October 29, 2021 • 48 mins
Have you ever followed a ghostly light into the woods? For many, it sounds like a story straight out of the world of folklore -- yet these strange lights have been reported across the world. In Mexico, they're sometimes considered evidence of witchcraft. So what exactly are these things? Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Nolan. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Today's episode is follow up of
sorts fellas. We are fresh off our dive into the
(00:49):
rise of witchcraft. That witchcraft is on the rise, it's
just how do you define it? Everybody? Check out that show. Uh.
And we're also doing a follow up to an earl elier.
In your earlier episode, we did on something kind of
like cryptozoology. It could it could conceivably fall in the
world of cryptods. It's inspired by a letter we received
(01:13):
earlier this year from m Z m Z. I hope
you're listening because this one is especially for you. You
introduced us to the idea of Brujas de fuego or
flame witches. Uh, and we would like to with your help.
M Z introduce this to everybody else, to your fellow
conspiracy realist, in your own words. So here are the facts. So,
(01:38):
as m Z writes, the story begins in a rural,
small farm mountain town in southern Chihuahua, Mexico. I grew
up spending my summers in the town. Was located not
too far from a native people that used to live
on the side of the mountains with adobe walls to
house their caves. And if you can imagine large boulders
trees you could climb like stairwells at a large open field.
(02:00):
It was a cool place I got to explore and
climb those trees. Um does sound like a pretty amazing place.
And then m Z continues, from what I could narrow
it down to, it was a Chira Chira Kahua Apache tribe,
and from what my grandparents told me, one of my
grandmothers was from the tribe. During my exploration, myself and
a kid I was wandering around with both saw something strange.
(02:22):
Imagine seeing something straight out of Majora's mask. That's the
Zelda game. Everybody sure you played it. Only this thing
from Major's Mask was inside an oblong giant cave with
an opening, and it's just staring back at us. We
shortly took off running after that and lived to tell
the tale thankfully. Yes, yeah, that's that's the spoiler alert.
(02:45):
M Z does survive to not only tell the tale,
but to write the email. I put in a little
picture of Majora's masks since I was unfamiliar with the game,
and it's a pretty weird thing to see in a
cave if you look at is. There's so many different
creatures in that game. I'm wondering what exact referring to. Yeah, yeah,
(03:07):
being unfamiliar with the game, I just I may have
some editorial bias. I just picked one that had really
big eyes that would look kind of spooky if you
saw them in a dark cave. Anyhow, So if you're
familiar with that, you know what em Z is talking about.
M Z continues and says, the people in the town
talk about the witches that live out in those mountains
(03:27):
and rumors of skin walkers as well, with one famous
story being about two men who shot one of these
things and when they found the skin walker it was
still half wolf and half human female. And there's strange
activity reported at night. But m Z says Here's where
(03:48):
it gets crazy. One of my aunts, who is currently
in her mid sixties, told me about a ball of
flame that was floating out in the mountains. When she
asked what it was, the locals told her it was
a flame, which okay, uh So now we fast forward
to about seven years ago UM, when this person writing
in went back to the same town UM due to
(04:11):
their grandfather passing away. UM, and K goes on. I
meet a guy around my age that worked for my
uncle as a ranch hand. One night, we were drinking
and eating some fresh butchered cow and the best kind UM,
and knowing the area, I asked him if he had
seen anything like my aunt had, and he told me yes,
he had seen the same thing UM out in my
(04:32):
uncle's ranch. Over the years, I've periodically checked for anything
resembling just that a flame which and there are a
few videos going viral in Mexico showing just that UM
and then MK links to them below. So strangely enough,
I've seen something slightly resembling these flame which is out
in the middle of nowhere in Marfa, Texas. Could it
be that the lights are covens of witches that have
(04:55):
mastered this form of flight and magic or is it
just false reports? Um. Personally, I've yet to meet anyone
in the States that knows of such a thing. And
if you want to find more sources on this, you
would have to navigate the WEAB in Spanish, and I
will link below what I have found in MK. Does
just that this is insanely incredibly fascinating stuff. Yeah, it
(05:17):
is pretty fascinating, and and thanks for this letter. First
you've shouted out the Marpha lights. We did an earlier
episode on what are sometimes called ghost lights, and in
case of the Marpha lights, we actually arrived at an
okay explanation, a possible mundane explanation. But uh, it turns
(05:39):
out that while many folks in the US may not
have read or seen Spanish reporting on this phenomenon, it's
very much a thing, not just in Mexico, but in
places like Trinidad and Tobago as well. People have been
seeing inexplicable fireball like stuff in the sky in Mexico.
(05:59):
It's why bidely known and these videos, as MC mentioned,
As you mentioned, they have gone viral. If anything, it's
strange that it's not something people talk about more often
in English media, right sort of like Mexico Zone of Silence.
You can see any number of videos on YouTube right
(06:20):
now purporting to be footage of these flame which is
and it's important to note that these alleged sightings do
not themselves look human. They don't look humanoid. You don't
see limbs, right, but they don't always look the same.
They don't always look like the same orb or same pattern,
you know. So today's question what are they? Here's where
(06:43):
it gets crazy. Yes, there there are so many possibilities here.
And if we take it back to the Marpha lights.
When we discussed those, we talked about atmospheric distortion and
distance and how lights that are far away on a
flat plane can actually appear to hover above that flat
plane when you're looking at them out in the horizon.
(07:04):
And here we find several possibly naturally occurring things that
can exist as like why people are seeing these flame
witches or something like that. And one of those explanations
would be something that sounds out of this world. The
will oh the wisp whisp wisp wisps. Yeah, fancy name.
Get this ignis fatuus with two us at the end.
(07:28):
I don't know why that tickles me so it's it's
like it sounds like a Hogwarts farting spell, right, Yeah,
like it's ignited flatulence. Yes, uh so we did talk
about this a little bit in the earlier episode we
mentioned on on ghost Lights. It's the will of the
Wisp is really weird because, as we'll find today, there
(07:53):
are a lot of explanations that sound good, but none
of them at this boy quite explain everything a hundred percent.
It's generally accepted that the will of the Whisp is
a flame like phosphorescence that is created when plants decay
in marshy areas and they emit gas, and under the
(08:15):
right circumstances, some of this gas can automatically night when
it comes into contact with oxygen in the air. In
earlier eras though, people were well aware of this, and
the anthropomorphized that the whisp that like will in the
Will of the Wisp is a dude. It's a it's
a creature. It's a sprite like a an elf or
(08:38):
a spirit of some sort that is trying to lure
unworried travelers off their path into the marsh, usually from
mischievous or downright evil purposes. It's so funny. I always
assumed will of the Whisp was referring to to sort
of like a set like a you know, like the
will of nature, like the will of the wind, or
like like like the idea of since quality of these
(09:01):
natural phenomenon. Yeah. Yeah, and I think it works on
both of those levels, you know, because the one of
the spooky things about these is that where they were
found across the world, there's often essentience or an intelligence
attributed to them. And the term whisp, by the way,
is just it's like a kind of torch. It's like
(09:23):
a bundle of sticks tied together. It's not supernatural, you know,
had whisp. This reminds me of, you know, where where
the term Jack o lantern comes from. It was actually
maybe a historical figure at the very least, a kind
of stock character named Jack who is this drunken kind
of letcheris dude in Ireland, and he was referred to
as Jack of the Lantern or Jack o lantern. M
(09:48):
yeah it should be now from now on, let's all
call it Jacks of the Lantern. Yes, yes, that's our
new club. We're front for the pumpkin industry. Uh, the
Checks of the Lantern. The ancient order thereof Yeah, it's
it's true, and there's a similar kind of naming structure
there too, So I'm it's fascinating that you can kind
(10:11):
of tell these names come from a similar sort of era,
a similar sort of time, and native populations in the
America's had stories about things like this too. They with
like before European contact, other cultures had this stuff going on.
(10:31):
It's very important to acknowledge that when it While the
term will of the whisp that we're using comes from
European folklore, those pre existent beliefs or stories about something
similar in the America's continued to date, and in Louisiana
and France we see this almost the exact same thing,
(10:54):
described as the full or fi fill. And as a
non native French speaker, apologies for the accident there. Maybe
before we continue, we should talk a little bit about
what the will of the wisp is. Generally, we've given
you this the best scientific guess right now. But if
(11:16):
you were just out in the woods, you have found
yourself in your swamp and you encounter will of the whisp,
let's let's describe how that encounter goes. What happens? Yes, Well,
much like the marpha lights and other visual phenomena dealing
with light kind of near the ground. You will see something,
probably in a dimly lit area near the swamp in
(11:38):
the forest. You can see it just off a bit
in the distance, maybe across a water or something like that,
and it appears that it's either coming towards you or leaving.
