Welcome backstage, conspiracy Realist. We are bringing you a classic episode. And before we do, while you're just kicking it with us in the figurative green room, I have to ask, do you guys like lights in general? Yeah? I love them colored ones, you know, white ones, black ones. The black ones are fun. They make they make things look real trippy in the dock. They teach you a lot about hotel rooms. That's also true. That's a different kind of trippy in the dark. Yeah, what did they call that? It was like it was like color therapy or something like that. There was it was labeled in some strange way, the blue and red lights. They were in a recent hotel we visited. I really like lights when they come together to form the shape of Diablo characters on my monitor. Basically, I like lights that are tempty, you know. I like lights that tease you a little bit, flirt you off the expected route. Sometimes they are called the will of the wisp. Sometimes they are called spooklights. And in today's classic episode, we went with the title ghost lights. You might be surprised by how many people feel that they have encountered this phenomenon and by just how many different explanations there are for it. I think we were all surprised by the responses from our fellow conspiracy realist. Oh absolutely, and hey, it's still not too late to let us know what you think after you listen to this classic episode from UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nell Spooky Brown. They called me been in various other things. You are you that makes this stuff they don't want you to know? A relatively spooky episode for us today. Yeah. I'm not sure if I'm just getting old and like sentimental or something, but I was writing around yesterday listening to Thriller really loud in my car, and it made me cry how good that song is, like how perfectly done that song is, and how it's like you think it couldn't get any better, You think it couldn't get any better, and then Vincent Price boom. Fun fact, I used to know the choreography of the Thriller dance. Yeah, this is I mean been. My experience is separated from the video. The video ads a whole another layer of like shocking onto that thing that is a piece of piece of art right there. It is. So we are doing one. We are delving into one topic that is particularly spooky, so spooky in fact that they use the word spook in the name. It's correct, and it was. We were hipped to the attention of this topic by a listener named Megan, who wrote to us. She says, Hey, guys, I started your podcast a couple of weeks ago, and I'm greatly enjoying it. It's been a great way to help me get through the workday, though my coworkers might be getting a little annoyed with me randomly laughing or bringing up odd conversations. Oh, we understand that completely, Megan, the laughing part, you know, maybe the odd conversations for sure. She says. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the Joplin Spooklight, but I thought it might be something that you'd have an interest in. I've been fascinated by it since I was little, and I always liked the various theories that I hear. Yeah, thank you for writing in, Megan. Our first response, I don't know about you. Guys. But my first response when I read the phrase Joplin Spooklight was what a great band name. Yeah, like I would go. I would go see them, only if you can get Janis to front it, though, I think that sailed well. I you know, you could do stuff with holograms or ghost maybe never holograms. Never holograms, all right, we'll see that freaks me out. We could get the old pentagram back out. See what we can conjure, yea conjure the Janis? All right? Cool, So I think we've we've just started a band. Yes, and before we before we get to our album, which is pretty clearly going to be a concept album, right, okay, as long as we're all on board. Oh and we need to introduce our super producer, Alex Williams. On the ones, twos and threes, he pointed out, Scott Choplin could be Yeah, that'd be a different kind of band, but I like it. We could make it like space jazz. What about just the two of them, just the two Joplins that would probably cancel each other out double job of like a dark matter explosion. I mean, that'd be dangerous. There is sort of a crossing the proton beams, ghostbusters vibe going on with that. Yeah, but maybe that's why it would be incredible. Yes, And we'll put a we'll put a we'll put a pin on this, and we want to hear your opinions to what sort of band Joplin Spooklight would be. It turns out that the job blind Spooklight, in addition to being a fantastic band name, is a phenomenon that is widespread and relatively well known in the Joplin area. This is an example of something that is also called, you know, a ghostlight, spooklight, a willow the wisp. And how have we not made an episode on this? We haven't, right, because we've not been through the other We've been to the feed and it's it's okay. I think we're good. I think we're good. We've talked about ghosts a lot, and I think this has come up come up in the periphery before, sure, but we've never actually delved into it. I will say, for a fact, stuff to blow your mind, our sister podcast, what do you call it, compatriots, what's what's pure podcast? Stuff to blow your mind? Our peer, part part peer. That's hard to say, stuff to Blow your Mind. Our colleagues who also a podcast, they did do an excellent episode on Willow the Whisp, so I recommend checking that one out addition to what you're about to hear here. Fantastic. Yeah, and you can also if you're a stuff to Blow your Mind fan, you can catch a couple of those guys on appearances on this very show. Last one in particular on the Bicameral Mind was one of my favorite discussions we've had in a minute. It was It was really fun, So do check that out. But first, in this episode, we're going to examine spook lights or Willow to Whisp in general, the one in Joplin in particular, and see whether we can determine some sort of common cause or best guess, right, and we are going to delve into some folklore and hopefully a little bit of science as well. Yeah, Joplin. And this is in Missouri, right, Yeah, Yeah, that is. It is near It is near Joplin. It's not actually in Joplin, Missouri, but the town. Yeah. Kind of how kind of the way that people in the US tend to just describe themselves as being from the closest big town in their area. Exactly, So what what the heck