The small Scottish town of Bonnybridge (pop. 6,000) not far from Edinburgh, bills itself the UFO capital of the world. According to its colourful local councillor, Billy Buchanan, almost half of the town’s residents have seen a UFO at one time or another and on a yearly basis, around 300 sighting reports are received from Bonnybridge and its environs – an area stretching from Stirling to the outskirts of Edinburgh which has been dubbed the “Falkirk Triangle”.

It all started in 1992 when James Walker noticed some strange lights in the sky while driving home. At first he thought they were stars but was startled when he saw them move and assumed a triangle shape. Since then, UFO sightings have been coming in thick and fast in Bonnybridge. Local politician Billy Buchanan, in among all the other mundane problems such as burst water mains and inadequate rubbish collection which his constituents asked him to solve, found himself receiving more and more complaints about UFOs. 

Eventually, these reached such a volume that he felt he could ignore the issue no longer. He chose to go public with it, attracting massive media attention to the town. Councillor Buchanan wrote to the Queen, the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Defence, demanding that the UFO reports be investigated. Predictably, the publicity generated resulted in even more people coming forward, claiming to have seen UFOs.

Grangemouth Electric UFO Photo

Is this the bottom of a flying saucer hovering over photographer's head?

This bizarre picture is the base of a “UFO” snapped by a photographer on November 12, 1991 as it hovered over his head, it is remarkably claimed. Malcolm Robinson:

"This red ball of light shot across towards them and was 200 to 300 feet above when he took the picture. He literally had to bend over to take it." 

The "craft" was reportedly photographed by a man, who had to "bend over backwards" to get it in sight above an oil refinery. The extraordinary image was revealed to the audience at the Outer Limits Magazine 70 Years of the Modern UFO Era conference in Hull by UFO investigator Malcolm Robinson. Mr Robinson, who has investigated UFOs since the 1980s, said it was the most remarkable UFO picture he has come across.

He told the audience that two men were photographing the BP oil refinery at Grangemouth, central Scotland, at night when they spotted a distant red object. It then flew directly towards them, he said. He said:

"This red ball of light shot across towards them and was 200 to 300 feet above when he took the picture. "He literally had to bend over to take it. We checked with all the usual people and there was nothing in the area at the time.It is nice we got a photo. Is that evidence? I am here to tell you to open up your minds."

Mr Robinson runs Strange Phenomena Investigations (SPI) based in central Scotland. The image was sent to him in 1991 but remains one of the most compelling he has seen. In an article on the SPI website, Mr Robinson said: "UFO testimony is one thing, but when you receive testimony backed up with a quite spectacular UFO photograph, well that's another matter. "We at SPI received quite an amazing UFO photograph which was unlike anything we have ever seen before."

The incident happened on November 12 at around 9.30pm. Phil Trevis, who snapped it was with a friend at the time. In a report sent to SPI with the picture, he said: "My friend and I were taking photographs of the BP chemicals plant in Grangemouth (from Polmont Reservoir) when we noticed a dim, or rather, two small dim flashing lights over by the two 'flashing pylons' at Kincardine Bridge. 

"We watched the object, which we thought was a helicopter, fly slowly over from the bridge to above the brightly lit Grangemouth Stadium. We watched it hover for around five minutes. It was then that we noticed that the 'craft' wasn't making any noise. Normally, if it was a helicopter, we would have heard the blades. It then turned around and faced our direction. It was roughly 2,000 feet above the ground, then it dipped and increased dramatically in speed. At the point of the photograph, it was about 200 to 300 feet directly above us. It was then that we heard the light 'pulsing hum' of the object. My friend and I were quite shaken at the time, but afterwards had an overwhelming sense of excitement."

Mr Robinson added: 

"What you are actually looking at is the underside of the object - concave, with numerous bright flashing lights being thrown out into the dark night sky, which creates a sort of halo effect. SPI conducted the usual lines of investigative enquiry to try and get to the bottom of this incident. We ascertained that there was no aircraft activity in that part of central Scotland that night. Letters to the British Petroleum plant at Grangemouth, asking them if they had any small light aircraft or microlights in operation above their complex that night (on pipe inspection duty) came back stating that no such light aircraft or micro-lights were flying above the plant that night."

Source: https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/853192/UFO-aliens-photo-underneath-flying-saucer-Grangemouth-oil-refinery-Scotland-Hull

Amazing UFO Photograph - taken from an article called "UFOs In Scotland" from Malcolm Robinson © SPI (Strange Phenomena Investigations) England.