That's generally the way it's reported by by people who
have experienced a Will of the wisp encounter well. And
when when you think about it in pop culture, it's
usually like something that somebody might chase and maybe it
(11:59):
leads them where, like to a secret entrance or you know,
some sort of treasure, or it could just lead them
into like a cliff that that tumbles them into the
swamps or the side of their death or their body.
You know. It's another one that and this is um
This is a commonly reported thing even with UAP sightings,
especially back in the day if you think back to
(12:20):
the Rendels from forest incident. The the belief is that
these lights are are guiding you somewhere, right, not always,
but in the moment, like there is this light, it
is going somewhere. I would like to follow that to
see what's where it's going or what's happening. And I
think that's where you get a lot of these legends of,
like you said, Ben, being led to someone's resting place
(12:42):
where like a spirit is taking you there, if that's
what you believe it is, or you know, even in
some cases an extra terrestrial craft or being leading you somewhere. Yeah,
and this movement is something we didn't really talk about
in the previous episode on ghost Lights, so we are
going to explore that today. We shall also say that
(13:04):
Massachusetts has similar folk tales surrounding the concept of something
like flame which is or will of the wisp, and
there's is very location dependent. Uh. Most of those reports
come from an infamous area called the Bridgewater Triangle, which
not to be to Glengarry glen Ross always be closing
(13:26):
about it. But we do have a podcast. We have
a podcast on on that. Not um, not stuff they
will want you to know. But Matt, it is a
show that you and Aaron Makeey have worked on. Correct. Yeah,
a whole bunch of people on on our team. It's
called Bridgewater and within the Bridgewater Triangle there in Massachusetts,
which is a pretty stark triangle when you see it
(13:49):
written out in places, but I would say it's way
more of just an area because you've got the Hawka
Mock Swamp out there, which is a real place. Um,
some strange stones like Dighton Rock and in particular Freetown
State Forest is like one of those places where if
you find yourself there, especially if you're alone, uh, you
(14:09):
may experience some weird things because there have been numerous
reported sightings of things like puckwags or lights and all
kinds of strange stuff that happens out there. Yeah, and
a lot of people in the US are going to
be more familiar with those older European descriptions or more
familiar with stuff like the Marfa lights or maybe things
(14:31):
they are reported in places like Bridgewater. But let's pause
for a word from our sponsors. We'll dance off into
a marsh of our own, and then we'll return to
South America and Mexico. So here's the amazing thing. M Z. Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Trinidad,
(14:58):
and Tobago all have their own versions of this phenomenon,
and some of them have a lot in common with
the stories that you have encountered in Mexico. In Brazil,
it's called well translates to like the fiery serpent, the
what tata or some some derivation thereof, and that has
that has a really interesting legend because the idea is
(15:21):
that this serpent shines so bright that it can only
see at night. It's one of those it's where my
sunglasses at night type cryptid And uh, now I think,
but when did that song come out? I where my
sun something? Okay, so we can agree it's about that
Brazilian cryptid. Right, yeah, it's from the It's from the
(15:44):
perspective of that fiery serpent. Uh. In Colombia. What's interesting
is that their version of the Will of the Whisp,
or what we call it in the US, the La
Candela is also thought to be something like a witch.
It's kind of like that story The Ring where spoiler alert,
it turns out that the monster is the ghost of
(16:06):
an evil person. This, the La Candelisa, is the ghost
of an evil grandmother, like a malevolent spirit that was,
you know, basically just making the logical transition from being
a terrible person to being a terrible ghost. Well said,
this reminds me of the Will of the Whisp that
(16:27):
existed in the old game ultimonline. I know you played
it out there Ultimon online. Yeah you did, year old.
But it was such a good game, Yes they did. Alright, alright,
it's a great game. But like michelob Ultra, is that
what you're talking, I'm trolling you. I'm aware of the game,
but I have not played it. But in this game,
(16:48):
like in Dungeons and Dragons in a couple other places,
the will of the Will of the Wisp is a
magic wielder, somebody who can some creature that can cast
all kinds of dangerous spells. Uh. And I'm just imagining
that being close to this version. This is interesting because
we've we've often found that folklore tends to have a
(17:09):
grain of truth in in the in the origin or
the genesis of the story. So the full story or
the short story version of Columbia's Will of the Whist
for Columbia's Flame, which is that it's the ghost of
an evil grandmother. Why is she evil? She raised her
children and grandchildren to be thieves and murderers, and so
(17:30):
karma caught up with her and she was punished by
being damned to wander the world surrounded in flames making trouble,
and it makes me wonder if it is somehow based
on a real life occurrence in the past, Like if
there really was some clan of of murderers and ne'er
(17:51):
do wells, could they have been so um influential on
on the community that they became the basis of this
story this way to explain this otherwise inexplicable thing. Maybe
there's no proof. Argentina and Uruguay have myths about something
called the lose Mala or evil light, and it's like
(18:14):
Will of the Whisp but evil. It's like, if Will
of the Whisp is Mario, this is Warrio. Does that work? Yeah?
I think so. I imagine that the potential for the
Will of the Whisp to be an enchanting kind of
thing that feels childlike in a lot of ways, Like, oh,
(18:36):
look at that little light out there, flickering. I wonder
what it wants. In this case, it's do not go
out there, don't follow it, don't even look at it,
just close your eyes and move on. I mean, I
don't know about you. Maybe my childlike spirit has like
been drained for me, you know, just from a lifetime
of bitterness and disappointment. But I don't know that I
would go trapesing around Marcia's following blinking lights just it's
(18:58):
willy nilly nose, sir uh and not not. I honestly,
I don't want to sound jaded, but after the last
couple of years, I feel like if I saw if
I saw something like this, and I have seen something
like this in the Everglades, or at least I saw
some lights I couldn't explain, but I feel like now
(19:19):
if I saw something like this, I would think, one
more thing. I've already I've got so many things I
have to do and think about. I'm not I'm just
not going to think about that. I would tell the
will of the Whisp to get on the schedule and like,
come by Thursday at a specific time. Dang you guys.
(19:41):
If I saw a light like that, I am trapesing
through a forest. I don't care. I Am just gonna hop,
skip and jump until I find where that thing went.
Nobody traps is like Matt Frederick. I do like the
use of the word scrapes here for sure. Yeah, I
don't know, it is it is and it and it
also paid to very specific picture because you're not as
(20:03):
far off from from null. Uh In that trapes means
to like move reluctantly or move like you're tired. Yeah,
I'm sorry, I'm You're not a good tripe. You're not
(20:23):
a trapser at all. I'm the trapser, You're the prancer.
I like our ambulatory nicknames we've got here. Uh so, yes,
this this thing you can understand how if if you
see it, you would want to have an explanation. When
people are confronted with things they cannot readily explain, they
(20:44):
typically tend to fall back on their own cultural framework.
That's just how the world works in Trinidad. What's even
more fascinating here is that they also have the name
of the fire They also have the idea of the fireball,
which they call it something different, but it's totally the fireball,
which it is a sorceress with the ability to take
(21:06):
on the form of a bright flame at night. It's
also a little more aggressive than it's Mexican counterpart, because
this fireball which will enter homes through any gap that
can find, and it will drink the blood of its victims.
So yeah, so how does that story come about? Does
somebody does somebody see a bright light as they're falling
(21:27):
asleep and then they wake up and their partner has
been exanguinated or something like That's that's a pretty wild one.
I'm trying to put together the flames and the power
of the flames somehow with drinking blood or consuming blood.
I'm not sure how those go together, right, but I'm interested. Yeah,
(21:47):
same and there There are similar myths in Asia and
across Ociana. They're all distinct in their own way, but
they have these commonalities. A light that seems to pulse
with some sort of sickly glow, that sometimes seems to
approach or recede, that seems to move away from people
(22:09):
when they approach in a way that is sometimes interpreted
as leading them somewhere for good or for ill. And
even though these things don't all have the same appearance,
they don't all have like the same pulsing or patterns
or oscillation or whatever, they share those those commonalities across
the world, which is a really important fact for us
(22:32):
because it means that people aren't making it up, you
know what I mean. This isn't one town somewhere that
needed some tourist bucks for the more skeptical in the crowd. Obviously,
the explanation is going to feel apparent. You're gonna say
swamp Gas, right, swamp Gas. I know that somebody's street name.
It's gotta be. There's gotta be a guy called a
(22:58):
street name. Maybe it's sort of like a grandpa nickname,
you know, old Swam or like an old an old
like tavern regular. You know, that's old swamp Gass over there.