is spooklight? You've heard the term or will of the wisp definitely. It's one of the common names for a thing called an atmospheric ghost light, and these have been documented numerous times in folklore. Will of the whisp is still probably the most common term. It comes from wisp, which meant a bundle of sticks or paper, sometimes used as a torch, and the name will meaning will of the torch. Jack lantern Jack of the lantern has a similar meaning. They're also called ghost lights. You'll hear folklorees call them orbs. Paranormal enthusiasts have names for them as well. My favorite, though, is ghost candles. Ghost candles about dead lights? Like, yeah, in it related? No, I think that's more red balloons, but I'm not sure. Well, deadlights are an otherworldly manifestation of the macro verse, in which, you know, which is everything that exist outside of reality as we understand it in the Stephen King universe. Oh my gosh, I'm making this a different show, okay, but yes, spooky lights seeing Allegedly, when they're in graveyards, they're called ghost candles, but they're across the planet. This phenomenon is known, and the name might change depending on the location or the culture that you hear them reported in. So they might be called onebe or Hitodama in Japan, or the men men Light in Australia and the men men light he said, a men men light. I like how when you do that impression you just like clench your teeth, yea yea yeah. Yeah. You might also hear people differentiate between types that and that's largely based on what the light is doing, how it's changing or moving the shape essentially. And so to people who believe there's some kind of supernatural and behind or occurrence behind these, they might be thought to move in ways that would be naturally occurring to some animal or something that has a will, something that can choose to move in a way, or something that's sentient. Right, So maybe there would be, for instance, a legend about a jilted lover who was murdered and the spooklight traces the path of their dying steps, or it's searching for something, or it's a malicious spirit which is trying to lure you further and further into the bag. Yeah, someone got killed on a road at a certain place and then all the way down on the other side of the road miles away, you can still see like the spirit of the person just going on their path down the road as they died. And this, I know, this sounds like it went morbid really quickly. But these ghost lights, yeah, their ghostlights and these things have been around for a long long time, and when mortality rates were much higher or distributed different, it was much more plausible to think, well, people die all the time in childbirth or below the age of thirteen, so you would also hear will of the whisp being like parents, mothers or kids, and so you can hear them called wandering spirits or the work of devils in Japan, or fairy pranks in Europe. And the Japanese word is yoki, right, which is there's there's a cartoon called Yoki Watch. Have you heard of this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's sort of like Pokemon, but they like live in a watch or something. Maybe that's just a branding tie in. I don't know, Yeah, the Yoki in um There's also a Takashimike fantasy film called like the Great Yoki War, which is all about like these kind of like gremliny like Japanese monsters and like living in the underworld, and it's kind of like a rollicking Gooonese style adventure by a pretty schlocky horror directors, so it's always fun to see them go in different directions. And they're also these lights are also feared by some humans as importent of death, similar to the old stories about hearing a banshee and this the version of this would be entirely visual, like otto you saw the flickering blue light, it means your time is nigh. And then in other parts of the world there are folk beliefs that supernatural fires of some sort appear where treasure is buried or hidden somewhere away from a regular view. But with this fire, maybe you can you can figure out where it is. And with this sometimes the fires are said to be spirits of the treasure itself, or maybe even spirits of the people who buried the treasure, or you know, maybe spirits who are searching for the treasure. But with like that kind of like buried forgotten treasure, isn't there always sort of a sense of like ominous and ominous kind of dread surrounding it, where if you know they don't want you to find it. Yeah, cursed treasure. Sure, that shows up a lot in folklore pretty often. And it's weird because already, just listing out some of the big folklore themes for ghost lights, we're seeing contradictory explanations. Right in the cannon. Should you run away from this thing? Should you chase it for treasure? Does it just mean you're going to die at dawn? Yeah? You throw the dice there, I guess, because right now there's no one explanation or one reason behind it. But they do have commonalities, that's correct. One is that all of the spooklights do seem to share this tendency to occur in humid conditions, like said bog Yeah, so there isn't there is a provable atmospheric thing, right. Even more bizarre part maybe that they're ubiquitous. They've been reported almost everywhere. We mentioned Australia, in Japan, and we mentioned the US right Missouri specifically, but these lights have also been reported in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Bangladesh, POC. The list goes on India, Sweden, Finland, lot Via, Estonia, Lithuania, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Venezuela, Canada, Norway, and many many more, and we couldn't find any reports of them occurring in Africa, but or in the African continent rather. But if you have had personal experiences with any of this in any kind of African country, or a good story about a sighting at all, we would absolutely love to hear from you at conspiracy at housta first dot com. Nice smooth, send us your stuff. So, if these lights are widespread and they're well known and they've been around for such a long time, have we as a species actually figured out what ghost lights are? Well? Maybe? And we'll get to that right after a quick word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Nice cliffhanger before they add there, man, yeah, yeah, I just wanted to do one of those. I think it worked. Okay, cool there. To get to the crazy part, let's look at