Ball lightning or UFOs Hate Tennis?

Getting into UFOs is like having a permanent dribbling smile. Sure, you look happy, but who wants to sit next to you on a bus? To avoid this, some of us have alter-egos…by day we work, raise families, go to school and do all the normal stuff that really matters in this life. By night, we get into our outfits, put the masks on and go feeding the monster that never sleeps; the appetite for all things weird and unusual.

Back in ’73, UFOs were watched by three trainee soldiers, two policemen and a passing Head Teacher as they moved above and within the grounds of a primary school at Rosmead, Cape Province, South Africa. The mystery lights were seen independently from different locations. 8pm, Sunday night, and the Army trainees were lying on a lawn at the Army barracks when they noticed a red light (‘like a car rear light’) circling the primary school some few hundred metres from their location. At first they thought nothing of it.

At the same time, Sergeant Goosen and Constable Brazelle had noticed a strange light in the sky above Rosmead and watched it in bemusement through binoculars. They were 18km East of Rosmead.
Shortly thereafter at 8:30pm, the school principle, Harry Truter, arrived and was stunned to see the tennis courts at his school all torn up and ruined. As he surveyed the damage, he noticed a light in the sky that moved vertically and disappeared. Assuming the damage was vandalism, he phoned the police…the same two men who were watching the light from afar.

When they arrived, this was the damage that met them:




They searched the area for signs of tyre tracks or vandals and none were found. They did however see a ‘long light’ that moved horizontally before moving vertically and disappearing. The images above were taken the next day and the damage is quite obvious. They also found that a bluegum tree had been scorched close to one of the holes. Here’s a snip from the article…



Now that is some interesting account! We have physical damage to property and tree and unusual lights being seen by multiple witnesses, independently, at the same time and from three different locations.

Years later, I think it’s possible to look at a provisional explanation. It just could be a case of ball lightning and Venus. On the night of November 12, 1972, Venus was low in the western sky from Middelburg police station (I checked Stellarium). Seen through binoculars, scintillation would make it appear like an object changing colours.

Coincidentally, an identical incident happened in 1948 on the isle of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. In this case, another tennis court was torn up and debris thrown around like we see in the images. In that case, it was reported in a weather journal and thought to be a ‘fireball’ or in other words…ball lightning.

“A tornado or an accompanying fireball dug a trench in a hard-packed clay tennis court at Curepipe, Maritius, in the Indian Ocean, on May 24, 1948: A trench running in a north-south direction, 60 feet long and 1–2.5 feet wide, was cut in the bare surface of the court to a depth varying from 1 to 4 in. The material lifted from the trench was all thrown to the west to a distance of 50 feet; pieces weighing about one pound were thrown as far as 30 feet. The surface material was slightly blackened as if by heating, and a crackling that of a sugar-cane fire was heard for 2 or 3 min. One claims to have seen a ball of fire about two feet in diameter which crossed from a football pitch to the tennis court through a wire-netting fence without leaving any evidence of it passage [16]”.

Tracks of Ball Lightning in Apparatus?

VERY similar! The article from which the quote is taken investigates the evidence for microscopic ball lightning and shows some excellent images of physical effects of the phenomena. The author describes and illustrates how this mysterious phenomena can pass through glass and yet carve tracks in metal. Ball lightning (BL) has a lot in common with UFO sightings in the way it isn’t one thing but possibly many and is yet to be fully identified. Indeed the reports of ball lightning have as much variety as any selection of UFO reports. When BL is better understood, it’s inevitable that some overlay will occur and that the number of ‘true ufo’ reports will be fewer.

Although BL is accepted as genuine atmospheric phenomena, it shares a history with UFOs in the way that much of the evidence is anecdotal and drawn from witness reports going back for centuries. What separates the willingness of scientists to accept the accuracy of BL reports and then doubt the accuracy of UFO reports is probably complicated by issues raised in my opening paragraph. They don’t want colleagues to wonder if a dribbling idiot is hiding behind the PhD and can't escape into alter-egos although Dr Beachcombing does a great job of it.

