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

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow
Your Mind. My name is Joe McCormick. Your other hosts,
Robert Lamb and Christian Seger are out of the office
this week, so we decided to air an update to

(00:24):
one of our October classics from last year, The Will
of the Wisp. So first you're going to hear the
original episode that Robert and I recorded last October about
this very weird and wonderful historical phenomenon. And after that,
I'm going to read some messages we received from listeners
about their own reported experiences with the ghost fire of
the Wilderness. So be sure to stick around at the

(00:47):
end for more. And without further ado, let's follow the
Light into the marsh. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
your My my name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. So, Robert, Yes,
I want you to put yourself in a scenario. Okay,
all right, I'm doing it. You are a peasant in

(01:11):
medieval England. All right, it's the place to start. But
I'm with you. Yeah, it's so. I know it's rough,
but you're a peasant in medieval England in in sort
of the fen Land. Okay, So there there's some marshes
all around you, and this is a time and place
where for your life the world is sort of alive

(01:32):
with magical beings. So who knows if there's a ferry
or a goblin hiding under a rock or in a
bush over by the side of the road. Who knows.
There are lots of things out there that you just
don't understand. It's a world that only by fire. It's
a demon haunted world. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a
perfect way of putting it. Um. So you're out one
night returning home from church, and dusk is coming on,

(01:56):
and as you're walking your way through the path that
winds along the marshlands at night, and the crickets are
chirping and you hear the frogs, you suddenly see something
kind of strange off off to your left, sort of
in the right, at the edge of your field of vision.
You see a bluish looking flame that's just hovering over

(02:19):
the ground that that's sort of beyond where you can
see exactly where it is. It's it's among some trees
and some some marsh grasses. Now, what do you do.
Do you just continue on your path or do you
walk over to see what it is? Who? What can
I do? Uh? Let me do a perception check. Okay,
roll your tenth. Well, I'm I'm seeing a basically a

(02:42):
ghostly blue flame that's just hovering in the air. I'm
thinking I'm gonna want to avoid anything to do with that,
because if it's some sort of supernatural entity at night, Uh,
it's probably up to no good. It's I'm probably better
off to stick into the course and going straight home. Well,
you're fantastic at resisting temptation. Congratulations, you're incurious, proud of it,

(03:06):
and you're gonna live a live to a ripe old
age in the solid knowledge that you just didn't check
things out. Well, yeah, I mean, because I've probably heard
enough stories like how does every weird horror story begin,
every strange folklore? It begins with that guy getting off
the beaten path, moving out of the path and going
into the wilderness and maybe following some sort of strange flame. Well, okay,

(03:28):
let me try you again. Then let's say that we
do the same scenario, but you've already gotten lost. You're
on your way home from church dusk is coming on.
You've lost the path and suddenly you are lost in
the marsh lands and you you can't find your way
back to the path. But up ahead you do see
a light. Uh, you see a flame bobbing that's just

(03:50):
above the horizon ahead of you, and you're not quite
sure what it is. Now do you go toward the
light or not? Well, I'm lost, So that light might
very well be somebody's camp fire. That might be as
a sign of humans out here, so I should Yeah,
maybe I should head that way because either that either
they're in the clear or maybe they can help me
get out right. It could be a traveler's lantern, could

(04:11):
lead you back to the path and get you on
your way home and out of this muck. So let's
say you follow it for a while, but you can't
ever seem to catch up with it, and you just
keep going farther and farther along in the marsh, but
it's always just out of where you can reach it
or get a good look at exactly what it is.
Do you keep following? Well, the more I follow, the

(04:33):
more I'm probably gonna feel like I'm being manipulated in
this led on a winding goat trail to nowhere. So uh,
which granted, and maybe that's a perfect metaphor for life,
but I'm probably gonna get a little frustrated. Yeah, but
what other choice do you have right now? You're lost
in the marsh and you better keep following. Yeah, I
can't go back. It's just as much trouble to go

(04:54):
back as it is to push forward. And maybe if
I hurry a little bit, I can actually catch that
during thing. Okay, So let's say you're trying to catch it.
Unfortunately you keep coming up on it, thinking you're just
about to get to it, but it goes away and
eventually you don't see it anymore at all, and you're
there alone in the dark, stuck in some quicksands in

(05:15):
the marsh. And what are you gonna do? Well, you're
gonna stay struggle. You struggle. That's how you get add
a quicksand. No, it's not, it's not at all. Do
we have an episode on quicksand? I don't think we
do yet, but it's a fascinating topic. Yeah, maybe we
should explore that sometime. Well, if you ever find yourself
trapped in quicksand, whether you're in a marsh and you
have been led there by a ghost light or not.

(05:36):
Don't struggle. Oh, that's why I have these ferrets in
my backpack. They're gonna help me out. That'll just work
you deeper into the into the muck. No, that's not
what you want to do. But anyway, I've been describing
a scenario that might sound kind of outlandish to you
people at home, but I think this type of story
was very common two people of say Europe in the
Middle Ages, or actually to folklore all over the world

(06:00):
old in one form or another, that there will be
stories that bear similarities to this, That there's a glowing
entity or some kind of flame that looks like a
lantern or like a blue luminescence that's just hovering out
of your vision and if you if you try to
get to it, you can never quite catch it. Yeah,

(06:20):
what is this thing? It is the will of the wisp,
that's right, And it goes by a number of names
as well discussed, but it's the it's it's that that
false fire right, that ignis fatus right and in fatuous, fatuous,
and that's what I think. It's. It's ignie so fire. Yeah,
and then f A t U U s that makes

(06:42):
me think fatuous, like you're being fatuous. Yes, so this
is uh, it's it's the swamp light, the marsh light,
fairy light. It's this ghostly luminescence that appears typically in
marsh lands and swamp lands, by ways, fins, marshes, is
the lonely roads, the places that maybe you wouldn't want

(07:03):
to be stuck at night, you'll see this strange glowing entity. Um,
what is it? Is it a mischievous spirit? Yeah? Oftentimes
it is. It's seen as this either a mischievous spirit
or sometimes an outright demotic demonic entity that ends up
leading humans astray. If you try and follow it, you

(07:25):
can't quite catch it, and eventually you're gonna wind up
in the quicksand just loft in the wilderness over a cliff,
following off a cliff, walking straight into hell. Who knows what,
but it's leading you off the path. Like I'm you
made a great comparison. It's like a bad GPS system. Yeah,
do you remember that In there an episode of the Office,

(07:45):
the GPS tells them to drive the car across the lake.
It's scenario because also sometimes you see motifs where it's
the it's the light that's representing like fairy gold or something.
So who I follow it, I'll get some riches and
you can't reach it because it's like the other end
of a rainbow, right. Yeah, And this lower comes from
all across time, all over the world. It's very common.

(08:08):
One common feature of the ghost light or the glowing
entity will the whisp lower is that the lights tend
to recede as you approach them. You can never quite
get to them or get ahold of them, and they
draw the traveler farther and farther off course as they go.
Another common feature is the color. And this is interesting.
So sometimes people just report various types of light, but

(08:32):
it's very often described as blue or bluish green. And
in the words of one scientist to study the phenomenon,
Alan A. Mills, who were going to quote later in
the episode, he called it quote an ephemeral bluish luminous
exhalation associated with marshy places. That's his will of the
whisp definition. So it's it's instantly identifiable as as something

(08:55):
that's it's not a torch, it's not a lantern, it's
something else, something for perhaps magical. Yeah, and so we
have various names for this phenomenon. I'm not gonna run
through all of them, but just some of them. For instance,
in the English traditions, you have Dicko Tuesday. Um, Kinky Puck.

