Will-o'-the-Wisp: A Light in the Swamp

There was a time when strange lights appeared in the marshlands. Commoners might have known the eerie luminescence as "Will-o'-the-Wisp" or "Hinky Punk," while the learned pondered the mysteries of "Ignis Fatuus." Superstitions aside, what natural phenomenon was at work here, before accounts of false fires in the night largely vanished from history? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe search for answers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to step to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So, Robert, Yes,
I want you to put yourself in a scenario. Okay,
all right, you're doing it. You are a peasant in

(00:25):
medieval England. All right, it's a place to start. But
I'm with you. Yeah, it's so. I know it's rough,
but you're a peasant in medieval England, in in sort
of the thin land. Okay. So there's some marshes all
around you, and this is a time and place where
for your life the world is sort of alive with

(00:46):
magical beings. So who knows if there's a ferry or
a goblin hiding under a rock or in a bush
over by the side of the road. Who knows. There
are lots of things out there that you just don't understand.
It's a world lit only by fire. It's a demon
haunted world. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a perfect way
of putting it. Um. So you're out one night returning
home from church, and dusk is coming on, and as

(01:11):
you're walking your way through the path that winds along
the marshlands at night, and the crickets are chirping and
you hear the frogs. You suddenly see something kind of
strange off off to your left, sort of in the right,
at the edge of your field of vision. You see
a bluish looking flame that's just hovering over the ground

(01:33):
that that's sort of beyond where you can see exactly
where it is. It's it's among some trees and some
some marsh grasses. Now what do you do? Do you
just continue on your path or do you walk over
to see what it is? Who? What can I do? Uh?
Let me do a perception check. Okay, Ah, well, I'm

(01:55):
I'm seeing a basically a ghostly blue flame that's just
hovering in the air. I'm thinking I'm gonna want to
avoid anything to do with that, because if it's some
sort of supernatural entity at night, Uh, it's probably up
to no good. It's I'm probably better off to stick
into the course and going straight home. Well, you're fantastic

(02:16):
at resisting temptation. Congratulations, you're incurious, proud of it, and
you're gonna live a live to a ripe old age
in the solid knowledge that you just didn't check things out. Well, yeah,
I mean, because I've probably heard enough stories like how
does every weird horror story begin, every strange folklore against
with that guy getting off the beaten path, moving out

(02:38):
of the path and going into the wilderness and maybe
following some sort of strange flame. Well, okay, let me
try you again. Then let's say that we do the
same scenario, but you've already gotten lost. You're on your
way home from church, dusk is coming on, You've lost
the path and suddenly you are lost in the marsh
lands and you you can't find your way back to
the path. But up ahead you do see a light. Uh,

(03:01):
you see a flame bobbing that's just above the horizon
ahead of you, and you're not quite sure what it is.
Now do you go toward the light or not? Well,
I'm lost, So that light might very well be somebody's
camp buire. That might be there's a sign of humans
out here, so I should Yeah, maybe I should head
that way because either that either they're in the clear

(03:21):
or maybe they can help me get out right. It
could be a traveler's lantern could lead you back to
the path and get you on your way home and
out of this muck. So let's say you follow it
for a while, but you can't ever seem to catch
up with it, and you just keep going farther and
farther along in the marsh, but it's always just out
of where you can reach it or get a good

(03:42):
look at exactly what it is. Do you keep following? Well,
the more I follow, the more I'm probably gonna feel
like I'm being manipulated. And this led on a winding
goat trail to nowhere. So uh, which, granted, and maybe
that's a perfect metaphor for life, but I'm probably gonna
get a little frustrated. Yeah, but what other choice do

(04:02):
you have right now? You're lost in the marsh, and
you better keep following. Yeah, I can't go back. It's
just as much trouble to go back as it is
to push forward. And maybe if I hurry a little bit,
I can actually catch that durn thing. Okay, So let's
say you're trying to catch it. Unfortunately, you keep coming
up on it, thinking you're just about to get to it,
but it goes away and eventually you don't see it

(04:23):
anymore at all, and you're there alone in the dark,
stuck in some quicksand quicks in the marsh and what
are you gonna do? Well, you're gonna stay still, struggle,
You struggle, that's how you get out of quicksand. No,
it's not, it's not at all. Do we have an
episode on quicksand? I don't think we do yet, but
it's a fascinating topic. Yeah, maybe we should explore that sometime. Well,

(04:44):
if you ever find yourself trapped in quicksand, whether you're
in a marsh and you have been led there by
a ghost light or not, don't struggle. Oh that's why
I have these sperrets in my backpack. They're gonna help
me out. That'll just work you deeper into the into
the muck. No, that's not what you want to do.
But anyway, I've been describing a scenario that might sound
kind of outlandish to your people at home, but I
think this type of story was very common two people

(05:08):
of say Europe in the Middle Ages, or actually it's
too folklore all over the world in one form or another,
that there will be stories that bear similarities to this,
That there's a glowing entity or some kind of flame
that looks like a lantern or like a blue luminescence
that's just hovering out of your vision and if you

(05:31):
if you try to get to it, you can never
quite catch it. Yeah, what is this thing? It is
the will of the wisp, that's right, and it goes
by a number of names as well discussed, but it's
it's it's that that false fire, right, that ignus fatus
right and in fatuous fatuous, that's what I think. It's.
It's ignie so fire yeah, and then f a t

(05:55):
u u s that makes me think fatuous, like you're
being fatuous, being foolish. Yes, so this is uh, it's
it's the swamp light, the marshlight, the fairy light. It's
this ghostly luminescence that appears typically in marshlands and swamp lands,
by ways, fins, marshes, the lonely roads, the places that

(06:17):
maybe you wouldn't want to be stuck at night, you'll
see this strange glowing entity. Um, what is it? Is
it a mischievous spirit? Yeah? Oftentimes it is. It's seen
as this either a mischievous spirit or sometimes an outright
demotic demonic entity that ends up leading humans astray. If

(06:38):
you try and follow it, you can't quite catch it.
And eventually you're gonna wind up in the quicksand just
loft in the wilderness over a cliff, falling off a cliff,
walking straight into hell who knows what, but it's leading
you off the path. Like I'm you made a great comparison.
It's like a bad GPS system. Yeah, do you remember
that in there an episode of the Office, the g

(06:59):
P s tells them to drive the car across the lake.
Its scenario. Because also sometimes you see motifs where it's
the it's the light that's representing like fairy gold or something.
So who I follow it, I'll get some riches like
and you can't reach it because it's like the other
end of the rainbow, right. Yeah, And this lower comes
from all across time, all over the world. It's very common.