some specific examples of these atmospheric ghosts and we'll start with Meghan's suggestion the Joplin, Missouri spooklights. The spooklight occurs in Oklahoma and it's near a small town. Residents. Please be forgiving of my pronunciation quapa uapa, quapapa quapaw. However, because it's most often seen from the east. It's been quote unquote attached to the tiny hamlet of Hornet, Missouri, and the larger area of you know, in a larger context, the better known larger town of Joplin. Yeah, and just for some simplicity there, it's occurring in Oklahoma, but you're mostly seeing it, or where it's mostly reported from is across the way in Missouri. Just did for an understanding. And I just want to this out there for using Family Guy rules. The town in their show is called Cohog, but it's spelled Quahog. Maybe it's Copa. Oh yeah, that's nice. Also could have entirely invented that pronunciation. I don't know. I have a feeling. We'll find out in the listener mail. Yeah. According to the legend, this is pretty interesting. It dates back a while. You will hear people say that this light was first seen by Native Americans along the Trail of Tears in eighteen thirty six, so from a folklore perspective, it's tied to that great tragedy. However, the first official, you know, in print report occurred in eighteen eighty one in a magazine called The Ozark Spook Light well, not really a magazine, like a printed pamphlet. It typically travels east to west along the four miles stretch of road with a really cool name that I suspect as not official, the Devil's promenade. Can you do that? In the Austria the voice little devil? Um? It's okay, I'd have to get this. I don't know how you promenade is such a devil's the devil's promenade. See that now we're taking all that back. Ok that's the promenade is such a weird word, like, there's only one way to say it. It's like a Southern gentleman, the devil's promenade, lemonade's promenade. So I think all of those pronunciations are great. Okay. According to the witness's descriptions, and there are quite a few witnesses, this light looks like a sort of ball of orange colored fire, and its size changes and it moves down the center of the road at high speeds, and then it will also rise and hover over the treetops before it retreats and disappears. And retreating is a really common thing with with the belief of ghost lights. Yeah, and others say it moves from the side like side to side, kind of like a lantern. Someone's swaying a little bit as they're carrying it, you know, someone visible being or spirit perhaps. The light's also been reportedly appearing nightly for over one hundred years, so you know, every night for a hundred years. It seems like there's something going on that's common enough to occur every night and to be visible. I don't know. We're going to get deeper into this. Yeah, And if you are listening to this and you happen to be in the area of Jobla, Missouri, you can head over to Hornet to check out the light for yourself. The locals say the best time to see it is later in the evening, between ten and midnight, So don't show up at three am and get disappointed. Yeah, please don't do that. So there are all these proposed explanations over the years, right. One of them would be natural gas. Another would be the reflection of car lights and billboards, which sounds super mundane but could be an explanation for at least some of these so escaping natural gas that's common in marshy areas. But the Hornet light is seemingly not affected by wind or rain, So how would it you know, how would it spark? How would itself ignite? Hold on, are we calling it the Hornet light? Now? Is it the Hornet light? Or is it the Joplin light? You guys, those two talents have been in a bitter rivalry. Are they beefed up? Yeah? They're like no, no, man, it's the Hornet light. It's like, no, it's not as a Dropolin light. Well, Megan called it the Joplin spook lights, so I think we know where she stands on this debate. All right. I think we should oscillate back and forth just to see who wins in the end. Okay, deal, just to make things as confusing as possible. Yes, yeah, yeah, let's make sure that we are super unclear about So people who are I guess true believers, maybe we would call them, um, we will call them true believers because they think that there is some other explanation that is not mundane about this causing this light. So these believers will tell you that the headlight explanation or the billboard explanation are just easily dismissed because the light was seen years before automobiles or billboards were made and before a road existed in the area. Yeah, but torches, man, torches were all over the place. You had to have fire and light, you know. Ever since that time, telling you, I think maybe there's something going on with light there again, I feel like I'm jumping the gun here. But no jump once. No, we'll talk about it towards the end. Uh the FUTA we're going on. You're gonna tease the jump the jump. There's some interesting things that occur on the horizon with your eyeballs A jump tease, yeah, like the Aurora borealis and stuff like that. Not okay, okay, Well we'll get into it. But one possible explanation that has been put forward is that the lights are somehow electrical atmospheric charges. And it gets a little weird here. So in areas where rocks deep below the Earth's surface are shifting and grinding together, there can be an electrical charge created depending on what the makeup of those rocks is piezoelectric activity, right, that's what it is. So this area lies on a fault line that runs east from New Madrid, Missouri, westward to Oklahoma, and it was the site of four earthquakes during the eighteenth century. So keep that in mind. There's activity going on beneath the surface, and these types of electrical fields are most commonly associated with earthquakes. So when you have an earthquake, perhaps you're going to get one of these electrical fields above the surface of the ground. I have a completely unhelpful sidebar. Okay. The only reason that I know, the only reason I pronounced that town of Missouri as New Madrid from the video, it's because a will of a Wilco song. Oh where they know it's not Wilco, it's Uncle Tupolo, the predecessor of Wilco. Where they have there's a part of the lyrics where or a section of the lyrics where they say roll me under New Madrid. And I had no idea what that meant. And