(09:16):
Hinky Puck, by the way, is a key punk punk.
Hinky punk is a sprite with only one leg and
it carries a candle to mislead travelers. Yeah. Um, you
have other names like corpse candle, l fire, hobb lantern,
hobby lantern, fire drake, jack O lantern. So we're seeing
a convergence here with like Will of the Whisp, Jacko Lantern. Uh,

(09:40):
maybe Dicko Tuesday is something else, but anyway, anyway, that
the idea here is that this first part is actually
a name. It's like Jack or Will. These are characters
who have emerged in the lore of people trying to
explain what happens when they see these ghost lights in
the marshes. But it's a character who carries some kind

(10:02):
of light or torch with them. The whisp idea being
like a wisp of sticks that would be a torch, right,
I mean, it's the idea that there seems to be
a consciousness behind it, a will behind it. It seems
to be an entity of some sort. One that comes
up a lot is Will the Smith. Not Will Smith,
our beloved national treasure, but but rather the soul of

(10:22):
a debauched human who has given, who has given a
second chance at life in order to redeem his soul.
Only he's screwed up again and so now he can't
get into heaven or hell, so he has to wander
the earth, and Satan gave him a glowing coal to
warm himself, which he uses to lure other victims to
his dinner, to their doom, because he's just a horrible individual.
So he's walking around with some hell fire in Marsh's

(10:45):
trying to get revenge on humanity, right. And you see
a number of different variations on Will the Smith, where
it's some sort of immortal wanderer, some sort of a
spirit uh entity that can't get into heaven or a
hell um. You also have in Scotland the Spunkies. In
Ireland you have fox Fire or William with the little Flame,

(11:06):
which is essentially Will the Smith. In Germany you have blood,
you have the Dickie potent. Wait, hold on blood just BLLD.
And then there is of course uh ear lickt uh
and this is uh, the ear lift is actually as
as the willow. The whisp in today is the subject
of an Arnold Bockland painting as well as the Cloth
Shool's album. So there you go. Um. And you see

(11:30):
a lot of accounts of this phenomenon from from Germany
for sure. Uh. In France there's a sanyand tad, which
in the folklore of Brittany is a type of elf,
and they dance together at night with candles on their fingertips,
each spinning independently, and any mortal who happens upon them
becomes disoriented and confused. So it's kind of like the

(11:51):
the the the example in the Hobbit right where they
see some fire in the woods and they follow it
out there and it's elves having their mischief there in
the woods, and it's just disorienting. Yeah, like they're they're
I imagine there's some elfin Debaucher, Are you going on? Yeah? Yeah,
I mean, you know, Tolkien didn't get into it as much,

(12:12):
but you know, they get to some weird stuff. Uh.
In Finland you have Likiko, which means that the flaming one.
And this is interesting because in this you have the
transformed soul of a child that's buried in the forest
and now wanders with a flame at night, but also
serves as a guardian of wild animals and plants that
are in the woods. So it's kind of almost like

(12:33):
a swamp thing vibe going on here, where it's the
spirit guardian of the environment. Um. You see a version.
You see versions in Native American traditions. You see, uh,
the one I ran across from the Penobscate Native American
tribe in the name for this issue date, there's also

(12:54):
Kanza perry uh. And this is something that exists in
the folklore of the Chairmis and Mari people. That's a
Finno you Greek ethnic group. You see. You also see
it in the Amazon Basin in the form of bakata. Oh.
And this one's a really good one. This is in
South America in Chile, the creature known as Alecanto. And

(13:18):
this is a night spirit in the shape of a
glowing metallic bird. Yeah. It lives in the mountains and
it said to feast upon gold and silver veins. So
if you glimpse its light at night and you're you know,
you're kind of a greedy individual. You might want to
follow it and find that rich mining deposit. But Alecanto,

(13:39):
uh is is hip to your your scheme here, and
we'll probably lure you over the edge of a cliff instead. Oh,
this fits with the same stuff you would encounter in
Europe about sometimes the will of the wisp being the
guardian of a treasure. Yeah, not just luring you off
the path, but like standing guard over where the gold
is hidden exactly. And I and I wondered to what
extent it's just a continuation of European beliefs in the

(14:02):
New World there, I imagine that's very much the case.
But there are also plenty of ghost lights in in
Asian folklore. In Bengal traditions you have Layah, which is
the name given to unexplained strange um marshal wood lights there. Okay,
And then of course, uh, outside of folk folklores and

(14:23):
folk tales, we have versions and are more recent media
as well. Well. I mean I would call dungeons and
dragons perfectly acceptable folklore. Yes, And you know, for a
lot of people, this may be one's first encounter with
with willow the whisp or willow whisps, as they've called there. Uh,
in case your Dungeon and Dragons fan or have any

(14:45):
a familiarity there, their alignment is chaotic evil, so they
are bad news. They're not just a little mischievous. They
are awful. If they were just a little mischievous, what
would they be chaotic neutral? Yeah, I think they would
be more I would I would say more chaotic neutral
with that were the case. But they are just completely
like evil, mischievous, mischievous. Uh. They have a challenge rating

(15:05):
of two, so they're not too bad. But get this,
they have a dexterity stat of twenty eight. Uh. That's
like like generally eighteen is an exceedingly high level for
a normal humanoid. So they have crazy dexterity because them
a plus nine and all dexterity sets and according to
the most recent Monster manual, uh their quote, the souls

(15:25):
of evil beings that perished in anguish orm misery as
they wanted and forsaken lands permeated with magical powers and
they use the usual lure people to their doom act
in the game. Plus, they can shock victims for two
D eight damage. They can drain life and sometimes in
the Dungeons and Dragons, the world they align themselves with
hags or black dragons or evil occultists. Uh, in order

(15:48):
to quote drink the agony of slaughter. So so they're
pretty cool. I kind of want to bust one out
in uh in my game. Now, well, that's great, and
that does mirror some of the folkloric edition, like the
idea that they might be an unrighteous spirit that's left
wandering the world. So they might be, you know, a
person who's just rendered spiritually unclean, maybe by having died

(16:10):
unbaptized in Christian tradition or something. Or or maybe there
are you know, a sinful person who can't get into
heaven or hell, like we talked to h like we
talked about with Will the Smith and the titular will
and the will of the wisp. But the will of
the Whisp also shows up in in plenty of later literature.
You know, in some classic English poetry, you'll get references

(16:31):
to the will of the Wisp, like in the Rhyme
of the Ancient Mariner by Coleridge. Uh, there is there
is a scene that describes ghost lights out on the
sea that says about about in real and route the
death fires danced at night the water like a witch's
oils burnt green and blue and white. Yeah, I like that. There.

(16:52):
There's Will the Wisp in Paradise Lost too, and John
Milton's Paradise Lost. There is the scene where the snake
in the garden of eden Is is attempting to tempt Eve.
Attempting to tempt is trying to get Eve to come
and eat of the fruit, you know, the forbidden fruit.
And it compares the snake's temptation of Eve to a

(17:14):
will of the Wisp in the sense that both would
be leading someone astray. This is in book nine, starting
around line and so it compares the snake too, as
when a wandering fire compact of unctuous vapor with the
night condenses and the cold environs round kindled through agitation

(17:34):
to a flame, which oft they say, some evil spirit attends,
hovering and blazing with delusive light, misleads the amazed night
wanderer from his way to bogs and myers and off
through pond or pool. They're swallowed up and lost from
sucker far. Now this is this is interesting and I
think potentially telling for later on in that um Milton

(17:57):
is describing a supernatural entity by comparing it to willow
the whisp. Yeah, so keep that in mind if talking
about will of the whisp as a natural phenomenon, right,
I mean he's describing a thing from a magical story
in terms of the will of the whisp, meaning that
the will of the wisp must have been a thing

(18:18):
that people were so intimately familiar with it could be
used as a reference point. Yes, Yeah, And I would
think for modern people, you'd you'd be more likely to
go the other way, like you'd compare the will of
the Whisp to something in the Bible that people might
be more familiar with. But he goes the other way around, Yeah,
as if to say, this is the thing that the

(18:39):
average reader will have a familiarity with and then can
therefore use as a reference point for this mythic thing. Yeah.
But of course it's not just the stuff of fairy
tales and an ancient literature and fiction imagical storytelling. There
are many like sober secular accounts of the ignis fatuous
or the will of the Whisp throughout world literature, including

(19:01):
scientific literature. For example, Isaac Newton mentions the world whisp
as if it were a commonplace occurrence in his third
book of optics. He says, the ignis fatuous is a
vapor shining without heat, and is there not the same
difference between this vapor and flame as between rotten wood
shining without heat and burning coals of fire? Which is

(19:25):
interesting because their newton is attempting to distinguish actual physical
characteristics of the ignis fatuous, like it's not like flame
because it lacks heat. So yeah, you'd get pretty often
people making sort of secular material physical observations of these things,
as if it's just a phenomenon that they were trying
to catalog and understand. So very often you'd hear about

(19:47):
this this sort of hovering blue flame near the ground.
But some accounts differ that there are other types of
appearances that people also categorized as well. The whisp one
comes from a first stand account by the English folklorist
Jabez Allies. I wonder if I'm saying that name right,
But he had a treatise called Ignis Fatuous or Will

