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Hunting for Spooklights - 20081107
MASSIMO POLIDORO
Massimo Polidoro is an investigator of the
paranormal, author, lecturer, and co-founder and head of CICAP,
the Italian skeptics group. His Web site is www.massimopolidoro.com.
The hot, still night was illuminated by a full
moon. The two shadowy figures moving along the empty road wondered
if this would interfere with their mission.
“Are you sure you took everything?”
asked the slender one.
“Of course!” said the shorter one,
who was carrying a backpack. “I checked the inventory.
I even took the infrared goggles and a telescopic steel rod.”
“Really?”
“Well . . . as a form of self-defense.
You never know.”
The two reached a tall, black gate.
“It’s locked.”
“Hold this,” said the shorter one,
handing the backpack to his colleague. After searching it,
he took out a large ring with a dozen keys attached.
“Here they are! They assured me that
with these there would be no problems.”
“We’ll see. . . .”
One at a time, the short fellow inserted the
keys in the keyhole. But not one worked.
“Damn! I knew it. We should have checked
first that it worked.”
The road was empty. Only one car had passed
since Slender and Shorty stopped by the gate, but it did not
slow down. The dark shadows hid them from the light.
“All right, if that’s the way it
has to be. . . .”
Slender shined a pocket light into the keyhole.
“It’s an old Wally model, there should be no problem.”
Shorty took a leather case out of his pocket
and opened it. There were a dozen different lockpicks. One
was chosen, and the operation started. “It should be
no problem,” puffed Shorty, who was crouched on his legs
while trying to pick the lock, sweat dripping from his face.
“Yeah, it’s easy when you just hold the light and
someone else has to do the dirty job.”
“Cut the chatter. Let’s move along.”
After a few more attempts there was a reassuring
“click.” The door was open.
“Quick!” snapped Slender. “Stand
up.”
“What . . . ?”
“I said quick, get inside!” Slender
pushed his mate in the dark hallway and closed the gate. “Don’t
say a word.”
They both hid behind a wall, holding their
breath. A police car passed by without stopping.
“That was close!” sighed Slender.
Shorty protested. “Close for what? You
make it seem like we are two burglars here!”
Slender smiled. “Yeah, and it’s
more fun, isn’t it?”
“We are here on a scientific mission,”
continued Shorty. “We are not on a secret hunt to rob
lost treasures or something like that.”
Slender turned on his pocket light and did
not reply. They were in a dark corridor, but down the hall
a door that led to the field outside could clearly be seen.
It was open when they reached it.
When they stepped outside, the pocket light
was no longer needed. The moon was quite bright, but the field,
full of a thousand flickering flames, was more luminous. Quite
an unexpected view—surreal but almost romantic. Slender
regretted he was there with Shorty and not with his girlfriend.
However, it was indisputable: a cemetery at
midnight was a sight not to be missed.
Luminous Fungis and
Earth Lights
The two mysterious figures in the story above
are my friend and colleague Luigi Garlaschelli and myself.
Actually, Luigi is not that short, but I needed an easy descriptor
for him. And since he is just a little shorter than I am .
. . my apologies, Gigi!
The night visits at the Major Cemetery in
Pavia, Italy, took place some time ago when we decided it
was time to investigate the “will o’ the wisp”
phenomenon. Of course, we obtained official permission from
the county administration—“scientific purposes”
was the reason we gave for our requested visit. We were quite
fascinated by this rare luminous phenomenon, a source of all
kinds of supernatural tales.
Also known as ignis fatuus, Latin for temporary
fire, will o’ the wisps are in fact said to be ghostly
lights, usually seen around graveyards and marshes at night.
They look like faint flames or a flickering, glowing fog,
usually green, that sometimes appears to recede if approached.
Folklorists have collected all kinds of legends related to
these mysterious lights, including the fact that they could
be some form of spirit lights or have a paranormal origin.
Science, however, has precious few facts to offer.
Some have proposed that Armillaria, a parasitic
kind of fungi known also as “honey fungus,” could
be responsible for some of the apparitions. Some species of
Armillaria are bioluminescent and may have been mistaken for
will o’ the wisps.
According to another theory, the wisps are
nothing more than barn owls with luminescent plumage. Hence,
the possibility of them floating around reacting to other
lights could explain their strange behavior.
In the 1970s, John Derr and Michael Persinger
of the Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada,
put forth a theory that these lights may be generated piezoelectrically
under a tectonic strain.
The theory suggests that the strains that
move faults also cause heat in the rocks, vaporizing the water
in them. Rocks and soils containing piezoelectric elements
such as quartz (or silicon) may also produce electricity,
which is channeled up through soils via a column of vaporized
water until it reaches the surface, somehow displaying itself
in the form of earth lights. If correct, this could explain
why such lights can behave in an electrical and erratic—or
even apparently intelligent—manner.