He he spends a mighty fine yarn because of that
legendary night when he just couldn't stop farting. Old Greg
the swamp gas, and he's like, guys, my name is Greg.
(23:23):
So it's true, though, like any part of the natural
world with the right conditions can in theory create ignis
fatus due to organic compounds like phosphine, diphosphane, and methane.
When they decay, they can create photon emissions. Earlier we
(23:43):
mentioned subsubstances ignite on contact with oxygen in the air.
That's our diphosphine, that's our phosphine. And it only takes
a little bit. You get a lot of You got
you get a lot of spooky for your buck with
these because just a small amount could something like a
glowing or It's ephemeral. It's not gonna be around all
(24:05):
day or all night, but it could create something like this.
In contrast, you probably need much more methane. Reminds me
of sightings of ball lightning, which I still have never
seen one day. It's tough to find it. It's tough
to find it, you know. It's kind of a rare pokemon.
I only much about Pokemon is that they are rare ones. Right,
(24:27):
Oh yeah, I gotta catch them all. Okay, there we go. Yeah.
I love that you're mentioned ball lightning because ball lightning
is usually associated with thunderstorms right and off, and people
aren't always reporting on the weather or the atmospheric conditions
(24:49):
when they see a will of the whisp because understandably
something very freaky and strange has just happened to them.
But you're right, mat ball ball lightning that was called
a ball of the lightning. Ball lightning is often brought
up as one of these scientific explanations for the possibility
of these glowing orbs, these mysterious things, and this is
(25:12):
an impressive idea. People proposed the swamp gas theory way
earlier than a lot of us would assume in the
late sixteenth century, and there was this guy named Ludwig
Lavatar who wrote a book with a ridiculously long, amazingly
fun title of ghost in Sprites, Woking by Nights and
(25:37):
of Strange Noises, creaks and Sundry for warnings which prommonly
happened before the death of men, great slaughters and alterations
of kingdoms. That's the subtitle. I don't know at that point.
By the time you get that far, I'm sorry. What
what was it of of creaky's it's spelled cr c
(26:00):
k E s sings? What go bump in the night
and make just go? That's wild man? What must what
must the text of the actual book itself be like?
If the title is, oh, we can pull a quote?
Do you want to? You want to read a quote?
Here's what I'll send in the chat. Somebody else give
(26:21):
this one a shot. At least maybe we can. We
can split it up. Many times, candles and small fires
appear in the night and seems to run up and
it down. Sometime these fires go alone in the night season. Sorry,
(26:43):
we're in it now, we're in it. We gotta we
gotta finish it. This this is well, this is the part.
This is the part where he's talking about the swampcast
theory in the night season and put such as see
them as they travel by night in a great fear.
But these things and many such like I have their
natural causes. Natural philosophers right that the thick exhalations are
(27:10):
rise out of the earth and are kindled minus full
of sulfur and brimstone. If the air enter onto it
as it layeth in the holes and veins of the earth,
will kindle on fear and strive to get out. Excellent, excellent,
(27:31):
good lord. Okay, I just I like curative because in
that in that voice is a wonderful performance. By the way,
it feels like there's a crowd of people in a church,
some weird church, or immediately following with and also with you.
You know, I heard I heard a distinct tone of
(27:54):
all Papa. Remember, will always love all Papa. He's done
a lot for the show. Yes, So what we're seeing
here is and and the spelling is not the same
as the spelling of English words. But what we're seeing
is this idea that it is geographically dependent, that's somewhere
(28:21):
under the earth there might be minds that contain gases.
They're not sure what gases, but they're guessing sulfur, brimstone.
Those are scary things, right and uh smelly and smelly, yes,
And when the air goes into these mines, it will
catch on fire, and because fire rises, it will try
(28:43):
to seek and escape avenue. So what you're seeing is
like this kind of fire from the ground. Do you
think it's any coincidence that things like sulfur and brimstone
are associated with the fires of hell? No, I don't.
I think that's a I think that's a purposeful choice.
In fact, brim stone is the same thing as sulfur.
It's synonymous and it so it smells. Also, correct me
(29:09):
on this if I'm off base, But I believe that
because lightning can create the odor of sulfur dioxide, and
because lightning was thought to be punishment from the gods
in ancient religions, sulfur is indicative of divine retribution. So
maybe maybe the idea was that if one encounters a demon,
(29:33):
you're you're smelling you're smelling the the smite that God
or you know, some divine entity put on them long ago,
the site that God hath smoked the smite that God
hath smoked, ha smelt it because he hath deult it
all rise. So I'm just staying in the continent at
(29:57):
least the fifth reference swap gas, you can't really get
away from it. Yeah, And if we accept the swamp
gas explanation for will of the whisp or m Z
for flame, which is in Mexico, we can see the
explanations pretty solid. But interestingly enough, it also gives us
an idea. I guess about why these orbs seem to
(30:21):
move of their own volition, why they seem to lead
people astray, to retreat from folks, or to guide them
towards something. It could be that if you are in
pursuit of one of these things, your movement is agitating
the air, and this stuff is gaseous, so if it
is swamp gas, so that movement is pushing the thing,
(30:43):
like physically pushing it through the air, or it is
agitating it in such a way that it disperses or
even causing it to follow you. If somehow you're moving
the air in such a way that the gas then
moves towards you, who maybe And so people in the
modern day started experimenting with different variations of the swamp
(31:08):
gas idea. They wanted to apply science to the supernatural.
We're gonna pause for a moment for work from our sponsors,
and we'll returned to tell you their results, which might
surprise you. All Right, we're back in night and in
(31:30):
two thousand and eight. There were a couple of other
experiments as well, but these are two of the big ones.
These chemists and these geologists were trying to recreate a
will of the wisp in a laboratory setting. If you
believe in the core, you're like, well, this is like
sum Many a demon. What what is wrong with you? Dude? Uh?
They managed to create They managed to create something though
(31:53):
both times they managed to create something. But here's the thing,
it didn't quite fit the bill. It didn't white function
the way that these things do in the wild. British
geologist named Alan Mills was able to mix phosphine crude
phosphine with natural gas in and he created a cool, green,
(32:17):
glowing cloud. That's the other thing about will of the
whisp that may differentiate it from flame, which is those
things don't create heat, which is doubly spooky. Right, and
his Mills, his green glowing cloud kind of worked, but
it didn't seem like a will of the Wisp and
the wild. It was a really farty one. Honestly, like
(32:38):
a smoke monster. Right when you say cool green glowing cloud,
I picture like a almost like a cartoon anthropomorphic cloud
with like sunglasses sunglasses. It's uh yes, uh. This this
thing emitted a ton of smoke and it stanked a
high heaven in the In the experiment in two thousand
(33:00):
and eight, these two Italian chemists tried something very similar.
They wanted to recreate Alan Mills's experiment, and they did
so by mixing phosphing with just nitrogen and air. They
also produced a green cloud, and they took their explanation
a few steps further. One of the objections is that
in both cases, these are green lights, and they're not
(33:22):
usually reported as being green or they're brighter or they're
blue or something like that. And these scientists concluded, well,
they said, you know, humans aren't that great at differentiating
color very well and low light, which is true unless
you have, you know, some equipment with you. And then
they also said, I don't know about this one, but
(33:42):
they also said, the right environmental conditions can make you
know a smoke and smells less easy to detect. Yeah.
I mean, if you're an open air and let's say
it's across a pond or something, you're not gonna detect
the smoke maybe the same, especially in low light. Yeah, yeah,
and I see that. And I also see that it's
(34:05):
possible that if you're in an area where these things
routinely occur, it would already smell pretty bad because the
gases out there. Right. So these these folks all later
concluded it was possible that a will of the wisp
in the wild, or a flame, which could be what's
called the cold flame, these luminescent halos. They become visible
(34:28):
when certain compounds are heated up but not quite to
their ignition point, and they create this blue flame. The
problem is, no one knows for sure whether these cold
flames occur naturally. All they know is that the compounds
that could create these things are products of organic decay.
(34:51):
So if you're in a marshy, swampy place, you're you're
probably gonna run into this stuff. The question is like,
how do you how do you like my fire? In
that regard, So look, I have to I have to
stop us here for one second, Ben, you said the
gases out there. Um, I just had a vision of
(35:13):
a movie poster for a show about a Will of
the Wisp, and it just says, the gases out there,
that's the tagline. We've got that old man at some
bar on the edge of the swamp just saying I
sink it like no one would believe men exactly, And
(35:38):
and then there's another mundane explanation, but again it's not
quite a perfect fit. There are some solid materials like
some ceramics, crystals like courts, or interestingly enough bones that
can accumulate an electric charge when they're placed under mechanical stress.