"UFO testimony is one thing, but when you receive testimony backed up with a quite spectacular UFO photograph, well that's another matter. We at SPI received quite an amazing UFO photograph which was unlike anything we have ever seen before. It was on 12th November 1991, at around 9.30pm, that friends Phil Trevis (previously known as Peter Muir, a pseudonym used in previous SPI accounts) and Paul Penman (pseudonym) were out taking photographs for a project called 'Light and Dark'. The following is the written testimony by Phil Trevis, as given to SPI.

"My friend and I were taking photographs of the BP chemicals plant in Grangemouth (from Polmont Reservoir) when we noticed a dim, or rather, two small dim flashing lights over by the two 'flashing pylons' at Kincardine Bridge. We watched the object, which we thought was a helicopter, fly slowly over from the bridge to above the brightly lit Grangemouth Stadium. We watched it hover for around five minutes. It was then that we noticed that the 'craft' wasn't making any noise. Normally, if it was a helicopter, we would have heard the blades. It then turned around and faced our direction.

"It was roughly 2,000 feet above the ground, then it dipped and increased dramatically in speed. At the point of the photograph, it was about 200 to 300 feet directly above us. It was then that we heard the light 'pulsing hum' of the object. My friend and I were quite shaken at the time, but afterwards had an overwhelming sense of excitement."

SPI conducted the usual lines of investigative enquiry to try and get to the bottom of this incident. We ascertained that there was no aircraft activity in that part of central Scotland that night. Letters to the British Petroleum plant at Grangemouth, asking them if they had any small light aircraft or microlights in operation above their complex that night (on pipe inspection duty) came back stating that no such light aircraft or micro-lights were flying above the plant that night. (The BP plant at Grangemouth is in controlled airspace; only special authorization can be given for overflights of this highly explosive complex.)

Indeed such was the closeness of this object that Phil Trevis had to bend over backwards to take his photograph, and so what you are actually looking at is the underside of the object - concave, with numerous bright flashing lights being thrown out into the dark night sky, which creates a sort of halo effect. The object is consistent with what was being sighted above and around the small town of Bonnybridge in Stirlingshire, central Scotland; the town of Bonnybridge is still experiencing UFO sightings, but not as many as those which peaked between the years of 1992 to 1994."

On Sunday 6 July 1997 at about 18:30 we were driving back from a volleyball tournament in Perth. It was a beautiful clear summer evening, there were four of us in the car (I was sitting in the front passenger seat), and I think we had just passed Stirling when I noticed a strange object directly above the motorway in front of us. I asked the driver if he could see it and he said he could. I then asked him if he’d ever seen anything like it and he said he hadn’t.

It was hard to tell exactly how big the craft was or how far away. My best guess is that it was a bit wider than the wingspan of a small two-seater aeroplane, and that it was flying at no more than a few hundred feet above us. It certainly wasn’t anything like as high as a passenger jet - more like the height you see helicopters flying when you can still see the pilot inside. Because it seemed fairly close, we were able to get a very good look at the craft as we approached it and then passed underneath.

It appeared to be very flat as we couldn’t really see any height to it at all - all we ever really saw was the triangular underside of the craft. (Diagram 1 shows how the object looked as we approached it from “behind”.) It must have been either hovering or travelling very slowly since we appeared to catch up with it and pass underneath it in much the same time as we would have if it had been standing still (we were probably travelling at about 70mph).

I remember actually asked the driver if he knew which way it was moving and he said no. (Diagram 2 shows how the object looked from directly underneath.) I remember the shape very clearly and apart from the “T-bar” at the “front”, the rest of the craft was completely uniform and triangular. The craft was totally black, there were no markings of any kind that we could make out, there appeared to be no source of propulsion, and we couldn’t hear any noise at all as we passed below (although being in the car it’s not clear whether we would have been able to hear anything anyway).

All four people in the car saw the craft, including a policeman, although the driver and I probably got the best view as we were sitting in the front. The whole sighting would have taken no more than minute or so from the moment we first saw the craft until we had driven so far past it we couldn’t really make it out anymore.

Editors note: This type of craft has been seen many times all over the world, and there are more examples in the section Triangular craft on the main page.

Another example was this Photo taken in Glasgow.

It appeared to be very flat as we couldn’t really see any height to it at all - all we ever really saw was the triangular underside of the craft. (Diagram 1 shows how the object looked as we approached it from “behind”.) It must have been either hovering or travelling very slowly since we appeared to catch up with it and pass underneath it in much the same time as we would have if it had been standing still (we were probably travelling at about 70mph).