(07:23):
One common feature of the ghost light or the glowing
ento the will the whisp lower is that the lights
tend to recede as you approach them. You can never
quite get to them or get ahold of them, and
they draw the traveler farther and farther off course as
they go. Another common feature is the color, and this
is interesting, so sometimes people just report various types of light,

(07:45):
but it's very often described as blue or bluish green.
And in the words of one scientist to study the phenomenon,
Alan A. Mills, who were going to quote later in
the episode, he called it quote an ephemeral bluish loo
minas exhalation associated with Marshy places. That's his Will of
the Whisp definition. So it's it's instantly identifiable as as

(08:09):
something that's it's it's not a torch, it's not a lantern.
It's something else, something perhaps magical. Yeah. And so we
have various names for this phenomenon. I'm not gonna run
through all of them, but just some of them. For instance,
in the English traditions, you have Dicko Tuesday, Um, Kinky Puck.

(08:30):
Hinky Puck, by the way, is a key punk punk. Yes,
hinky punk is a sprite with only one leg and
it carries a candle to miss Lee travelers. Yeah. Um,
you know about the names like corpse, candle, l fire hob, lantern, hobby, lantern,
fire drake, jack O lantern. Uh. So we're seeing a
convergence here with like Will of the Wisp, Jacko lantern. Uh.

(08:54):
Maybe Dicko Tuesday is something else, but anyway, anyway, that
the idea here is that this first part is actually
a name. It's like Jack or Will. These are characters
who have emerged in the lore of people trying to
explain what happens when they see these ghost lights in
the marshes. But it's a character who carries some kind

(09:16):
of light or torch with them. The whisp idea of
being like a wisp of sticks, that would be a torch, right,
I mean, it's the idea that there seems to be
a consciousness behind it, a will behind it. It seems
to be an entity of some sort. One that comes
up a lot is Will the Smith. Not Will Smith,
our beloved national treasure, but but rather the soul of

(09:36):
a debauched human who has given, who has given a
second chance at life in order to redeem his soul.
Only he's screwed up again and so now he can't
get into heaven or hell, so he has to wander
the earth, and Satan gave him a glowing coal to
warm him, stuff which he uses to lure other victims
to his dinner, to their doom because he's just a
horrible individual. So he's walking around with some hell fire

(09:58):
in Marsh's trying to get revenge on humanity, right. And
you see a number of different variations on will the Smith,
where it's some sort of immortal wanderer, some sort of
a spirit uh entity that can't get into heaven or hell. Um.
You also have in Scotland the Spunkies. In Ireland you
have fox Fire or William with the little Flame, which

(10:20):
is essentially will the Smith. In Germany you have blood.
You have the Dickie potent weight hold on blood just blld.
And then there is of course uh ear lickt uh
and this is uh the ear lit is actually as
as the willow the whisp in today is the subject
of an Arnold Bockland painting as well as the cloth
Shool's album. So there you go. Um. And you see

(10:44):
a lot of accounts of this phenomenon from from Germany
for sure. Uh. In France there's a sandyand Tad, which
in the folklore of Brittany is a type of elf,
and they dance together at night with candles on their fingertips,
each spinning independently, and any mortal who happens upon them
becomes disoriented and confused. So it's kind of like the

(11:05):
the the the example in the Hobbit right where they
see some fire in the woods and they follow it
out there and it's elves having their their mischief there
in the woods, and it's just disorienting. Yeah, like they're
they're I imagine there's some elfin debauchery going on. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, you know, Tolkien doesn't get into it as much,

(11:26):
but you know, they get up to some weird stuff. Uh.
In Finland you have Likiko, which means the flaming one.
And this is interesting because in this you have the
transformed soul of a child that's buried in the forest
and now wanders with a flame at night, but also
serves as a guardian of wild animals and plants that
are in the woods. So it's kind of almost like

(11:48):
a swamp thing vibe going on here, where it's the
spirit guardian of the environment. Um. You see a version.
You see versions in Native American traditions. You see the
one I ran across from the Penobscate to Native American
tribe in the name for this issue date, there's also

(12:08):
the Kanza perry uh. And this is something that exists
in the folklore of the Cheermis and Mari people. That's
a Finno, you grick ethnic group. You see. You also
see it in the Amazon Basin in the form of betata. Oh,
and this one's a really good one. This is in uh,
South America, in Chile, the creature known as Alecanto, and

(12:32):
this is a night spirit in the shape of a
glowing metallic bird. Yeah. It lives in the mountains and
it's said to feast upon gold and silver veins. So
if you glimpse its light at night and you're you know,
you're kind of a greedy individual, you might want to
follow it and find that rich mining deposit. But Alecanto

(12:53):
uh is hip to your your scheme here, and we'll
probably lure you over the edge of a cliff instead. Oh,
this fits the same stuff you would encounter in Europe
about sometimes the will of the whisp being the guardian
of a treasure. Yeah, not just luring you off the path,
but like standing guard over where the gold is hidden. Exactly.
And I and I wondered to what extent it's just

(13:14):
a continuation of European beliefs in the New World there,
I imagine that's very much the case. But there are
also plenty of ghost lights in in Asian folklore. In
Bengal traditions, you have Layah, which is the name given
to unexplained strange um Marshall wood lights there. Okay, and
then of course, uh, outside of folk folklore and folk tales,

(13:38):
we have versions and are more recent media as well. Right, Well,
I mean I would call dungeons and dragons perfectly acceptable folklore. Yes,
And you know, for a lot of people, this may
be one's first encounter with with will of the whisp
or will whisps as they're called there. Uh. In case
your dungeon and dragons fan or have any a familiarity,

(14:00):
their their alignment is chaotic evil. So they are bad news.
They're not just a little mischievous. They're awful. If they
were just a little mischievous, what would they be chaotic neutral? Yeah,
I think they would be more I would I would
say more chaotic neutral if that were the case. But
they are just completely like evil, mischieous, mischievous. Uh. They
have a challenge rating of two, so they're not too bad.