So this means in theory, some of these lame which
(36:00):
situations might be caused by stuff in the ground, by
tectonic action that gets exerted on materials. So we we
talked about this as a possible explanation our ghost Lights episode.
For example, Theoretically, if you're in an area and there
are rocks that contain a lot of courts, maybe they
could exhibit pisio electricity under the right environmental conditions or
(36:25):
geologic conditions. But the problem with this is this phenomenon
has also not been reliably observed as a cause of
will of the wisp in the wild, and if it
were a thing that was actually happening rather than just
theoretically possible, then it would be one of the easiest
to predict, would it not, because you would just sort
(36:46):
of go to where the right stones were, the right
ancient stones, and then you would wait for a tremor
or an earthquake and just see what pops up. I
think the coinciding of these two things is like the
perfect storm of a willow of the whisp, a place
where there are crystals, like there's a lot of courts
in the ground. There's also some uh, you know activity occurring,
(37:11):
tremors do occur regularly, and you've got swamp gas. Put
it all together, it's the will of the whisp factory.
There we go. Or a super wisp sounds like a
delightful crispy chocolate bar from like Germany or something. You know,
it's got like air bubbles in it, you know, I
just think it sounds delightful to me. Or those aerrated chips,
(37:36):
the air puffed chips. Here's the thing. When we know
that those explanations are the best scientific guess is right,
but still maybe don't explain every sighting, just refine. Let's
look at the more esoteric ideas. There probably is not
a sentient force guiding these lights in most cases, unless
(37:59):
you cow the person pursuing the light they're chasing after
this delicate, ephemeral mix of gas, So your movements through
the air could be disturbing or guiding it. And it's
definitely an ancient phenomenon. People are not making this up.
Legends from various civilizations were just they were a way
for folks to explain what was happening through their own
(38:20):
cultural lens. And perhaps the most important thing is, like
so much folklore and legend, these stories might not have
a ton of what we consider modern scientific proof, but
they do contain practical advice. A lot of folklore is
mainly about practical advice, and this could be neatly summed
up as uh and I think we said we said
(38:40):
a version of this earlier in the show. If you
see one of these bad boys, don't touch it, don't
approach it. Treat it like a wild animal, you know
what I mean. Be glad it's there and get out
of its way. Chase it down, Uh, prance towards it
and bring home the treasure or the mystic relic or
whatever that's that's that's like found clutched in the hand
(39:03):
of a of a decaying you know, skeleton. And if
if you're chasing a flame, which the important note met
in in some stories, you need a child to successfully pursue,
it has to be a child following it. So we
all have one inside of us in here. A child. Yes,
(39:23):
there's a child inside all of us. Just say that. Okay,
I thought you were pointing to a box. All right,
no child. So what I wanted to talk about really
quickly here, guys, did you see some of the videos
that m Z referred to that showed these phenomena. I
only saw two that I I mean, I was perplexed by.
(39:48):
I think, Yeah, there's one in particular, where it's footage
that's very close to a fireball that starts on the
ground as like it looks like a fire where the
fuel is on the ground level, and then it starts
to rise up into the air and becomes a ball
(40:09):
of fire and floats away. Now, to my eyes, when
I look at that, it just it looks like something
that is very light and flammable, that much like an
ember like any ember, as it catches fire and the
air is being essentially moved upwards and rising with the heat,
it just floats away because it's so light. Um. But
(40:34):
people were fully convinced that that was some type of
human or you know, humanoid catching on fire and flying
away like a flame. Which I just wondered what you
guys thought about that particular footage. I was fascinating too,
because it seemed more active than a lot of like
the stereotypical ideas of a will of the whisp, right, Yeah,
(40:58):
I mean it looks very much as we're we're rewatching
this together, folks, and it looks very much like a
like the action you would see with a flame propelled balloon.
It's like it almost looks like the hot air balloon
principle at work here, you know. Yeah, but nothing is
visible above the actual flames, right, No, yeah, nothing there.
(41:22):
I'm just I'm wondering if it does look Yeah it is.
You guys seen the Miyazaki film Howel's Moving Castle. Yeah,
you know, you know the flame demon that's in that
that that that that that sort of propels the castle. Um,
what's his name? He's voiced by the delightful Billy crystal Um.
(41:43):
But he sometimes this thing kind of reminds me of
that character in a funny way. Yeah, but you're right,
it looks like maybe it's it almost looks like it's
something on fire, like paper or something. And then and
then right it's and then it's getting the lift from
the updraft that it's creating as it's burning itself up,
you know, speaking of Zelda, that's the thing you can
(42:03):
do in Zelda, at least the more recent Zell the games,
that you can set the grass on fire and it
creates an updraft that allows you to use your little
paraglider to like, you know, get a boost. Nice, but
all your weapons break and such a counter Yeah yeah,
so but by my point about this one, guys, it's
(42:23):
just the fact that our our position as the camera, right,
that's what we are seeing very yeah, very close to
this action, as though it reminds me of filming fireworks
or something like that. Same. I thought of that too,
you know, because it's such a it's a shot that
(42:46):
it's a short clip, but it's a shot that catches
all of the action, you know what I mean, which
means perhaps this thing was there for a while and
they noticed it and had time to compose a pretty
a shot. But then also they smoothly trace it going
into the sky, or it was something they sent on
fire on purpose and they were surprised or expected. So
(43:10):
it's like one day videos, you know what I mean.
Wild animals don't wear a lot of hats, is the thing.
But but the but that's it is fascinating because the
truth of the flame, which is idea or will of
the wisp idea, has yet to be fully explained. Science
has some really good guesses, and these guesses are treated
(43:34):
as a certitude. We know this is an ancient phenomenon,
but we're still not able to explain every single sighting
out there, meaning that on the most like based logical level,
we have to assume there's almost certainly more than one
cause at play. On the supernatural side, traveling through the
(43:56):
air if you have magical powers, right, I I'm interested
to hear you guys. Take you could choose between beat
on fire or flying with like a broom. Which way
would you go? Depend on what you're trying to do,
because I feel like flying on fire is not very
good for secrecy. Yeah, it would be awesome if it
(44:19):
was like a teleportation with flames, where like flames come
out and you get enveloped and then it just disappears
and you're somewhere else and the flames come in with
a hint of brimstone at the and the fish just
kind of night Nightcrawler style. Yeah, hey see that? What
about interesting? I mean, you know, the fire power in
(44:41):
and of itself seems like a bonus, doesn't it, because
because you presumably would be in some ways immune or
um resistant to fire if you're using it to like
help you fly. So I would pick that one because
it seems like a two fer. I wonder what happens
if it rains. I guess it's superd fire. You'd be okay. Well,
(45:02):
I remember his name and how the moving Castle. His
name was Calcifer, and uh yeah, Rain was a big downer. Yeah,
and he when he got wet at one point and
almost died. So based on Miyazaki logic, I think Rain
would be a no go. So let's let's keep all
the flame which is in our thoughts. Be careful out
wills of the wisp. Yes, I want to bring up
(45:23):
one last thing, you guys, I promise and that I'm done.
It just goes back to m Z's questions and talking about, uh,
what has been shown on media. Maybe not in the
United States, maybe in Spanish speaking countries. You can find
I can't remember the name of the show, but you
can find footage where there's a panel of people and
(45:43):
they are looking at footage of what, in my mind
is clearly things entering Earth's atmosphere and burning up as
it's entering. So whether it's you know, small pieces of
space rock entering the atmosphere and burning up, or maybe
a piece of the junk that's up there in orbit
falling back into space and burning up, you can you
(46:04):
can look at this footage and that's clearly what it is,
and they're just discussing how it may be something else
of some have some other supernatural origin. I would just
say remember that there are real natural phenomena that occur
fairly often where things enter the atmosphere and burn up
and do cause things like a sonic boom every once
(46:25):
in a while, or you know, an energy pulse essentially
that will break windows and has the potential to break
windows and do other things like that. Yes, that's a
great point. There's a lot of junk in space. It's
definitely going to be a problem. It's already a problem,
but it's going to be a problem with the capital
P in a while. For now, we want to hand
(46:50):
the Whisp to you, folks, fellow conspiracy realist. We hope
you enjoyed this exploration of wills of the whisp across
the world. H that's kind of tough to say, so
so let us know what you think. Have you encountered
strange lights in the wild? If so, where and what
(47:12):
were the circumstances, like, tell us as much as you
can about it, and tell us whether you decided to
follow it or to run away, or you know, if
you just stared awkwardly at it for a while. We
try to be easy to find online. That's right. You
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(47:35):
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(47:55):
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iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they don't want you to know.