(20:07):
of the Wisp and the Fairies from eighteen forty six,
and I'm just going to read a piece of this.
In this story, he gives about how he witnessed the
will of the wisp one night, he says, sometimes it
was only like a flash in the pan on the ground.
At other times it rose up several feet and fell
to the earth and became extinguished. And many times it

(20:28):
proceeded horizontally from fifty to one yards in an undulating
motion like the flight of the green woodpecker, and about
his rapid and once or twice it proceeded with considerable
rapidity in a straight line upon or close to the ground.
The light of this ignis fatuous, or rather of these
ignis fatui or fatui, was very clear and strong, much

(20:52):
bluer than that of a candle, and very like that
of an electric spark. And some of them looked larger
and as bright as the star Syria. Of course, they
look dim when seen in ground fogs, but there was
not any fog on the night in question. There was, however,
a muddy closeness of the atmosphere, and at the same
time a considerable breeze from the southwest. These will of

(21:13):
the whisps, which shot horizontally invariably proceeded before the wind
towards the northeast. That's interesting because it's a very scientifically
minded uh um and practical response to viewing this. Yeah,
he's describing it in terms of electricity, uh, describing the
color and sort of the position and the motion and

(21:36):
speed of motion, and then explaining that it follows the
pattern of the wind. Yeah. And I but I do
love the fact that he's he's really standing back and
taking a serious, calm approach to it because one of
the accounts that I was looking at an earlier account
from traveling German lawyer Hintsner Paul Hertzner, who wrote about

(21:56):
his travels in England, and he wrote the following about
a journey from Canterbury to Dover. He said, quote, there
were a great many jack o lanterns, so that we
were quite seized with horror and amazement. Um. And of
course if you're seized with horror and amazement, you get
into that whole realm of like what am I perceiving?
How is my mind perceiving it? And then how am

(22:18):
I recalling that memory and altering it? I mean, the
you know, part and partial to any paranormal experience where
the experience is valid, but they're varying mental factors that
are going to play into your interpretation of the event,
particularly if Englishmen have been telling you tales of the
strange lights in the in the in the swamp lands

(22:40):
and what they represent. Yeah, And of course everybody's got
an interpretive framework that they bring to seeing things like this,
Like I'm sure that our German traveler friend brought a
magical interpretive lens to it, saying there's a spirit out here.
It wishes us harm. It might be that dungeons and dragons,
chaotic evil spirit. I need to stay away. Uh. Jabez

(23:01):
Allies brought a more secular approach to it, he said
at the end of his recollection of the different events
that he witnessed, he says, from all the circumstances, stated,
it appears probable that these meteors rise in exhalations of
electric and perhaps other matter out of the earth, particularly
in or near the winter season, and that they generally

(23:23):
occur a day or two after a considerable rain and
on change from a cold to a warmer atmosphere. Now,
whether all that is true, that we don't know. It
might not be the case that you're more likely to
see it under those circumstances, but it's interesting that he's
trying to narrow down the physical causes that that would
create this and he of course tries to blame it

(23:45):
on electricity, which would make sense if you're writing in
the eighteen thirties or eighteen forties, when you know, electricity
is a very interesting thing. Yeah, and it's certainly that
the difference between magic and electricity there's a lot of
cross over and understanding of it. Electricity is very much
this uh, this this lofty uh partially understood concept. Yeah.

(24:06):
And then there was another thing that I looked at.
There was an article on Igny's fatuous from the Scientific
Monthly in nineteen nineteen, and it just made some observations.
For example, the flames of the ignis fatuous used to
appear very consistently in some locations, So there are places
where you could just expect to see them, and if
you went there, you you you would probably see them,

(24:29):
and that they gave off neither heat nor odor, and
that they don't set fire to the things around them.
Of course, granted you're talking about marsh lands and swap
lands in many situations here, so yeah, but I mean
there should be lots of dead grass and stuff like that.
I mean, it would seem like if you're dealing with
a hot flame, you would expect it to set fire
to something. So that's going to throw a wrench in

(24:50):
a lot of the explanations that people have given for this.
So the main point of of giving all these stories
about what people saw is that it's not just made up.
I mean, clearly, a lot of the explanation of what
causes the will of the whisp is magical thinking and
and fairy fairy stories and things like that. But the

(25:11):
phenomenon itself, I think we can be pretty confident is real.
It was actually referring to a thing people witnessed firsthand,
because why would there be so many stories from so
many different places, especially varied commentators too. It's not just
the religious or the folklore like it's also hot, you know,
scientifically minded individuals who are just talking about the lights

(25:34):
in the woods that simply occur, and that everyone says,
if everybody knows what you're talking about. And of course
we'll get into this later, but one of the disconnects
is that we don't see lights in the woods and
strange lights in the marsh all the time like we
apparently used to. So it's harder for us a to
put ourselves in that world, in that mindset and alsoys,

(25:55):
we'll discuss harder to go out and try and study
something that doesn't seem to be occurring anymore, at least
occurring with the same frequency. All Right, on that note,
we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come
back we will look at some of the possible scientific
explanations of this phenomenal Alright, we're back discussing Willow the

(26:18):
whist jack o lantern, will the smith, Uh, hinky punk,
whatever you wanna call that strange glow in the marsh lands,
in the woods, in the squamp. Pinky punk is a
really great personal insult that I've never heard used before. Yeah,
I might have to adopt it when I had my
son in the car, because you normally always call people

(26:39):
uh double doors or or use the word duck. Uh
here there, But that's pretty good. But maybe kinky punk.
We should make a list of the great insults that
we come up with from our research on these podcasts.
Because when I was doing an episode a couple of
years ago, forward thinking, we came across the term aggregated

(26:59):
diamond nano rods and a material science context. But man,
what a great thing to call a person a nano rod.
I've I've kept it with me ever since, and now
Hinky Punk goes on the list as well. Look at
that person driving like a complete hinky punk nano rod. Okay,
but now we need to bring it back to talk
about what on earth could be the actual scientific material

(27:22):
cause of all these phenomenon that people have called will
of the wisp. And there are a couple of things
that make this part of the discussion difficult. One of
the problems is that, unfortunately, most research into will of
the Whisp has been coming up with physical explanations that
try to match historical descriptions, because the will of the

(27:44):
Whisp has never, to my knowledge, been captured, sampled, measured,
really or even satisfactorily recorded on film in any useful way.
I think there's some claims that some people sort of
got a photograph of one, but not in any way
that's you full for, like a spectral analysis or anything
like that. So we've been just trying to figure out

(28:06):
ways to match people's descriptions of what they saw. And
most of these description descriptions come from more than a
hundred years ago, So already you're having a problem here
because there's nothing direct you can compare your examples too.
You just have to experiment and say, well, does this
look like what people were talking about back then? Uh.

(28:28):
Then there's another problem in scientific explanations of the will
of the whisp, which is that it's possible that similar
but different phenomena have sometimes been grouped together under the
category of will of the whisp. So there could be
lots of different types of ghost lights and various luminescent
events that occurred in the marshes or in the wilderness

(28:51):
in the past, and that people assumed, well, they're pretty similar,
they're they're all the same thing, and that they weren't
actually all the same thing. Yeah. I mean, especially if
the phenomenon that's occurring as a product of the environment,
it seems entirely likely you would have a different phenomenon occurring,
say in the mountains of Chile, as opposed to the
swamp lands um you know of of Italy. Yeah. Uh.