(14:20):
But get this, they have a dexterity stat of twenty eight. Uh.
That's like like generally eighteen is an exceedingly high level
for a normal humanoid, so they have crazy dexterity to
give them a plus nine and all dexterity sex and
according to the most recent Monster manual UH, their quote
the souls of evil beings that perished in anguish or

(14:42):
misery as they wanted it, forsaken lands, permeated with magical powers,
and they use the the usual lure people to their
doom act in the game, plus, they can shock victims
for two D eight damage, they can drain life, and
sometimes in the Dungeon and Dragons the world, they align
themselves with hags or black dragons or evil cultists in
order to quote drink the agony of slaughter. So so

(15:06):
they're pretty cool. I kind of want to buff one
out in UH in my game. Now, well, that's great,
and that does mirror some of the folkloric tradition, like
the idea that they might be an unrighteous spirit that's
left wandering the world. So they might be, you know,
a person who's just rendered spiritually unclean, maybe by having
died unbaptized in Christian tradition or something, or or maybe

(15:28):
there are you know, a sinful person who can't get
into heaven or hell. Like we talked to Uh, like
we talked about with Will the Smith and the titular
will intil the Whisp. But the will of the Whisp
also shows up in in plenty of later literature. You know,
in some classic English poetry, you'll get references to the
Will of the Whisp, like in the Rhyme of the
Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. Uh. There is there is a

(15:51):
scene that describes ghost lights out on the sea that
says about about in real and route the death fires
danced at night the water like a witch's oils burnt
green and blue and white. Yeah, I like that. There's
Will the Wisp in Paradise Lost too, and John Milton's
Paradise Lost. There is the scene where the snake in

(16:13):
the Garden of Eden is it is attempting to tempt Eve.
Attempting to tempt is trying to get Eve to come
and eat of the fruit, you know, the forbidden fruit.
And it compares the snake's temptation of Eve to a
will of the Wisp in the sense that both would
be leading someone astray. This is in book nine, starting

(16:33):
around line and so it compares the snake too, as
when a wandering fire compact of unctuous vapor with the
night condenses and the cold environs round kindled through agitation
to a flame, which oft they say, some evil spirit attends,
hovering and blazing with delusive light, misleads the amazed night

(16:56):
wanderer from his way to bogs and myers, and off
through pond or pool. They're swallowed up and lost from
sucker far. Now this is this is interesting and I
think potentially telling for later on In that um Milton
is describing a supernatural entity by comparing it to willow

(17:17):
the wisp, So keep that in mind and talking about
will of the whisp as a natural phenomenon, right, I
mean he's describing a thing from a magical story in
terms of the will of the whisp, meaning that the
will of the Wisp must have been a thing that
people were so intimately familiar with it could be used
as a reference point. Yes, yeah, And I would think

(17:41):
for modern people, you'd you'd be more likely to go
the other way, like you'd compare the will of the
Whisp to something in the Bible that people might be
more familiar with. But he goes the other way around, Yeah,
as if to say, this is the thing that the
average reader will have a familiarity with and then can
therefore use as a reference point for this mythic thing. Yeah,
but of course it's not just the stuff of fairy

(18:02):
tales and an ancient literature and fiction imagical storytelling. There
are many like sober secular accounts of the ignis fatuous
or the will of the Wisp throughout world literature, including
scientific literature. For example, Isaac Newton mentions the will of
the Whisp as if it were a commonplace occurrence in

(18:23):
his third Book of Optics. He says, the ignis fatuous
is a vapor shining without heat, and is there not
the same difference between this vapor and flame as between
rotten wood shining without heat and burning coals of fire?
Which is interesting because their Newton is attempting to distinguish
actual physical characteristics of the Igney's fatuous, like it's not

(18:47):
like flame because it lacks heat. So yeah, you'd get
pretty often people making sort of secular material physical observations
of these things, as if it's just a phenomenon that
they were trying to catalog and understand. So very often
you'd hear about this this sort of hovering blue flame
near the ground, but some accounts differ that there are
other types of appearances that people also categorized as will

(19:10):
of the Wisp. One comes from a first hand account
by the English folklorist Jabez Allies. I wonder if I'm
saying that name right, But he had a treatise called
Igny's Fatuous or Will of the Wisp and the Fairies,
from eighteen forty six, and I'm just going to read
a piece of this. In this story, he gives about
how he witnessed the will of the wisp one night.

(19:33):
He says, sometimes it was only like a flash in
the pan on the ground. At other times it rose
up several feet and fell to the earth and became extinguished.
And many times it proceeded horizontally from fifty to one
hundred yards in an undulating motion, like the flight of
the green woodpecker, and about his rapid And once or
twice it proceeded with considerable rapidity in a straight line

(19:55):
upon or close to the ground. The light of this
ignis fatuous, or rather of these ignace fatu i or
fatui was very clear and strong, much bluer than that
of a candle, and very like that of an electric spark,
and some of them look larger and as bright as
the star. Serious of course, they look dim when seen

(20:16):
in ground fogs, but there was not any fog on
the night in question. There was, however, a muddy closeness
of the atmosphere and at the same time a considerable
breeze from the southwest. These will of the wisps, which
shot horizontally invariably proceeded before the wind towards the northeast.
That's interesting because it's a very scientifically minded, um and

(20:40):
practical response to viewing this. Yeah, he's describing it in
terms of electricity, describing the color and sort of the position,
and the motion and speed of motion, and then explaining
that it follows the pattern of the wind. Yeah. And
I but I do love the fact that he's he's
really standing back and taking a serious, calm approach to it.

(21:01):
Because one of the accounts that I was looking at
an earlier account from traveling German lawyer Hintsner Paul Hertzner,
who wrote about his travels in England and Uh. He
wrote the following about a journey from Canterbury to Dover.
He said, quote, there were a great many jack o
lanterns so that we were quite seized with horror and amazement. Um.

(21:24):
And of course if you're seized with horror and amazement,
you get into that whole realm of like what am
I perceiving? How is my mind perceiving it? And then
how am I recalling that memory and altering it? I mean,
the you know, part and partial to any paranormal experience
where the experience is valid, but they're varying mental factors

(21:45):
that are going to play into your interpretation of the event,
particularly if Englishmen have been telling you tales of the
strange lights in the in the in the swamp lands
and what they represent. Yeah, And of course everybody's got
an interpretive framework that they bring to to seeing things
like this, Like I'm sure that our German traveler friend
brought a magical interpretive lens to it, saying there's a

(22:07):
spirit out here it wishes us harm. It might be
that dungeons and dragons chaotic evil spirit. I need to
stay away. Uh. Jabez Allies brought a more secular approach
to it, he said at the end of his recollection
of the different events that he witnessed, he says, from
all the circumstances, stated it appears probable that these meteors

(22:28):
rise in exhalations of electric and perhaps other matter out
of the earth, particularly in or near the winter season,
and that they generally occur a day or two after
a considerable rain and on change from a cold to
a warmer atmosphere. Now, whether all that is true, we
don't know. It might not be the case that you're
more likely to see it under those circumstances. But it's

(22:50):
interesting that he's trying to narrow down the physical causes
that that would create this, and he of course tries
to blame it on electricity, which would make sense if
you're writing in the eighteen thirties or eighteen forties, when
you know electricity is a very interesting thing. Yeah, and
it's certainly that the difference between magic and electricity there's