(48:26):
Is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Nolan. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer
Paul Mission Controlled deconds. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. Today's episode is follow up of
sorts fellas. We are fresh off our dive into the
(00:49):
rise of witchcraft. That witchcraft is on the rise, it's
just how do you define it? Everybody? Check out that show. Uh.
And we're also doing a follow up to an earl elier.
In your earlier episode, we did on something kind of
like cryptozoology. It could it could conceivably fall in the
world of cryptods. It's inspired by a letter we received
(01:13):
earlier this year from m Z m Z. I hope
you're listening because this one is especially for you. You
introduced us to the idea of Brujas de fuego or
flame witches. Uh, and we would like to with your help.
M Z introduce this to everybody else, to your fellow
conspiracy realist, in your own words. So here are the facts. So,
(01:38):
as m Z writes, the story begins in a rural,
small farm mountain town in southern Chihuahua, Mexico. I grew
up spending my summers in the town. Was located not
too far from a native people that used to live
on the side of the mountains with adobe walls to
house their caves. And if you can imagine large boulders
trees you could climb like stairwells at a large open field.
(02:00):
It was a cool place I got to explore and
climb those trees. Um does sound like a pretty amazing place.
And then m Z continues, from what I could narrow
it down to, it was a Chira Chira Kahua Apache tribe,
and from what my grandparents told me, one of my
grandmothers was from the tribe. During my exploration, myself and
a kid I was wandering around with both saw something strange.
(02:22):
Imagine seeing something straight out of Majora's mask. That's the
Zelda game. Everybody sure you played it. Only this thing
from Major's Mask was inside an oblong giant cave with
an opening, and it's just staring back at us. We
shortly took off running after that and lived to tell
the tale thankfully. Yes, yeah, that's that's the spoiler alert.
(02:45):
M Z does survive to not only tell the tale,
but to write the email. I put in a little
picture of Majora's masks since I was unfamiliar with the game,
and it's a pretty weird thing to see in a
cave if you look at is. There's so many different
creatures in that game. I'm wondering what exact referring to. Yeah, yeah,
(03:07):
being unfamiliar with the game, I just I may have
some editorial bias. I just picked one that had really
big eyes that would look kind of spooky if you
saw them in a dark cave. Anyhow, So if you're
familiar with that, you know what em Z is talking about.
M Z continues and says, the people in the town
talk about the witches that live out in those mountains
(03:27):
and rumors of skin walkers as well, with one famous
story being about two men who shot one of these
things and when they found the skin walker it was
still half wolf and half human female. And there's strange
activity reported at night. But m Z says Here's where
(03:48):
it gets crazy. One of my aunts, who is currently
in her mid sixties, told me about a ball of
flame that was floating out in the mountains. When she
asked what it was, the locals told her it was
a flame, which okay, uh So now we fast forward
to about seven years ago UM, when this person writing
in went back to the same town UM due to
(04:11):
their grandfather passing away. UM, and K goes on. I
meet a guy around my age that worked for my
uncle as a ranch hand. One night, we were drinking
and eating some fresh butchered cow and the best kind UM,
and knowing the area, I asked him if he had
seen anything like my aunt had, and he told me yes,
he had seen the same thing UM out in my
(04:32):
uncle's ranch. Over the years, I've periodically checked for anything
resembling just that a flame which and there are a
few videos going viral in Mexico showing just that UM
and then MK links to them below. So strangely enough,
I've seen something slightly resembling these flame which is out
in the middle of nowhere in Marfa, Texas. Could it
be that the lights are covens of witches that have
(04:55):
mastered this form of flight and magic or is it
just false reports? Um. Personally, I've yet to meet anyone
in the States that knows of such a thing. And
if you want to find more sources on this, you
would have to navigate the WEAB in Spanish, and I
will link below what I have found in MK. Does
just that this is insanely incredibly fascinating stuff. Yeah, it
(05:17):
is pretty fascinating, and and thanks for this letter. First
you've shouted out the Marpha lights. We did an earlier
episode on what are sometimes called ghost lights, and in
case of the Marpha lights, we actually arrived at an
okay explanation, a possible mundane explanation. But uh, it turns
(05:39):
out that while many folks in the US may not
have read or seen Spanish reporting on this phenomenon, it's
very much a thing, not just in Mexico, but in
places like Trinidad and Tobago as well. People have been
seeing inexplicable fireball like stuff in the sky in Mexico.
(05:59):
It's why bidely known and these videos, as MC mentioned,
As you mentioned, they have gone viral. If anything, it's
strange that it's not something people talk about more often
in English media, right sort of like Mexico Zone of Silence.
You can see any number of videos on YouTube right
(06:20):
now purporting to be footage of these flame which is
and it's important to note that these alleged sightings do
not themselves look human. They don't look humanoid. You don't
see limbs, right, but they don't always look the same.
They don't always look like the same orb or same pattern,
you know. So today's question what are they? Here's where
(06:43):
it gets crazy. Yes, there there are so many possibilities here.
And if we take it back to the Marpha lights.
When we discussed those, we talked about atmospheric distortion and
distance and how lights that are far away on a
flat plane can actually appear to hover above that flat
plane when you're looking at them out in the horizon.
(07:04):
And here we find several possibly naturally occurring things that
can exist as like why people are seeing these flame
witches or something like that. And one of those explanations
would be something that sounds out of this world. The
will oh the wisp whisp wisp wisps. Yeah, fancy name.
Get this ignis fatuus with two us at the end.
(07:28):
I don't know why that tickles me so it's it's
like it sounds like a Hogwarts farting spell, right, Yeah,
like it's ignited flatulence. Yes, uh so we did talk
about this a little bit in the earlier episode we
mentioned on on ghost Lights. It's the will of the
Wisp is really weird because, as we'll find today, there
(07:53):
are a lot of explanations that sound good, but none
of them at this boy quite explain everything a hundred percent.
It's generally accepted that the will of the Whisp is
a flame like phosphorescence that is created when plants decay
in marshy areas and they emit gas, and under the
(08:15):
right circumstances, some of this gas can automatically night when
it comes into contact with oxygen in the air. In
earlier eras though, people were well aware of this, and
the anthropomorphized that the whisp that like will in the
Will of the Wisp is a dude. It's a it's
a creature. It's a sprite like a an elf or
(08:38):
a spirit of some sort that is trying to lure
unworried travelers off their path into the marsh, usually from
mischievous or downright evil purposes. It's so funny. I always
assumed will of the Whisp was referring to to sort
of like a set like a you know, like the
will of nature, like the will of the wind, or
like like like the idea of since quality of these
(09:01):
natural phenomenon. Yeah. Yeah, and I think it works on
both of those levels, you know, because the one of
the spooky things about these is that where they were
found across the world, there's often essentience or an intelligence
attributed to them. And the term whisp, by the way,
is just it's like a kind of torch. It's like
(09:23):
a bundle of sticks tied together. It's not supernatural, you know,
had whisp. This reminds me of, you know, where where
the term Jack o lantern comes from. It was actually
maybe a historical figure at the very least, a kind
of stock character named Jack who is this drunken kind
of letcheris dude in Ireland, and he was referred to
as Jack of the Lantern or Jack o lantern. M
(09:48):
yeah it should be now from now on, let's all
call it Jacks of the Lantern. Yes, yes, that's our
new club. We're front for the pumpkin industry. Uh, the
Checks of the Lantern. The ancient order thereof Yeah, it's
it's true, and there's a similar kind of naming structure
there too, So I'm it's fascinating that you can kind
(10:11):
of tell these names come from a similar sort of era,
a similar sort of time, and native populations in the
America's had stories about things like this too. They with
like before European contact, other cultures had this stuff going on.
(10:31):
It's very important to acknowledge that when it While the
term will of the whisp that we're using comes from
European folklore, those pre existent beliefs or stories about something
similar in the America's continued to date, and in Louisiana
and France we see this almost the exact same thing,
(10:54):
described as the full or fi fill. And as a
non native French speaker, apologies for the accident there. Maybe
before we continue, we should talk a little bit about
what the will of the wisp is. Generally, we've given
you this the best scientific guess right now. But if
(11:16):
you were just out in the woods, you have found
yourself in your swamp and you encounter will of the whisp,
let's let's describe how that encounter goes. What happens? Yes, Well,
much like the marpha lights and other visual phenomena dealing
with light kind of near the ground. You will see something,
probably in a dimly lit area near the swamp in
(11:38):
the forest. You can see it just off a bit
in the distance, maybe across a water or something like that,
and it appears that it's either coming towards you or leaving.