(29:13):
And another aspect, and this is my read on it too,
is that so many of these explanations are taking meticulous
care with chemical or physical properties that maybe in play,
without taking into account, of course, the mental aspects of it,
the psychological aspects. And again some of the problems with
memory and perception that I mentioned earlier. So you're which

(29:37):
is part of it. You know, you're you're just looking
at a possible physical chemical, uh reaction that's going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's not like like we're saying, it's not a photograph, right,
I mean, there's it's not objectively recorded. Even by people
who are trying to bring a scientific or skeptical mindset
to these things, they're they're still sort of interpreting with

(29:57):
a cultural script like you're saying, or a framework that
they're working from. They know this is a phenomenon people
have observed before. It usually is described to look like X.
So they're already bringing that to the table when they're
seeing it. All right, Well, let's let's roll through some
of them. Let's start with electricity. We mentioned electricity earlier. Yeah,

(30:18):
that was in in Jabez Allies account. He suggested quote
these meteors rise in exhalations electric h of electric matter
out of the earth. And some people have tried to
offer the hypothesis of like ball lightning or other aberrant
electrical phenomena to explain what's going on when you see
lights in the marsh Alessandro Volta, according to one source,

(30:41):
apparently thought that the Igney's fatuous could be explained by
way of interaction between electrical currents and what he called
inflammable air, which I think is referring to methane, which
we will definitely get to in a minute here. But
this I think has been rejected by modern people who
have looked into the phenomenon. Alan A. Mills, who wrote

(31:02):
a couple of papers on this on the subject of
Will of the Whisp, didn't think that the electrical explanations
really fit what people were describing when they saw will
of the Wisp and saw and explained what they saw.
It just doesn't sound like the same kind of thing
right now. As far as the next idea, bioluminescence goes,

(31:23):
there's some interesting ideas here, some more plausible than others. Right. So, bioluminescence,
of course, is the natural illumination of animals or of
of life forms, and not necessarily just animals. It could
be microbial life. So fireflies or bioluminescence. They can light
up in the dark, and I can definitely see that.
There may have been some cases in the past where

(31:45):
people saw fireflies and then they had a pre existing
cultural script of Igny's fatuous and they say I saw it,
I saw the light in the marsh when they were
really seeing fireflies. That's possible, but it doesn't seem like
firefly as can explain all of these instances because they
don't really closely enough match what people are usually describing. Um,

(32:08):
And it just seems like that could maybe explain some instances,
but probably not most. Yeah. Also, if you're used to
seeing the fireflies, you know, it seems like they would
maybe make more sense if you were a traveler to
an area where, oh, I've never seen a firefly before,
and then there are these random pinpoints of light in
the wilderness or potentially in the Asian model, because in

(32:29):
in parts of the Asia you see fireflies, particularly entail end.
I believe that that light up in Unison in a
way that we don't see so much in the United States. Yeah. Um,
there's also fungus, right, Yes, there are in particular type
of fungus that keeps up popping up in these uh
these theories is our malaria. This is a parasitic kind

(32:50):
of fun guy that's also known as honey fungus. Oh,
that's a cuter name. It sounds delicious, a little tangy
and sweet. Um, So this could be responsible for some
of these apparitions. Some species of our malaria are bioluminescent,
and you know, growing in just the right place and
perceived in just the right atmosphere could be seen as

(33:11):
a will of the whist. Now. One of the people
writing on this subject that we read, Jan's Elassawitz, commented
that sometimes, though probably not in most cases, but in
some rare occasions, people might have even been talking about owls. Yeah,
because on one hand, you know owl nocturnal flyer, very silent,

(33:31):
very quiet, kind of ghostly. Just to perceive an owl
even in the daytime, it's it's it's something slightly supernatural
about it. So you can especially if the moonlight is
catching gray or white plumage just right, or if the
owl has trapped in the feathers in its wings, some
rotting wood or bioluminescent fungus, like if it's been rolling

(33:53):
in the fungus and the fungus glows and then the
owl swoops around in the dark. This may pow possibly
explain some instances of what people are seeing, but it
seems similar to other things we've been talking about so far,
the fireflies and things like that. It might explain some
cases that people map onto the existing cultural script of

(34:14):
the Igney's fatuous, but it just doesn't sound very much
like what people are usually describing. Yeah, it doesn't seem
like a good excuse, universal excuse for what's going on,
and it just doesn't seem really all that common. Now.
Another version of this is, of course, that they could
just you could just be perceiving a reflected light from
another source. Yeah. One great example of this is I

(34:36):
was recently in in BigBen National Park in Texas, and
near that we went through the town of Marfa, Texas,
which is famous for the Marfa ghost lights. Have you
ever heard of these? Are these railroad related or they
just are they? Not? That I know is there are
a lot of traditions, I think, even around my own
hometown in Tennessee, tales of ghostly lights out on the

(34:57):
railroad tracks that are kind of a will of the
whis type of scenario, but I think are generally related
to uh, reflected lights from other sources. Yeah, well, so
the Marfa ghost lights are probably not the same phenomenon
as well. The whist because it's not marshy area, it's
you know, desert, and they they seem to be a
different kind of thing. They're not really what people are
describing there either, but they are a type of ghost

(35:20):
light that from what I've read, a common skeptical response
to this is people are just seeing reflected car headlights
from like their cars driving far out in the desert
and they get reflected by the atmosphere in a certain
way or somehow end up reflecting their light to people
near the town of Marfa, and they're like, Wow, that's
an amazing light I just saw in the desert. What

(35:40):
could what could explain it? Or it's campfires? You know.
I know we're both familiar with the Chattanooga, Tennessee area.
Oh yeah, I grew up there. Yeah, well I've I've
definitely driven through Chattanooga on like really dark nights before
and I'll see of what essentially car lights that are
driving up in the the hills and the mountains. It's dark.

(36:02):
It's so dark that for a split second I see
there's some sort of strange light. It must be a
UFO or something. And then I realized, oh wait, that's
that's a there's a mountain right there, how disappointed just
the mountain people. Yeah, so in our age that is
just so just full of ubiquitous artificial lighting, screwing up
our perception of nighttime. Uh, there's plenty of room for

(36:24):
a will of the whisps to emerge that way. Yeah.
So electrical phenomenon, bioluminescence or reflected lights. Like we said,
all of these may account for some small subset of
of these historical sightings, but they don't really seem to
fit the bill in terms of what people usually describe
when they talk about the ignese fatuous. So what's something

(36:45):
that's closer to the traditional description and really seems to match.
And here we get to the main event, which is
marsh gas. Uh, good old, good old marsh gas, good
old swamp gas. Unfortunately, as we'll see, this is not
with out problems of its own. But finally we're getting
into the territory that that could really be a viable explanation.

(37:08):
So Robert, Yes, what happens when a body of a
dead animal or a bunch of dead plant matter lies
down to its final repose in a marsh or swamp? Oh,
that's that's gonna break down, and it may seek to
the breakdown of organic matter that is just part of
the swamp marshland ecosystem, right, And so the decomposition of

(37:30):
dead organic matter often happens underwater or under damp soil
in these types of environments, in the swamp, in the marsh,
in the bog and what we would call an anaerobic environment.
So that's without access to air. Now, things can decompose
with access to air. To you lay something on the
ground in the forest, it'll have a chance for all

(37:52):
this air to get at it. And that's a different
kind of decomposition than anaerobic decomposition that happens without air.
Decomposition that happens without air tends to produce gaseous byproducts,
including methane and carbon dioxide. Methane is flammable, and if
you get any of your home power from natural gas,

(38:14):
this is a somewhat similar mixture. It's composed primarily of methane.
That's what's burning with that nice blue flame. So many
sources treat the matter of the scientifically known you know,
skeptical latitude cause of will of the whisp as pretty
much completely settled. It's spontaneous combustion of methane in marsh gas.

(38:34):
Just one example is one we looked up together the
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. The entry on ignis fatuous.
It says, quote the will of the Whisp or Friar's
lantern a flame like phosphorescence flitting over marshy ground due
to the spontaneous combustion of gases from decaying vegetable matter,
and deluding people who attempt to follow it. Hence any

(38:57):
delusive aim or object or some utopian ski team that
is utterly impracticable. It's kind of a kind of a
political stance from Brewers there. But anyway, but it sounds possible, right, Yeah.
But it also the way it's the way it presents
it is this is not just one hypothesis that has
been offered, but it acts as if this is a
settled matter. Yeah, it's the spontaneous combustion of marsh gas.

(39:20):
Another example would be one scientific paper I found that
said the following quote. The once widespread sightings of will
of the Wisp, also known as ignice fatuous on northern
European peat lands were probably the result of methane abiliations
ignited by lanterns or other ignition sources formerly used for
nighttime illumination. So again they treat it as pretty much settled.