(23:11):
a lot of crossover and an understanding of it. Electricity
is very much this uh, this this lofty uh partially
understood concept. Yeah. And then there was another thing that
I looked at. There was an article on ignis fatuous
from the Scientific Monthly in nineteen nineteen, and it just
made some observations. For example, the flames of the ignis

(23:32):
fatuous used to appear very consistently in some locations, So
there are places where you could just expect to see them,
and if you went there, you you would probably see them,
and that they gave off neither heat nor odor, and
that they don't set fire to the things around them.
Of course, granted you're talking about marsh lance and swamp
plants in many situations here, so yeah, but I mean

(23:55):
there should be lots of dead grass and stuff like that.
I mean, it would seem like if you're with a
hot flame, you would expect it to set fire to something.
So that's going to throw a wrench in a lot
of the explanations that people have given for this. So
the main point of giving all these stories about what
people saw is that it's not just made up. I mean,

(24:16):
clearly a lot of the explanation of what causes the
will of the whisp is is magical thinking and and
very fairy stories and things like that. But the phenomenon itself,
I think we can be pretty confident is real. It
was actually referring to a thing people witnessed firsthand. Because
why would there be so many stories from so many

(24:37):
different places, especially from varied commentators too. It's not just
the religious or the folklore like, it's also scientifically minded
individuals who are just talking about the lights in the
woods that simply occur, and that everyone says, if everybody
knows what you're talking about. And of course we'll get
into this later, but one of the disconnects is that
we don't see lights in the woods and strange lights

(24:59):
in the marsh all the time like we apparently used to.
So it's harder for us a to put ourselves in
that world in that mindset and alsways, we'll discuss harder
to go out and try and study something that doesn't
seem to be occurring anymore, or at least occurring with
the same frequency. All right, on that note, we're gonna
take a quick break, and when we come back, we

(25:19):
will look at some of the possible scientific explanations for
this phenomena. All right, we're back discussing Willow the whisp,
jack a lantern, will the smith, Uh, pinky punk, whatever

(25:41):
you wanna call that strange glow in the marsh lands,
in the woods, in the swamp. Pinky punk is a
really great personal insult that I've never heard used before. Yeah,
I might have to adopt it. When I have my
son in the car, because you normally always call people uh,
dumble doors or or use the word duck. Uh here there,

(26:02):
But that's pretty good. But maybe hinky punk. We should
make a list of the great insults that we come
up with from our research on these podcasts, because when
I was doing an episode a couple of years ago,
forward thinking, we came across the term aggregated diamond nano
rods in a material science context. But man, what a
great thing to call a person a nano rod. I've

(26:23):
I've kept it with me ever since. And now hinky
punk goes on the list as well. Look at that
person driving like a complete hinky punk nano rod. Okay,
but now we need to bring it back to talk
about what on Earth could be the actual scientific material
cause of all these phenomenon that people have called will

(26:44):
of the wisp. And there are a couple of things
that make this part of the discussion difficult. One of
the problems is that, unfortunately, most research into will of
the whisp has been coming up with physical explanations that
try to match historical descript options, because the will of
the whisp has never, to my knowledge, been captured sampled, measured,

(27:06):
really or even satisfactorily recorded on film in any useful way.
I think there's some claims that some people sort of
got a photograph of one, but not in any way
that's useful for like a spectral analysis or anything like that.
So we've been just trying to figure out ways to
match people's descriptions of what they saw. And most of

(27:27):
these description descriptions come from more than a hundred years ago.
So already you're having a problem here because there's nothing
direct you can compare your examples too. You just have
to experiment and say, well, does this look like what
people were talking about back then? Uh. Then there's another
problem in scientific explanations of the will of the whisp,

(27:50):
which is that it's possible that similar but different phenomena
have sometimes been grouped together under the category of will
of the whisp. So there could be lots of different
types of ghost lights and various luminescent events that occurred
in the marshes or in the wilderness in the past,
and that people assumed, well, they're pretty similar, they're they're

(28:12):
all the same thing, and that they weren't actually all
the same thing. Yeah, I mean, especially if if the
phenomenon that's occurring as a product of the environment, it
seems entirely likely you would have a different phenomenon occurring,
say in the mountains of Chile, as opposed to the
swamplands um you know of of Italy yea uh. And
another aspect, and this is my read on it too,

(28:33):
is that so many of these explanations are taking meticulous
care with chemical or physical properties that maybe in play,
without taking into account, of course, the mental aspects of it,
the psychological aspects and again some of the problems with
memory and perception that I mentioned earlier. So you're which

(28:54):
is part of it. You know, you're you're just looking
at a possible physical chemical uh, reaction and it's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's not like like we're saying, it's not a photograph.
I mean, there's it's not objectively recorded. Even by people
who are trying to bring a scientific or skeptical mindset
to these things, they're they're still sort of interpreting with

(29:15):
a cultural script like you're saying, or a framework that
they're working from. They know this is a phenomenon people
have observed before. It usually is described to look like X,
so they're already bringing that to the table when they're
seeing it. All right, Well, let's let's roll through some
of them. Let's start with electricity. We mentioned electricity earlier, Yeah,

(29:35):
that was in in Jabez Allies account. He suggested, quote
these meteors rise in exhalations electric h of electric matter
out of the earth. And some people have tried to
offer the hypothesis of like ball, lightning, or other aberrant
electrical phenomena to explain what's going on when you see
lights in the marsh Alessandro Volta, according to one source,

(29:58):
apparently thought that the these fatuous could be explained by
way of interaction between electrical currents and what he called
inflammable air, which I think is referring to methane, which
we will definitely get to in a minute here. But
this I think has been rejected by modern people who
have looked into the phenomenon. Alan A. Mills, who wrote

(30:19):
a couple of papers on this on the subject of
Will of the Whisp, didn't think that the electrical explanations
really fit what people were describing when they saw Will
of the Wisp and saw and explained what they saw.
It just doesn't sound like the same kind of thing.
Right now, as far as the next idea, bioluminescence goes,

(30:40):
there's an interesting ideas here, some more plausible than others. Right. So, bioluminescence,
of course is the natural illumination of animals or of
of life forms, and not necessarily just animals. It could
be microbial life So fireflies or bioluminescence, they can light
up in the dark, and I can definitely see that.
There may have been some cases in the past where

(31:02):
people saw fireflies and then they had a pre existing
cultural script of ignis fatuous and they say I saw it,
I saw the light in the marsh when they were
really seeing fireflies. That's possible, but it doesn't seem like
fireflies can explain all of these instances because they don't
really closely enough match what people are usually describing um.