for years I thought he was saying roll me under the mattress. I thought, wow, Uncle Tupolo is a little darker than the those jaunty country twang rhythms would have you believe. Well, do you some pathos in there? My friend? Do you remember when we made the video on the New Madrid Fault? Oh? Yes, we called it the New Madrid Fault. The whole time. Yeah, yeah, sorry, how the internet take to that? Um people are very helpful, sure and pointing out things like that, Nat, did you just roll plus one on diplomas? No? Uh yeah that was That was a U. You can check it out. That's on me. I mispronounced the name of the town. I didn't catch it either. So we have another example though, just to increase our sample size a little bit over in Marfa, Texas, there's something called the Marfa Lights. So the Marfa Lights are near US Root sixty seven on Mitchell Flat East in Marfa, Texas, in the United States these United States, and the first published account of this sighting appeared in the July nineteen fifty seven issue of Coronet Magazine. So in nineteen seventy six, Elton Miles Tale of the Big Bend included stories dating to the nineteenth century and a photograph of the Marpha Lights taken by a local rancher. According to Cecilia Thompson's book History of Marfa and Presidio County, Texas, the earliest allege report comes from cowboy Robert Reid Ellison. That is a good cowboy name. That was in March of eighteen eighty three. The Marfa Lights have also been given an official viewing area, which is cool. I picture it as being like almost like one of those like scenic overlooks of the Blue Ridge Mountains or something only creepier. And that is at the site of Marfa Army Airfield, where there are tens of thousands of personnel who are stationed there between nineteen forty two and nine forty seven who are training American and Allied pilots. Yeah, and this is a very important detail. So the Marfa Lights here in the US are one of the most well known examples of this phenomenon. So that means that these are probably the lights that are seen most often by the most people. I mean, the fact that they have a viewing area itself speaks volumes. But here's a detail that's important and maybe throws the paranormal allegations a little askew. So it's this massive field, like Noll said, and it had been used as an airport at daily airline service, which means there was a constant patrol schedule, you know, the flow of human beings going through that area, right, So if there were anything super duper unusual, you know, something supernatural, this would be the place where it would have been most likely to have been seen, acknowledged reported, you know, if someone actually, say found treasure or they followed a ghost light to a grave or something. Yeah, well maybe it was covered up man, or there may be some other explanations in play. So now we're now we're kind of putting folklore and science in opposite corners of the boxing ring. Yeah. That's always tough because there are all these great stories that have, you know, believe explanations that are out there, and that's why they're fun, right, Yeah, And what we're going to try and do is find the space where do these things connect somehow is there a little space in the middle. We'll find out after a word from our sponsors. All right, So, of the explanations that have been proposed by various scientific minds, we have chosen the top contenders and let's explore them a little bit. One is super fascinating is the idea of bioluminescence. The belief the concept is this that the light we see, the ghost lights, the spook lights, might be the result of insects swarming that have taken on bioluminescent characteristics, maybe because they were contaminated by some agent in local fungus fungi, or maybe there is a species of owl with their own naturally occurring source of bioluminescence. That that one I don't buy. Bioluminescent owl. Well, owls are also some of the quietest birds, yea, in terms of the noise they like when they fly. Yeah, So I don't know if that one measures up. So maybe okay, let's say, wait, wait, what about what about just lightning bugs? Yeah? What about fireflies? Right? Insects? Jellyfish, jellyfish? What about wait, m what are you talking about? Yeah, like airborne jelly things. Yeah, oh okay, Oh so jellyfish that are just like floating. Yes, okay, yes, man, got it, got it. I meant I understood, understood, all right, So case solved, right, guys, case solved. I think I'm thinking of that scene and Life Aquatic, where like they go out in the middle of the night and the beach is covered and those bioluminescent jellyfish and someone asks him like, what's what's the source of their glow? He's like, it's the moon reflecting off of their skin. That's the one thing about that movie I really thought was funny. The rest of it kind of board me a little bit. I tried. I tried to like it. I tried to rewatch it and get into it, but I couldn't do. It's very deliberate, it's very yes. Just so, what's that? What's that old? It's a joke from family Guy that got stuck in my head years ago when they're trying to argue in pretentious terms about The Godfather, and Peter ends up saying because it insists upon itself. It insists upon itself, which sounds intelligent, but makes no sense when you say that about a film that's mine. So whenever we're talking, like if we go see a film together, which you know, listeners, Matt Nolan, I and our crew go out and watch films when we can find time because we're nerds. But if we ever walk out and you hear me say that I didn't like something because it insists upon itself, it probably means I wasn't paying attention and I want to sound smart nice. That expression, to me means that something was pretentious. There we go, Well, thank you for giving some meaning to it. Well, I just just how it hits me. Let started using people of insisting on themselves. Yeah, how would you even do that? You just walk up to them and like, Hey, it's me, it's me, It's really me all the time. You mean, how would somebody insist upon themselves? No, you just kind of like insist that you're important in the situation. I think, is it? Okay? Yeah? Yeah, you know me. I think that's what it is. We've solved it, and you slam your fist down on the table. We've solved it as well as solving the mystery of spooklights or have we hang Tychemosaba, because to date, no one has captured or observed an animal that has