I remember actually asked the driver if he knew which way it was moving and he said no. (Diagram 2 shows how the object looked from directly underneath.) I remember the shape very clearly and apart from the “T-bar” at the “front”, the rest of the craft was completely uniform and triangular. The craft was totally black, there were no markings of any kind that we could make out, there appeared to be no source of propulsion, and we couldn’t hear any noise at all as we passed below (although being in the car it’s not clear whether we would have been able to hear anything anyway).

All four people in the car saw the craft, including a policeman, although the driver and I probably got the best view as we were sitting in the front. The whole sighting would have taken no more than minute or so from the moment we first saw the craft until we had driven so far past it we couldn’t really make it out anymore.

Editors note: This type of craft has been seen many times all over the world, and there are more examples in the section Triangular craft on the main page.

Another example was this Photo taken in Glasgow.

UFO spent four hours hovering above our rural home', claims family after capturing video footage of 'spinning lights' in the sky

Morag Ritchie spotted the UFO hovering above her home in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire. Her daughter's fiance filmed the strange blinking lights on Saturday night. Civil Aviation Authority: 'It could be northern lights'

A family has spoken of the terrifying moment they saw a UFO hovering above their house for four hours. Morag Ritchie, 50, was awoken in the middle of the night by flashing lights in the sky over the family home in rural Scotland. The grandmother-of-one woke her family up and her daughter’s fiance caught the shocking images of four blinking lights on video.

Anomalous lights along the Adriatic coast, luminous object over Pescara

The ufological association ARIA analyzed the images 

In June 2022 at least six witnesses witnessed an anomalous phenomenon along the Adriatic coast: a very bright object flew over the city of Pescara. Intrigued by the event, the witnesses contacted the Italian Alien Research Association founded by the ufologist Angelo Maggioni and made up of former soldiers and aerospace engineers.

The analyzes and investigations carried out by the experts were complex, explains Maggioni who also made use of the cooperation of the Neapolitan ufologist Emilio Acunzo . First, elements deemed incompatible with the event filmed in Pescara were excluded, such as airplanes, sounding balloons, Chinese lanterns, satellites and birds. Using special programs used for forensic investigations, the authenticity of the film itself was verified, which does not present any manipulations or alterations caused by other editing programs; the programs also examined and processed the metadata, hexadecimal and blocks/pixels and certified the integrity of the various frames.

At a later stage we proceeded with the analysis of the alleged object, a complex analysis which due to the strong light source did not allow the solid part of the alleged object to be highlighted, but which was nevertheless highlighted thanks to the reconstruction processing. The object therefore appears to be composed of a solid part surrounded by a strong light source and no motor or stabilization instabilities caused by presumed propulsions have been observed, but a constant and intense light pulsation is observed.

The object was compared with some drone models such as the Phantom 4, DIJ Mavic and others, but they did not meet all the requirements to establish absolute compatibility, but only partial. In fact, the analysis highlights a particular alleged " propulsion " only on the left side and absent on the right side, while the drones being (the ones mentioned) quadcopters, i.e. equipped with four lateral engines, would cause " propeller propulsion " effects on both sides. Furthermore, ufologists point out that any " lighthouse " is placed under the drone's belly and not above or on its side (except for the position lights which are usually flashing green and red with low luminous intensity). The " lighthouse " positioned under the belly is used during take-off and landing to better map the terrain below (with sensors) and facilitate a safe landing. Another relevant factor is that no light source appears to be pulsating either in drones or in commercial and military aircraft. After all, the Adriatic is now at the center of attention due to the " Anomalous Lights " which for years have affected the entire coast up to Rimini, but the ufologist Maggioni warns that the phenomenon has nothing to do with the fake Friendship case.

In the past – Maggioni specifies – an engineer from an amateur astronomy group from Pesaro also witnessed such phenomena. The association was unable to find a logical and rational explanation that could explain the event, effectively placing this event in the UAP ( unidentified Aerial Phenomena ) phenomenon. Furthermore, the investigations did not highlight any military activity in progress during the phenomenon, nor did we become aware of any improper use of drones, for which, according to ENAC national regulation, it is forbidden to fly them over inhabited centers both during the day and at night, if they do not have work authorizations and licenses.

ARIA, therefore, " urges anyone who witnessed the same event, perhaps from other angles or places in the Pescarese area, to contact the association via WhatsApp on 3518182205 ".

Source: https://www.meteoweb.eu/2022/09/luci-costa-adriatica-pescara-ufologo/1001150587/

A ne pas confondre avec les lanternes thaïlandaises et les ballons à leds qui inondent le ciel de France avec plus de 400 000 unités vendues chaque année dans l'hexagone !