(39:45):
It's marsh gas being set on fire, and that's what
the will of the whisp is. But I don't know.
That seems kind of weird to me. I mean, wouldn't
people have noticed it had to be set on fire
with sparks or lanterns? Yeah, you think the stories would
revolve more around some individual wandering out with it with
his or her lantern and in poof a willow wits,

(40:05):
you know, suddenly pops into being right next to you,
as opposed to seeing one in the distance right. And
so the story I think is not nearly as settled
as many of these older sources would seem to indicate
because of this big question, what is the source of ignition?
Is it really fair to assume that the people who
saw these things were constantly inadvertently setting fire to methane

(40:25):
bubbles around them without realizing they were doing so. Maybe again,
it's kind of like some of the other things, maybe
in some weird cases, but it kind of seems like
a stretch to say this is the primary phenomenon being described.
So here we get to some chemistry where the answer
could possibly lie, because what you're starting to look for

(40:45):
is what could be a chemical spark in the natural
environment that could naturally ignite methane gases escaping from a
marsh a marsh land. Yeah, but the only thing that
comes to mind off hand opposed front. Let's see, you
have lightning strikes. Yeah, you have spontaneous combustion, which is
a possibility with anaerobic situations such as say a hay bale. Yeah,

(41:10):
but like if the heat builds up in it, it
gets really hot. Yeah. Aside from that, the only thing
that comes to mind is like a wolf that that
that that somebody's tied fire to its tail or if
you know, something of that matter. But yeah, otherwise, maybe
put some flints to its teeth so every time it chomps,
it strikes sparks a rock falling off a cliff and

(41:31):
just happening to somehow spark on the way down. A
guy traveling from the future and the time machine with
a flamethrower, yes, or just a cigarette. He's just he's
just traveling through time, stops for a smoke in a
medieval bog and then continues. But then oh, the butterfly effect.
Now the future we all have frog frog tongues. Yeah.
So in other words, it sounds a little sketchy, right,

(41:52):
I mean, we need we need a better ignition system
than that. Yeah. And so the ignition system that has
long been for posed by people trying to explain the
will of the whisp has been phosphorus compounds. So instead
of being lit up by a lantern, marsh gas leaking
from the ground could be ignited in the presence of
oxygen if there were phosphorus compounds in play, for example,

(42:15):
phosphene or pH three. You could also call that hydrogen
phosphied or die phosphine P two H four. So phosphine
is a highly toxic gas. In fact, I saw this
mentioned online and I went back and revisited it. You know,
if you go back to the beginning of Breaking Bad,

(42:36):
right right at the start, there's a scene where Walter
White uses a chemical reaction producing phosphine gas to poison
a couple of gangsters, do you okay, now, yeah, now
that you mentioned it, I do. Though. I've actually read
chemists looking at that and saying the chemistry of that
scenes a little bit wrong. But but it is true
that phosphine is highly toxic. Well, it was this some
more theme though that we're saying here. People sort of

(42:58):
shuffle the explanations off to the realm of chemistry, and
for most people that's sufficient. Okay, it's a matter of chemistry.
I don't really understand all the ins and outs of chemistry,
but it seems like a realm where everything is possible.
Everything in the world hinges on chemistry. So well enough,
but then when a chemist start breaking it apart, these
problems emerging. Yeah, and so phosphine is extremely, extremely flammable.

(43:23):
It can totally catch on fire at a moment's notice.
And then this other compound, the diphosphine P to H
four is a liquid that will ignite, just spontaneously combust
when it's exposed to the air. So you get this
stuff out of its anaerobic environment up to the surface
where air comes into contact with it, and it just

(43:45):
erupts with fire and this ignites the phosphine or the
methane itself. Phosphine igniting ignites the methane and then boom,
you've got fire in the gas escaping from the marsh.
It's been utilized in weapons before. Um kind of hillacious
weapons that we tend to shot away from. Oh really,
I didn't know, because it burns in the air. That's gross.

(44:05):
Oh I guess like phosphorus based incendiary weapons. That's horrible.
But anyway, the idea is that the dead, decaying organic
matter down under the marsh releases these gases. It releases phosphine, diphosphine, methane,
and the reaction with the air causes ignition. The methane

(44:28):
catches on fire. Is this plausible, Well, I think the
answer is sort of, but maybe not entirely so. It's
it is apparently true that some microbial life forms can
produce these types of phosphorus compounds through the process of decomposition.
Going to work on on bones and other organic materials

(44:48):
that might be buried down in the swamp, they can
release the phosphorus compounds that we've talked about. But other
sources have contested the idea of straight up combustion of
methane and other gas is including the phosphine match or
the phosphorus based ignition systems, And there are a few
things to consider. One of them is that methane, if

(45:09):
ignited by fire, will burn with a what one of
the people we read described as a brief, hot, bright flame,
which really goes opposite to how people usually describe the
will of the Whisp, But that's more often described as
having a cool blue luminessence that does not seem to
produce any heat or much heat at least depending on

(45:30):
the source. Yeah, if the situation is not that Will
the Smith lit a fart in the night, is that
Will the Smith has some sort of ghostly illumination that
is seems to be pretty constant though though moving. Yeah.
Another thing is that people have found that the ignition
of phosphine gas mixed with methane results in acrid smoke.

(45:50):
This is not a common feature of Will of the
Whisp descriptions, right, Yeah, because that would be a whole
other thing, right. You can imagine the tails would revolve around, Oh,
there was a camp fire the woods of Misty, and
there's clearly fairies or elves that hadn't know It's there's
no no mention of the smoke. Yeah. Um. Other questions
would be that why is the willow Wisp often reported
to run away when you approach it, or then follow

(46:12):
you when you don't. The best explanations that I ran
across had to do with just complex fluid dynamics in
the situation, disturbing the mixture of gases in the air
as you approach, and you just kind of make it
waffed away by their movements, like trying to catch up
a stray bit of cat hair floating in the in
the room. Yeah, you never can can Yeah, And I

(46:33):
think that's a perhaps good explanation. But then there's another
big one that I think is kind of important. If
this is ordinary hot combustion, just like hot flames, like
the fire we normally know, why doesn't the flame spread?
Like why doesn't it catch fire to surrounding dead grass
and vegetation. Well, my answer response to that would be,
in many cases, this is a bog or a marsh land.

(46:54):
And when's the last time you heard about a bog
burning down? Right? I mean it's I think it's still
possible for for the dead plant matter that's above you know,
whatever kind of damp soil or is there what's poking
out above the ground that seems like that could catch fire.
But potentially yeah, I mean yeah, but just the damp
environment tends to make me give less credence to that.

(47:16):
But but I agree. It seems like there would still
be the potential for something to catch on fire. Yeah.
So there's actually a geologist named Alan A. Mills who
did who wrote a couple of papers on the subject
of the ignis fatuous or the will of the wisp,
and explained that he based on some analysis he did
and some experiments he conducted, he didn't think that the

(47:38):
marsh gas explanation cut it. It just didn't really work.
He claimed that he tried it. He didn't experiment with
putting a bunch of stuff into a container of damp
garden soil, peat and rotten compost, and he tried to
incubate it in the dark. He did get methane marsh
gas out of it, but it did not spontaneously and bust.

(48:01):
And then he also he tried adding phosphine phosphine generating
compounds and that apparently this produced a great stink, but
it did not It did not create the spontaneous luminescence.
So he could produce march gas, but he couldn't find
a natural way to get it ignited like that. And
whatever the cause of the ignition, it seems like the

(48:22):
traditional sightings of the ignis fatuous really must not have
featured hot flames. Now you're probably wondering, Okay, what's the
opposite of hot flames? What would the dalb with cold points?
But cold flames? Um? Cold flames are produced by ether
or carbon disulfide. When he did just below the ignition

(48:43):
point yea, So they're not exactly cold, but they're not
as hot as flames usually are. So you heat certain
substances up to the point where they're almost about to
catch on fire, but they don't, and they produced this, uh,
this sort of halo. Yeah, I can described as that
luminescent recombustion halo um. Again, right, when the various compounds

(49:05):
are heated, it just below the ignition points. So and
again this perhaps this would be due to a natural
um if this would be a natural product of the
decay in the swamp. Yeah, so this is a possibility
that a few people have explored in some experiments. And
then there is also a parallel possibility. In fact, cold
flames might even be an example of this. But the

(49:26):
broader concept is chemo luminescence, which would mean glowing or
light created by a chemical reaction. So it's not exactly fire,
but it is chemicals reacting in a way that produces light.
For example, the oxidation of those phosphorus compounds, we were
talking about creating a chemo luminescent glow. Okay, but this

(49:50):
seems likely too. It's kind of the bioluminescent model, except
without the without the direct involvement with an organism. Yeah,
and so Alan A. Mills. This one researcher described how
he put together an experiment where he created a glow
just by exposing different gases to each other. So he
says that he found experimentally quote that the entrainment of

(50:14):
crude phosphine into natural gas at low concentrations insufficient to
cause ignition did result in a cool, glowing cloud visible
in the dark. However, its color was green, like the
glow associated with aerial oxidation of yellow phosphorus, rather than blue.
So he's saying that just by mixing together the phosphorus

(50:34):
compounds and the natural gas in the dark in the
right concentrations, he got it to glow, even though it
didn't catch fire. Okay, but it does. It does seem
to lend cred into the possibility that a different type
of chemical reaction could be taking place. We just maybe
don't know all the ingredients that they're involved. Yeah. Yeah.