(31:26):
And it just seems like that could maybe explain some instances,
but probably not most. Yeah. Also, if you're used to
seeing the fireflies, you know, it seems like they would
maybe make more sense if you were traveler to an
area where I've never seen a firefly before, and then
there are these random pinpoints of light in the wilderness
or potentially in the Asian model, because in in parts

(31:47):
of the Asia you see fireflies that particularly Thailand, that
that light up in unison in a way that we
don't see so much in the United States. Yeah. Um,
there's also fungus, right, yes, there are in particular type
of fungus that keeps up popping up in these uh
these theories is our malaria. This is a parasitic kind

(32:07):
of fun guy. That's also known as honey fungus. Oh,
that's a cuter name. It sounds delicious, a little tangy
and sweet. Um, So this could be responsible for some
of these apparitions. Some species of our malaria are bioluminescent,
and you know, growing in just the right place and
perceived and just the right atmosphere could be seen as

(32:28):
a will of the whist. Now, one of the people
writing on this subject that we read, Jan's Elassa Witz
commented that sometimes, though probably not in most cases, but
in some rare occasions, people might have even been talking
about owls. Yeah, because on one hand, you know owl
nocturnal flyer, very silent, very quiet, kind of ghostly. Just

(32:51):
to perceive an owl even in the daytime, it's it's
it's there's something slightly supernatural about it, So you can
especially if the moonlight is catching gray or white plumage
just right, or if the owl has trapped in the
feathers in its wings, some rotting wood or a bioluminous
at fungus, like if it's been rolling in the fungus

(33:12):
and the fungus glows and then the owl swoops around
in the dark. This may possibly explain some instances of
what people are seeing, but it seems similar to other
things we've been talking about so far, the fireflies and
things like that. It might explain some cases that people
map onto the existing cultural script of the Igney's fatuous,

(33:32):
but it just doesn't sound very much like what people
are usually describing. Yeah, it doesn't seem like a good excuse,
universal excuse for what's going on, and it just doesn't
seem really all that common now. And another version of
this is, of course that they could just you could
just be perceiving a reflected light from another source. Yeah.
One great example of this is I was recently in

(33:54):
in Big Ben National Park in Texas, and near that
we went through the town of Marfa, Texas, which is
famous for the Marfa ghost lights. Have you ever heard
of these? Are these railroad related or they just are
they not? That I know is there are a lot
of traditions, I think, even around my own hometown in Tennessee,
tales of ghostly lights out on the railroad tracks that

(34:15):
are kind of a will of the Whist type of scenario,
but I think are generally related to uh, reflected lights
from other sources. Yeah, well, so the Marfa ghost lights
are probably not the same phenomenon as well of the
Whist because it's not Marti area, it's you know, desert,
and they they seem to be a different kind of thing.
They're not really what people are describing there either, but
they are a type of ghost light that from what

(34:38):
I've read, a common skeptical response to this is people
are just seeing reflected car headlights from like their cars
driving far out in the desert and they get reflected
by the atmosphere in a certain way or somehow end
up reflecting their light to people near the town of Marfa,
and they're like, Wow, that's an amazing light I just
saw in the desert. What could what could explain it?

(34:59):
Or it's can't fires? You know, I know, we're both
familiar with the Chattanooga, Tennessee area. Oh yeah, I grew
up there. Well, I've I've definitely driven through Chattanooga on
like really dark nights before, and I'll see of what
essentially car lights that are driving up on the hills
and the mountains. But it's dark. It's so dark that

(35:20):
for a split second, I see there's some sort of
strange light. It must be a UFO or something. And
then I realized, oh wait, that's that's a there's a
mountain right there. How disappointed just the mountain people. Yeah,
so in our age, that is just so just full
of ubiquitous artificial lighting screwing up our perception of nighttime. Uh,
there's plenty of room for will of the whisps to

(35:42):
emerge that way. Yeah. So electrical phenomenon, biolumin essence, or
reflected lights, like we said, all of these may account
for some small subset of of these historical sightings, but
they don't really seem to fit the bill in terms
of what people usually describe when they talk abut the
ignis fatuous. So what's something that's closer to the traditional

(36:04):
description and really seems to match. And here we get
to the main event, which is marsh gas, good old,
good old marsh gas, good old swamp gas. Unfortunately, as
we'll see, this is not without problems of its own.
But finally we're getting into the territory that that could
really be a viable explanation. So, Robert, what happens when

(36:28):
a body of a dead animal or a bunch of
dead plant matter lies down to its final repose in
a marsh or swamp. Oh, that's that's going to break down,
and it may sink to the breakdown of organic matter.
This is just part of the swamp marshland ecosystem, right,
And so the decomposition of dead organic matter often happens

(36:50):
underwater or under damp soil in these types of environments,
and the swamp, in the marsh, in the bog and
what we would call an anaeroba environment. So that's without
access to air. Now, things can decompose with access to
air too. You lay something on the ground in the forest,
it'll have a chance for all this air to get
at it. And that's a different kind of decomposition than

(37:14):
anaerobic decomposition that happens without air. Decomposition that happens without
air tends to produce gaseous byproducts, including methane and carbon dioxide.
Methane is flammable, and if you get any of your
home power from natural gas, this is a somewhat similar mixture.
It's composed primarily of methane. That's what's burning with that

(37:36):
nice blue flame. So many sources treat the matter of
the scientifically known you know, skeptical latitude cause of Will
of the Whisp as pretty much completely settled. It's spontaneous
combustion of methane in marsh gas. Just one example is
one we looked up together the Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase

(37:56):
and Fable. The entry on ignis fatuous. It says, quote
the will the Wisp or Friar's lantern a flamelike phosphorescence
flitting over marshy ground due to the spontaneous combustion of
gases from decaying vegetable matter and deluding people who attempt
to follow it. Hence any delusive aim or object or
some utopian scheme that is utterly impracticable. It's kind of

(38:19):
a kind of a political stance from Brewers there. But anyway,
but it sounds possible, right, Yeah, it's but it also
the way it's the way it presents it is. This
is not just one hypothesis that has been offered, but
it acts as if this is a settled matter. Yeah,
it's the spontaneous combustion of marsh gas. Another example would
be one scientific paper I found that said the following quote,

(38:43):
the once widespread sightings of will of the wisp also
known as ignice fatuous on northern European peat lands, were
probably the result of methane abiliations ignited by lanterns or
other ignition sources formerly used for nighttime illumination. So again
they treated as pretty much settled. It's marsh gas being
set on fire, and that's what the will of the

(39:05):
whisp is. But I don't know, that seems kind of
weird to me. I mean, wouldn't people have noticed it
had to be set on fire with sparks or lanterns? Yeah,
you think the stories would revolve more around some individual
wandering out with it with his or her lantern and
in poof a willow whisp you know, suddenly pops into
being right next to you, as opposed to seeing one

(39:26):
in the distance. Right, And so the story I think
is not nearly as settled as many of these older
sources would seem to indicate because of this big question,
what is the source of ignition? Is it really fair
to assume that the people who saw these things were
constantly inadvertently setting fire to methane bubbles around them without
realizing they were doing so. Maybe, Again, it's kind of

(39:47):
like some of the other things. Maybe in some weird cases,
but it kind of seems like a stretch to say
this is the primary phenomenon being described. So here we
get to some chemistry where the answer could possible lie,
because what you're starting to look for is what could
be a chemical spark in the natural environment that could

(40:08):
naturally ignite methane gases escaping from a marsh a marsh land. Yeah,
but the only thing that comes to mind off hand
top pose front. Let's see, you have lightning strikes, you
have spontaneous combustion, which is a possibility with anaerobic situations
such as say a hay bale yah, but like if
the heat builds up in it, it gets really hot. Yeah.

