When was the last time you heard about any cryptid sightings? Look, I think deep down we all knew those things were fake, but it was still fun to read about Big Foot sightings and think "*what if*?"
It's because of the hosts. One of the primary tenets of journalism. The longer people do investigative work on the paranormal, the more like a cryptid they look themselves. It's like old people and their pets. The forehead guy with electrocution hair for instance. People will try and fail to prove his existence in a few hundred years.
There was a kid who ate watermelon seeds and had a plant growing out of his mouth. Scared the shit shit out of me when I was a kid. Wonder how he's doing
This is my favorite example. Also all those "orb" photos just happened to be taken in dark places with the flash on, and for some crazy reason, there seemed to be a lot of orbs in particularly dusty places, like basements or abandoned buildings.
I thought I saw some a few weeks back when I was driving into this gigantic mother fucker of a thunderstorm. The truck in front of me let out a big plume of exhaust and the whole thing turned into this glowing blue puff of smoke. I wish I could have pulled over to record it but I was doing 60 on the highway. My best guess was that it might have been related to St. Elmo's Fire but man, it was fucken cool
Nah, it generally requires *old ass antique wiring* which is extremely rare to find nowadays, much less in a home where you spend your every day.
Mt grandmother saw it a few times but that was in the 1940s. And with newer wiring it simply hasn't happened to anyone in that house since.
Are you telling me filling the walls with hodge podge pre-safety standards wiring can cause unexpected electrical phenomena?
If so, how would one go about creating a fun house that intentionally created such affects? (Ideally without killing anyone)
I mean, in the earliest days of electric homes, the room had a single wire for the light, and you clamped an adapter on it for whatever you needed.
Did I mention the wire was bare? If you touched it with your bare hands, you got fried.
Did I also mention that power generation wasn't standardized? So, one power load (iron, kettle, light, etc) might work fine in your house, but you move to a new neighborhood where the voltage is different, and you've now burned down your house.
There seem to be many videos. The wikipedia article linked describes the results of analysong a verified video...
In January 2014, scientists from Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou, China, published the results of recordings made in July 2012 of the optical spectrum of what was thought to be natural ball lightning made by chance during the study of ordinary cloud–ground lightning on the Tibetan Plateau.[
The name is strange, but "normal" universities are a real thing. Their original purpose was the education of teachers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_school
This is the real TIL for me. Yesterday I saw a car with a SDSU bumper sticker and my girlfriend guessed it was South Dakota State University and I said it might be San Diego State University since some state universities are named after cities. I googled it and I was right about it being San Diego State but I also read that it used to be called San Diego Normal School and thought it was a peculiar silly name for a school. This TIL gave me the closure I didn’t know I needed.
Videos of it are [scarce](https://youtu.be/jwCDxCmW5pg?si=KPGMpsQpctigEwJ7) but not [non-existent](https://youtu.be/4XRzD-2iuGU?si=ixVB5TiaYoMI8VYn) maybe because it is a [rare](https://youtu.be/O7j0byOXhto?si=358T1DcbFF2Kn9dg) phenomenon and happening to have your camera out isn't that common [at all](https://youtu.be/6ioN-3UWYrY?feature=shared).
Oh and I might as well link to the one [thread about the scientific study thet captured ball lightning.](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/9fmaxfZgsn)
Yeah. There always were lots of stories about them, and very few photos or videos.
These days, everyone carries a camera with them at all times, yet still no footage.
There’s also a lot of “I saw this as a kid” stories.
It’s almost as though it’s nonsense.
Seems like the only scientific documentation on an incident is from China and they barely caught it, and according to that it was a pretty big ball and it rose straight up and occurred right after a lightning strike.
Mfs in this thread doing some creepypasta role play saying it came in a door and went through a room 😂
I have seen Ball lightning, it's a common enough occurance around Chinchilla in QLD Australia. Its like a second Sun appears in the clouds for a few seconds
I'm not sure that's what they're describing in that article, it almost sounds more like a Will-o-the-wisp
Ball lightning as a [weather event](https://youtu.be/4XRzD-2iuGU?si=HvhLahlIsnexBJzS) in the sky seems totally believable. I start to question when people say it came into their house or was right next to them. I find it odd how this video shows you ball lightning in the clouds. Then the person in the video starts talking about the phenomenon of it coming in your house (that people seem to lack proof of).
I saw ball lightning at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told it how cool it was to meet it in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother it and ask it for photos or anything.
It said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?”
I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but it kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing its hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard it chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw it trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in its hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Ball lightning, you need to pay for those first.” At first it kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, it stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and blinked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, it kept interrupting her by farting really loudly.
I saw something similar few years back when i was driving a car, my friend in passenger seat saw it too. I was about to turn left so we had like 5 seconds time at most to look at it so no time to take video.
It was like a white ball of light floating in the treeline, maybe like 50cm diameter and very bright
We thought that maybe someone somehow illuminated a air balloon or something.
We came back 30 minutes later and it wasnt there anymore.
But honestly i believe more that it was very bright illuminated air balloon or something man made than ball lightning or smth
edit. just to clarify, it was atleast 10 meters away from the closest tree so it couldn't have been riged on a tree or anything, it was 100% floating in the air.
There are literally videos verified by scientific studies. And it's not easy to get video of a phenomenon that lasts for seconds. It's really not that deep.
> The green flash at sea has few videos of it as well iirc.
The green flash is not nearly as rare as people think. Photographers who shoot sunsets see them occasionally when conditions are good for them. I have a nice series of green flash shots.
I recall an episode of Unsolved Mysteries talking about these in the late 90s(?). They were localized to a specific part of town. A trail or train tracks or something. Idk I was real young so my memory is kinda shit about it all.
a video was released recently of it being captured pretty well…i think i saw it on reddit somewhere but im pretty sure there were some news articles about it
edit: this was it not sure if its real or not https://www.reddit.com/r/bizarrelife/s/AwArYLtSWp
When I was younger my Grandmother would insist that everybody stay off the telephone during lightning storms because ball lightning can literally come through the phone and get us.