all these characteristics that would make it, you know, a one on one comparison with a ghost light. And there's also at this point no bioluminescent source that we know of that's bright enough. Yeah, it's overwhelmingly unlikely for these lights to be produced by animals. Correct, But what if the Earth is doing it itself? You guys? Yeah, yeah, remember the thing of piezio electrics that been mentioned before, where the earth itself is creating it or perhaps even that favled marsh gas. Yeah, so okay. The idea is that the tectonic strain. Moving faults in the earth would also heat up the rocks, vaporizing any water content, and rock or soil containing something like quartz or silicon or arsenic can also produce electricity that would be channeled up to the surface through the soil via the water as a medium and then somehow appearing as these lights. This, if it were piezoelectric in origin, would also explain why the lights appear to be erratic or even intelligent in their behavior, because there's some kind of flow that's occurring there that maybe is moving it in a way that you would think as you're watching it, they're choosing to do that. Yeah, because we like to anthropomorphize things, right and describe agency to them. You know, but what about marsh gas? What about marsh gas? So this guy Alessandro Volta, who discovered methane in seventeen seventy six, originally put forth this idea that these ghostly orbs of light were somehow tied to marsh gas. He believed that lightning mixed with the swamp gases and caused the ghost lights. His theory was pretty controversial at time, and initially was just, you know, disregarded wholeheartedly due to two pretty important factors. One is the unlikeliness of spontaneous combustion. Okay, that's a good one. That's not likely, not super likely. And two is the his failure to explain why these phenomena appeared to retreat when approached. Ye as if they knew something was come, as if to beccon you into the void like a swamp siren. Yes or no no, no, no, no, no, no no, don't don't fall, don't see How are you supposed to go into the light? Are you not supposed to go into the light? Really depends on the contact. Yeah, yeah, Are you dying and you're ready to go then yes? Right, that's the whole point. That's the only time you go into the light. Wasn't there a poulter Geist thing? Or just don't go into the light? Yeah, because the actual Poulter guyst the Dead cult leader, is trying to take Carol Anne's enormous power. You know, I've never seen Poulter guyst been. You just spoiled poulter Geist for me. No, I didn't even tell you. The coolest part Dead Cult Leader, though, is that they don't get to that until like poulter Geist two or three. I see you've spoiled the whole franchise for me. Dude, Yeah, let me go ahead, let me make it worse. The guy who is that guy had a show called Coach. He's the dad. Oh what the hell is his name? The only thing you need to know about Poultergeist is that braces sometimes attack you. Your own braces sometimes attack you, and that's terrifying. Well everybody knows that. Yeah, I feel like I must have done braces. I mean horrible, horrible, malicious things like I may have done you a disservice, my friend, because I went through that period where I was just sending images screen caps from Poultergeist in response to work emails, like creepy old dude with the hat. This is like pre emoji. This is probably pre emoji. Yeah. The first time I ever saw meat in a like a decomposing state where there are maggots and everything is from Poltergeist. And I was a little kid. Yeah, and it has scarred me ever since. Yes, I'm glad you're talking about decomposition because this idea that Volta proposes says that, all right, so the normal way that organic stuff decomposes in open air is called aerobic decomposition. Sounds like a lazy fitness program. It means they're affected by air around them. And like all organic matter, plants, animals, what have you, were mostly made up of carbon and oxygen and hydrogen, and when decaying in the presence of oxygen, the byproducts of the decomposition process are going to be carbon dioxide, energy, or heat water. But in swampy or marshy areas, which would also happen to be very humid, aerobic decomposition often doesn't take place because the dead matter, the organic stuff, gets buried beneath water or water saturated soil, and it continues to decompose in the absence of air anaerobic decomposition, and that would mean that the matter gets broken down by anaerobic bacteria. And here we go. This is why it matters, because when the bacteria are decomposing this stuff or breaking it down, they produce carbon dioxide, nitrogen, phosphenes, other chemicals, including methane as byproducts. Now, methane, what do we know about methane cow parts? Well, if anyone out there ever attempted to light a toot on fire, a toot. Really, what do you know? This is like that time? So it was a while back. Would you called something to no no place? Yeah? Yeah, Should we take a break and go tinkle? I mean, you know, if you got a tinkle tinkle. But yeah, all right, so uh toots, yeah, toots and methane. It's flammable. That's why it's important. That is important. Yeah, and uh, phosphines are also flammable, and they can burst into spontaneous flame in the presence of air. As it burns, it produces this dense white cloud which could seem to give more substance to the flame, right, especially from far away, mixed with methane. This these gases functioning in concert, would you know, would be the explanation for willow the whisp, at least according to a Volta. Yeah, especially if you get a pocket of the gas that's just on fire for a little bit and burns for a little while and then dissipates or you know, begins burning in a direction. It sure sounds like it needs some pretty specific circumstances to generate this effect. Though, you know that's correct when you hear the way it's described, it's it's all got a very similar look, right, or they're bobbing and weaving and kind of like you said, retreating, especially to see it every night, right, I mean, what there's like a National Park style you know, scenic overlook for the damn things. I mean, it's like, you know, yeah, it's not a made up phenomenon, but we know how the northern lights work, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know you know what the cause of that phenomenon is. It's pretty interesting that