That's generally the way it's reported by by people who
have experienced a Will of the wisp encounter well. And
when when you think about it in pop culture, it's
usually like something that somebody might chase and maybe it
(11:59):
leads them where, like to a secret entrance or you know,
some sort of treasure, or it could just lead them
into like a cliff that that tumbles them into the
swamps or the side of their death or their body.
You know. It's another one that and this is um
This is a commonly reported thing even with UAP sightings,
especially back in the day if you think back to
(12:20):
the Rendels from forest incident. The the belief is that
these lights are are guiding you somewhere, right, not always,
but in the moment, like there is this light, it
is going somewhere. I would like to follow that to
see what's where it's going or what's happening. And I
think that's where you get a lot of these legends of,
like you said, Ben, being led to someone's resting place
(12:42):
where like a spirit is taking you there, if that's
what you believe it is, or you know, even in
some cases an extra terrestrial craft or being leading you somewhere. Yeah,
and this movement is something we didn't really talk about
in the previous episode on ghost Lights, so we are
going to explore that today. We shall also say that
(13:04):
Massachusetts has similar folk tales surrounding the concept of something
like flame which is or will of the wisp, and
there's is very location dependent. Uh. Most of those reports
come from an infamous area called the Bridgewater Triangle, which
not to be to Glengarry glen Ross always be closing
(13:26):
about it. But we do have a podcast. We have
a podcast on on that. Not um, not stuff they
will want you to know. But Matt, it is a
show that you and Aaron Makeey have worked on. Correct. Yeah,
a whole bunch of people on on our team. It's
called Bridgewater and within the Bridgewater Triangle there in Massachusetts,
which is a pretty stark triangle when you see it
(13:49):
written out in places, but I would say it's way
more of just an area because you've got the Hawka
Mock Swamp out there, which is a real place. Um,
some strange stones like Dighton Rock and in particular Freetown
State Forest is like one of those places where if
you find yourself there, especially if you're alone, uh, you
(14:09):
may experience some weird things because there have been numerous
reported sightings of things like puckwags or lights and all
kinds of strange stuff that happens out there. Yeah, and
a lot of people in the US are going to
be more familiar with those older European descriptions or more
familiar with stuff like the Marfa lights or maybe things
(14:31):
they are reported in places like Bridgewater. But let's pause
for a word from our sponsors. We'll dance off into
a marsh of our own, and then we'll return to
South America and Mexico. So here's the amazing thing. M Z. Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Uruguay, Trinidad,
(14:58):
and Tobago all have their own versions of this phenomenon,
and some of them have a lot in common with
the stories that you have encountered in Mexico. In Brazil,
it's called well translates to like the fiery serpent, the
what tata or some some derivation thereof, and that has
that has a really interesting legend because the idea is
(15:21):
that this serpent shines so bright that it can only
see at night. It's one of those it's where my
sunglasses at night type cryptid And uh, now I think,
but when did that song come out? I where my
sun something? Okay, so we can agree it's about that
Brazilian cryptid. Right, yeah, it's from the It's from the
(15:44):
perspective of that fiery serpent. Uh. In Colombia. What's interesting
is that their version of the Will of the Whisp,
or what we call it in the US, the La
Candela is also thought to be something like a witch.
It's kind of like that story The Ring where spoiler alert,
it turns out that the monster is the ghost of
(16:06):
an evil person. This, the La Candelisa, is the ghost
of an evil grandmother, like a malevolent spirit that was,
you know, basically just making the logical transition from being
a terrible person to being a terrible ghost. Well said,
this reminds me of the Will of the Whisp that
(16:27):
existed in the old game ultimonline. I know you played
it out there Ultimon online. Yeah you did, year old.
But it was such a good game, Yes they did. Alright, alright,
it's a great game. But like michelob Ultra, is that
what you're talking, I'm trolling you. I'm aware of the game,
but I have not played it. But in this game,
(16:48):
like in Dungeons and Dragons in a couple other places,
the will of the Will of the Wisp is a
magic wielder, somebody who can some creature that can cast
all kinds of dangerous spells. Uh. And I'm just imagining
that being close to this version. This is interesting because
we've we've often found that folklore tends to have a
(17:09):
grain of truth in in the in the origin or
the genesis of the story. So the full story or
the short story version of Columbia's Will of the Whist
for Columbia's Flame, which is that it's the ghost of
an evil grandmother. Why is she evil? She raised her
children and grandchildren to be thieves and murderers, and so
(17:30):
karma caught up with her and she was punished by
being damned to wander the world surrounded in flames making trouble,
and it makes me wonder if it is somehow based
on a real life occurrence in the past, Like if
there really was some clan of of murderers and ne'er
(17:51):
do wells, could they have been so um influential on
on the community that they became the basis of this
story this way to explain this otherwise inexplicable thing. Maybe
there's no proof. Argentina and Uruguay have myths about something
called the lose Mala or evil light, and it's like
(18:14):
Will of the Whisp but evil. It's like, if Will
of the Whisp is Mario, this is Warrio. Does that work? Yeah?
I think so. I imagine that the potential for the
Will of the Whisp to be an enchanting kind of
thing that feels childlike in a lot of ways, Like, oh,
(18:36):
look at that little light out there, flickering. I wonder
what it wants. In this case, it's do not go
out there, don't follow it, don't even look at it,
just close your eyes and move on. I mean, I
don't know about you. Maybe my childlike spirit has like
been drained for me, you know, just from a lifetime
of bitterness and disappointment. But I don't know that I
would go trapesing around Marcia's following blinking lights just it's
(18:58):
willy nilly nose, sir uh and not not. I honestly,
I don't want to sound jaded, but after the last
couple of years, I feel like if I saw if
I saw something like this, and I have seen something
like this in the Everglades, or at least I saw
some lights I couldn't explain, but I feel like now
(19:19):
if I saw something like this, I would think, one
more thing. I've already I've got so many things I
have to do and think about. I'm not I'm just
not going to think about that. I would tell the
will of the Whisp to get on the schedule and like,
come by Thursday at a specific time. Dang you guys.
(19:41):
If I saw a light like that, I am trapesing
through a forest. I don't care. I Am just gonna hop,
skip and jump until I find where that thing went.
Nobody traps is like Matt Frederick. I do like the
use of the word scrapes here for sure. Yeah, I
don't know, it is it is and it and it
also paid to very specific picture because you're not as
(20:03):
far off from from null. Uh In that trapes means
to like move reluctantly or move like you're tired. Yeah,
I'm sorry, I'm You're not a good tripe. You're not
(20:23):
a trapser at all. I'm the trapser, You're the prancer.
I like our ambulatory nicknames we've got here. Uh so, yes,
this this thing you can understand how if if you
see it, you would want to have an explanation. When
people are confronted with things they cannot readily explain, they
(20:44):
typically tend to fall back on their own cultural framework.
That's just how the world works in Trinidad. What's even
more fascinating here is that they also have the name
of the fire They also have the idea of the fireball,
which they call it something different, but it's totally the fireball,
which it is a sorceress with the ability to take
(21:06):
on the form of a bright flame at night. It's
also a little more aggressive than it's Mexican counterpart, because
this fireball which will enter homes through any gap that
can find, and it will drink the blood of its victims.
So yeah, so how does that story come about? Does
somebody does somebody see a bright light as they're falling
(21:27):
asleep and then they wake up and their partner has
been exanguinated or something like That's that's a pretty wild one.
I'm trying to put together the flames and the power
of the flames somehow with drinking blood or consuming blood.
I'm not sure how those go together, right, but I'm interested. Yeah,
(21:47):
same and there There are similar myths in Asia and
across Ociana. They're all distinct in their own way, but
they have these commonalities. A light that seems to pulse
with some sort of sickly glow, that sometimes seems to
approach or recede, that seems to move away from people
(22:09):
when they approach in a way that is sometimes interpreted
as leading them somewhere for good or for ill. And
even though these things don't all have the same appearance,
they don't all have like the same pulsing or patterns
or oscillation or whatever, they share those those commonalities across
the world, which is a really important fact for us
(22:32):
because it means that people aren't making it up, you
know what I mean. This isn't one town somewhere that
needed some tourist bucks for the more skeptical in the crowd. Obviously,
the explanation is going to feel apparent. You're gonna say
swamp Gas, right, swamp Gas. I know that somebody's street name.
It's gotta be. There's gotta be a guy called a
(22:58):
street name. Maybe it's sort of like a grandpa nickname,
you know, old Swam or like an old an old
like tavern regular. You know, that's old swamp Gass over there.
He he spends a mighty fine yarn because of that
legendary night when he just couldn't stop farting. Old Greg
the swamp gas, and he's like, guys, my name is Greg.
