head. The lights don't pass through
Speaker 1: things ever, which if they were all in your head,
Speaker 1: I would imagine that they could go anywhere that you looked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have no idea on this one. Um the last
Speaker 1: theory that I have that I have, And then you're
Speaker 1: gonna parade out some something I don't know what it
Speaker 1: is yet, surprised if I had that black book that
Speaker 1: you have I'd have it out and you'd be tapping
Speaker 1: it as I do. I'm waiting, come on. Okay. Last
Speaker 1: theory that I have is that it is ghosts and
Speaker 1: or polter geist, to which I say, boom no. There
Speaker 1: there is some folklore to this. Western folklore says that
Speaker 1: these kind of lights typically they're people who have done
Speaker 1: bad things in their life and are then doomed to
Speaker 1: eternity to wander the world at night, and they are
Speaker 1: using this light to attract people and lead them astray.
Speaker 1: If you go to Eastern folklore, there's a similar vein. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they say it's demons. Sometimes they say that it
Speaker 1: is local people who have died and are trying to
Speaker 1: help or maybe lead astray the other locals that are
Speaker 1: around them. I mean, the this is all based on
Speaker 1: like the Willow whisp Um folklore, which is really like
Speaker 1: there's some crazy, crazy stories that people have come up
Speaker 1: with to describe them, like extremely elaborate, Like you know,
Speaker 1: suddenly they deal with the devil and God and having
Speaker 1: a hell and like all these things get wrapped up
Speaker 1: into it, and it's really quite surprising. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: how big some of that was. Yeah, the thing about
Speaker 1: it is is like, if you look at all the
Speaker 1: evil people have died, all the dead bodies around the world,
Speaker 1: they're pretty evenly distributed. And yet this, this particularly occurs
Speaker 1: in only a few places. Well there's bad dead people, magnets. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that's what it is. All the all the all
Speaker 1: the bad people moved to and die in these these
Speaker 1: places that have meteorological Yeah, that that go on, which
Speaker 1: in which were there are these atmospheric inversions. That's where
Speaker 1: the evil people go to die. That must be what
Speaker 1: it is. I mean, that's that's I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not a big proponent of it being ghosts and
Speaker 1: Google's I have one okay, let's hear it. Meteor showers. Okay,
Speaker 1: let let me let's hear it. Okay, well with with
Speaker 1: like a few and this is just obviously going off
Speaker 1: of the list provided, right, but with one outlier, most
Speaker 1: of these fit pretty solidly into what I understand has
Speaker 1: been the history of the leund meteor showers in Australia.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's a different and I like went through
Speaker 1: kind of circled like, okay, this is a date that
Speaker 1: you know, a year where it was at its kind
Speaker 1: of peak, and I can understand how when you see
Speaker 1: something flaming coming out of the sky. I'm willing to
Speaker 1: say that part of it could be your perception of
Speaker 1: time pausing a little bit right, that things maybe aren't
Speaker 1: covering as much as you're like, oh my god, that
Speaker 1: thing and you just in your brain, Yeah, your brain
Speaker 1: makes it stand still. Have you seen a fireball thoughever?
Speaker 1: Have I personally? Yeah? Yeah, I saw one once years ago,
Speaker 1: and uh, it didn't last very long. No, but I
Speaker 1: think you know, if you're out by yourself in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere and you're seeing you know, you're driving fast, right.
Speaker 1: A lot of these are people in cars in modern times.
Speaker 1: In modern times, there are people in cars driving fast
Speaker 1: towards a thing that might be hurdling fast to the earth.
Speaker 1: There could be a perception of that thing is getting
Speaker 1: closer to me while I'm getting closer to it, and
Speaker 1: so it's coming towards me, or it's going further away.