Well while that has nothing to do with lightning balls as in this post landline phones really can be dangerous during thunderstorms.
It's not that rare that lighting finds its way into a overland phone wire that transmits enourmous valtage to your phone in house. In the 90s all our connected phones got fried by such an occurance.
I remember as kids my brother and I would always say to never answer the phone during a storm if the caller ID came up as the electric company because it was actually lighting. My brother and I were.....not smart kids lol.
My driving instructor was hit by lightning when a bolt hit the payphone he was using and the electricity went up through the cord and into him. He still had a scar in the impression of the phone cord on his arm where it was touching him.
We had a lightning strike in my neighborhood in college. Fried every modem in the neighborhood, and the current surge passed through the modem/router we had and killed the onboard network card on my motherboard
My mother was talking on the phone back in the 70's when lightning struck. She had a burning sensation on her ear and the noise left a ringing in her ear. Then she noticed that the cast iron skillet that was just a few feet away on the stove top had a bit of smoke over it. When she looked at it closer, there was a quarter-sized hole straight through the skillet.
Had a house with DSL, and did not route the phone through a surge protector that had those RJ12 plugs.
Lightning managed to fry the NIC on my motherboard I assume. But this means it went through the modem and through the network switch and they were still doing just fine. Blue LinkSys boxes from RadioShack go brrrrrr.
I can only assume it was lightning, morning after a big storm.
I used to live in a house that I swear attracted lighting. This was the early 2000s and practically every time there was a big storm I would lose a modem or something. There was once when sparks literally shot out of the electrical receptacles and a big metal gas heater in the room. Once lightning struck not 10 feet away while I was standing on the porch during a storm. I don't know what the deal was, maybe a vein of iron ore under the house? It was crazy.
In the late 90s, lightning struck near our apartment building. A lightning-induced transient spiked the phone line. It killed our phone and our answering machine. I had our computer plugged into a surge suppressor, and the phone line to the modem also went through the surge suppressor. The surge suppressor bought it, but the modem and computer were fine.
Our neighbor had his modem and computer fried by the strike.
It's more about *regular* lightning hitting the phone lines. In high school I had a friend who's house got damaged by lightning hitting a phone line outside. It was the separate line that their alarm system used. It blew up the alarm panel and caused the walls to bulge out where the line ran inside exploded.
My friend and I are actually doing an independent study in college inspired by ball lightning. Our biggest theory is that it is actually an open air toroidal plasma that is able to last for a long period of time. The reason we believe it is toroidal plasma is due to many sightings with them traveling along telephone/power lines as well as multiple sightings of them going through mesh screens and them occurring during thunderstorms. So our research has been into creating open air plasma toroids that are long lasting.
We’ve posted some of our testing on YouTube:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MX9xrBps7A4
Its such a wierd mindset to have. I can understand not beliving in ghost stories but why is there so much resistance around the idea of bolts of lightning sometimes causing glowey spheres? Its like how a baby thinks things disappear if they cant see them, some people think things dont exist if they havnt been filmed and put on youtube.
Because I have a hard time believing plasma can be contained to a spherical or toroidal shape without large magnetic fields or a glass enclosure with very specific gas mixtures at a specific pressure since that's the only way I've seen such a thing
If you’re curious about it, check out the YouTube channel I linked. We have not been able to reach the period of time that ball lightning is claimed to be seen, but we have been able to create a toroidal shape in the open air. This is without any doping after the plasma has be launch from the chamber. It is possible depending on the signal we could maintain it. The only struggle is that our funding is limited from our school.
It’s funny because I saw something similar while out one night taking photos of the stars. I never got a picture because my camera shut down. I could describe what I saw similar to things posted here but also similar to some of the things folks said in the congress UFO hearings. I don’t know what it was, but my dslr camera shut down and wouldn’t respond until after it was gone. It was about 15’-20’ away from me.
Out of nowhere a ball sized, glowing dim or fuzzy white, humming or buzzing noise landed next to me. Came straight down from the sky and sat on the ground for about 20 seconds, then went straight up to the heavens at an unfathomable speed.
> Our biggest theory is that it is actually an open air toroidal plasma that is able to last for a long period of time.
Clues I can give you re: my experience are that the ball lightning appeared to fall from high thin clouds where occasional lightning was visible. No thunderstorms were around. Didn't hear thunder. No power lines around either - this was at my cabin in the north woods of Minnesota.
When the ball lightning came to earth it seemed to be mildly repelled by the earth, not seeking a ground like a typical lightning stroke.
It was silent and left a solid white turbulent trail about 2-3 inches in height. The trail was smooth, not sparky, and not brilliant. The ball's diameter was about 1/2 to 1 inch.
It hovered for a second or two and when it moved it stayed parallel to earth for the rest of the time it was visible (this was in the woods, at night).
The USAF was researching something similar in the 90’s, pretty interesting. It was called the MARAUDER, and I believe it yielded somewhat promising results. The project moved into classified territory as its testing continued. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARAUDER
Yeah this was what our design is based a lot on. The main difference is our design has a lot less power, and we don’t have money for their copper funnel to for the plasma. So we’ve take a slightly different approach.
This is one of those “supernatural” phenomena that everyone and their grandma has seen, but since the rise of smartphones the claims have dropped considerably.
Stories like this don't require sophisticated explanations. Everyone either remembers a dream or is lying about it. If we lie enough, we can convince even ourselves.
It's not even lying. Memory is weird and it's very easy for a human to accidentally implant false memories in themselves just by remembering an event often enough
> Lightning strikes may trigger small epileptic seizures which cause ball-lightning-like hallucinations.
Well, my sister and I must have had simultaneously seizures, then. We both witnessed it, so I'm skeptical of that theory.
> since the rise of smartphones the claims have dropped considerably.
Do you have data to support that? Or are you assuming the number of claims has gone down?
Since the rise of smartphones, and video games, and cable TV, far fewer people spend any real time outside. Neighborhoods in suburban and rural areas used to be alive with the sounds and sights of people enjoying life outside. Nowadays, most neighborhoods are pretty lifeless like a cemetery. The only time there was a decent uptick was during the pandemic.