(50:55):
And then there was also another experiment I read about
that was done by some Italian researcher is more recently,
I think it was just seven or eight years ago.
So they just had a container of phosphine gas phosphine
vapor that they fed with a stream of air and nitrogen.
And when they did that just right a like they described,
a faint, pale greenish light could be seen in the dark.

(51:19):
And I think, as far as most scientists who have
looked into this are concerned, to the chemo lumin essence
is probably the most viable answer to the question today,
though it still doesn't seem to fit perfectly. Though maybe
we should just never expect anything to fit perfectly, yeah,
especially given the the uncertain shape that has been presented

(51:42):
by these these varying historical accounts. Right, yeah, because ultimately
we're being held back here by the lack of observation
of this phenomenon today. And that's another really interesting aspect
of the will of the wisp. Claimed sightings of will
of the wisp, for some reason, have drastically dropped off
in the past century or so, almost to the point

(52:02):
of some people saying that the will of the Whisp,
whatever it was, is now extinct or or endangered in
near extinction. And I think it's really interesting to imagine
what could be the cause of this, because, as we've
talked about, it's widespread enough that we think it is
referring to a real thing. It's not just people imagining it.
But what could the thing have been if people generally

(52:25):
don't see it anymore? And I do want to point
out that, you know what, we're not saying that they've
completely vanished, but clearly they used to. They used to
be more prevalent than they are today. UM. I know,
for instance, I was looking around and the U. S.
Air Forces Project, a blue book that came out in
the nineteen sixties, um I had to do with the
UFOs and possible explanations for UFOs. One major explanation presented

(52:49):
by Jay Alan Heineck in that was that, particularly in
the rural Michigan area, swamp lights might be the reason
for that people are claiming to see UFOs. But then again,
UFO sidings are also down today compared to what they
were in the in the previous century, So I don't know.

(53:10):
Maybe that also plays into this gradual disappearance of the
swamp lights. That's interesting because you see UFO sightings suddenly
come into the picture in the twentieth century, right at
the time when these the will of the Wisp sightings
seem to largely disappear. Yet they're probably not the same
thing because they I mean, they're described in vastly different ways. Yeah,

(53:34):
but I wouldn't be surprised that there's a little overlape
and again we're falling into the potential trap of trying
to explain a whole host of different phenomena with one explanation. Yeah.
I think that's the most important thing to keep in
mind is again, like we said, the will the whisp
might not be just one thing. It might be a
sort of center of the road script that a lot

(53:54):
of different phenomena are mapped onto. One of the big
things that to discuss here though, in terms of why
the willow wist phenomenon would have faded away, is just
to first of all, look at where it's occurring. Most
of these accounts have to do with wetlands, marshlands, boss
and what has happened to our marshlands in uh in
the last Cuple over the last couple of centuries, right,

(54:15):
if a lot of this folklore is coming out of
the marshes of Europe. The marshes of Europe have largely
been transformed into places where agriculture happens, or in the cities,
or they've been drained, they've been sliced up. They are
no longer the ecosystem that they once were. Yeah, So
if you think of if you think of of the
willowist phenomenon as being a phenomenon that naturally occurs though

(54:38):
as something of a rarity in a large wetland environment,
and then it's reduced to a small wetland environment a
few centuries later, it seems like you would haven't even
rarer occurrences. That whatever is causing it, be at an organism,
be at a particular chemical build up, the potential for
that to happen is going to be far less because

(55:00):
we've essentially terraformed our our planet. We've we've we've more
than doubled the nitrogen cycle. We've we've we've we've decided
to pick and choose what organisms are going to flourish,
which ones we're going to do our best to eradicate
without even knowing that we're doing it right at the time. Yeah.
And and marshlands and wetlands, I mean that is they've

(55:21):
been a real rallying point of in recent history of
us trying to say, ho, slow down, these are actually
important ecosystems and we don't just need to, you know,
push them out to the edge of existence. So we've
lost a number of species already that have made their
home in wetlands. Is it possible that we've also exterminated

(55:44):
or nearly exterminated, uh, something that produces the willow weest phenomenon. Yeah.
I mean we may have just been watching too many
times the documentary Man Versus Nature, The Road to Victory,
But yeah, it's essentially along the same lines as something
that people have brought up with the idea of terraforming Mars.

(56:06):
We think that Mars probably doesn't have any life forms
on it today. Probably it may have had some in
the past, but whether it currently has any strange microbial
life surviving anywhere, or ever had it in the past.
What if by terraforming Mars in the future, by turning
it into a suitable earthlike environment, we destroy whatever pockets

(56:29):
of existing life or evidence of past life. We're already there. Yeah,
that's one of the big arguments against terraforming and uh
and indeed it's it's one that we have already encountered
with a certain degree here on this planet. And I
think the underlying concept here is one that several scientists
we referred to have alluded to, which is that the

(56:49):
the will of the whist phenomenon may have a sort
of species based origin, like that there might be a
particular kind of microbial life form or microbial life ecosystem
that produces it. There are tiny creatures in the ground
that are responsible for the will of the whisps people

(57:10):
used to see. Yeah, one of the articles out there
floating around is from Howell G. M. Edwards titled Will
of the Whisp An Ancient Mystery with extreme aphile Origins
question mark and uh, yeah. This basically the basic concept
here seems to be that that either the bioluminescence or
the biologically discharged gas resulting of it maybe resulting from

(57:31):
an extreme a file organism that previously carved out of
fragile niche lifestyle and swamps and marches marshes, but has
since snuffed it due to its delicate positioning in the ecosystem.
So again it comes down to the fact that this
is something out there and maybe it's uh in its
place in the world is fragile, and then when we

(57:53):
start eradicating and cutting down this environment, it all that
goes away. It makes me wonder what kinds of strange
phenomena other than the will of the whisp could go
extinct in the future. What are the things people see
today that we might class as paranormal that maybe will
mostly disappear in the future, and we might not know
why because we might not know what caused it to

(58:15):
begin with. What if we enter a future, can you
imagine a world where people don't see UFOs anymore? Well,
we kind of, we kind of live in it already.
I mean, I feel like looking at these cases we
presented here, you could say that, all right, take the UFO.
There are varying reasons why one might see a UFO UH.
Some of them involve sleep paralysis, some of them involve

(58:36):
mental illness, some of them involve a sleep deprivation, etcetera.
You can make a long list of them, and if
if a certain type of swamp gas phenomenon is on
that list, and that becomes eradicated due to environmental change,
then yeah, that changes how it is perceived. It becomes

(58:57):
less than an object of nature in more of a
mental uh existence, more of a mental animal as opposed
to a chemical one. Yeah. Yeah, And that is interesting
because the will of the whisp seems to have largely
gone away, but the phenomenon of seeing lights has not.
I mean we people still see lights. Yeah, We've always

(59:17):
seen them, and we're going to continue to see strange
lights that we can't explain, but try to our brain
ends up trying to explain them in the form of
hallucination and then also in the form of various cultural
scripts to apply to it in retrospect. Okay, but Robert,
I want to bring you back to the place we started. Yes,
I want to change everything and say you're not a
medieval peasant. You are not out on the fens of

(59:40):
medieval England. You are yourself and you are currently out,
let's say, hiking in a US National park. You have
do you have a favorite national park? Well, you know what,
Let's say, let's say state park. Let's go with Stark
Pinocchi in here in Georgia, because it's a swamp and
it's a swamp where people have claim to have seen
uh marsh lights in the past. Perfect. Okay, So you're

(01:00:03):
you're out walking in the Oki Pinoki. You realize you've
you've hiked too far in the late afternoon, and suddenly
dusk is coming on. You need to head back in
the other direction to get back to the visitor center
in your car. But on the way, you see some
blue lights that are just out of just beyond range,
out off the path. Would you go and investigate, really,

(01:00:23):
knowing what I know now, yeah, I would probably not,
But I feel like I would stop and watch and
and hopefully I would watch this phenomenon with the presence
of mind that what I'm observing is a rarity. Whatever
is causing it has become scarce in the world, be
it an organism that is dying out, a chemical uh

(01:00:46):
scenario under the soil that is less prevalent, or you know,
fairies that are leaving the world, or a certain damned
individual who somehow weasel his way back into hell. Man,
I feel like I have the I must have the
horrible curiosity at half to go. Why would there You're
gonna die? Well, no, I'm not. No, that's exactly why
I brought it to the modern day. So you don't
think that there's ahinky punk out there who's gonna lead

(01:01:08):
you off a cliff or into into Quicksand do you
think this is probably some kind of natural occurrence. It's
something that maybe gas, maybe something you can touch. Maybe
you could be the person who has the insight onto
into what is causing this, because you can finally get
close and get a good look and catch some in
a jar. Yeah, but this is but as we've discussed,
this is not happening in the city. This is happening

(01:01:30):
in the wild and in humans. And despite despite all
of our GPS technology, we can still die in the wilderness,
and we can, we can, we can do so fairly easily.
They're still alligators in the okathin Okey. There's still bears
and other national parks, and there's still things to fall
off of and you know, have to cut your own
leg off and that sort of thing. Yeah, and that's
what Willow Wis wants to happen. So there you have it.