(23:23):
So it's true, though, like any part of the natural
world with the right conditions can in theory create ignis
fatus due to organic compounds like phosphine, diphosphane, and methane.
When they decay, they can create photon emissions. Earlier we
(23:43):
mentioned subsubstances ignite on contact with oxygen in the air.
That's our diphosphine, that's our phosphine. And it only takes
a little bit. You get a lot of You got
you get a lot of spooky for your buck with
these because just a small amount could something like a
glowing or It's ephemeral. It's not gonna be around all
(24:05):
day or all night, but it could create something like this.
In contrast, you probably need much more methane. Reminds me
of sightings of ball lightning, which I still have never
seen one day. It's tough to find it. It's tough
to find it, you know. It's kind of a rare pokemon.
I only much about Pokemon is that they are rare ones. Right,
(24:27):
Oh yeah, I gotta catch them all. Okay, there we go. Yeah.
I love that you're mentioned ball lightning because ball lightning
is usually associated with thunderstorms right and off, and people
aren't always reporting on the weather or the atmospheric conditions
(24:49):
when they see a will of the whisp because understandably
something very freaky and strange has just happened to them.
But you're right, mat ball ball lightning that was called
a ball of the lightning. Ball lightning is often brought
up as one of these scientific explanations for the possibility
of these glowing orbs, these mysterious things, and this is
(25:12):
an impressive idea. People proposed the swamp gas theory way
earlier than a lot of us would assume in the
late sixteenth century, and there was this guy named Ludwig
Lavatar who wrote a book with a ridiculously long, amazingly
fun title of ghost in Sprites, Woking by Nights and
(25:37):
of Strange Noises, creaks and Sundry for warnings which prommonly
happened before the death of men, great slaughters and alterations
of kingdoms. That's the subtitle. I don't know at that point.
By the time you get that far, I'm sorry. What
what was it of of creaky's it's spelled cr c
(26:00):
k E s sings? What go bump in the night
and make just go? That's wild man? What must what
must the text of the actual book itself be like?
If the title is, oh, we can pull a quote?
Do you want to? You want to read a quote?
Here's what I'll send in the chat. Somebody else give
(26:21):
this one a shot. At least maybe we can. We
can split it up. Many times, candles and small fires
appear in the night and seems to run up and
it down. Sometime these fires go alone in the night season. Sorry,
(26:43):
we're in it now, we're in it. We gotta we
gotta finish it. This this is well, this is the part.
This is the part where he's talking about the swampcast
theory in the night season and put such as see
them as they travel by night in a great fear.
But these things and many such like I have their
natural causes. Natural philosophers right that the thick exhalations are
(27:10):
rise out of the earth and are kindled minus full
of sulfur and brimstone. If the air enter onto it
as it layeth in the holes and veins of the earth,
will kindle on fear and strive to get out. Excellent, excellent,
(27:31):
good lord. Okay, I just I like curative because in
that in that voice is a wonderful performance. By the way,
it feels like there's a crowd of people in a church,
some weird church, or immediately following with and also with you.
You know, I heard I heard a distinct tone of
(27:54):
all Papa. Remember, will always love all Papa. He's done
a lot for the show. Yes, So what we're seeing
here is and and the spelling is not the same
as the spelling of English words. But what we're seeing
is this idea that it is geographically dependent, that's somewhere
(28:21):
under the earth there might be minds that contain gases.
They're not sure what gases, but they're guessing sulfur, brimstone.
Those are scary things, right and uh smelly and smelly, yes,
And when the air goes into these mines, it will
catch on fire, and because fire rises, it will try
(28:43):
to seek and escape avenue. So what you're seeing is
like this kind of fire from the ground. Do you
think it's any coincidence that things like sulfur and brimstone
are associated with the fires of hell? No, I don't.
I think that's a I think that's a purposeful choice.
In fact, brim stone is the same thing as sulfur.
It's synonymous and it so it smells. Also, correct me
(29:09):
on this if I'm off base, But I believe that
because lightning can create the odor of sulfur dioxide, and
because lightning was thought to be punishment from the gods
in ancient religions, sulfur is indicative of divine retribution. So
maybe maybe the idea was that if one encounters a demon,
(29:33):
you're you're smelling you're smelling the the smite that God
or you know, some divine entity put on them long ago,
the site that God hath smoked the smite that God
hath smoked, ha smelt it because he hath deult it
all rise. So I'm just staying in the continent at
(29:57):
least the fifth reference swap gas, you can't really get
away from it. Yeah, And if we accept the swamp
gas explanation for will of the whisp or m Z
for flame, which is in Mexico, we can see the
explanations pretty solid. But interestingly enough, it also gives us
an idea. I guess about why these orbs seem to
(30:21):
move of their own volition, why they seem to lead
people astray, to retreat from folks, or to guide them
towards something. It could be that if you are in
pursuit of one of these things, your movement is agitating
the air, and this stuff is gaseous, so if it
is swamp gas, so that movement is pushing the thing,
(30:43):
like physically pushing it through the air, or it is
agitating it in such a way that it disperses or
even causing it to follow you. If somehow you're moving
the air in such a way that the gas then
moves towards you, who maybe And so people in the
modern day started experimenting with different variations of the swamp
(31:08):
gas idea. They wanted to apply science to the supernatural.
We're gonna pause for a moment for work from our sponsors,
and we'll returned to tell you their results, which might
surprise you. All Right, we're back in night and in
(31:30):
two thousand and eight. There were a couple of other
experiments as well, but these are two of the big ones.
These chemists and these geologists were trying to recreate a
will of the wisp in a laboratory setting. If you
believe in the core, you're like, well, this is like
sum Many a demon. What what is wrong with you? Dude? Uh?
They managed to create They managed to create something though
(31:53):
both times they managed to create something. But here's the thing,
it didn't quite fit the bill. It didn't white function
the way that these things do in the wild. British
geologist named Alan Mills was able to mix phosphine crude
phosphine with natural gas in and he created a cool, green,
(32:17):
glowing cloud. That's the other thing about will of the
whisp that may differentiate it from flame, which is those
things don't create heat, which is doubly spooky. Right, and
his Mills, his green glowing cloud kind of worked, but
it didn't seem like a will of the Wisp and
the wild. It was a really farty one. Honestly, like
(32:38):
a smoke monster. Right when you say cool green glowing cloud,
I picture like a almost like a cartoon anthropomorphic cloud
with like sunglasses sunglasses. It's uh yes, uh. This this
thing emitted a ton of smoke and it stanked a
high heaven in the In the experiment in two thousand
(33:00):
and eight, these two Italian chemists tried something very similar.
They wanted to recreate Alan Mills's experiment, and they did
so by mixing phosphing with just nitrogen and air. They
also produced a green cloud, and they took their explanation
a few steps further. One of the objections is that
in both cases, these are green lights, and they're not
(33:22):
usually reported as being green or they're brighter or they're
blue or something like that. And these scientists concluded, well,
they said, you know, humans aren't that great at differentiating
color very well and low light, which is true unless
you have, you know, some equipment with you. And then
they also said, I don't know about this one, but
(33:42):
they also said, the right environmental conditions can make you
know a smoke and smells less easy to detect. Yeah.
I mean, if you're an open air and let's say
it's across a pond or something, you're not gonna detect
the smoke maybe the same, especially in low light. Yeah, yeah,
and I see that. And I also see that it's
(34:05):
possible that if you're in an area where these things
routinely occur, it would already smell pretty bad because the
gases out there. Right. So these these folks all later
concluded it was possible that a will of the wisp
in the wild, or a flame, which could be what's
called the cold flame, these luminescent halos. They become visible
(34:28):
when certain compounds are heated up but not quite to
their ignition point, and they create this blue flame. The
problem is, no one knows for sure whether these cold
flames occur naturally. All they know is that the compounds
that could create these things are products of organic decay.
(34:51):
So if you're in a marshy, swampy place, you're you're
probably gonna run into this stuff. The question is like,
how do you how do you like my fire? In
that regard, So look, I have to I have to
stop us here for one second, Ben, you said the
gases out there. Um, I just had a vision of
(35:13):
a movie poster for a show about a Will of
the Wisp, and it just says, the gases out there,
that's the tagline. We've got that old man at some
bar on the edge of the swamp just saying I
sink it like no one would believe men exactly, And
(35:38):
and then there's another mundane explanation, but again it's not
quite a perfect fit. There are some solid materials like
some ceramics, crystals like courts, or interestingly enough bones that
can accumulate an electric charge when they're placed under mechanical stress.
So this means in theory, some of these lame which
(36:00):
situations might be caused by stuff in the ground, by
tectonic action that gets exerted on materials. So we we
talked about this as a possible explanation our ghost Lights episode.