we've accepted this visual oddity but we don't really know what causes it. It's pretty neat. Well. I mean, there are a lot of people will say they have figured out the cause of a specific one or a specific area, right, But you're right, there are people who would still disagree with this because the folks again i'll call them true believers, who think that these explanations are okay, but they don't really encapsulate or demystify the thing. They would say, in a lot of cases, lights are reported from areas without these favorable conditions. And I agree that it sounds like a set of pretty complicated specific things. There's almost a Rube Goldberg feel to this, definitely. But there is one other explanation that was what did we call it? It was like a quick hint at It was a quick uh we were oh, a jump tease. It was a jump tease. We jump tease. That guess what we're jumping in right now. It's called fata Morgana first or head first. Well, I like to go belly. You're a flopper first, yep, that's generally my life, just flopping before after you good things the street, like the flop toots to the tanks. All right, So what's a photo morgana. So this is a third hypothesis, and that's this is that the lights are a result of optical illusion occurring in the observer, or at least it happens to the observer from what's happening into your eyes, the way the light enters your eyes over the horizon. Right. The idea that the whole thing is a mirage, forget swamp gas, forget some kind of earthquake based electricity. People are just somehow making this up consistently over decades, centuries and so on. Foto Morgana is pretty interesting, but it has one big problem, at least in this case. So the idea is that there has to be a thermal inversion such that the curvature of light rays within the inversion becomes stronger than the curvature of the earth. I know this sounds like a lot of gobbledy goook, but essentially means the rays will bend and create arcs. So if you are seeing this, you're what you're seeing is a distorted, erect or inverted image. And because of the changing nature of the atmosphere at the time of Fata Morgana, this type of mirage can change within just a few seconds, so it can seem to be very dynamic. But here's the big problem with Fata morgana. What they are most commonly seen in polar regions really, so not Missouri, not Texas. Oh Man. See, so I was banking on this one because we're talking about humid conditions right where you've already got some optical stuff going on, and there's moisture in the air. You've got four miles of roughly flat terrain that you're looking all the way down and seeing some light way on the other end of that four miles. And you know, if you've got lights, even if you're way back in the day and you've got torches during the trail of tears, and it's way way way down there, and you've got those human conditions, you've got that distance. I was thinking that is what would end up happening. You could, you know, it might look larger, it might look to be moving differently than it actually is because of this fotimorgana. But dang it, I really thought I was onto the figuring it out right there. Well, I mean, don't don't dismiss entirely yet. It could be some kind of mirage. But my issue with that is if it were a mirage, right, if it were some sort of optical illusion, then why would it be consistently the same. It seems much more likely that maybe there would be a busy road that somehow is reflecting light, you know, But then if these are moving cars on an interstate or a road, not affect the behavior of the light. Yeah, but if it's a smaller road, then maybe you only have a couple cars on there at once. But there's usually a car, but only a few at a time. I don't know. I think the closest thing I can say that I've seen to this sort of like this and super common it is just when it's really really hot and you're driving and like, you know, the street is really hot, and you kind of see this like faint shimmering in the air above the right above the horizon kind of And I think, you know, that's that's the closest thing that like a visual disturbance that I've maybe personally witnessed. So but that happens all the time, and all it takes is it being really hot. Yeah, so okay, what about heat? We didn't even really talk much about temperature. We haven't. Yeah, it could the temperature be affecting this? And that that weird heat wave that Noel's mentioned is something that I think we've all seen, friends and neighbors. I mean, you can just walk out in a hot area and look into the distance. But would that could the heat create just heat alone create this sustained ball of creepy light? I think anything any true explanation for one of these, And I think you probably have to take each one. So yeah, I think you probably do, because all the conditions in the different areas are going to be slightly different. But yeah, I think maybe it's a combination. You guys, At this point, mainstream science probably agrees with you and feels is adequately explained this phenomenon through the following the following causes, or a combination thereof naturally a currying atmospheric conditions, misidentification by eyewitnesses. Right, and so the same thing as you know, you think it's a UFO, but it's a secret government spy plane, still creepy, or you know the Chinese lanterns that go up. I've I have tricked myself into believing there's a UFO with the Chinese lantern a group of Chinese lantern Oh really, was it from the lantern parade or something? It wasn't the lantern parade. It was awful lantern parade time, but it was for sure that's what it was. And then, of course we would be remiss if we did not mention the likelihood of purposeful hoaxes, which I still don't understand. I guess it's this sort of hoax scene came along before it was easy to just troll people on the internet. Yeah, a few years ago here in Georgia, where the show is based, we heard tell, as they would say in Tennessee, we heard tell of someone who claimed they have found the corpse of a sasquatch. Yes, remember that, and they had it in a cooler, and they had pictures of it, and they said they were getting DNA analysis. And I think it was just a gorilla costume. Is that what it turned out to be? Yes, it definitely wasn't a sasquatch. So we do have to at some point, or anyone who looks into this has to at some point acknowledge the possibility or even plausibility