The microscopic BL is fascinating but it’s the big stuff that we like most and some of the reports sound like great experiences. Several can be interpreted in several ways and behave like typical UFO sighting reports. In terms of destructive BLs, this account is a winner…

"........As suddenly as the lightning had become intense, it just as suddenly tapered off. Then a brillliant ball of blue-white light appeared at the base of the main cloud. It seemed to orbit the waterspouts in two and a half oval-shaped orbits. Then, the ball descended swiftly down toward the surface. When it reached the surface, we could hear a sizzling sound and could see steam rising off the water in the wake of the ball. It zoomed away from the funnels roughly to the North, shooting past our bow at a distance of maybe a mile. It slowed as it sped along the water, as though friction was putting on the brakes. It began to shrink. As it shrank, it slowed even more. Finally, the ball exploded with a thunderclap that seemed much quieter than normal ".

US Navy sonar technician Randy Holley's BL report

This BL sighting occurred during an extraordinary triple waterspout appearance and makes me wonder what effects it would have on people or property if much closer? Enough to trash a tennis court? Erratic flight? What if it struck someone? Would it be enough to cause damage to vision or even skin burns? Anecdotally, BL has been the cause of deaths as you can read in historical accounts of ball lightning. Where would Holley's sighting be if he'd interpreted it as an alien craft instead of just describing what he saw?

The Rosmead UFO sighting could have been BL and Venus...who knows? Only the local Army base showed an interest in finding out. It became associated with 'space aliens' and 'landing sites' too quickly and therefore unworthy of study. The 'taint of UFO' was upon it like a leper's scab or contagious insanity. In spite of the discomfort felt by people looking at this field from a distance...something was seen and damage was done. All the looking away won't change that, but it'll never bring us closer to finding out.

i've always had a problem with the 'ball lightening' theories in relation to UFOs....

Neither have been proven, only speculated on....

How can you argue one phenomenon that may or may not exist with another phenomenon that may or may not exist?

The UFO ships are theorized to work on high speed mechanical pulses.
Thus affecting the surrounding air into illumination.
This illumination of air and gases in a tube was done by Tesla.
Sort of a trait that set a few researchers to pull out the Tesla card for study.

Brilliant bit of writing and an excellent theorem for many puzzling cases. My own sighting of a huge and beautiful pulsating orb was a seminal influence on my own alter-ego heheh. On full pulse the orb looked as if molten metal were swirling around inside.

I could only come--ultimately--to two conclusions: Either I was a witness to a most rare, long-lasting, and truly awe-inspiring form of ball lightning or I had seen something alive, intelligent, and somehow organic and not-organic at the same time.

When I read the following from one your links:

It is possible that microscopic ball lightning may leave microscopic markings and residual effects similar to those caused by natural ball lightning, tornadoes and experimentally produced plasmoids.
www.lenr-canr.org...

The "experimentally produced plasmoids" part really caught my eye.

Plasma, it seems, has become a major player in our increasingly quantum world. Everyone from the MOD attributing many of the "unsolved" UFO cases to rare forms of ball lightning to NASA becoming increasingly interested in plasma physics for propulsion purposes.

The experimentally produced plasmoids have also been said to resemble life so much so that the possibility exists that there are plasma lifeforms living amongst us--most times outside the range of our senses.

Ball lightning by nature is a "plasma." So, all I'm wondering is that maybe in some cases we're dealing with something "mechanical" and electrical in nature and in other cases maybe we're dealing with an extenuation of that same "world" and coming across plasma lifeforms.

I make no claims for the following author's credentials, but I do find him an interesting read and intelligent enough.

Life-Like Qualities of Plasma: Bohm, a leading expert in twentieth century plasma physics, observed in amazement that once electrons were in plasma, they stopped behaving like individuals and started behaving as if they were a part of a larger and interconnected whole. Although the individual movements of each electron appeared to be random, vast numbers of electrons were able to produce collective effects that were surprisingly well organized and appeared to behave like a life form.

The plasma constantly regenerated itself and enclosed impurities in a wall in the same way that a biological organism, like the unicellular amoeba, might encase a foreign substance in a cyst. So amazed was Bohm by these life-like qualities that he later remarked that he frequently had the impression that the electron sea was "alive" and that plasma possessed some of the traits of living things.
www.unexplained-mysteries.com...

Most excellent post, Kandinsky, thanks for the trip.

reply to post by OneEleven

How can you argue one phenomenon that may or may not exist with another phenomenon that may or may not exist?