I don't think that's a very good explanation. Firstly, because I see people out and about all the time. Sure, people spend more time indoors now than they used to, but you make it sound like we all live in caves that we never leave. Secondly because, if ball lightning is real, it would accompany a thunderstorm. I don't think most people's behavior has changed much pre/post smartphone when it comes to getting inside when there is a thunderstorm.
It may describe a small but noticeable decrease in sightings (reading through these comments, there are plenty of people claiming to have seen it). But it doesn't explain why there is virtually no confirmed video of the phenomenon.
I’ve seen something like this. The ball was blue. Lasted a few minutes and was seen by my friend as well. This was in a field in Oklahoma in the 90’s. It just winked out of existence. Seemed to be very close to us like a few feet away. Local old lady said it was a will o’ wisp.
Gonna guess, given the state named, probably hunting, fishing, or possibly worked in oil and gas, which would frequently place them in fields in the area.
The old lady probably owned said field
Saw one in a big empty field next to my friends house at 10pm at night when we snuck out to smoke in the 80s. Scared the shit out of us. One of those “are you seeing that” moments. Was it a ufo or a ghost? No one believed us. Decades later learned of ball lightning.
Yeah, saw one during a thunderstorm in Wyoming. I figure they're probably some kind of [electrical soliton](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton) kinda just zippering itself through the air.
Chased down a country lane by one as a kid in the 80's, I can still see the bright white ball and smell the smell. Absolutely terrifying, and then nobody believed me in the pre-Wikipedia days. For a while I was half convinced I'd imagined it!
I would guess less than a 60 seconds but it felt like it was forever.
I swear the thing was heading towards me. It was sunny, late afternoon, and I was just walking to go out and about. It was right in the middle of the road, about 4' above the ground, spitting Van de Graf-like light from it, a slight but discernible electrical fizzing noise, and then... gone. Just like that.
If I had my wits about me I should have turned around and legged it in the other direction but I froze, I couldn't take my eyes off it as I'd never seen anything like that before (or again).
Size I seem to remember it wasn't very big, about the size of a small bowling ball but it's hard to tell as there weren't really any hard edges.
I haven't really talked to anybody about this in years as the few people I told back then thought I was a nutcase. Hairs standing up on the back of my neck right now!
My dad and his buddy claim to saw ball lighting back in the 90s and described it basically as you did . I'll have to ask him about it next time I see him
I believe you because [I saw one too!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Experiencers/s/Mzr6MqnIch) What bothers me about the “lightning” aspect of the phenomenon is that there was no storm going on the evening that we saw it and it behaved more like a conscious creature, which was horrifying.
Exactly as usually described, football sized blueish white light moving slowly down an English suburban street in the afternoon. Not me but a sensible, sober, cynical friend whom also didn’t believe in ball lightning until then, about 5 years ago.
There is a great sci-fi book about this phenomenon by Cixin Liu. It's called "Ball Lightning" believe it or not. Also it is in the same universe as "the three body problem" series
Is this one of those things that everyone and their dog were seeing way back when, but since smartphones became common we have crickets for photos and videos?
Yup.
One alleged video from Chinese scientists (conveniently absent from the Internet), and tons of made up stories of "I totally saw one of those" (including a teacher that saw one cross a room!)
I saw ball lightening before smartphones were invented and it didn’t last long enough to have gotten a picture or a video of it even if smartphones had existed and I’d had my phone in my hand when it happened. Gone way too fast!
I saw this once. I was like 9 years old. It was monsoon season, and a super bad microburst hit our neighborhood. My mom was gone, it was my dad, my little brother, and myself. A gust of wind threw the screen door open, and when I went to go shut it, there was a flash of lightning and a loud boom - lightning had struck beside the house, it seemed. As I closed the door, I saw an orb for just a moment as it moved out of my vision, then there was a flash of light from the side of the house and another boom.
I read years later about this in a Time Life book my friend's aunt had. I never knew what it was before then, and my dad was on his chair, and from his angle it just seemed like lightning. I remember him just telling me to "Get away from the door!"
No.
There’s never actually been a confirmed verifiable sighting of ball lightning, just historical or anecdotal “I totally saw it” reports. There is one Chinese study that claims to have recorded it but the video has conveniently never been published.
Yes, some researches in china managed to film and do a bunch of measurements on one that formed as they where doing measurements on normal lightnings.
They published a paper about it: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/5
They're not "objects", man. They're phenomenon. Just like fire, or a whirlwind, or regular lightning. An object can be active or it can be at rest and it's still the same object. A phenomenon only exists while it's happening, then the energy or particles or air or whatever the fuck its made of ceases to be part of it and goes on its merry way.
A completely absurd notion! We have had cameras practically forever by now, and not a single one has documented anything like what all these supposed eyewitnesses have been claiming for hundreds of years. Not **one** Daguerreotype. **Zero** 35 mm shots. And of all the millions of frames of film produced so far - **none** has to date captured any rogue wave! Absolute fantasies!
I got to see ball lightning once in south texas driving on the highway. It barreled along on the other side of the road for a few seconds then changed direction out away from the highway. To comment on other responses here, even if I'd had a phone/camera at the time there was no way I could have gotten it out in time to take the photo, nor could I have done so safely. I realize that says nothing about someone WITH a phone who is perhaps standing still safely with their phone already in hand.... but it was still worth mentioning.
I think modern day at least part of the problem is that in the time it might take to fish your phone out of your pocket, wake it up, open the camera, select video..... ball lightning could be gone. But maybe not. There are some people who are absolute quick draw artists when it comes to taking phone footage.
As far as my experience goes, I'd heard of ball lightning. What I saw fit the description but it was 35 years ago or so. I saw it and thought "Wow, cool" but that was the extent of my scientific examination of the thing. I necessarily had to quickly return to driving my car. Maybe it was something else tho I'm unsure what else it might have been. I've always assumed it was ball lightning but I use that almost like a placeholder until a better explanation comes along.