of someone purposefully, you know, pulling a fast one on friends and neighbors. But here's the thing. Yeah, even if there is a perfectly good explanation for one of these things, or we can explain it away somehow through science, it doesn't make the physical viewing of one of these things any less spooky. Which makes me think it would be wonderful to see pictures of ghost lights or will of the wisps. Would they be wills of the wisp? Yeah, they would have to be wills will of the wisps. Wills of the wisp, yeah, all because each one is a different will. Can we call them? The wisp is the thing that these are the wills of, So there would be only one whisp, It's the great Whisp. The individual items are the wills of said great whisp. But what if it's one will controlling all of the will. There's a will, there's a whisp. Okay, yes, if you are a will of the whisper, then we would like to hear your firsthand experience, friends and neighbors. We ourselves, like anybody else, have seen certain phenomenon that we can't completely explain right without careful research. But I don't believe we have in this room actually seen ghost light or spooklight for ourselves. Is that correct? I have not seen one. I have watched tons of videos online of people showing it, and I've seen things that were very strange on a mountain road in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where out in the distance it looks as though there is a light shimmering or shining and floating a little bit, And after a little bit of investigation I found out that it's this specific road that wraps around the mountain in this one way, and when cars go around it, for some reason, it just looks very strange and not like headlights. And it's true that even though different proposed explanations might sound I don't know, highly unlikely or maybe even to a degree condescending when people talk about misidentification, it's it's still true that it's easy for this sort of stuff to happen. If you believe that you have proof of a supernatural will of the whisp. By the way, please write to us post haste before it gets you. I Oh, I had one other thing I wanted to put in here to the question about why these lights seem to retreat. Yes, I want to know what that Depending on how close people get before the retreat occurs. Is it possible that it's a disturbance in the air of the person approaching or from the person approaching. Interesting, I'm waiting for someone to write in and say that's not how air works. What do you call someone that's an expert in an air a weatherman or or a woman? Well, I guess it would be a meteorologist. That yeah, yeah, that's whether whether men or woman is a diminutive and not mean any disrespect to the meteorological community. They're very powerful here. You don't want to get a big meteorology mad at we think about it. They're only a couple of clicks away from controlling the weather. So you know, yeah, that's true. And do check out our episode on weather modification while we're While we're here, we've been talking so much about you friends and neighbors, and we've been asking for your write in, and that reminds us what better time for got corner Our first shout out today subject daughter of a psychic Hey, conspiracy dudes. I'm a new listener and you guys have expressed some interest in psychic people. My mom has made a few predictions in her lifetime, mostly around death. Back in the nineties, my family went to New York and we're going to visit the World Trade Center. They're on their way to cross the bridge when my mom starts completely freaking out, saying she doesn't want to go and something bad is going to happen, and she's freaking out so bad. My dad asks a police officer to help them turn around. A few weeks later, World Trade Center blew up for the first time. Whoa Also, she predicted the death of my grandmother. She had a dream that my grandma was sitting at the edge of my father's brother's coffin. He had died a few years prior. She sat there just looking at my mom and talking to her. When my mom woke up and asked my dad to take her to his mom's house. By the time they got there, she had already passed away. There's some other stuff about how she gets bad vibes about people and things, and I'm not a big believer in this stuff, but I am a big believer in her predictions. She hasn't had one in a while, but I guess that's a good thing. Thanks for doing what you do, Signed Elena. You know I want to see at the very top of this reaction that I absolutely do not care what people ascribe a bad vibe too. I would listen to it because there's you know, there's any combination of cues that you're subconscious might pick up on that your mind does not acknowledge, and sometimes that could translate as a bad feeling, you know, like someone just walked over my grave, or I just shook hands with that guy. Now it feels weird and I don't trust him. You know, I think there's nothing wrong with following your gut in that regard. I mean, don't don't you know, go out and try to murder someone because you got a vav vibe off of them. Yeah, but even like I mean, like not not to oversimplify it. But haven't you ever had I had a thing where like you were thinking about a song and then that song came on or like you know, I mean, so I know that's like confirmation bias or what is it where you or mind hoff syndrome or whatever, But like, it is a very very powerful feeling, you know what I mean, And especially when you connect it with something that ultimately does come to pass. It's it's it's very easy. Even like something as simple as like hearing a song, you could almost you know, your brain could you could very easily be convinced by your brain, which is very clever, you know. Yeah, piece of machinery that you made that happen, or that you somehow had for knowledge that was going to happen, and then it was like an inclination or something like that. I have never really experienced the phenomenon in the way that she's describing like that. I don't think I've ever really known anybody that was just spot on repeatedly. But for me to really believe it, I think it would have to be like repeatedly repeatedly and specifics. Yeah, well you know, full disclosure I have. It is a belief in this stuff is widespread in my extended family, and they will insist to you that they have had precognitive dreams or that they have had you know, discidence, Yeah, that they've had the site. It's