My argument was that phenomena exist and overlap with others. I acknowledged that BL is largely anecdotal when it comes to evidence and asked the question of why science accepts one and not the other.

BL is a term used to categorise a wide variety of phenomena thought to have meteorological and geological origins. Some forms of BL can be created in labs and even in a kitchen; they certainly exist. As I pointed out in the links, BL has been identified at microscopic levels and also in larger forms. Whether these are the outcome of identical forces is yet to be understood.

The overall point was that one group of witnesses to unknown phenomena are ignored in favour of another.

reply to post by The GUT

On full pulse the orb looked as if molten metal were swirling around inside.

Have you seen reactive metals like potassium and lithium being dropped in a beaker of water? Sometimes they don't react in an impressive way but take on a spherical appearance and move erratically across the surface. It calls to mind the described appearance and characteristics of some sightings...that's probably just me though.

Plasma, it seems, has become a major player in our increasingly quantum world. Everyone from the MOD attributing many of the "unsolved" UFO cases to rare forms of ball lightning to NASA becoming increasingly interested in plasma physics for propulsion purposes.

I'd like to see science whittle away at the prosaic causes of some UFO sightings and identify the ones they can. If BL or plasma forms come to explain some of them, it's a good thing. Hessdalen is an obvious example of balls of light and potentially plasma-based forms that seem to hint at a plausible explanation for a few sightings.

Ball lightning by nature is a "plasma." So, all I'm wondering is that maybe in some cases we're dealing with something "mechanical" and electrical in nature and in other cases maybe we're dealing with an extenuation of that same "world" and coming across plasma lifeforms.

This is what I was getting at. If science won't investigate sightings with a 'UFO taint,' there's a good chance we all miss out on discovering something new. There are only two examples involving tennis courts and yet I wonder if, under specific conditions, the metal fencing (chicken-wire) plays a part? The extension of this research would seek to give us an explanation for some reports and also focus in on those that can't be explained...as yet.

I'm glad you read the paper I linked to and I'll do the same by reading your link.

Get real guys, it's clear to see that the alien craft took the tennis court for something similar to the Nazca lines, which were in fact human made landing zones for another species of aliens who the original aliens didn't like and took to demolishing the "landing zone" or tennis court (depending on perspective), in order to prevent human contact. Why do I have to always point these so obvious conclusions out?

Thing is though, if the holes were patterned as is described, that would probably indicate some form of intelligence behind it, would it not?

Alright lets go way out here and explain this with a tractor beam.
Being above top secret and above the law the replacing any tennis court or
the culprit ship will not be determined. Who let these people lose to roam around
a free country has been suggested many times but not heard from in the free press.

Great find Kandinsky - and very well written too.

The sighting by the guards protecting the petrol tanks 400 meters away is what really got me about this. It seems that it could only be ball lightning if these guards were drunk and didn't know what they were talking about. Considering, what they are describing does not sound like the only matching "logical" explanation.

Maybe I overlooked something though. Anyhow, thanks for sharing this bit of information.

Tennis is bad on the hips, maybe this is evidence that E.Ts care about our well being.

Speaking of links: I'm still going through yours--great digging. Love this guy & a great story:

...Note the way that the meteor is a Biblical ‘ball of fire’ and yet the stone is described and analysed in a scientific fashion. If this had happened fifty years before Beachcombing’s guess is that the morals of Mr John Hubbard or better still his wife would have been called into question by the local press.
‘Whoring Publican’s Wife Judged by Fire from the Heavens…’
You get the idea.

(Wonderful 272) On 4 July 1803, a ball of fire struck the White Bull public house, kept by John Hubbard, at East Norton [UK]. The chimney was thrown down by it , the roof in part torn off, the window shattered to atoms, and the dairy, pantry etc converted into a heap of rubbish.

It appeared like a luminous ball of  considerable magnitude ; and on coming into contact with: the house, exploded with a great noise and a very oppressive sulphurous smell.

Some fragments of this ball were found near the spot, and have been subject to chemical analysis by a gentleman in that neighbourhood, who has found them to consist of nearly one half silicious clay, 35 parts of oxidated iron, 12 of magnesia, and a small portion of nickel, with some sulphur.
www.strangehistory.net...