(01:02:04):
That was our original will of the Whisp episode. And
now welcome to this special October coda. We have received
lots of really interesting messages over the months in response
to that show, and some of them made it onto
previous listener mail episodes, some didn't, but I wanted to
collect them all in one place so we can get
a sense of how this ancient phenomenon appears today. So

(01:02:27):
here we go. This message is from Glenn and it
came in via email. Hey guys, my name is Glenn.
I just listened to your Will of the Whisp podcast
and I wanted to share an experience I recently had
with you. It's mid October, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I'm on
a date with a girl I was seeing at the time,

(01:02:49):
and I decided to take her to this spot just
southeast of Milwaukee and St. Francis. There's a condominium development
along the lake shore as a footpath running along the
backside of the cons following the shore. At the northernmost
end of the path, there's a man made pond that's
on a hill which is surrounded by breakwater that's been
rocked off and diverted, so out to end it goes

(01:03:12):
lake rocks, lakewater, than the hill and then the pond.
So it's fairly marshy as far as man made landscapes go.
At the edge of the pond, there are some benches
that overlook the entire cityscape, great view, so I take
her there and as we're relaxing taking in the site,
we can see a blue pulsating light down the hill,

(01:03:33):
hovering just along the water line of the lake. It's
a fairly intense light, almost comparable to a small, flashing
blue led. At first glance, I thought it might have
been a person's cell phone, but this theory was quickly
disproved when the light began to rise maybe five to
six feet up off the ground and started to float
its way up the hill toward us. It was very small,

(01:03:54):
a little bigger than say, your standard issue firefly, but
the light was much more dents and moved in a
much different way than fireflies do, and it didn't share
the yellow glow that a firefly has. It was a
very true blue. It gets to the top of the
hill and then begins to float in an undulating motion
on a straight course from the west toward the lake

(01:04:16):
to the east, about two yards away at eye level
before it gets over the lake and it's out of vision.
So anyway, he says, they got a little scared. They
decided to leave and then he said, actually another one
rose up out of some brush off the side of
the path as they were leaving. But anyway, he concludes
by saying, I've been searching for an explanation to this
scene since that day, and after hearing your podcast and

(01:04:39):
fairly certain that I saw what these accounts claimed you
have also witnessed. I've returned to the location several times,
but have never been lucky enough to see them again.
Sorry to the length the email, I have a renewed
excitement now. It would seem there has to be some
substance to what we saw that night. I will add
that it did indeed rain a couple of days previous
to my story, so maybe they is a correlation. Really interesting, Glenn,

(01:05:03):
thank you for sharing another ghost light phenomenon, this one
a little bit different. This comes from our listener Kelly,
and Kelly writes over email to say, Hey, guys, I
experienced something on the mysterious side in the mid nineties
that this episode reminded me of. To set the stage,
it occurred near my home in the Okanagan Valley, a
desert like valley known for its orchards, vineyards, and tourism.

(01:05:27):
It's in the southern British Columbia interior, just above the border,
so above the forty ninth parallel. I was driving one
night along Okanagan Lake from Penticton to Kelowna, and often
the distance there was this eerie greenish glow. It was
clear across the lake and on Okanagan Mountain, an area
with no development. I didn't think much of it, but

(01:05:48):
I did enjoy its glow for maybe about half an hour,
also known as thirty minutes in metric. Thank you for
the conversion, Kelly. I just thought it was the northern
lights giving me a show, but never looked into it.
I'm wondering if the Aurora borealis could explain away some
of these experiences. Anyways, as always, keep up the great work.
Thank you very much, Kelly. That that is interesting. I

(01:06:08):
know people have invoked the aurora to try to explain it,
but it doesn't really seem to match a lot of
the reports. You hear about a more distinct bluish lights
hovering near the ground, but that may have something to
do with the this sort of larger glow that you
claim to have seen. Next our listener Megan Hutchinson writes

(01:06:29):
in to say that she enjoyed the original Will of
the Whisp episode, but also to let us know that
she drew and co created a graphic novel called Will
of the Wisp with a writer named Tom Hammock. And
I won't read her full message because it contains spoilers
for the plot, but this story is set in some
of the watery places of Louisiana and it involves a

(01:06:50):
girl who's got to solve a mystery behind a local
Will of the Wisp. And I will say that lately
I have been dying for some swamp fiction, to sort
of dive into a satan in a haunted swamp with
wrathful spirit adventures, and it looks like this book is
exactly what I've been hoping for, so I actually ordered
a copy. And if you're in the mood for a
similar type of wicked thing, especially from the pen of

(01:07:12):
another stuff to blow your mind listener, you might want
to look up Megan's graphic novel to see if it
catches your eye. It's called Will of the Wisp, so
check it out if you're interested. Darren writes to us
on Facebook with a great message in which he says
some very nice things about the show, he corrects our
abysmal pronunciation of Scottish towns and cities, and then recounts

(01:07:35):
some strange experiences of his own. So Darren says, particularly
wanted to tell you off a Will of the Whisp
type situation I experienced last year in Corfu, that's a
Greek island. My fiance and I were walking along a
beach about ten pm and I noticed a fire snake
side winding across the water. I naturally freaked out. My fiance,

(01:07:57):
who is Polish, laughed at my fear and told me
they were common, she had seen them all the time. Emboldened,
I decided to take a picture of the beast. The
moment the flash went off, the flame snake headed straight
towards me. Now, I'm from Scotland and we don't have
illuminated sea creatures very much. As this creature is heading
towards me, I'm getting pretty scared. When it leaves the

(01:08:18):
water hovers into a tree, and I think I can
see a pair of glowing eyes looking at me. Well, gentlemen,
I don't mind telling you. My feet didn't touch the
floor until I was back at my hotel. My fiance's
mocking laughter following me, and I still don't believe her
explanation that it was a firefly. I know I saw
a fire snake. Man Um. I'm not quite sure that

(01:08:41):
fits into the Will of the Whisp tradition, but it's
it's close enough that it's worth mentioning. So thank you
very much. Darren Joshua contacts us via email with a
bunch of thoughts. I'm going to read some of his
comments that relate to the Will of the Wisp. Joshua says,
I have a Wisp story for you. I was a
teenager around oh six oh seven, either junior or senior year.