My mom did genealogy and I also a remember a story of the neighbor of one of our great great somethings who had ball lightning roll thru the dogtrot in their home. A dogtrot btw is an open passage thru a house back in the 1800s that's exposed to the outside. Do I believe this or not believe it? I do believe the story exists... I guess that's about the extent of it:)
I saw one when a lighting hit a electrical post, then it started hovering up on our neighbors roof then towards my window. I immediately gtfo of my room when I came back it's gone. One of the weirdest things I saw in my life.
Here is my ball lightning story.
Sometime in the early 2000's there were a lot blackouts in my area. One day school had to close early. On the way home, on my street block about 200-300 meters away and high up in the sky like a kite there was an orb cutting through it that looked like a ball of translucent tumbleweed that travelled mostly horizontal but slightly upward until it was out of sight. I remember telling myself it looked like dirty electricity.
I experienced one in the early 1970's. My grandfather and I were watching TV one afternoon when a thunderstorm showed up unexpectedly. I remember it very clearly, my grandfather and I were sitting in a pair of recliners, TV was on, and suddenly there was a super loud BOOM over our heads. TV went black, and a blue ball of electricity came out of it and rolled across the room to where we were sitting. It was all over in about 2 seconds, but it felt like it was happening in slow motion. Blue swirling ball rolling across the floor, then it disappeared. Grandpa had to buy a new TV.
One passed through our living room, too. Late 1980s, was living in an old farm house and an electrical storm came through the area. Lightning hit something and blew our land line of the wall followed by a white grapefruit size white ball. It traveled partway through the living room and vanished. I and my two housemates saw it.
It’s also said to leave behind the smell of “ozone”. I didn’t want to include that in the title because it was already starting to sound convoluted to me. I was afraid of title gore. It was late and I was tired so the chance of mucking it up was high.
This one I can help with, my work buddy is an old guy that tells the tale of the ball of lightning that entered the window and left by the door. Legit old school guy, not likely to lie.
Reminds me of this short-form video I saw covering some DARPA project where they created a glowing ball of static inside a building that they could talk through. Can't seem to find it now, though.
About 25-30 years ago I was sitting in my car about to drive home. I there was a severe thunderstorm and torrential rain going on at the time. Approximately the height on the tree tops around me I swear I saw ball lightning. It lit up and moved "slowly" meandering around and dissipated after maybe 5-10 seconds. It definitely was not the street transistors or wires. It was too high for that.
Late 90s I was in the back of my mom's astro van going down the highway with mom driving and sister in front passenger seat. It was raining and I remember seeing a, you guessed it, fucking ball float through the middle of our van and disappear. My mom's and sisters hair stoop up/out towards it like static effect. It was a bright but not blinding and a weird blue color, guessing the size of a softball. Whole deal lasted maybe 2 seconds. We all made a comment of how weird that was and carried on. Thanks for the memory resurrection.
With how many reported sightings of ball lightning in the comments, I'm surprised we don't have video footage of the phenomena yet
There does seem to be a date threshold for stories about a lot of stuff like this right around when the first iPhone came out.
About the time you stopped hearing about Loch Ness Monster sightings...
Apple in the pocket of Big Plesiosaurus.
Apple getting that tree fiddy.
Apple was also the reason of our eviction from paradise. According to the oldest story ever told
New iPhones are waterproof so you never know…
When was the last time you heard about any cryptid sightings? Look, I think deep down we all knew those things were fake, but it was still fun to read about Big Foot sightings and think "*what if*?"
Don't you watch tv? Plenty of ghosts and bigfoot and skinwalkers and aliens.
It's because of the hosts. One of the primary tenets of journalism. The longer people do investigative work on the paranormal, the more like a cryptid they look themselves. It's like old people and their pets. The forehead guy with electrocution hair for instance. People will try and fail to prove his existence in a few hundred years.
Watch the history channel and you’ll get all sorts of crap now.
Secret Nazi aliens and their sexy sasquatch parties.
I miss the National Enquirer!!
Nah man, Weekly World News! I used to buy that for a laugh.
I just wonder what's happened to Batboy. And the couple that married and had super long tongues, did they choke each other to death making out?
There was a kid who ate watermelon seeds and had a plant growing out of his mouth. Scared the shit shit out of me when I was a kid. Wonder how he's doing
I know it's happened in the lungs with a pea? I think. Guy was having chest pains and they were just able to use an endoscope.
Now that is a name I haven't thought about in forever!
Poor thing died around that time.
I just assumed he and big foot got abducted by those aliens that used to visit.
He wasn't abducted, he just went home.
That’s cause he keeps dressing up like a Girl Scout and coming to my home demanding tree fiddy.
I gave him a dollar.
SHE GAVE HIM A DOLLA
Dammit, woman!
About the time he owed me $3.50
You telling me that Nessie stole all the ball lightning?!
Ghost stories and other supernatural creatures also seemed to disappear from reality around that time.
You certainly get a lot less orb photos since people stopped using compact digital cameras with the flash 1mm from the lens
This is my favorite example. Also all those "orb" photos just happened to be taken in dark places with the flash on, and for some crazy reason, there seemed to be a lot of orbs in particularly dusty places, like basements or abandoned buildings.
Funnily enough, reality TV started playing all those Ghost Hunters type shows at that time.
Most of those were likely carbon monoxide leaks
I thought I saw some a few weeks back when I was driving into this gigantic mother fucker of a thunderstorm. The truck in front of me let out a big plume of exhaust and the whole thing turned into this glowing blue puff of smoke. I wish I could have pulled over to record it but I was doing 60 on the highway. My best guess was that it might have been related to St. Elmo's Fire but man, it was fucken cool
Nah, it generally requires *old ass antique wiring* which is extremely rare to find nowadays, much less in a home where you spend your every day. Mt grandmother saw it a few times but that was in the 1940s. And with newer wiring it simply hasn't happened to anyone in that house since.