big in Appalachia, so my in laws are right there with you. Oh yeah, yeah. But I would love to hear more of these stories. I am fascinated by this. Yes, please send them in if you've got them. I am too, And I am not downplaying these stories at all. I'm just kind of like filtering it through my own experience, in my own jerky skeptic brain, I guess. But you know, I have experienced things like this, but not quite this intense, and if it was, if it had happened to me, I might feel completely differently about him. That's true. That's true. Now I'm now I'm going to be paying close attention to every song I hear for the next day because we mentioned bet or mine off. It's gonna follow me like a curse. Rams I used to dance alone of my own volition. That's a good one. That's Alex's favorite one too. So thanks for writing to Elena. We've got a We've got a short recommendation from the been Randall on Twitter says, conspiracy stuff. Please call your drunken after show cons barrassy hashtag do it for the kids? What have we decided that's a thing. I don't think we've decided that yet, Ben, but you know we're we're definitely it's a thinking about it. We're just trying to decide whether we're going to record it or not. That's true. I heard a funny Halloween beer pun last night. It was would you'd care for a Miller fright? You know? It is, after all the Shampain of fears. Oh wow, I am so delighted. Thank you for bringing that into my life. Yeah, my girlfriend told me that, and she'd heard some friends say it. I'm not going to name names, but shout out to Jess Bress and Uh and to you as well, Ben Randall. We have not we have not officially decided whether we're going to foray into recording this, but we appreciate all the suggestions that we found on Twitter. Who you know, people were asking us if we wanted to film it. I don't know if we wanted to record it, but I can't argue with a good pun, and conspiracy is pretty solid, So thank you the Ben Randall. Our final shout out goes to Damon from Indiana. Damon says, I've been listening to every podcast so far, and I have to say it's quite the feat to get to the newer stuff. There's just so much of it. Well, you're welcome, Damon, and sorry, but I do also have a suggestion for you guys to research. I don't know how easy it would be for you to do a topic on this due to how mysterious it is. The Great Attractor. Oh that's a good one, right. There are so many speculations on what this thing could be. No one really knows what it is other than a strange anomaly that's pulling everything in the universe towards it. I think it would be a cool episode, maybe fun for you guys as well. We all love looking into deep space. Agreed. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Guys, keep doing all the awesome stuff you do for all of us listeners. Oh that's really cool. Thank you Damon and the Great Attractor. I don't know that I know this besides maybe a supermassive black hole. Is that what Damon's talking about? Or is it something even bigger? Some other force. Right now, science is referring to it as a gravitational anomaly. It's at the center of the Alanakia super cluster, and it has it's a localized concentration of mass that is tens of thousands of times more massive than the entire Milky Way. Wow, so what's going on with that? That does sound like a great idea for an episode. Yes, we just need to get somebody on the phone with us or in the studio. I think, who can just go, here's the science, true and fair enough. Thank you so much, Elena, Thank you so much the Ben Randall, and of course thank you Damon. This concludes our Ohs, but not our show. Matt Noel, super producer Alex and I will be back next week with some things that might surprise you, some things that might disturb you, but definitely hopefully fascinate you as much as they fascinate need us. So if you have any stories about ghost lights or any other kind of paranormal activity, really we love hearing that kind of stuff. Anything from psychics, you know, maybe a premonition that somebody in your family had, or somebody you know or maybe you had, all the way to just a glowing red orb that appeared to you on top of your cat once. I want to know about that. I think these guys do too. He'll just tell us about your cat. We're very interested in your cat stories. Yes, especially if your cat sits on your chest at night and tries to steal your breath. Why you gotta make it all sinister, man, Why can't it just be about the cats or a sweet, cute, little katy cat that is only a serial murderer on the side. As someone who is as someone who is unreasonably popular with cats, I can say that I believe they are inherently sinister. Me too. I don't love them. I don't think that's a criticism. I agreed, I love them. Have you guys seen that movie Cat People. Yeah, it's like sort of like a skin a max, like like softcore erotica film from the Eightiesway, oh, I'm you're thinking of cats. I was thinking of Sleepwalkers. That was later cat People. I think in Sleepwalkers are very similar. They're basically about, you know, these very sexy people in the eighties that turned into cats. Wow. I only bring it up because we're talking about cats and sinister things, and I recently bought the soundtrack and it rules. It's Georgio Moroder does the score and that's got the Like the Cat People. UM title track is by David Bowie and it was featured in that scene in UM Inglorious Bastards where the character sets a fire. I'm not gonna do any spoilers, but there's a really intense Bowie track and that's totally like the theme to Cat People. Wow, start a fire with guesso. And what better way to inspire you to write to us? I cannot imagine a better note, musical or conceptual to set you on your digital journey while you're on the internet. You can also find us on Instagram, and you can find us on Facebook, and you can find us on Twitter and not tumbler. Tumbler. Yeah, we're conspiracy stuff on most of those or conspiracy stuff show. Just typing in you'll find us. If you don't want to do any of the social media, just send us an email. We will get it. We are conspiracy at HowStuffWorks dot com. And that's the end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into contact with us in a number of different ways. One of the best is to give us a call. Our number is one eight three three stdwy t K. If you don't want to do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.