The Wild World of Ball Lightning
- mooreacorrigan
- Jun 19
- 2 min read
Curiosity #4
Reposted from Substack June 10, 2025
I was first introduced to the rare meteorological phenomena of ball lightning through my interest in ghost stories. I am firmly a skeptic (or a Shaniac, iykyk1), so I am always interested in the more natural or scientific explanations given for supernatural occurrences2. Along with swamp gas, ball lightning is a common ‘scientific’ theory to explain paranormal and supernatural sightings, particularly floating apparitions.
Per Encyclopedia Brittanica3, ball lightning is defined as “a rare aerial phenomenon in the form of a luminous sphere that is generally several centimetres in diameter. It usually occurs near the ground during thunderstorms, in close association with cloud-to-ground lightning. It may be red, orange, yellow, white, or blue in colour and is often accompanied by a hissing sound and distinct odour. It normally lasts only a few seconds, usually moving about and then vanishing suddenly, either silently or explosively.”
The earliest known account4 of this phenomena in English comes from the twelfth century, where reportedly a fiery ball of light that drifted down from the sky to the river near London. It was also giving off a strange white trail.
There have even been cases where the ball lightning kills someone, as is in the case of Russian scientist Georg Richmann5, who was reportedly struck in the head by a “globe of blue and whitish fire” while conducting an experiment in his St. Petersburg laboratory. Some claim that ball lightning can travel through walls without damaging anything and float along anything from a building to an airplane.
On the other hand, some scientists claim that ball lightning itself may not really exist. Although there are plenty of eyewitness accounts, there is no specific evidence and scientists have struggled to create the phenomena even in a controlled setting.
Do I want ball lightning to be real? Of course! But we will need to keep an eye on the current research6 until we can say for sure.
Thank you for learning with me!
1 Just kidding. No gatekeeping here. The term Shaniac is from the beloved YouTube shows Buzzfeed Unsolved and Ghost Files.
2 See this fantastic video by Jenny Nicholson about one of the wildest ghost hunting TV shows of all time, starring a psychic and a home repair person.
3 The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "ball lightning". Encyclopedia Britannica, 24 May. 2025, https://www.britannica.com/science/ball-lightning.
4 An article on the event from physics.org.
5 https://cen.acs.org/environment/atmospheric-chemistry/What-is-ball-lightning-reality-or-myth/102/i12
6 An article on an interesting mathematical theory surrounding the phenomena, circa 2015.
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