Speaker 1: But a meteor does come down pretty quick, and people
Speaker 1: have reported, you know, like fifteen or twenty minutes of
Speaker 1: travel with this thing in pursuit, so that that causes
Speaker 1: me pause. Yeah, the media don't last more than a
Speaker 1: few seconds, granted, but during shower, right, Like, what's to
Speaker 1: say that it's not like a bunch of different ones
Speaker 1: because you're obviously not you're looking away, looking back, right, Okay, granted, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's not a great theory. But then the outlier here,
Speaker 1: so yeah, and the outlier here would be the farmer
Speaker 1: who was on its tractor. Oh, the guy who heard
Speaker 1: the noise, and he said that it was it was
Speaker 1: burning orange yellow, and then it turned green and then
Speaker 1: it died out. And the sound that he was describing,
Speaker 1: I would not say was unusual for like an actual
Speaker 1: flame if it was. Yeah, there are some things you've
Speaker 1: I've heard things when you've when they burn and they
Speaker 1: make that high pitch norse. And actually, do you know
Speaker 1: what burns green? Because it turns out not a lot
Speaker 1: of things burned green? Borax? And do you know what
Speaker 1: they use as fertilizers for crops? Borax? It's not just
Speaker 1: for cleaning, Nope, not just for cleaning. So it's reasonable
Speaker 1: to assume in my mind that something caught fire, whether
Speaker 1: it was you know, again, like a meteor, but there
Speaker 1: weren't really meteor showers at that time, but there was
Speaker 1: something that caught fire behind a boulder and it was burning,
Speaker 1: and he was just like's not it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: have smoke. I mean, you've been in a chemistry lab
Speaker 1: for long enough to know, yeah, something's actually burned pretty clean.
Speaker 1: Especially they never let me in borax actually burns really clean.
Speaker 1: This makes mentally no, but I mean, so that's one
Speaker 1: of those interesting things where as soon as you start
Speaker 1: talking about like, well it was green, like that's the
Speaker 1: thing that burns clean, that probably that burns really hot,
Speaker 1: that burns pretty fast, that can condense down, and that
Speaker 1: is seen in areas of agriculture where this farmer would
Speaker 1: have been. So I think there could be a combination
Speaker 1: of things. I'm not saying that it's the best theory,
Speaker 1: but I also do think it's interesting that these meteor
Speaker 1: showers do seem to coincide pretty concretely with at least
Speaker 1: the curated list that you've provided. And I think I
Speaker 1: might be a danger because it is it just a
Speaker 1: randomly curated list just for the different accounts through I
Speaker 1: don't know, and you know, let's let's not forget that
Speaker 1: there could be more than one explanations. Thank you. That
Speaker 1: was where I was going to go next. We're out
Speaker 1: of theories and there's a I don't think it's a
Speaker 1: single theory. I don't think no, I don't think so either.
Speaker 1: I think that with as with a lot of unusual
Speaker 1: natural phenomena, I think that this is probably a bucket
Speaker 1: load of different things causing similar Yeah, everything from me,
Speaker 1: like from refraction to mushrooms. But who was the room?
Speaker 1: Was it mckimmon and mckimmon, What was the guy's name?
Speaker 1: What guy the professor? That part the part the car
Speaker 1: and yeah, what was his name? Yeah? There was no
Speaker 1: m Yeah. Now, so Pedigrew, I think his theory actually
Speaker 1: actually accounts for the vac the vast majority of sightings,
Speaker 1: in that it's something that can't be caught up with
Speaker 1: like a rainbow, which would describe an article over you know,
Speaker 1: something over the horizon like the moon or a fire
Speaker 1: or car headlights or whatever, and they're always moving away
Speaker 1: from you of course. Okay, So yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: accounts for the vast majority of them. Some of it
Speaker 1: could be misreporting, could be outright lying, could be you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps the influence of drugs. Yeah, I mean there's these
Speaker 1: stories are are always as we know, anyone who's listened
Speaker 1: to the show knows as well as us who have
Speaker 1: done all the research, that how easily these stories can
Speaker 1: be embellished and inflated. So that's not just not just
Speaker 1: by the people who said they saw the thing, but
Speaker 1: by well, yeah, by the people who the story. Some
Speaker 1: of the older ones, it seems, may have been direct
Speaker 1: accounting because they were in the newspapers and stuff, so
Speaker 1: that gives you more of a concrete it doesn't it
Speaker 1: doesn't morph as much if it's being told true to
Speaker 1: what was in the paper. And again that's up for
Speaker 1: interpretation if the paper told true to what the person
Speaker 1: actually said, because frankly, the press was not anywhere responsible
Speaker 1: back in those days than they are today. So all right,
Speaker 1: Well that's that's all I've got on the Men Men Lights. So,
Speaker 1: as Joe would say, we should probably get to the
Speaker 1: part that everybody listens for, which is our awesome administrative details.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, alright, So this episode, as well as all
Speaker 1: of our episodes, are available on our website, uh for
Speaker 1: streaming or download, as well as links for some of
Speaker 1: our research. Obviously not all of it, but some of it. UH.
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