(01:09:02):
I was in the Pennsylvania area around Jamison, Pennsylvania, in
a development place called Stover Mill, where my two friends
lived at the time, and he says, it's around the Doylestown,
Philadelphia area. At that time in my life, I was
a bit of an arrogant philosopher slash atheist who, seemingly
in contradiction, believed in the supernatural world of magic. I

(01:09:24):
was with two friends, one who felt she had direct
connections to dark forces in the world and another one
who just kind of identified himself as a punk. I
had experimented with supernatural stuff like what I thought at
the time was meditation and the like. So I was
a bit cocky in the way only a teenager could be.
So all three of us were hanging out very late

(01:09:46):
at night, if not early morning, in a well lit
neighborhood slash development. That kind of orange light, I know
what light you're talking about. In the center of this
development was one of those big water collecting areas with
tall grass with it. Now, I can't be certain if
it had rained recently, but I'm pretty sure the basin
was dry because we had walked the path earlier. So

(01:10:07):
as we were on the curb and just talking, we
see a bobbing light, almost as if someone were very
slowly skipping. The light was less than half a football
field away. When I first saw it, I took a
second glance because it looked like the blue light of
someone on their cell phone. Only too right. That's the
second cell phone comparison I've heard. But anyway, Joshua continues,

(01:10:28):
and in my pants down awareness, I quickly went through
my list of what I was seeing, like, oh, it's
someone on a cell phone in the tall grass, which
was replaced by oh, wait, I don't see a body,
nor do I hear anyone. In the silence of the night,
me and my friends, in our Scooby Doo fashion, hit
the ground and inch closer to try and figure out
what we were seeing. Uh. It was strolling along through

(01:10:50):
the grass, first away from us. Then it changed directions
and started heading our way at its slow pace. I
was excited because it meant I could get a closer look.
So only the light went out and all stared in silence,
waiting to see, and it appeared again about half the
distance it was closer to us, to which in our
teenage fashion, we ditched and ran out of fear of

(01:11:11):
a ball of light that seemed to come right at us.
And then he goes on later in his note to
talk about the concept of blue energy. He says there
is a book called Megas of Java or Majus of Java,
which refers to a person named John Chang. I believe
from a nineteen eighty eight documentary called Ring of Fire.
The documentary is really enjoyable, but the book basically goes

(01:11:33):
into an explanation of martial arts in a fantastical way.
It actually sounds a bit cultish to me. A person
who stays open to many portrayals of reality as part
of my philosophic works. But in one chapter there's a
demonstration of quote yang energy that apparently always appears blue.
Another interesting point of reference to some mystical blue light. Mcguffin,

(01:11:55):
that is interesting. Thank you, Joshua. Our listener Eric writes
a by email. He says, hey, gentlemen, you ask for
anyone who's seen the elusive will of the Wisp. I
have had an experience with such an entity. I live
in upstate New York, Chinango County. I love to hike
on the mini finger like trails, or any trail that
spreads across the woods. The area of land behind where

(01:12:18):
I grew up had several pond marshy areas connected by
a series of streams, generally just a wet place, no
bog or swamp. Though at the age of fourteen eight
years back or so, I was several miles from home
when darkness fell. I know all the woods there pretty
well from my copious times wandering through them. It's also

(01:12:38):
hard to get lost. If you walk in any any
direction for a little while, you will find a road,
not a vast wilderness, for sure. I was casually walking
on a trail back with the moon is the only light.
Went off to my right. About three hundred feet into
the woods, I see a bobbing, whitish blue light. I walked,
keeping an eye on it, thinking if there were any

(01:12:58):
houses out that way. There were not. Not only that,
but it seemed to be moving parallel to me. I
thought to myself, I'm not starving or near dehydration. I'm
not delirious or mad. But I had a profound skeptical
curiosity in the supernatural. I thought it might be a ghost.
My neighbor liked to tell ghost stories about people getting
lost in the woods by following a large white buck

(01:13:21):
during deer season, or a girl in distress that they
could never seem to find. I think he just liked
to scare me. Anyways, I followed it off the trail,
taking note of where I was. I followed it, never
seeming to be able to get closer than a hundred
feet or so from it. But it looked like a
dim blue flame, bobbing and swaying in the dark, dancing
around trees, egging me on to follow it. Prevaricating my

(01:13:44):
worst thoughts, I kept following and meandered through the woods.
I had to walk over many little streams and around
wet areas where it became hard to pass through. This
went on for about an hour before I lost sight.
I walked to where it was, and it was the
edge of one of the old farmer's fields. There are
a lot of old fields that are not near any
roads or anything, just isolated in the woods. I saw

(01:14:07):
the bobbing light on the other side of the field.
I knew exactly where I was and had had enough
and decided to walk home. The road was only a
little less than a mile from where I was. I
followed the edge of the field to a path at
one of the corners, and the light followed me. But
at some point during this time it split off into
three smaller bobbing lights. They never went too far from

(01:14:29):
each other. One would get ahead and the others would
quickly catch up. But they went parallel to me till
I got to the path and I couldn't see them
in the woods anymore. But I glanced back and saw
them at the end of the path after I had
walked a little ways in. At this point I began
to walk fast, getting more and more unnerved. They never
seemed to catch up. Even after I started to run

(01:14:50):
and ran out of breath and stopped to grab my breath,
they didn't seem to get any closer, even though I
wasn't moving. A few minutes later, I got to the road,
I turned back to see if they were still following me.
I could still see them, but way farther off than
they had been the entire time. I watched them fade
back into the woods, behind the trees and the brush.

(01:15:10):
I walked home, haunted by what I saw. I never
told many people about it because it obviously sounds crazy.
I researched it and came across the term will of
the Wisp in later weeks, but had never seen anything
saying there were any sightings in the area. I never
saw them again, despite many night hikes since then. Well,
I thought you guys would enjoy one of the more

(01:15:30):
horrifying memories from my confusing, angst filled adolescence, battling with
the existential dread of wondering about life after death and
other planes of existence. Anyway, you guys are the best.
I enjoy listening to you and other house stuff Works podcasts.
You feed the nerd in me. Well, I'm glad we
could do that, Eric. But Eric's message is one that
we actually covered in a previous listener mail episode, and

(01:15:53):
when we did that, we wondered what Eric himself made
of the experience. So he wrote us again to respond,
and this is eric se and message. I have to say,
I agree. It's the product of a life form that's endangered.
I played with this idea a bit and thought how
about how it acted. I think it could be a
swarm of small bioluminescent insects, gnats, or some other small

(01:16:14):
fly that become illuminated while they're eating. So maybe they're
having a feeding frenzy on microbial life that I or
other life forms are kicking up as they get disturbed.
In wet areas, think about it. Bats fly near our
heads when we walked to eat the bugs we stir
up and attract, So maybe this is a similar instance.
Possibly a small curious animal was in the woods and

(01:16:36):
staying near me. I've had this happen with foxes and
the occasional coyote. Perhaps I was in the right circumstance
to see these small bugs going on a feeding frenzy
following a small animal. So when I started to follow it.
The animal was spooked, so the bugs followed the animal.
When I turned and went back, the animal followed me again,
with me kicking up my own microbial cloud causing them

(01:16:58):
to break off. So there were small are groups, So
in a way, there's a fluid dynamic thing going on.
I have to admit this doesn't have any basis in science,
just my creative mind trying to form a hypothesis to
something intangible. Ha, let me know what you guys think.
I do think it's some sort of product of a
life form that is slowly disappearing. Well, Eric, I know

(01:17:19):
that's been one of the scientific hypotheses that's been offered,
but I guess it's hard to really know. I'm I'm
somewhat convinced. I think by the chemoluminescence hypothesis, the the
idea that it is a chemical reaction going on with
with gases being released from the ground, But yeah, it's
hard to know. I think there there could possibly be

(01:17:40):
bioluminessence explanation for some of the sightings, and and as
we talked about, I think in the original episode, there
could be different types of phenomenon that are being combined
under the will of the wisp explanatory rubric that are
Actually they have different causes, so that's what I think,
but I don't really know. Oh, it's still an interesting

(01:18:01):
thing to investigate in any case, Thanks to all of
you who wrote in. These were great messages to read
and and a lot of fun to hear about the
various forms of foolish and spiritual fire that seemed to
emerge in the outdoors. Anyway, one last thing. If you're
a fan of this show, you know how much we
love all manner of monsters, ghosts, wraiths, grave ghouls, golems,

(01:18:24):
alligator kings, psychic spider lords, earth rim roamers, sabretooth witches,
smoke wolves, blooms of stidgy and algae. So we're dwelling
vampire magi, wandering blood, mushrooms, lead skin, desert worms, beholders,
wasp holders, sentient emerald fog, cybernetic mummies, and so on
and around here. We take every advantage every October to

(01:18:47):
spend some time talking about the science of all things
cursed and monstrous. So if you keep up with our
new releases, we're going to be getting into the October
spirit with plenty of original Halloween themed episodes later this month.
Sharpen your fangs and make yourselves ready. In the meantime,
check out all of the latest work at stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com, where you can find great

(01:19:09):
stuff like Robert's delightful, long running monster of the Week series.
I love it every time he does one of those,
and I'm sure he'll have some more good creatures coming
up soon. Also, you can get in touch with us
on social media if you look up blow the Mind
or stuff to Blow your Mind, or some variation thereof
on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all of those all find places
for the eyes that stare through the darkness with no form.

(01:19:31):
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(01:19:58):
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