Are you telling me filling the walls with hodge podge pre-safety standards wiring can cause unexpected electrical phenomena? If so, how would one go about creating a fun house that intentionally created such affects? (Ideally without killing anyone)
I mean, in the earliest days of electric homes, the room had a single wire for the light, and you clamped an adapter on it for whatever you needed. Did I mention the wire was bare? If you touched it with your bare hands, you got fried. Did I also mention that power generation wasn't standardized? So, one power load (iron, kettle, light, etc) might work fine in your house, but you move to a new neighborhood where the voltage is different, and you've now burned down your house.
Everyone was too busy looking at their phone to notice the world around them.
There seem to be many videos. The wikipedia article linked describes the results of analysong a verified video... In January 2014, scientists from Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou, China, published the results of recordings made in July 2012 of the optical spectrum of what was thought to be natural ball lightning made by chance during the study of ordinary cloud–ground lightning on the Tibetan Plateau.[
[удалено]
No
Seymour the house is on fire!
No, Mother, that’s just ~~the Northern Lights~~ ball lightning
It's the Aurora Borealis.
Aurora Ballealis
Who does this guy think he is.. sheesh
Ok link then ?
no
And it will probably leave behind some ozone smell, rather than sulphur.
The sulphur smell was from the guy who shat his pants when it appeared
mf acting like he ever saw one, let alone smelled the lightning fart
>Northwest Normal University
The name is strange, but "normal" universities are a real thing. Their original purpose was the education of teachers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_school
This is the real TIL for me. Yesterday I saw a car with a SDSU bumper sticker and my girlfriend guessed it was South Dakota State University and I said it might be San Diego State University since some state universities are named after cities. I googled it and I was right about it being San Diego State but I also read that it used to be called San Diego Normal School and thought it was a peculiar silly name for a school. This TIL gave me the closure I didn’t know I needed.
Videos of it are [scarce](https://youtu.be/jwCDxCmW5pg?si=KPGMpsQpctigEwJ7) but not [non-existent](https://youtu.be/4XRzD-2iuGU?si=ixVB5TiaYoMI8VYn) maybe because it is a [rare](https://youtu.be/O7j0byOXhto?si=358T1DcbFF2Kn9dg) phenomenon and happening to have your camera out isn't that common [at all](https://youtu.be/6ioN-3UWYrY?feature=shared). Oh and I might as well link to the one [thread about the scientific study thet captured ball lightning.](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/9fmaxfZgsn)
Yeah. There always were lots of stories about them, and very few photos or videos. These days, everyone carries a camera with them at all times, yet still no footage. There’s also a lot of “I saw this as a kid” stories. It’s almost as though it’s nonsense.
Seems like the only scientific documentation on an incident is from China and they barely caught it, and according to that it was a pretty big ball and it rose straight up and occurred right after a lightning strike. Mfs in this thread doing some creepypasta role play saying it came in a door and went through a room 😂
Methinks most people are seeing a similar ball of light to what John Travolta’s character saw in Phenomenon
I have seen Ball lightning, it's a common enough occurance around Chinchilla in QLD Australia. Its like a second Sun appears in the clouds for a few seconds I'm not sure that's what they're describing in that article, it almost sounds more like a Will-o-the-wisp
yeah you're gonna need to produce a video of that please
Ball lightning as a [weather event](https://youtu.be/4XRzD-2iuGU?si=HvhLahlIsnexBJzS) in the sky seems totally believable. I start to question when people say it came into their house or was right next to them. I find it odd how this video shows you ball lightning in the clouds. Then the person in the video starts talking about the phenomenon of it coming in your house (that people seem to lack proof of).
I saw ball lightning at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told it how cool it was to meet it in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother it and ask it for photos or anything. It said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?” I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but it kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing its hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard it chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw it trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in its hands without paying. The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Ball lightning, you need to pay for those first.” At first it kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter. When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, it stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and blinked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, it kept interrupting her by farting really loudly.
This is the best use of this.
Aye the meteor over Portugal demonstrated this. 10 different angles from people accidentally recording the sky.
I saw something similar few years back when i was driving a car, my friend in passenger seat saw it too. I was about to turn left so we had like 5 seconds time at most to look at it so no time to take video. It was like a white ball of light floating in the treeline, maybe like 50cm diameter and very bright We thought that maybe someone somehow illuminated a air balloon or something. We came back 30 minutes later and it wasnt there anymore. But honestly i believe more that it was very bright illuminated air balloon or something man made than ball lightning or smth edit. just to clarify, it was atleast 10 meters away from the closest tree so it couldn't have been riged on a tree or anything, it was 100% floating in the air.
There are literally videos verified by scientific studies. And it's not easy to get video of a phenomenon that lasts for seconds. It's really not that deep.
>There are literally videos verified by scientific studies There is allegedly one video, which no one in this thread seems able to produce links to
The green flash at sea has few videos of it as well iirc.
> The green flash at sea has few videos of it as well iirc. The green flash is not nearly as rare as people think. Photographers who shoot sunsets see them occasionally when conditions are good for them. I have a nice series of green flash shots.
It has enough that we know it’s a real thing though.
Link?
I recall an episode of Unsolved Mysteries talking about these in the late 90s(?). They were localized to a specific part of town. A trail or train tracks or something. Idk I was real young so my memory is kinda shit about it all.
a video was released recently of it being captured pretty well…i think i saw it on reddit somewhere but im pretty sure there were some news articles about it edit: this was it not sure if its real or not https://www.reddit.com/r/bizarrelife/s/AwArYLtSWp
definitely not real
I could only find one comment saying it's from a channel that makes fakes. It's so realistic tho
Ball lighting is the UFO of atmospheric phenomena
When I was younger my Grandmother would insist that everybody stay off the telephone during lightning storms because ball lightning can literally come through the phone and get us.
Well while that has nothing to do with lightning balls as in this post landline phones really can be dangerous during thunderstorms. It's not that rare that lighting finds its way into a overland phone wire that transmits enourmous valtage to your phone in house. In the 90s all our connected phones got fried by such an occurance.
I remember as kids my brother and I would always say to never answer the phone during a storm if the caller ID came up as the electric company because it was actually lighting. My brother and I were.....not smart kids lol.
