The Earthlights Debate: Closing Remarks

Hilary Evans

From Magonia 25, March 1987

There are few things seemingly so simple but potentially so complex as a ball of light. The phrase itself is ambiguous: does ball mean sphere or spheroid or spherical, does light mean light source or luminosity, and so on. Here are some of the things BOL may be - a physical object in its own right, as for instance ball lightning, earthquake lights, Saint Elmo’s fire, feux follets, etc., or plasma phenomena generated by electrical conditions not yet understood.

The Earthlights Debate

Paul Devereux

Magonia 25, March 1987

There are a number of points in Magonia 24 I’d like to pass brief comments on. Michael Goss’s article was a delight. I would just point out that those shito-dama phenomena described as “roundish tadpole shaped” does bring dramatically to mind Kenneth Arnold’s description of his Cascade Mountains ‘fying saucers’ as taking on a ‘tadpole when crossing Goat Ridge; of the descriptions of the lines of “tadpole shaped lights” witnessed by hundreds of people before the 1957 Charnwood (Leicestershire) earthquake

The Curious Connection Between Helicopters and UFOs

Dennis Stilling

Magonia 25, March 1987

During the past three or four years, as I was reviewing the more recent literature on UFOs and the cattle mutilation phenomenon, I became aware that so-called ‘phantom helicopters’ were often seen in connection with these phenomena. In addition these usually unmarked, usually black, helicopters demonstrated some rather remarkable properties: they move silently or with sound unlike those of normal helicopters: they fly at abnormal, unsafe, or illegal altitudes: they appear both shy and aggressive.