Persinger thinks that his theory can be used
to predict the manifestation of earthquakes and, along the way,
explain many UFO sightings. “When the specific equations
between UFO reports (the contemporary label for luminous events)
and earthquakes in the central U.S.A. between 1950 and 1980
were applied to the 19th century (earthquakes were recorded
then), there were predictable peaks in the numbers of luminous
events for specific years,” says Persinger.
“Although there were no reports of ‘UFOs’
in the historical newspapers, there were reports of ‘odd
air ships’ and ‘phantom balloons.’ The massive
‘flap’ of 1897, through several tens of states in
the southeastern U.S.A., was followed by one of the largest
earthquakes in the region.”
As interesting as this theory sounds, and
as interesting as it would be to discover whether UFO “flaps”
of the past century have been followed by major earthquakes
or not, we wanted to test a different kind of will o’
the wisp. The kind that is said to appear in the presence
of freshly buried bodies.
Decaying Bodies
One of the most popular scientific explanations
for ghost lights is that the oxidation of hydrogen phosphide
and methane gas produced by the decay of organic material
may cause glowing lights to appear in the air. And this phenomenon
is said to occur more easily in the proximity of “fresh”
burials.
Thus, we positioned ourselves, with video
cameras rolling, in an area of the cemetery where burials
had taken place that same day and a few days before. The idea
was to document on film the formation of a will o’ the
wisp.
Luigi had even built an aspiring pump that
would allow him to “suck” the wisp inside a hermetically
sealed container in order to later test its chemical composition
in the lab. In fact, Luigi has now been able to replicate
the lights in his laboratory at the Department of Chemistry
in Pavia with the help of his colleague Paolo Boschetti.
At first, the idea was to test the “cool
fire” effect. Luigi explains it this way: “According
to one hypothesis, the will o’ the wisp is a sort of
cold flame, inconsistent with a normal combustion of methane,
as reliable eyewitnesses have reported. ‘Cool flames’
can indeed be generated if vapors of suitable organic compounds
(such as ethyl ether) come in contact with a hot surface kept
at temperatures around 200–300°C [392–572ºF].
These luminescent pre-combustion haloes are sufficiently cool
that a hand or a piece of paper can be put in them without
being burned.”
The main objection to this interesting hypothesis
is that the necessary vapors are not known components of marsh
gases, and the presence of surfaces at such high temperatures
is difficult to find in nature.
“It is often stated that the phenomenon
originates from the spontaneous combustion of gases generated
underground by anaerobic fermentation processes,” continues
Luigi. “These gases consist mainly of methane and carbon
dioxide. Small amounts of phosphine (PH3) and diphosphine
(P2H4) [self-igniting on contact with the air] would act as
a ‘chemical match’ for the combustible methane.
“Although this hypothesis is one century
old, the presence of PH3 in marsh gases has only recently
been demonstrated. If the will o’ the wisp indeed is
a hot flame, this conjecture might be correct.” If, on
the contrary, a will o’ the wisp is a cool “flame,”
then the cold chemiluminescence of some compound naturally
occurring in marsh gases appears to be a more appealing explanation.
Luigi reconsidered a century-old experiment
conducted by German chemists in which phosphine, oxygen, and
an inert gas were fed through three small nozzles at the base
of a vertical glass tube. By carefully adjusting the flow
of the inlets, a faint flickering luminescence could be seen
in the dark near the top of the tube due to the chemiluminescence
of phosphine.
Luigi built the necessary equipment with a
500 mL flat-bottomed flask, in which he put some solid phosphorous
acid. The flask was stoppered by a silicone septum through
which a mixture of air and nitrogen was stored on water within
a gas tank and fed by a needle. A second needle in the septum
provided for the necessary outlet. The flask was flushed with
nitrogen and put on a hot plate that was heated to 200°C
(392ºF).
“It works!” shouted Luigi, probably
feeling a little like Dr. Frankenstein.
The decomposition of phosphorous acid generated
phosphine, and a fog formed in the flask. When the air and
nitrogen stream was fed into the phosphine vapors, a faint,
pale-greenish light was clearly visible in the darkness.
The success in the lab, however, was not matched
by success in the field. We spent the entire night at the
cemetery, but nothing happened except buzzing and biting mosquitoes.
After that there have been repeated visits to cemeteries,
graveyards, marshes, and the like, and Luigi has started to
carry with him a very sensitive phosphine detector—a
portable Draeger Xam-7000—but so far with no luck.
Being able to reproduce spooklights in a lab
is one thing. But to see it up close with your own eyes in
a cemetery at night is quite another. Hopes are still high,
however. There never is a shortage of fresh burials, and hunting
season for will o’ the wisps is always open.
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