(40:31):
Aside from that, the only thing that comes to mind
is like a wolf that that that that somebody's tied
fire to its tail or, if you know, something of
that matter. But yeah, otherwise, maybe put some flints to
its teeth, so every time it chomps, it strikes sparks,
a rock falling off a cliff and just happening to
somehow spark on the way down. A guy traveling from

(40:52):
the future and the time machine with a flamethrower, yes,
or just a cigarette. He's just he's just traveling through time,
stops for a smoke in a medieval and then continues.
But and then, oh the butterfly effect. Now the future
we all have frog frog tongues. So in other words,
it sounds a little sketchy, right, I mean, yeah, we
need we need a better ignition system than that. Yeah.

(41:14):
And so the ignition system that has long been proposed
by people trying to explain the will of the whisp
has been phosphorus compounds. So instead of being lit up
by a lantern, marsh gas leaking from the ground could
be ignited in the presence of oxygen if there were
phosphorus compounds in play, for example phosphene or pH three.

(41:35):
You could also call that hydrogen phosphied or die phosphine
P two H four. So phosphine is a highly toxic
gas In fact, I saw this mentioned online and I
went back and revisited it. You know, if you go
back to the beginning of Breaking Bad, right right at
the start, there's a scene where Walter White uses a

(41:56):
chemical reaction producing phosphine gas to poise in a couple
of gangsters. Okay, now, yeah, now that you mentioned it,
I do though. I've actually read chemists looking at that
and saying the chemistry of that seems a little bit wrong,
but but it is true that phosphine is highly toxic. Well,
it was a similar theme though that we're seeing here.
People sort of shuffle the explanations off to the realm

(42:18):
of chemistry, and for most people that's sufficient. Okay, it's
a matter of chemistry. I don't really understand all the
ins and outs of chemistry, but it seems like a
realm where everything is possible. Everything in the world hinges
on chemistry. So well enough, but then when the chemists
start breaking it apart, these problems emerged. Yeah, and so
phosphine is extremely extremely flammable. It can totally catch on

(42:41):
fire at a moment's notice. And then this other compound,
the die phosphine P two H four is a liquid
that will ignite just spontaneously combust when it's exposed to
the air. So you get this stuff out of its
anaerobic environment up to the surface where air comes into
contact with it, and it just erupts with fire and

(43:03):
this ignites the phosphine or the methane itself. Phosphine igniting
ignites the methane and then boom, you've got fire in
the gas escaping from the marsh. It's been utilized in
weapons before, um, kind of hillacious weapons that we tend
to shy away from. Oh really, I didn't know. Because
it burns in the air. That's gross. Oh I guess
like phosphorus based incendiary weapons. That's horrible. But anyway, the

(43:28):
idea is that the dead, decaying organic matter down under
the marsh releases these gases. It releases phosphine, diphosphene, methane,
and the reaction with the air causes ignition. The methane
catches on fire. Is this plausible, Well, I think the

(43:49):
answer is sort of, but maybe not entirely, And so
it's It is apparently true that some microbial life forms
can produce these types of phosphorus compounds through the process
of decomposition, going to work on on bones and other
organic materials that might be buried down in the swamp.
They can release the phosphorus compounds that we've talked about,

(44:10):
But other sources have contested the idea of straight up
combustion of methane and other gases, including the phosphine match
or the phosphorus based ignition systems, And there are a
few things to consider. One of them is that methane,
if ignited by fire, will burn with a what one
of the people we read described as a brief, hot,

(44:33):
bright flame, which really goes opposite to how people usually
describe the will of the whisp, but that's more often
described as having a cool blue luminessence that does not
seem to produce any heat or much heat at least
depending on the source. Yeah. If the situation is not
that Will the Smith lit a fart in the night,
is that Will the Smith has some sort of ghostly

(44:55):
illumination that is seems to be pretty constant though moving. Yeah.
Another thing is that people have found that the ignition
of phosphine gas mixed with methane results in acrid smoke.
This is not a common feature of will of the Whisp, descriptions, right, Yeah,
because that would be a whole other thing. Right. You
can imagine the tails would revolve around, oh, there was

(45:16):
a campfire in the woods of mist, and there's clearly
fairies or elves that hadn't know it's there's no mention
of the smoke. Other questions would be that why is
the willow wisp often reported to run away when you
approach it or then follow you when you don't. The
best explanations that I ran across had to do with
just complex fluid dynamics of the situation, disturbing the mixture

(45:37):
of gases in the air as you approach, and you
just kind of make it waffed away by their movements,
like trying to catch up a stray bit of cat
hair floating in the in the room you know you
never can get. Yeah, And I think that's a perhaps
good explanation. But then there's another big one that I
think is kind of important. If this is ordinary hot combustion,
just like hot flames, like the fire, we normally know,

(46:00):
why doesn't the flame spread, like why doesn't it catch
fire to surrounding dead grass and vegetation. Well, my response
to that would be, in many cases this is a
bog or a marsh land. And when's the last time
you heard about a bog burning down? Right? I mean,
I think it's still possible for the for the dead
plant matter that's above you know, whatever kind of damp

(46:20):
soil or is there what's poking out above the ground.
That seems like that could catch fire. But potentially yeah,
I mean yeah, but just the damp environment tends to
make me give less credence to that. But but I agree,
it seems like there would still be the potential for
something to catch on fire. Yeah. So there's actually a
geologist named Alan A. Mills who who wrote a couple

(46:42):
of papers on the subject of the ignis fatuous or
the will of the wisp, and explained that he based
on some analysis he did and some experiments he conducted,
he didn't think that the marsh gas explanation cut it.
It just didn't really work, he claimed. He tried it.
He didn't experiment with putting a bunch of stuff into