Un autre exemple de foudre en boule orange à Dolgoprudny (au nord de Moscou)

Lien vers le rapport complet avec toutes les mesures : http://bit.ly/2aNhRYH

Source: Laboratoire de Recherche sur la Foudre (unité de recherche Pégase) : http://www.labofoudre.com/

A unique video of a giant fireball moving across a Siberian field could be the latest proof that ball lightning is not an urban myth, but a real natural phenomenon.Novosibirsk State Technical University graduate Roman Tregubov, who currently resides in Canada, posted this video he took in the countryside just outside Novosibirsk while visiting Russia in July. 

“This is the first time I’ve seen a ball lightning!!!! I even managed to film it a little… Awesome,” Roman emotionally captioned the video he shared on his Facebook page on July 18, 2016. “Anyway I was shocked to see such a big and strong fireball... And whole process from his birth to death... Sounds... Visual... Feelings…[sic],”Tregubov continued. He later made the video public and the sighting of the rare phenomenon was quickly shared with a much wider audience, making it into various Russian media outlets.

Up to the 1960s ball lightning was considered an urban myth and due to inconsistencies and to the lack of reliable data, the true nature of the phenomenon remains unknown. These fireballs can dramatically vary in size from as little as a pea to several meters in diameter. This particular sighting is supposedly a large one. Aleskandr Tyutin, from the Physics Department of the Novosibirsk State University, told NGS news website that he believes what we see in the video could indeed be a ball lightning.“Judging by how it changes color, form and by how it moves with the wind - it actually most probably is ball lightning. I can’t imagine another phenomenon with such glowing effect,” he said.

He added that although Tregubov was filming from a safe distance, it’s best not to get closer to these balls of fire, but that the worst thin someone can do is to run away. “If you start running from ball lightning, it will start following you in the air flow you create making it nearly impossible to escape. It’s best to stand still,” Tyutin concluded.

‘We had no idea what was happening or where it was coming from or what it was. I still don’t and can’t explain it to you – but I know what I have seen.’

Derbyshire housewife Laverne Marshall was describing a terrifying night-time drive into the twilight zone which has become etched upon her memory. Laverne had taken her son to Heathrow Airport and was returning to her home in the town of Glossop across a lonely road in the High Peak. With her in the back seat of the car were her 20-year-old daughter Stacey and her baby.

‘We were just driving and talking when all of a sudden these little balls of light, four or five in all, appeared on the dashboard,’ Laverne said. ‘They were really bright and dancing up and down just like they were being controlled by a juggler. The first thing I did was to look up and see if a plane was going over; but there was nothing above us. There were no houses around, and there were no headlights behind me. I said to Stacey straight away “take that torch off the baby” but she shouted back “mum, I’ve got the torch in my hand and it’s not turned on.” So Stacey grabbed the baby off the back seat and held her and as she did so these lights moved onto the roof of the car.’

Powerless to help and not willing to stop the car on the isolated road, surrounded as it was on all sides by miles of featureless moorland, Laverne watched the lights in the mirror as they slowly moved around inside the car. ‘Stacey panicked, locked the central locking and slid the cover over the sunroof,’ she said. ‘Then they sort of split up into two groups and we sat speechless as they went to the back window and then each moved back in single file to the dashboard where they regrouped, almost as if they were marching in order.’

The family’s nightmare lasted a full seven minutes as their car travelled from the highest point on the Woodhead Pass into darkened Longdendale valley, blinking out when the car reached streetlights and safety. ‘As we got near the youth hostel at Crowden there’s a turn to Glossop which takes you past the Devil’s Elbow but even though I was running short of petrol I wouldn’t go down that because it’s even spookier than the main road,’ Laverne confessed.

Both Laverne and her daughter were left profoundly disturbed by the strange encounter with ‘the lights’ which happened closed to midnight on the cold clear evening of 14 February 1995. ‘I woke up the next morning and thought “God what was it, what did I see?”’ she said later. ‘Then someone was taking the mick and Stacey said: “Well, you’ve not seen it – you can take the mick if you like, but we have.”’

Sean Wood won’t take the mick. His window fronts directly onto the carriageway of the busy trans-Pennine Woodhead Pass where the Marshalls had their frightening encounter with the unknown. He told a local newspaper with blunt sincerity: ‘Quite simply, there are bright lights which appear at the top end of Longdendale; there’s no doubt they exist, but what they are I have no idea.’ When I visited Sean’s home he described the lights he had seen, pointing towards Shining Clough, a rugged and desolate mountain ridge which dominates the southern horizon from his home at the watershed of the valley. He first saw the lights there in the early 1980s shortly after his family moved to live at Bleak House which stands directly below Woodhead’s fourteenth century chapel-of-ease.