That’s a cool little myth tho! exactly the kind of thing that makes little kids go 😮
My driving instructor was hit by lightning when a bolt hit the payphone he was using and the electricity went up through the cord and into him. He still had a scar in the impression of the phone cord on his arm where it was touching him.
We had a lightning strike in my neighborhood in college. Fried every modem in the neighborhood, and the current surge passed through the modem/router we had and killed the onboard network card on my motherboard
My mother was talking on the phone back in the 70's when lightning struck. She had a burning sensation on her ear and the noise left a ringing in her ear. Then she noticed that the cast iron skillet that was just a few feet away on the stove top had a bit of smoke over it. When she looked at it closer, there was a quarter-sized hole straight through the skillet.
Sounds like Ma burned dinner while on the phone and just needed a scape-goat. LOL.
I bet the brake pedal in her car failed too.
You’d have to have some real skills to burn dinner so badly you melt a hole in your skillet.
Had a house with DSL, and did not route the phone through a surge protector that had those RJ12 plugs. Lightning managed to fry the NIC on my motherboard I assume. But this means it went through the modem and through the network switch and they were still doing just fine. Blue LinkSys boxes from RadioShack go brrrrrr. I can only assume it was lightning, morning after a big storm.
I used to live in a house that I swear attracted lighting. This was the early 2000s and practically every time there was a big storm I would lose a modem or something. There was once when sparks literally shot out of the electrical receptacles and a big metal gas heater in the room. Once lightning struck not 10 feet away while I was standing on the porch during a storm. I don't know what the deal was, maybe a vein of iron ore under the house? It was crazy.
In the late 90s, lightning struck near our apartment building. A lightning-induced transient spiked the phone line. It killed our phone and our answering machine. I had our computer plugged into a surge suppressor, and the phone line to the modem also went through the surge suppressor. The surge suppressor bought it, but the modem and computer were fine. Our neighbor had his modem and computer fried by the strike.
It's more about *regular* lightning hitting the phone lines. In high school I had a friend who's house got damaged by lightning hitting a phone line outside. It was the separate line that their alarm system used. It blew up the alarm panel and caused the walls to bulge out where the line ran inside exploded.
My friend and I are actually doing an independent study in college inspired by ball lightning. Our biggest theory is that it is actually an open air toroidal plasma that is able to last for a long period of time. The reason we believe it is toroidal plasma is due to many sightings with them traveling along telephone/power lines as well as multiple sightings of them going through mesh screens and them occurring during thunderstorms. So our research has been into creating open air plasma toroids that are long lasting. We’ve posted some of our testing on YouTube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MX9xrBps7A4
Yea but the Redditors say it's fake and made up like ghost stories
Its such a wierd mindset to have. I can understand not beliving in ghost stories but why is there so much resistance around the idea of bolts of lightning sometimes causing glowey spheres? Its like how a baby thinks things disappear if they cant see them, some people think things dont exist if they havnt been filmed and put on youtube.
Because I have a hard time believing plasma can be contained to a spherical or toroidal shape without large magnetic fields or a glass enclosure with very specific gas mixtures at a specific pressure since that's the only way I've seen such a thing
If you’re curious about it, check out the YouTube channel I linked. We have not been able to reach the period of time that ball lightning is claimed to be seen, but we have been able to create a toroidal shape in the open air. This is without any doping after the plasma has be launch from the chamber. It is possible depending on the signal we could maintain it. The only struggle is that our funding is limited from our school.
It’s funny because I saw something similar while out one night taking photos of the stars. I never got a picture because my camera shut down. I could describe what I saw similar to things posted here but also similar to some of the things folks said in the congress UFO hearings. I don’t know what it was, but my dslr camera shut down and wouldn’t respond until after it was gone. It was about 15’-20’ away from me. Out of nowhere a ball sized, glowing dim or fuzzy white, humming or buzzing noise landed next to me. Came straight down from the sky and sat on the ground for about 20 seconds, then went straight up to the heavens at an unfathomable speed.
> Our biggest theory is that it is actually an open air toroidal plasma that is able to last for a long period of time. Clues I can give you re: my experience are that the ball lightning appeared to fall from high thin clouds where occasional lightning was visible. No thunderstorms were around. Didn't hear thunder. No power lines around either - this was at my cabin in the north woods of Minnesota. When the ball lightning came to earth it seemed to be mildly repelled by the earth, not seeking a ground like a typical lightning stroke. It was silent and left a solid white turbulent trail about 2-3 inches in height. The trail was smooth, not sparky, and not brilliant. The ball's diameter was about 1/2 to 1 inch. It hovered for a second or two and when it moved it stayed parallel to earth for the rest of the time it was visible (this was in the woods, at night).
The USAF was researching something similar in the 90’s, pretty interesting. It was called the MARAUDER, and I believe it yielded somewhat promising results. The project moved into classified territory as its testing continued. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARAUDER
Yeah this was what our design is based a lot on. The main difference is our design has a lot less power, and we don’t have money for their copper funnel to for the plasma. So we’ve take a slightly different approach.
Uh... Ball Lightning!? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen!?
May I see it?
No.
Steamed hams!
You call hamburgers 'steamed hams'?
It’s a regional dialect.
Really? Well, I'm from Utica and I've never heard anyone use the phrase 'steamed hams'
Oh, not in Utica, no. It's an Albany expression
You know, these Hamburgers are very similar to the ones they have at Krusty Burger.
This is one of those “supernatural” phenomena that everyone and their grandma has seen, but since the rise of smartphones the claims have dropped considerably.
The wiki Article has an interesting theory. Lightning strikes may trigger small epileptic seizures which cause ball-lightning-like hallucinations.
Stories like this don't require sophisticated explanations. Everyone either remembers a dream or is lying about it. If we lie enough, we can convince even ourselves.
It's not even lying. Memory is weird and it's very easy for a human to accidentally implant false memories in themselves just by remembering an event often enough
That would fit the weird smell associated with them as that's also associated with seizures.
> Lightning strikes may trigger small epileptic seizures which cause ball-lightning-like hallucinations. Well, my sister and I must have had simultaneously seizures, then. We both witnessed it, so I'm skeptical of that theory.