(47:05):
a container of damp garden soil, peat and rotten compost,
and he tried to incubate it in the dark. He
did get methane marsh gas out of it, but it
did not spontaneously combust And then he also he tried
adding phosphine phosphine generating compounds, and that apparently this produced

(47:25):
a great stink, but it did not It did not
create a spontaneous luminescence. So he could produce march gas,
but he couldn't find a natural way to get it
ignited like that. And whatever the cause of the ignition,
it seems like the traditional sightings of the ignis fatuous
really must not have featured hot flames. Now you're probably wondering, Okay,

(47:48):
what's the opposite of hot flames? What would the DLB
with cold points? What cold flames? Um? Cold flames are
produced by ether or carbon disulfide, when he did just
below the ignition point, so they're not exactly cold, but
they're not as hot as flames usually are. So you
heat certain substances up to the point where they're almost

(48:09):
about to catch on fire, but they don't, and they
produce this, uh, this sort of halo. Yeah, I've seen
it described as that luminescent precombustion halo um. Again, right,
when the various compounds are heated, it just below the
ignition points. So and again this perhaps this would be
due to a natural um This would be a natural

(48:29):
product of the decay in the swamp. Yeah. So this
is a possibility that a few people have explored in
some experiments. And then there is also a parallel possibility.
In fact, the cold flames might even be an example
of this. But the broader concept is chemo luminescence, which
would mean glowing or light created by a chemical reaction.

(48:51):
So it's not exactly fire, but it is chemicals reacting
in a way that produces light. For example, the oxidation
of those phosphorus compounds we were talking about creating a
chemo luminescent glow. This seems likely too. It's kind of
the bioluminescent model, except without the without the direct involvement

(49:13):
of an organism. Yeah, and so Alan A. Mills. This
one researcher described how he put together an experiment where
he created a glow just by exposing different gases to
each other. So he says that he found experimentally quote
that the entrainment of crude phosphene into natural gas at
low concentrations insufficient to cause ignition did result in a cool,

(49:38):
glowing cloud visible in the dark. However, its color was
green like the glow associated with aerial oxidation of yellow
phosphorus rather than blue. So he's saying that just by
mixing together the phosphorus compounds and the natural gas in
the dark in the right concentrations, he got it to glow,

(49:58):
even though it didn't catch five air. Okay, but it does.
It does seem to lend cred into the possibility that
a different type of chemical reaction could be taking place.
We just maybe don't know all the ingredients that are
they're involved. Yeah, yeah. And then there was also another
experiment I read about that was done by some Italian
researchers more recently, I think it was just seven or
eight years ago. So they just had a container of

(50:21):
phosphine gas phosphene vapor that they fed with a stream
of air and nitrogen and when they did that, just
righte a like they described, a faint, pale greenish light
could be seen in the dark. And I think, as
far as most scientists who have looked into this are concerned,
the chemo lumin essence is probably the most viable answer

(50:45):
to the question today, though it still doesn't seem to
fit perfectly. Though maybe we should just never expect anything
to fit perfectly, especially given the the uncertain shape that
has been presented by these these very historical accounts, right. Yeah,
because ultimately we're being held back here by the lack

(51:05):
of observation of this phenomenon today. And that's another really
interesting aspect of the Will of the Whisp. Claimed sightings
of will of the Whisp, for some reason, have drastically
dropped off in the past century or so, almost to
the point of some people saying that the Will of
the Whisp, whatever it was, is now extinct or or
endangered in near extinction. And I think it's really interesting

(51:28):
to imagine what could be the cause of this, because,
as we've talked about, it's widespread enough that we think
it is referring to a real thing. It's not just
people imagining it. But what could the thing have been
if people generally don't see it anymore? And I do
want to point out that, you know what, we're not
saying that they've completely vanished, but clearly they used to.

(51:49):
They used to be more prevalent than they are today. Um.
I know, for instance, I was looking around and the U. S.
Air Forces Project, a blue book that came out in
the nineteen sixties um had to do with the UFOs
and possible explanations for UFOs. One major explanation presented by
Jay Alan Heineck, and that was that, particularly in the

(52:10):
rural Michigan area, swamp lights might be the reason for
that people were claiming to see UFOs. But then again,
UFO sidings are also down today compared to what they
were in the in the previous century, so I don't know.
Maybe that also plays into this gradual disappearance of the

(52:30):
swamp lights. That's interesting because you see UFO sightings suddenly
come into the picture in the twentieth century, right at
the time when these the Will of the Wisp sightings
seem to largely disappear. Yet they're probably not the same
thing because they I mean, they're described in vastly different ways. Yeah,
but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a little overlap.

(52:53):
And again we're falling into the potential trap of trying
to explain a whole host of different phenomena with one explanation. Yeah.
I think that's the most important thing to keep in
mind is again, like we said, the will the Whisp
might not be just one thing. It might be a
sort of center of the road script that a lot
of different phenomena are mapped onto. One of the big

(53:14):
things to discuss here, though, in terms of why the
willow wisp phenomenon would have faded away, is just to
first of all, look at where it's occurring. Most of
these accounts have to do with wetlands, marshlands boss and
what has happened to our marshlands in uh in the
last cuple over the last couple of centuries. Right, If
a lot of this folklore is coming out of the
marshes of Europe, the marshes of Europe have largely been

(53:37):
transformed into places where agriculture happens or in the cities,
or they've been drained, they've been bliced up. They are
no longer the ecosystem that they once were. Yeah. So
if you think of if you think of of the
willowist phenomenon as being a phenomenon that naturally occurs though
as something of a rarity in a large wetland in

(53:59):
VI and then it's reduced to a small wetland environment
a few centuries later, it seems like you would haven't
even rarer occurrences that whatever is causing it be it
an organism, be at a particular chemical build up, the
potential for that to to happen is going to be
far less because we've essentially terraformed our our planet. We've

(54:20):
we've we've more than doubled the nitrogen cycle. We've we've
we've we've decided to pick and choose what organisms are
going to flourish, which ones we're going to do our
best to eradicate without even knowing that we're doing it
right at the time. Yeah, And and marshlands and wet lands,
I mean that is there. They've been a real rallying
point of in recent history of us trying to say, ho,

(54:43):
slow down, these are actually important ecosystems, and we don't
just need to, you know, push them out to the
edge of existence. So we've lost a number of species
already that have made their home in wetlands. Is it
possible that we've also exterminated or nearly exterminated something that
produces the willowest phenomenon? Yeah, I mean we may have

(55:06):
just been watching too many times the documentary Man Versus Nature,
The Road to Victory, But yeah, it's essentially along the
same lines as something that people have brought up with
the idea of terraforming Mars. We think that Mars probably
doesn't have any life forms on it today. Probably it