‘It was about 9.30 p.m. on a November evening when I walked into one of the front rooms at Bleak House to chastise someone for shining a torch through our window,’ Sean explained. ‘Of course there was no torch, nor indeed any person outside. However, the light filled the room with a chilly, moonlike glow. The effect was heightened by the lack of street lighting at this altitude and when I went outside to investigate I saw a large pulsing ball of light directly above the house, and not too far from the aptly-named Shining Clough. With the hair on the back of my neck bristling I went to telephone my near neighbours at the Crowden Youth Hostel. Guess what? They were outside watching the light in the sky too.’

This was just the beginning. ‘Two years after that I saw it again, beneath the skyline. In all I’ve seen them more than thirty times over the sixteen years I’ve been here,’ Sean explained. ‘One of the times it was very, very big, and between fifty and seventy feet from the ridge; it was pulsing again and then stopping, moving back and forth and up and down. I’ve also seen three lights together, much smaller in size, like in a string, moving in an arch. I’ve seen these a few times, and also the big ones a few times.’

Sean Wood is just one of many Longdendale residents who have experienced the phantom lights which haunt Bleaklow and the Woodhead road in the valley below. The Woodhead pass is is one of the main arteries linking Yorkshire with Manchester across the Pennines, cutting through dramatic and beautiful moorland scenery at the 2,000 foot source of the river Etherow which flows west through the valley towards the Irish Sea. Fewer than forty people, mostly farmers, live within the tiny parish of Woodhead, a population which has swelled to more than a couple of hundred souls just once in its long and eventful history. In the nineteenth century Irish workmen and their families were imported to carve the huge Woodhead railway tunnel out of the gritstone rock. Since that time the string of reservoirs have been constructed in the valley bottom to serve Manchester and these are now accompanied by miles of high-tension electricity pylons.

Some have claimed the heavy traffic, reservoirs and pylons have spoilt Longdendale’s natural beauty. When visitors climb away from the valley bottom, however, they are exposed to wild nature on the high moorland crags which rise dramatically to 2,000 feet above sea level north and south of the valley. Longdendale has a strange atmosphere and a long history of supernatural happenings which stretch back to the dawn of history. Local residents will speak in whispers about the reputation of the valley and tell you that an elemental presence has made its home on these moors for as long as the memory of man can stretch. The ‘Longdendale Lights’ which haunt the gritstone crags on the north face of Bleaklow are so well known they have become part of the folklore of the region, just one aspect of the ‘otherness’ of the valley. Stories describing them can be traced back through the generations and in tales handed down through the centuries the sinister lights are known as the Devil’s Bonfires. In tradition, they were said to hover around a mysterious mound near the summit of the Bleaklow massif known as Torside Castle. Some archaeologists believe the mound dates from the Bronze Age, others maintain it is a natural lump of mud and rock left in the wake of the glaciers which cut a swathe through the valley many thousands of years ago. Folktales also link them with the phantom legions of Roman soldiers who tramp across the darkened moors on the first night of the first full moon in the spring. Their ghostly glow is said to be flames from the torches carried by the auxillaries marching along the route of a Roman road linking the fort at Glossop with the Hope Valley in the east.

One resident remembers how back in the decade following the end of the Second World War his grandmother would point towards the looming moors visible from their home in Old Glossop and refer to ‘the lights’ which flickered and hovered around the Devil’s Elbow. Many attempts were made by local people to account for lights seen on the hills during the war, from decoy flares dropped by the RAF to lure German bombers away from the big cities to exploding ammunition used by paratroopers who trained on the moors. Ten years later as a volunteer in the newly-formed volunteer Mountain Rescue Team my informant heard about the lights again when motorists began to report balls of fire resembling distress flares hovering above the hills. This was in the early years of the fledgling mountain rescue service, when walkers were advised to take flares with them for use if they became lost or stranded on the moors. Even then the reports left experienced climbers baffled.

During the 1960s the new Peak District National Park authority built the first youth hostel at Crowden, not far from Woodhead. The hostel was designed to provide an overnight resting place for walkers braving the first leg of the newly-opened Pennine Way footpath which crosses Longdendale on its route north. It wasn’t long before visitors and wardens based at the hostel and surrounding cottages began to see beams and pulsating balls of coloured lights racing along the rocky gritstone crags on the remote western face of Bleaklow, along Bramah Edge and the aptly-named Shining Clough. On occasions police and mountain rescue teams turned out to search the mountains but found nothing.  Then one fine summer’s evening in July 1970 teacher Barbara Drabble was driving her Morris Oxford home to Crowden past the Youth Hostel when she suddenly passed through an invisible curtain which led directly into the Twilight Zone….