Dr. Beachcombing seems to be a superior find (Thanks!) and his "…library of the damned" contains--it seems--voluminous files in the following intriguing categories:

1) Burning Libraries: books and texts that we have lost with a supplement on Invisible Libraries, books and texts that we imagined.

2) Cobblers: widely believed historical myths

3) Forgotten Kingdoms: the countries/states/ regni that time forgot.

4) Hinge Moments: the moments when history changed.

5) WIBT: ‘Wish I’d been there’ – moments that Beachcombing would have given up everything but his wedding ring to see.

6) Wrong Place: Exotic finds - things and people from afar.

7) Wrong Time: Harbingers and fossils, things and people that turn up in surprising time periods.

8 ) WtH: ‘What the Hell!’ My God! or even I don’t understand this reference AT ALL. Please help.

9) Rogue Researchers: Academics and scholars who use unconventional techniques.

10) Weird Wars: Soldiers and generals and mayhem in history.

11) Images: Striking but little known photographs and paintings that bring the past to life.
www.strangehistory.net...

I don't have to argue about ball lightning with anyone as I have seen it, about ten years ago. In my case it was not micro, but big and noisy, not white but red to orange, and not particularly evenly round, more like a flaming sun, and of football size.
It came after a sudden and very local huge deluge, and AFTER a tremendous thunderclap and passed over my head at around 80°. You could argue though that it was not ball lightning as it was not of a brightness related to the idea of it being a plasma, but then this thing was big, where most anecdotes describe something small and white, so size and colour is the difference in what I saw. It moved horizontally and passed out of sight.

reply to post by smurfy
Must of been a TRULY hair-raising experience har har. Very cool smurfy I felt like I was there.

I wonder if this energy can be harnessed? One of the outstanding, for me, facets of the Tehran UFO case was the reported behavior of some of the ufos.

…In the October 1, 1976 issue of the Iran Times from Washington, D.C., an apparent firsthand account from Lt. Jafari, the pilot of the second jet interceptor, was published, based on a tape of the actual pursuit.

The aircraft flew towards Tehran at over the speed of sound. Jafari said that on seeing him coming, the UFO increased its speed. 'It was half the size of the moon as seen from earth,' he said. 'It was radiating violet, orange, and white light about three times as strong as moonlight.'"…

…Azarbarzin independently confirmed Pirouzi's statement. He said they concluded that the UFO had deliberately jammed both the aircraft and control tower electronics. About the objects that seemed to shoot out of the UFO, Azarbarzin said:

"The pilots called them fireballs, but we all thought that they were very powerful waves of electromagnetism, which jammed all the electronics starting from VHF, UHF, fire control system, gun radar, gun communications, everything. Everything was gone."…
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by smurfy


its was looking for a place too,
go to ground,
earth ground.
were u wearing rubber boots?

or a chain-mail,
suit?

I want to be on your team Kandinsky I subscribe to the same wave of thought as far as UFO's are concerned, in that I believe many authentic sightings have most probably been ball lightning. As you said, much of the history for BL and UFO's is anecdotal evidence, which does not make for very good scientific proof. But catching lightning in a bottle isn't easy; getting said proof of something that is exceedingly rare and happens at, well, pretty much the speed of light, seems near impossible. However, with more and more people carrying a camera with them at all times (cell phone) the more opportunities we have to capture the "rare" occurrences in life, and the more we'll be able to study and understand them...this is only my second reply on ats, my first being on another ufo thread- www.abovetopsecret.com... which seemed to me more like a case of ball lightning from the descriptions, only it was said to have crossed most of the united states in a half hour. I've read many of the reports and eyewitness accounts about BL, how it can range greatly in size, shape, color, velocity, and motion, but could it travel as far and as fast as witnessed in 1962? I will be the first to say I have no clue, but after watching this awesome video of the auroras from space it wouldn't take a great leap in imagination to believe that mother nature could whip up a little ball of light (plasma? I assure you I have no scientific background whatsoever) and toss it around this great big sphere, much as it can whip up tornados, hurricanes, and other vortexes such as volcanic smoke rings. Anyhow, great stuff Kandinsky. Thanks for sharing.