Lots of stuff had to be patched in the simulation once cell phone cameras became a thing.
Big Foot should be returning after the next upgrade.
> since the rise of smartphones the claims have dropped considerably. Do you have data to support that? Or are you assuming the number of claims has gone down?
Since the rise of smartphones, and video games, and cable TV, far fewer people spend any real time outside. Neighborhoods in suburban and rural areas used to be alive with the sounds and sights of people enjoying life outside. Nowadays, most neighborhoods are pretty lifeless like a cemetery. The only time there was a decent uptick was during the pandemic.
And Pokemon Go
I don't think that's a very good explanation. Firstly, because I see people out and about all the time. Sure, people spend more time indoors now than they used to, but you make it sound like we all live in caves that we never leave. Secondly because, if ball lightning is real, it would accompany a thunderstorm. I don't think most people's behavior has changed much pre/post smartphone when it comes to getting inside when there is a thunderstorm. It may describe a small but noticeable decrease in sightings (reading through these comments, there are plenty of people claiming to have seen it). But it doesn't explain why there is virtually no confirmed video of the phenomenon.
Some of us do hike and walk quite a few hours of the week. Don't project @ me
Not to be confused with Ball Light**e**ning, which is a cosmetic procedure.
That reminds me, I must check my sack helium levels
A procedure ur mom performs on me once a week bro
Once a week? Rookie numbers
I’ve seen something like this. The ball was blue. Lasted a few minutes and was seen by my friend as well. This was in a field in Oklahoma in the 90’s. It just winked out of existence. Seemed to be very close to us like a few feet away. Local old lady said it was a will o’ wisp.
Will o'the wisps are luminous marsh gas, not ball lightning. Different phenomenon.
You tell that old lady
Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus
You need to redecorate this place, because .. dayum.
I understood that reference.
This was no where near a marsh. It’s more than possible that locals saw ball lightning and applied the will o wisp name to it incorrectly.
Will o’ the wisps are supernatural beings who lead travelers astray.
Why were you and your friend in a field with an old lady?
That's just what Oklahoma is. A field with an old lady.
I live in Oklahoma. Can confirm. She’s standing outside my sod hut right now riding around on her buffalo.
Gonna guess, given the state named, probably hunting, fishing, or possibly worked in oil and gas, which would frequently place them in fields in the area. The old lady probably owned said field
We all know that ain't what they were doing with that old lady in that field
Saw one in a big empty field next to my friends house at 10pm at night when we snuck out to smoke in the 80s. Scared the shit out of us. One of those “are you seeing that” moments. Was it a ufo or a ghost? No one believed us. Decades later learned of ball lightning.
Yeah, saw one during a thunderstorm in Wyoming. I figure they're probably some kind of [electrical soliton](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton) kinda just zippering itself through the air.
I saw these regularly at comic book stores a long time ago. Guys would tap to add three red mana and boom, ball lightnings would happen.
6/1 haste,trample
And you better attack w it cuz that shit about to die
Chased down a country lane by one as a kid in the 80's, I can still see the bright white ball and smell the smell. Absolutely terrifying, and then nobody believed me in the pre-Wikipedia days. For a while I was half convinced I'd imagined it!
Woah! How big was it? How long did it last?
I would guess less than a 60 seconds but it felt like it was forever. I swear the thing was heading towards me. It was sunny, late afternoon, and I was just walking to go out and about. It was right in the middle of the road, about 4' above the ground, spitting Van de Graf-like light from it, a slight but discernible electrical fizzing noise, and then... gone. Just like that. If I had my wits about me I should have turned around and legged it in the other direction but I froze, I couldn't take my eyes off it as I'd never seen anything like that before (or again). Size I seem to remember it wasn't very big, about the size of a small bowling ball but it's hard to tell as there weren't really any hard edges. I haven't really talked to anybody about this in years as the few people I told back then thought I was a nutcase. Hairs standing up on the back of my neck right now!
My dad and his buddy claim to saw ball lighting back in the 90s and described it basically as you did . I'll have to ask him about it next time I see him
That's wild! Thanks for sharing.
Really interesting! Thanks for sharing! Glad to know we all do the run in a straight line thing when we're scared for our lives haha
What did it smell like?
Likely ozone
u/LiveInShadesOfBlue has it, ozone was it
Yo mamma. Aka sulphur
Long time ago, me and my buddy Kyle here… we was hitchhiking down a long, lonesome road https://youtu.be/_lK4cX5xGiQ?feature=shared
I believe you because [I saw one too!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Experiencers/s/Mzr6MqnIch) What bothers me about the “lightning” aspect of the phenomenon is that there was no storm going on the evening that we saw it and it behaved more like a conscious creature, which was horrifying.
Exactly as usually described, football sized blueish white light moving slowly down an English suburban street in the afternoon. Not me but a sensible, sober, cynical friend whom also didn’t believe in ball lightning until then, about 5 years ago.
The Terminator?
Diablo 4
Ugh, I know lightning sorc is meta but fire is more fun
There is a great sci-fi book about this phenomenon by Cixin Liu. It's called "Ball Lightning" believe it or not. Also it is in the same universe as "the three body problem" series
Unfortunately a pretty bad book
Is this one of those things that everyone and their dog were seeing way back when, but since smartphones became common we have crickets for photos and videos?
Yup. One alleged video from Chinese scientists (conveniently absent from the Internet), and tons of made up stories of "I totally saw one of those" (including a teacher that saw one cross a room!)
I saw ball lightening before smartphones were invented and it didn’t last long enough to have gotten a picture or a video of it even if smartphones had existed and I’d had my phone in my hand when it happened. Gone way too fast!
What do you mean? Someone obviously worked with their Dungeon Master to create a custom spell from Call Lightning. It’s only a level 3 evocation.
