The Earth's Anomalous Lightforms

Ball lightning near St. Petersburg, Russia. La Physique Populaire (July 1888), artist unknown. Public domain.

This site is a collection of articles and other material regarding anomalous luminous phenomena. It covers a range of natural but mysterious lights which for various reasons are seldom investigated as mainstream science:

For a complete contents and to see which files have changed recently, see the directory list.

Other Miscellany

Some works in progress:

Why Anomalous Lightforms?

This site started out in around the turn of the millennium when there wasn't much information available online in the field of anomalous lightforms. As one of the few sites dedicated to the spooklight phenomenon at the time said (a site which has now disappeared), there are plenty of sites about specific places and sightings, but very little bringing it all together.

The purpose of this site, then, was to bring lots of information about anomalous light forms together in one place. It serves to bring awareness of these phenomena to the public's attention. In general, this site mainly covers earth lights (i.e. spooklights, ghost lights, nocturnal lights, geophysical meteors), and the Will-o'-the-wisp (i.e. the ignus fatuus, the foolish fire). Earthquake lights are also covered, along with some other rare phenomena such as foxfire, St. Elmo's Fire, and so on, but these are really sidelines to the main theme.

by Sean B. Palmer