Barbara was so intrigued that she made a point of visiting local farmers, asking them what they knew about the light. They shuffled uncomfortably when put on the spot by an outsider, and kept what they knew to themselves. ‘I drew a blank from everyone but their attitude made me feel they did see something,’ she said.

Then, one year later dozens of people staying at Crowden Youth Hostel, including the warden Joyce Buckley, were dazzled by the same or a similar brilliant light which shined in through the windows. ‘At first I thought it might be car headlights but it reappeared on top of Bleaklow and no car can get up there,’ said Mrs Buckley, who now lives in Manchester. ‘It lasted more than three minutes and was very powerful.’

The warden was so concerned about the light that, fearing there had been an accident or plane crash on the mountains, she called out a Mountain Rescue search party led by Mrs Drabble’s then husband. Ken Drabble was a senior warden for the Peak Park based in Tintwistle during the 1960s when the rescue service received up to sixty distress calls every year. In 1995 he told me he clearly remembered the night he was contacted by Mrs Buckley at the Youth Hostel, who described how they could see ‘very bright lights’ on Torside Clough, opposite Crowden. He said: ‘At first I thought they had seen a distress flare or illuminator because people do send rockets up if they are in trouble and these can light up quite large areas. Although distress flares should be red, sometimes they can be white and other colours.’

On arrival at the hostel Ken met more than a dozen residents who had seen the dazzling lights on the mountain. The lights had also been seen by farmers and residents of Bleak House further east at the head of the valley. ‘In a moment of madness I decided to go up on the hill with lights of my own,’  he said. Taking walkie-talkies and gas-powered searchlights Ken leapt into a four-wheeled drive vehicle and with a rescue team climbed to the summit of the mountain ridge where the lights had appeared.

‘When we got to the top there was nothing – no trace of people, lights or even a fire,’  he said. ‘The people at the hostel could see our lights from the top of the hill. We were carrying large gas-powered searchlights whose reflectors were the size of a dustbin lid, but the people down below said they were not even a candle in comparison with the lights they had seen. They said they could hardly see the lights we were carrying.’

The mystery incandescent light, they said, had filled the whole valley with its radiance. Discussing the events of that night for a TV reconstruction in 1996 Mr Drabble, now a retired chief ranger of the Peak National Park, told me: ‘I did not think someone was playing a trick. There were fifteen people at the hostel that night and they did see something and I would not disagree that it was something very mysterious.’

That mystery continues. Today the most common description has been of a string of moving lights which have been mistaken for hiker’s torches high on the mountainside. Others have seen balls of pulsating light and ‘searchlight beams.’  One former resident of the area wrote from her new home in California to describe her experiences with ‘the lights,’ after reading an article in a Peak District magazine. Back in the early 1980s she would regularly drive through the Longdendale valley to visit her parents in South Yorkshire and on her return journey she would often see ‘dancing lights’ racing across the mountains at Woodhead and Crowden. ‘At first I thought they were hikers but common sense and logic soon ruled this out,’ she wrote. ‘There were three moving lights, orange or yellow in colour and seemed to follow me for about a mile and then disappear. It was hard to tell what size they were but they were not very big, probably the size of a tennis ball, from where I was in my car looking up into the hills.’

These phenomena have been reported right along the fifteen mile mountain ridge south of the valley from Torside Castle and Bramah Edge in the west to Shining Clough which overlooks Sean Wood’s home at the head of the valley. So persistent have these reports become that the voluntary Mountain Rescue team have turned out from their Glossop base on a number of occasions when lights and ‘flares’ have been reported to the police, only to find that the lights fade away like a will o’the wisp as they approach. The team’s commander, engineer Phillip Shaw, became fascinated by the lights after he spotted a mystery beam of light on Bleaklow in the early 1980s and now keeps a log of sightings. ‘Between them, the seven mountain rescue teams in the Peak are called out once a year by people who see lights in the hills and assume someone is in trouble,’ he told me. ‘This has been going on for at least twenty years but no one has ever been found. The reports have become so regular that the police no longer pass on sightings of mystery lights to us unless they feel it is a genuine sighting of a red distress flare.’