(55:28):
may have had some in the past, but whether it
currently has any strange microbial life surviving anywhere, or ever
had it in the past. What if by terraforming Mars
in the future, by turning it into a suitable earthlike environment,
we destroy whatever pockets of existing life or evidence of
past life we're already there. Yeah, that's one of the

(55:51):
big arguments against terraforming and uh and indeed it's it's
one that we have already encountered with a certain degree
here on this planet. And I think the under line
concept here is one that several scientists we referred to
have alluded to, which is that the the will of
the whisp phenomenon may have a sort of species based origin,

(56:13):
like that there might be a particular kind of microbial
life form or microbial life ecosystem that produces it. There
are tiny creatures in the ground that are responsible for
the will of the whisps people used to see. Yeah,
one of the articles out there floating around is from
Howell G. M. Edwards titled Will of the Whisp, an

(56:35):
ancient mystery with extreme aphile origins question mark and uh yeah.
This basically the basic concept here seems to be that
that either the biolumin essence or the biologically discharged gas
resulting it may be resulting from an extreme file organism
that previously carved out of fragile niche lifestyle and swamps
and marches marches, but has since snuffed it due to

(56:58):
its delicate positioning in the eCos system. So again it
comes down to the fact that this is it's something
out there and maybe it's in its place in the
world is fragile, and then when we start eradicating and
cutting down this environment, it all that goes away. It
makes me wonder what kinds of strange phenomena other than

(57:19):
the will of the whisp could go extinct in the future.
What are the things people see today that we might
class as paranormal that maybe will mostly disappear in the future,
and we might not know why because we might not
know what caused it to begin with. What if we
enter a future, can you imagine a world where people
don't see UFOs anymore? Well, we kind of, we kind

(57:39):
of live in it already. I mean, I feel like
looking at these cases we presented here, you could say that,
all right, take the UFO. There are varying reasons why
one might see a UFO. Uh. Some of them involve
sleep paralysis, some of them involve mental illness, some of
them involve um a, sleep deprivation, etcetera. You can make
a long list of them. And and if if a

(58:01):
certain type of swamp gas phenomenon is on that list
and that becomes eradicated due to environmental change, then yeah,
that changes how it is perceived. It becomes less than
an object of nature and more of a mental uh existence,
more of a mental animal as opposed to a chemical one. Yeah. Yeah,

(58:23):
And that is interesting because the will of the whisp
seems to have largely gone away, but the phenomenon of
seeing lights has not. I mean, we people still see lights. Yeah,
We've always seen them, and we're going to continue to
see strange lights that we can't explain, but try to
Our brain ends up trying to explain them in the
form of hallucination, and then it also in the form

(58:44):
of various cultural scripts to apply to it in retrospect. Okay,
but Robert, I want to bring you back to the
place we started. Yes, I want to change everything and
say you're not a medieval peasant. You are not out
on the fens of medieval England. You are yourself and
you are currently out, let's say, hiking in a US
national park. If you ever, do you have a favorite

(59:06):
national park? Well, you know what, Let's say, let's say
state park. Let's go with with ok Finoki in here
in Georgia, because it's a swamp, and it's a swamp
where people have claim to have seen marsh lights in
the past. Perfect. Okay, So you're you're out walking in
the okay, Finoki. You realize you've you've hiked too far
in the late afternoon, and suddenly dusk is coming on.
You need to head back in the other direction to

(59:28):
get back to the visitor center in your car. But
on the way, you see some blue lights that are
just out of just beyond range, out off the path.
Would you go and investigate? Really, knowing what I know now, yeah,
I would probably not, but I feel like I would
stop and watch and and hopefully I would watch this

(59:49):
phenomenon with the presence of mind that what I'm observing
is a rarity. Whatever is causing it has become scarce
in the world, be it and a organism that is
dying out, a chemical scenario under the soil that is
less prevalent, or you know, fairies that are leaving the world,
or a certain damned individual who somehow weasel his way

(01:00:12):
back into hell. Man, I feel like I have the
I must have the horrible curiosity i'd have to go
to you're gonna die? Well, no, I'm not. No, That's
exactly why I brought it to the modern day. So
you don't think that there's a hankkeey punk out there
who's gonna lead you off a cliff or into into
Quicksand do you think this is probably some kind of
natural occurrence. It's something that maybe gas, maybe something you

(01:00:33):
can touch. Maybe you could be the person who has
the insight onto into what is causing this because you
can finally get close and get a good look and
catch some in a jar. Yeah, but this is but
as we've discussed, this is not happening in the city.
This is happening in the wild and humans and despite
despite all of our GPS technology, we can still die
in the wilderness, and we can we can, we can

(01:00:54):
do so fairly easily. They're still alligators in the okafin Oky,
there's still bears in other national parks, and there's still
things to fall off of, and you know, have to
cut your own leg off and that sort of thing.
And that's what the willow Wisp wants to happen. But
sometimes you gotta walk through some alligator infested waters to
achieve your terrible purpose, the terrible purpose, terrible purpose, as

(01:01:16):
palm wad Deep might say, Yeah, yeah, he'd probably walk
out and see what they were doing. All right, Well,
there you have it, Willow the wisp, uh, hinky punk,
whatever you want to call this particular scenario, marsh lights,
self light, fairy fire. What was the answer in the end?
I guess it was the best one was chemo lumin essence,

(01:01:37):
but we still don't really know for sure. Yeah. I
think the lassa what's kept describing it as a quote
chemical animal, and I really like that idea that it's
it's not it'sself an organism, but it's kind of a
chemical manifestation linked to organisms, certainly linked to organisms, either
by some unknown extreme of file microbe in the in

(01:01:59):
the soil or just the breakdown of other organic organisms unknown.
It's almost like a shadow organism in that sense. But yeah,
it seems like those are the best explanations out there,
all right. Yeah, so hey, we'd of course, we'd love
to hear from anybody out there who has seen anything
like this. If you are one of the rare individuals

(01:02:20):
who has glimpsed ferry fire in this modern age, we
want to know about it. You can get in touch
with us a number of ways. First of all, always
get a head on over to stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com. That's our mothership. That's we'll find blog post,
toppin list, galleries, uh links out to social media accounts, etcetera.
It's all there, and you can find us on social
media on Facebook, on Twitter. We're blow the Mind on.

(01:02:43):
Both of those were Stuff to Blow your Mind on
Tumbler and Joe how can they get in touch with
your field fashion went ah. Well, if you'd like to
write to us on email and let us know about
your experience with Will of the Whisp, ignis Fatuous or
any other types of ghost lights, you can email us
at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.

(01:03:04):
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