Can anyone help explain this discharge?

Morning all,

Having a bit of trouble here.

To put you in the picture, I was on a paranormal investigation the other evening and found something very odd on video.

It's there for a split second but makes a noise and has its own light source.
At first, I thought it was static electricity discharging, but I always thought that electricity goes to ground and not upwards or increase in size...

This event happened in front of a doorway which is blocked off by a wooden frame and galvanised metal wire.
This is the type of barrier in the doorway;
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/222219dfd6a5.jpg[/atsimg]

And here is the original video footage, untouched (you'll see it at 7 seconds above the mans shoulder);


Here, I have looped it a few times in case you can't see it;


Then I slowed the film down to get a bit of a better look at what was happening;


Then zoomed in and slowed..


It appears to 'spark' up the galvanised wire, but it gets bigger and even goes up past the wooden top beam, which has to mean that it is in front of the barrier. At the time we saw no flash of light, as you would from an electrical discharge and we may have even put the noise down to our own equipment at the time as none of us commented on what it was. One of the people who was there has seen the footage, he is an electrical engineer, and he feels this can't be electricity or plasma discharge as it defies physics and likes wood.

He even went to the effort to get this picture using a HD burst capture then applied a high pass filter & overlay to sharpen it up a bit.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/373c34a8196f.png[/atsimg]

You can clearly see that it has gone past and above the top wooden beam, which is quite thick.

Does anyone have any idea what this is or what might have caused it?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

It's the IR light (nightvision) on your camera reflecting off of the bar/angleiron/whatever is at the top of the wires

reply to post by alaskan


We've already thought of that, but the first problem is how does a reflection make a noise?

The wire is galvanised so does not reflect and how does a reflection from a light, which is moving to the right, move upwards?

To me it looks like a bug reflecting the camera lighting. It appears again in the last couple seconds of the first video, it flies down range towards the bright light and then back again.

reply to post by tjack


We've eliminated the flying bug from the first anomaly. They are two seperate items. I included the flying bug in the first video in order to show a comparison. The bug was pure chance that it appeared a few seconds later in this video.

I hope you had your volume up a bit when you watched the vids as you can clearly hear a crackling noise that is in perfect time with the 'flash'.

It looks like the spot you get when using a handheld IR thermometer, sorry i dont know the proper name for them lol.

reply to post by Catch_a_Fire


I know what you mean but it is not one of those either.

They don't make a clicking noise as we hear here and the light from them does not flicker on and off and grow larger as we see occuring. Also the light moves above the top of the wooden bar. If it was a directed light then we would have seen a portion of the light flash onto the wall, not stay as a complete object above the bar.

Originally posted by tjack
To me it looks like a bug reflecting the camera lighting. It appears again in the last couple seconds of the first video, it flies down range towards the bright light and then back again.

I agree. My first impression was of a moth. In fact, I detect wing beats.

Regards

If it was an electrical discharge wouldnt the flash cause more illumination, almost like a camera flash?.

reply to post by Catch_a_Fire


Yes, that's right, it would. But it didn't...we were not aware of it until I watched the video.

It crackles and sparks off like electricity but it can't be that. Electricty goes to ground via the shortest route. It does not do what we are seeing here.

We were thinking of a plasma discharge but it's not that either.

It's definitely not a bug or even the bug you see in the first video which flies away and back again.

reply to post by Extralien


Very interesting. I would guess it is an insects wing rattling off the mesh that is illuminated by the cams ir illuminator.

Static electricity can behave strangely and not always how you would think. For example, to dissipate charge from a film roll being unwound an earthed metal bar touching the film is ineffective wheras a conductive brush Near but not touching the film is much more effective.

Looking at the environment I would doubt it is static.

If it isn't an insect as I mentioned then I am stuck.

i am a 'retired' electrician, just to get all the facts, this is a wire fence like structure that is encased in a wooded frame and has no electrical sources leading to it in any way? the video does not show anything at all that could easily be determined as being electrical btw, so i'm going to go on what you have to say about it first, rather than picking apart the video, if anything the video just looks like a play of light reflection and what not

[edit on 6/6/2010 by indigothefish]

Originally posted by Catch_a_Fire
It looks like the spot you get when using a handheld IR thermometer, sorry i dont know the proper name for them lol.

the spot is normally a laser for aiming purposes

Well I think the lights are there when the camera is taking a shot makes me believe the light is coming from the camera being reflected. In the loop vid the light and the sound of the camera are in sync....

reply to post by indigothefish


A wooden frame with a galvanised mesh nailed to one side. No electrical sources nearby.

Just to add to the information available, the camera I was using is a Sony CCD-TRV67E, so it uses video tape and is not digital in any shape or form.
It's set on auto focus.

loner007;
The camera made no sound, the sound you hear is from the light that is shown. The camera was 'rolling' and did not make any changes that would have made such a noise.

Lightfantastic;
That would have to be an insect that grows in size and has solid wings in order to make such a noise. Bodmin jail is in the UK and the only insects I can think of that would make any noise remotely similar to this would be a stag beatle. They are big enough to be heard flying around.. they make a real buzz... not a crackle like this.

The stone used for the building is actually granite, so we have considered this as a possible cause or aid in the creation of what we see/hear.

reply to post by Extralien



oh i see and so that sound of a camera clicking isnt really there at all is it?....

Sounds like you want someone to say ooh yes you have caught a ghost on tape well done!! ...get real.....

reply to post by Extralien


The reason I though of an insect is from hearing uk insects rattle their wings off light bulbs. I thought that some buzzing on lamp in the past was electrical and is was actually an insect. I was thinking the crackling was caused by the wings and the mesh somehow.

The flash may appear to change size as the wings orientation with respect to the camera changes.

The closest electical behavior I have seen is human made ball lightning. Some zinc On the mesh could have become turned into a plasma via a large current but I do not see how such a current could occur in the location shown.


Only a guess based on my extensive knowledge of electricity and zero knowledge of insect percussion.

[edit on 6/6/2010 by LightFantastic]

reply to post by LightFantastic


It's confusing the heck out of us too...

It's definitely not an insect..watch the first clip again and see just how fast this thing flashes by..less than a second.. and the crackle pops right along with it.

This is why I've had to bring this to ATs, to see if the best of the best can fathom out exactly what this is. As I've already said, we have had an electrical engineer look at this video and he says that this is the first bit of electricity he's ever seen that defies physics and likes wood.. We know he's having a bit of a giggle, mostly because he's as stumped as the rest of us.

reply to post by loner007


I fail to see how that could ever be mistaken for a ghost..

Paranormal....possibly...but not a ghost...

That's the point of me creating this thread...to get to the bottom of what this is.
I don't need to look for glory or praise, I'm simply coming here to get an answer to a question..

Thanks for your previous input.

reply to post by Extralien


I forgot to mention the the artificial ball lightning I mentioned was seen to pass through a ceramic plate. I'm using a phone so not too easy for me to post a link at the mo but I remember he was using a submarine battery.

Just managed to play the normal speed video and it seems too quick and noisy to be an insect as you say.

[edit on 6/6/2010 by LightFantastic]