A spokesman for the National Grid has heard the stories and rules out the pylons which criss-cross the valley bottom as having any connection with the lights. He says ‘arcing and sparking’ could be visible in wet weather and polluted air conditions but the glow produced by it would be very difficult to spot from ground level. Another rare electrical phenomenon, ball lightning, has also been considered and found wanting as a result of the history and long duration of the reports from the valley. Police and mountain rescue personnel point out that the entire Bleaklow plateau lies below a major international air route for traffic approaching landing at Manchester’s Ringway airport in the west and it is quite possible that landing lights could be responsible for some of the sightings of moving lights. Others may have mistook the flashing beacon of the giant Holme Moss TV transmitter to the north of the valley as a mystery light when there have been unusual weather conditions. None of these theories account for the range of unusual light phenomena witnessed in the valley or the traditional accounts of lights on the hills in the years before the arrival of aeroplanes, pylons and other man-made sources of electricity.

This point was made eloquently by a Longdendale resident whose family have farmed land near Tintwistle for three centuries. He remembered hearing stories about the lights from his grandparents which dated back to the latter part of the nineteenth century. ‘Over the years people used to say these lights could be seen above Nell’s Pike, a pointed rock above the Devil’s Elbow and the moors beyond that,’ the farmer told me. ‘Back in the olden days people put it down to witches and ghosts – now it’s all UFOs and flying saucers.’

Today people across the world can watch the skies above the Devil’s Elbow thanks to a unique Internet website which is dedicated to the study of Longdendale and its mysteries. The ‘Haunted Valley’ site was created by paranormal investigator Debbie Fair who has set up a live Webcam – a camcorder linked to a computer – which looks out over the Derbyshire moors from her home in Glossop. Weather and visibility permitting, the Webcam allows visitors to scan the skies twenty four hours every day and to join in with regular organised skywatches. The popularity of the site, which had an amazing 180,000 visitors during one six month period in 1999, has left Debbie stunned and is testimony to the rapidly spreading fame of mysterious Longdendale. For the twenty first century it is hoped that a full-scale scientific inquiry will eventually put the Longdendale Lights under the miscroscope with a mission to capture and record them on film using the very latest equipment. However, as with other strange phenomena it is the elusive nature of the lights which is their most enduring characteristic and as a result they may continue keep us guessing about their origin and purpose for many years to come.

2011 Update:  Since writing this chapter I have received several accounts from people who have experienced mysterious lights in the Longdendale Valley. They had said nothing until they read about the ‘lights’ whilst searching for answers. Here are two accounts received by email:

[received from  J.K. 20 October 2008]:

“…Dear Dr Clarke: I glanced at your webchat on the Sky News website today and noticed your comment about the number of strange occurences in the Pennine area between Manchester and Sheffield.  I was reminded of a very, very odd experience recounted to me by my uncle prior to his death in 2000 – I took a look at your website and started reading about the phenomenon of the Longdendale Lights, which I had not previously heard about.  I was amazed to find that my uncle’s experience matched almost exactly that of Barbara Drabble, who is mentioned in your article.

“My uncle was driving back towards New Mills after visiting friends in the Holmfirth area – it was late and dark.  I think it must have been about two years or so before his death, so I would estimate that the incident occurred in 1998 or thereabouts.  He was somewhere between Holmfirth and Glossop – he did not specify where – but reading your description of the Longdendale valley, I suspect he must have been in that area (or very near it).  He told me that suddenly he and the surrounding landscape were lit up by an incredible blue light – I wondered if it might have been simply a police helicopter search light, but, like Barbara Drabble, my uncle said that it lit up the area for miles around so that he could see the detail of a massive area of landscape.  I have a vague recollection that he mentioned coldness, as did Barbara Drabble, but he definitely mentioned that he arrived home and realised that he had absolutely no memory of anything after the sudden blue light.  He couldn’t recall anything of the remainder of the journey home – “I simply don’t remember how I got home” he told me – those words really struck me.

“As I said, my uncle was a very down-to-earth, straight-talking Yorkshireman – prior to this incident, he would jokingly dismiss anything strange or even spiritual as “mumbo-jumbo”.  Indeed, he was very reluctant to talk about what happened – I heard about it through his son and later managed to convince him to tell me about it – he was still extremely reluctant when he did eventually talk to me.  This makes me wonder how many people have experienced this and, for whatever reason, have not told anyone about it.

“I will never forget what he told me – and I am hugely grateful – and really quite spooked! – to find, from your website, that he was not the only person to experience this phenomenon.”

