Spook Lights

[July 2003] I first heard about Spook Lights while reading William R. Corliss' 'Handbook of Unusual Natural Phenomena' some years back. I have always enjoyed reading through this book because it seems to be rather dispassionate in cataloging odd things that people have seen (mostly reports from the 1800's!!) including ball lightning (a real phenomenon) and unusual natural sounds. Among his list are Spook Lights or 'Earth Lights'. Apparently, there are many different varieties of these, but in nearly all cases they are accompanied by lots of local folk tales.

What I am going to try to do at this web page is create an archive that will serve as my notepad for what I hope is a very dispassionate study of these curious phenomena. I will try to collect only the best information that I can about them. I don't claim that I will come to a better understanding of what they are, but I do want to reduce their study to a bare set of facts that seem indisputable...at least for now. Besides, there is no centralized place on the web where you can get the complete story of all of the known sightings, and the few pages available vary enormously in their content and quality.

I have borrowed text and images from many web sites and have fully cited them via specific names and URLs. The material I have collected is roughly current to about 2001. This site is provided for educational purposes only.

Here are some of my thoughts about the general problem of studying these phenomena, and why scientists may never be able to 'prove' what is really going on with them:

Why it's Hard to Investigate Unusual Phenomena that Have Captured the Popular Imagination.

Marfa Lights..............................Marfa, Texas