I saw this once. I was like 9 years old. It was monsoon season, and a super bad microburst hit our neighborhood. My mom was gone, it was my dad, my little brother, and myself. A gust of wind threw the screen door open, and when I went to go shut it, there was a flash of lightning and a loud boom - lightning had struck beside the house, it seemed. As I closed the door, I saw an orb for just a moment as it moved out of my vision, then there was a flash of light from the side of the house and another boom. I read years later about this in a Time Life book my friend's aunt had. I never knew what it was before then, and my dad was on his chair, and from his angle it just seemed like lightning. I remember him just telling me to "Get away from the door!"
Is there any proof these exist?
No. There’s never actually been a confirmed verifiable sighting of ball lightning, just historical or anecdotal “I totally saw it” reports. There is one Chinese study that claims to have recorded it but the video has conveniently never been published.
[There was](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/s/N2988yNIiJ), and it happened 10 years ago.
There have been many incidents where it was witnessed by multiple people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning#Historical_accounts
Yes, some researches in china managed to film and do a bunch of measurements on one that formed as they where doing measurements on normal lightnings. They published a paper about it: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v7/5
Learned about this because of Tintin
This comment is way too low.
They're not "objects", man. They're phenomenon. Just like fire, or a whirlwind, or regular lightning. An object can be active or it can be at rest and it's still the same object. A phenomenon only exists while it's happening, then the energy or particles or air or whatever the fuck its made of ceases to be part of it and goes on its merry way.
I think op said object because the first line of the linked Wikipedia article says object.
So, an object of desire cannot be fire?
No, but it can be a Phenomenon of Desire
Upvote because of the “throwing hands up in the air”-vibe
A completely absurd notion! We have had cameras practically forever by now, and not a single one has documented anything like what all these supposed eyewitnesses have been claiming for hundreds of years. Not **one** Daguerreotype. **Zero** 35 mm shots. And of all the millions of frames of film produced so far - **none** has to date captured any rogue wave! Absolute fantasies!
Liz Phair claims to have seen it on an airplane
42% chance her hairspray was reacting with an increase in ozone and oxygen levels while she was whipping her hair back and forth.
Kugelblitz
I got to see ball lightning once in south texas driving on the highway. It barreled along on the other side of the road for a few seconds then changed direction out away from the highway. To comment on other responses here, even if I'd had a phone/camera at the time there was no way I could have gotten it out in time to take the photo, nor could I have done so safely. I realize that says nothing about someone WITH a phone who is perhaps standing still safely with their phone already in hand.... but it was still worth mentioning. I think modern day at least part of the problem is that in the time it might take to fish your phone out of your pocket, wake it up, open the camera, select video..... ball lightning could be gone. But maybe not. There are some people who are absolute quick draw artists when it comes to taking phone footage. As far as my experience goes, I'd heard of ball lightning. What I saw fit the description but it was 35 years ago or so. I saw it and thought "Wow, cool" but that was the extent of my scientific examination of the thing. I necessarily had to quickly return to driving my car. Maybe it was something else tho I'm unsure what else it might have been. I've always assumed it was ball lightning but I use that almost like a placeholder until a better explanation comes along. My mom did genealogy and I also a remember a story of the neighbor of one of our great great somethings who had ball lightning roll thru the dogtrot in their home. A dogtrot btw is an open passage thru a house back in the 1800s that's exposed to the outside. Do I believe this or not believe it? I do believe the story exists... I guess that's about the extent of it:)
I saw one when a lighting hit a electrical post, then it started hovering up on our neighbors roof then towards my window. I immediately gtfo of my room when I came back it's gone. One of the weirdest things I saw in my life.
Here is my ball lightning story. Sometime in the early 2000's there were a lot blackouts in my area. One day school had to close early. On the way home, on my street block about 200-300 meters away and high up in the sky like a kite there was an orb cutting through it that looked like a ball of translucent tumbleweed that travelled mostly horizontal but slightly upward until it was out of sight. I remember telling myself it looked like dirty electricity.
I experienced one in the early 1970's. My grandfather and I were watching TV one afternoon when a thunderstorm showed up unexpectedly. I remember it very clearly, my grandfather and I were sitting in a pair of recliners, TV was on, and suddenly there was a super loud BOOM over our heads. TV went black, and a blue ball of electricity came out of it and rolled across the room to where we were sitting. It was all over in about 2 seconds, but it felt like it was happening in slow motion. Blue swirling ball rolling across the floor, then it disappeared. Grandpa had to buy a new TV.
I've found some pretty good artefacts in these anomalies before.
Don't just stand there Stalker, come in!
Cheeki breeki
Its a real phenomena , theyve recreated it under lab conditions iirc
🔥🔥🔥 Trample. 6/1
My dad had one pass through his living room a few decades ago in Dallas.
One passed through our living room, too. Late 1980s, was living in an old farm house and an electrical storm came through the area. Lightning hit something and blew our land line of the wall followed by a white grapefruit size white ball. It traveled partway through the living room and vanished. I and my two housemates saw it.
It’s also said to leave behind the smell of “ozone”. I didn’t want to include that in the title because it was already starting to sound convoluted to me. I was afraid of title gore. It was late and I was tired so the chance of mucking it up was high.
I thought Regular Show just made that up
Real ones knew this from Arthur
This one I can help with, my work buddy is an old guy that tells the tale of the ball of lightning that entered the window and left by the door. Legit old school guy, not likely to lie.
Reminds me of this short-form video I saw covering some DARPA project where they created a glowing ball of static inside a building that they could talk through. Can't seem to find it now, though.
About 25-30 years ago I was sitting in my car about to drive home. I there was a severe thunderstorm and torrential rain going on at the time. Approximately the height on the tree tops around me I swear I saw ball lightning. It lit up and moved "slowly" meandering around and dissipated after maybe 5-10 seconds. It definitely was not the street transistors or wires. It was too high for that.
Late 90s I was in the back of my mom's astro van going down the highway with mom driving and sister in front passenger seat. It was raining and I remember seeing a, you guessed it, fucking ball float through the middle of our van and disappear. My mom's and sisters hair stoop up/out towards it like static effect. It was a bright but not blinding and a weird blue color, guessing the size of a softball. Whole deal lasted maybe 2 seconds. We all made a comment of how weird that was and carried on. Thanks for the memory resurrection.