[received from PM, 29 January 2009]:

“…Dear David…I have just been surfing the internet to try and find any walks in the Longdendale Valley when I came across your site. I started to read it and the hairs on the back of my head suddenly stuck up. A young lady had the exact same experience as I had myself. This is the first time in 36 years I have told anybody about what happened that night. At the time I was working for the Automobile Association in Cheadle Hulme and I had been out for a Friday night drink with my girlfriend because I intended to pop home to Leeds that weekend to see my parents. I had taken her home around midnight and decided to go to Leeds via the Woodhead route. So there I was happily driving my new Ford Escort playing my 8 track stereo player (Pink Floyd I think) and had just gone through Hyde and was heading up towards the moors. I had just passed the turn off on the right for Glossop and was heading uphill when all of a sudden this incredible pure bluey white light suddenly engulfed the whole area. I slammed the brakes on and just looked in awe because everywhere around me was as bright as day. Brighter than day, because everything was just so CLEAR. I noticed an electric train in the valley bottom hauling a long line of coal tubs and I could see every detail of it. All the conifers on the far side of the valley were crystal clear. I jumped out of my car and just stood and stared and tried to find the source of the light [but] there was no source, it was as if it was everywhere. I can’t have been standing there for more than ten seconds when POP the light suddenly went out…leaving me in TOTAL darkness, feeling not a little scared by this time I jumped back in my car and very apprehensively resumed my journey to Leeds. It was on my mind all the way. I kept asking myself: ‘What was it? Where did it come from? What caused it?’ I got to my parents house very early in the morning and told them what had happened. I don’t think they believed me and from that day on I have kept what happened that night to myself. I would love to know what happened that night and I am just so relieved that somebody else has had the same experience. Since that night I have had first-hand experience with aerial flares, as I now work for the MoD, and even the big artillery or mortar launched ones are only a fraction as bright as the light that night.”

Copyright David Clarke

Ball Lightning: A Shocking Scientific Mystery

While some skeptics remain, there is significant observational evidence for ball lightning's existence. "[There are] around 10,000 written accounts of observations covering many countries with similar properties recurring in many observations," said John Abrahamson, a professor of chemistry at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. "All this points to a phenomenon which is repeatable and justifies a single label."

Thousands of eyewitnesses have described seeing a floating, glowing ball similar to a tennis ball or even a beach ball. The sightings generally accompany thunderstorms, but it's unclear what other similarities ball lightning might share with its conventional relative. Ball lightning floats near the ground, sometimes bounces off the ground or other objects, and does not obey the whims of wind or the laws of gravity.

An average ball lightning glows with the power of a 100-watt bulb. Some have been reported to melt through glass windows and burn through screens. The record suggests that ball lightning is not inherently deadly, but there are reports of people being killed by contact—most notably the pioneering electricity researcher Georg Richmann, who died in 1753. Richmann is believed to have been electrocuted by ball lightning as he conducted a lightning-rod experiment in St. Petersburg, Russia. The phenomenon lasts only a short time, perhaps ten seconds, before either fading away or violently dissipating with a small explosion.

Ball Lightning Research

Despite some fairly consistent characteristics, ball lightning has thus far defied scientific explanation—but it's not for a lack of theories. Scientists have postulated that plasma may be behind the phenomenon. Plasma clouds are composed of charged particles that recombine into atoms and glow with light. The clouds may be created by an energy source like a conventional lightning bolt and could theoretically form ball lightning. An alternative theory promotes the notion that small particles held together in a ball by electrical charges emit chemical energy through oxidation.

This theory suggests that when lightning strikes a surface, a vapor is formed. The vapor condenses into particles that mix with oxygen in the air and then slowly burn with the release of chemical energy. "The whole picture is electrical energy, in a huge amount really, and a small part of that energy gets converted to chemical energy and stored in particles," said the University of Canterbury's Abrahamson, who supports the theory. Laboratory work is currently seeking to reproduce ball lightning under this model and several others.

Meanwhile, the Naval Research Lab's Hubler hopes that technology will leave less room for the real thing to hide. "There is such a proliferation of video cameras these days that people must have captured [pictures of] ball lightning, and it would be an immense help to see some of those videos and study them," he said. "Here's a real, physical phenomenon that's out there in nature, and we don't have the foggiest idea what it is—that's interesting," he added. "I hope in my lifetime we find out what it is. It's possible that there's some very new physics in it and that could be very profound."

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20060624132915/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060531-ball-lightning_2.html

• Relativistic-microwave theory of ball lightning: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep28263

• Ball lightning characteristics: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19660006027.pdf

• Man Killed by Bolt From Clear Blue Sky: https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92972&page=1

• Lightning Types and Classifications: https://stormhighway.com/types.php

• ball lightning (Google Scholar): https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ball+lightning&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5

• ball lightning: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA5B4897404F34F8B

• La foudre en boule  (Anciens cas): https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1891LAstr..10...22F/0000048.000.html