For example, Theoretically, if you're in an area and there
are rocks that contain a lot of courts, maybe they
could exhibit pisio electricity under the right environmental conditions or
(36:25):
geologic conditions. But the problem with this is this phenomenon
has also not been reliably observed as a cause of
will of the wisp in the wild, and if it
were a thing that was actually happening rather than just
theoretically possible, then it would be one of the easiest
to predict, would it not, because you would just sort
(36:46):
of go to where the right stones were, the right
ancient stones, and then you would wait for a tremor
or an earthquake and just see what pops up. I
think the coinciding of these two things is like the
perfect storm of a willow of the whisp, a place
where there are crystals, like there's a lot of courts
in the ground. There's also some uh, you know activity occurring,
(37:11):
tremors do occur regularly, and you've got swamp gas. Put
it all together, it's the will of the whisp factory.
There we go. Or a super wisp sounds like a
delightful crispy chocolate bar from like Germany or something. You know,
it's got like air bubbles in it, you know, I
just think it sounds delightful to me. Or those aerrated chips,
(37:36):
the air puffed chips. Here's the thing. When we know
that those explanations are the best scientific guess is right,
but still maybe don't explain every sighting, just refine. Let's
look at the more esoteric ideas. There probably is not
a sentient force guiding these lights in most cases, unless
(37:59):
you cow the person pursuing the light they're chasing after
this delicate, ephemeral mix of gas, So your movements through
the air could be disturbing or guiding it. And it's
definitely an ancient phenomenon. People are not making this up.
Legends from various civilizations were just they were a way
for folks to explain what was happening through their own
(38:20):
cultural lens. And perhaps the most important thing is, like
so much folklore and legend, these stories might not have
a ton of what we consider modern scientific proof, but
they do contain practical advice. A lot of folklore is
mainly about practical advice, and this could be neatly summed
up as uh and I think we said we said
(38:40):
a version of this earlier in the show. If you
see one of these bad boys, don't touch it, don't
approach it. Treat it like a wild animal, you know
what I mean. Be glad it's there and get out
of its way. Chase it down, Uh, prance towards it
and bring home the treasure or the mystic relic or
whatever that's that's that's like found clutched in the hand
(39:03):
of a of a decaying you know, skeleton. And if
if you're chasing a flame, which the important note met
in in some stories, you need a child to successfully pursue,
it has to be a child following it. So we
all have one inside of us in here. A child. Yes,
(39:23):
there's a child inside all of us. Just say that. Okay,
I thought you were pointing to a box. All right,
no child. So what I wanted to talk about really
quickly here, guys, did you see some of the videos
that m Z referred to that showed these phenomena. I
only saw two that I I mean, I was perplexed by.
(39:48):
I think, Yeah, there's one in particular, where it's footage
that's very close to a fireball that starts on the
ground as like it looks like a fire where the
fuel is on the ground level, and then it starts
to rise up into the air and becomes a ball
(40:09):
of fire and floats away. Now, to my eyes, when
I look at that, it just it looks like something
that is very light and flammable, that much like an
ember like any ember, as it catches fire and the
air is being essentially moved upwards and rising with the heat,
it just floats away because it's so light. Um. But
(40:34):
people were fully convinced that that was some type of
human or you know, humanoid catching on fire and flying
away like a flame. Which I just wondered what you
guys thought about that particular footage. I was fascinating too,
because it seemed more active than a lot of like
the stereotypical ideas of a will of the whisp, right, Yeah,
(40:58):
I mean it looks very much as we're we're rewatching
this together, folks, and it looks very much like a
like the action you would see with a flame propelled balloon.
It's like it almost looks like the hot air balloon
principle at work here, you know. Yeah, but nothing is
visible above the actual flames, right, No, yeah, nothing there.
(41:22):
I'm just I'm wondering if it does look Yeah it is.
You guys seen the Miyazaki film Howel's Moving Castle. Yeah,
you know, you know the flame demon that's in that
that that that that that sort of propels the castle. Um,
what's his name? He's voiced by the delightful Billy crystal Um.
(41:43):
But he sometimes this thing kind of reminds me of
that character in a funny way. Yeah, but you're right,
it looks like maybe it's it almost looks like it's
something on fire, like paper or something. And then and
then right it's and then it's getting the lift from
the updraft that it's creating as it's burning itself up,
you know, speaking of Zelda, that's the thing you can
(42:03):
do in Zelda, at least the more recent Zell the games,
that you can set the grass on fire and it
creates an updraft that allows you to use your little
paraglider to like, you know, get a boost. Nice, but
all your weapons break and such a counter Yeah yeah,
so but by my point about this one, guys, it's
(42:23):
just the fact that our our position as the camera, right,
that's what we are seeing very yeah, very close to
this action, as though it reminds me of filming fireworks
or something like that. Same. I thought of that too,
you know, because it's such a it's a shot that
(42:46):
it's a short clip, but it's a shot that catches
all of the action, you know what I mean, which
means perhaps this thing was there for a while and
they noticed it and had time to compose a pretty
a shot. But then also they smoothly trace it going
into the sky, or it was something they sent on
fire on purpose and they were surprised or expected. So
(43:10):
it's like one day videos, you know what I mean.
Wild animals don't wear a lot of hats, is the thing.
But but the but that's it is fascinating because the
truth of the flame, which is idea or will of
the wisp idea, has yet to be fully explained. Science
has some really good guesses, and these guesses are treated
(43:34):
as a certitude. We know this is an ancient phenomenon,
but we're still not able to explain every single sighting
out there, meaning that on the most like based logical level,
we have to assume there's almost certainly more than one
cause at play. On the supernatural side, traveling through the
(43:56):
air if you have magical powers, right, I I'm interested
to hear you guys. Take you could choose between beat
on fire or flying with like a broom. Which way
would you go? Depend on what you're trying to do,
because I feel like flying on fire is not very
good for secrecy. Yeah, it would be awesome if it
(44:19):
was like a teleportation with flames, where like flames come
out and you get enveloped and then it just disappears
and you're somewhere else and the flames come in with
a hint of brimstone at the and the fish just
kind of night Nightcrawler style. Yeah, hey see that? What
about interesting? I mean, you know, the fire power in
(44:41):
and of itself seems like a bonus, doesn't it, because
because you presumably would be in some ways immune or
um resistant to fire if you're using it to like
help you fly. So I would pick that one because
it seems like a two fer. I wonder what happens
if it rains. I guess it's superd fire. You'd be okay. Well,
(45:02):
I remember his name and how the moving Castle. His
name was Calcifer, and uh yeah, Rain was a big downer. Yeah,
and he when he got wet at one point and
almost died. So based on Miyazaki logic, I think Rain
would be a no go. So let's let's keep all
the flame which is in our thoughts. Be careful out
wills of the wisp. Yes, I want to bring up
(45:23):
one last thing, you guys, I promise and that I'm done.
It just goes back to m Z's questions and talking about, uh,
what has been shown on media. Maybe not in the
United States, maybe in Spanish speaking countries. You can find
I can't remember the name of the show, but you
can find footage where there's a panel of people and
(45:43):
they are looking at footage of what, in my mind
is clearly things entering Earth's atmosphere and burning up as
it's entering. So whether it's you know, small pieces of
space rock entering the atmosphere and burning up, or maybe
a piece of the junk that's up there in orbit
falling back into space and burning up, you can you
(46:04):
can look at this footage and that's clearly what it is,
and they're just discussing how it may be something else
of some have some other supernatural origin. I would just
say remember that there are real natural phenomena that occur
fairly often where things enter the atmosphere and burn up
and do cause things like a sonic boom every once
(46:25):
in a while, or you know, an energy pulse essentially
that will break windows and has the potential to break
windows and do other things like that. Yes, that's a
great point. There's a lot of junk in space. It's
definitely going to be a problem. It's already a problem,
but it's going to be a problem with the capital
P in a while. For now, we want to hand
(46:50):
the Whisp to you, folks, fellow conspiracy realist. We hope
you enjoyed this exploration of wills of the whisp across
the world. H that's kind of tough to say, so
so let us know what you think. Have you encountered
strange lights in the wild? If so, where and what
(47:12):
were the circumstances, like, tell us as much as you
can about it, and tell us whether you decided to
follow it or to run away, or you know, if
you just stared awkwardly at it for a while. We
try to be easy to find online. That's right. You
find us in the usual Internet locations of note, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter,
or or conspiracy stuff on Instagram or conspiracy stuff show.
(47:35):
And if you don't want to sip of these social meds,
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(47:55):
time you have more to say, maybe you have some links,
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