Strange Times continue for the start of 2023
Spooky updates and mystery lights
Hi everyone and welcome new subscribers! We’re already rapidly approaching the end of February and I’m getting around to some updates I wanted to share.
Firstly, I went on vacation at the end of 2022 to Bermuda and wrote about its spooky past and the odd things I found there. Please check out the post on my personal website called “I Survived the Bermuda Triangle”. I festooned the piece with lots of photos and details about the array of weirdness in the tiny country. It definitely fits in the vein of the Fortean Travelogue.
Spooky Geology updates
I managed to finally move Spooky Geology off of my dreadful old web host. To celebrate, I freshened up the site with a new theme and layout. I also started my own subReddit for the topic. So PLEASE join. I really need more of a community there. The Reddit page allows me to post recent news and recirculate existing pieces to a new audience. The feed is also viewable on the Spooky Geology homepage. So check back regularly!
New content on Spooky Geo includes a rundown of the anomalous observations and fringe ideas that came along with the horrific Turkey-Syria quake. Immediately, lots of items under the spooky geo banner appeared - mystic predictions, earthquake lights, weird animal behavior, and conspiracies. Check out this latest feature article for more.
Finally, on Spooky Geology, there is a new sticky post called What’s the Spookiest Thing right now!? It’s a way to see what’s recently in the news and changes to the site. I’ll update that as needed.
On the socials
Both my personal account and the Spooky Geology account on Twitter are generally inactive. I refuse to engage on that platform-of-no-return. Big thanks to the several people who migrated to Mastodon as I did. Because there is no biased algorithm on Mastodon, you don’t get force-fed posts. So, it’s not conducive to “going viral”. Additionally, Google is also biased against small sites so I don’t get the reach that I used to when using those rather evil platforms. Quality over quantity, I guess.
In my spare time, I’m editing the Tetrapod Zoology podcast for Darren and John, who, I’m pleased to say, are trying to keep a regular schedule. The podcast is great and you should subscribe and listen. If you like my Weekly Weird News animal stories, you will find a lot of overlap in the latest two episodes. Episode 84 is about bringing back the Dodo and the upcoming Episode 85 is about big cat encounters in the US, UK, and India.
Anomalous luminous phenomena
Looks like UAPs are going to be huge this year. I normally don’t write about UFOs/UAPs on the Weekly Weird News because, quite frankly, most people don’t want to hear about it and the information is low-quality, biased speculation that is feeding a small population of people that are quite detached from reality and deep in conspiratorial ideas. But I’d like to call attention to Stan Gordon’s recap of accounts from 2022. Stan is a researcher in western PA who collects and investigates reports of strange phenomena. He took up the job when no one else would and does it to this day. He has a distinct feel for what’s trending. 2022, Stan says, was “a very active year” for reports of lights, particularly “ground-level balls of light”. Interesting!
As some of you may have noticed, this is a particularly favorite topic of mine. I’m very much into tales of spook lights, earth lights, ball lightning, and earthquake lights - all that fit under the umbrella of anomalous luminous phenomena (ALP). At the tail end of last year, I was also tipped off that weird lights in association with Bigfoot sightings were also now a thing. This seems to be playing out.
Overall, it feels that people are paying far more attention to lights and sounds than ever before. Additionally, they have someplace (social media) to share their observations which also allows others to connect and share their own witnessed incidents.
I strongly hesitate to say that there is a notable rise in actual incidents. All we can reliably say is that there is a rise in reported incidents. We have no idea what these witnesses saw or experienced. It’s fair to say several are likely mistaken identifications overlain with an extraordinary cultural interpretation.
Earth lights and other ALP do not have enough solid evidence and, more importantly, no tested theory, to support their formation, so the phenomena has not been accepted by the wider scientific community. Even ball lightning is still considered dubious or, at best, extremely rare. It’s not justifiable to conclude that something unusual is going on here beyond cultural contagion in interpreting unusual experiences. But I’ll be watching for better evidence.
We have many examples of cultural contagion that make it appear that something usual is happening in a “flap”. Our current “balloon invasion” will almost certainly be seen in hindsight as one of these flaps just like the Great Airship Wave of 1896-1897, and the flying saucer sighting frenzy after 1947.
What is clear is that 2023 will be another wild year as these strange times continue. Thanks again for joining me on this trip.
Well, you just sent me down a rabbit hole of Internet searches with this ALP talk. Several years ago, I saw a ground-level luminous something-or-other that I couldn't explain. Not a ball but more like a pillar, a few feet tall, pulsating. It was stationary and was there for at least twenty minutes. At times I got the vague impression that it was artificial, but mostly I just didn't know what I was looking at. I watched it through my window for a while but never went out for a closer look--partly because it was on my neighbor's property, partly because I didn't want to take my eyes off it, and partly because it weirded me out. I have regretted my failure to investigate more closely ever since.
I was aware that William Corliss had a book or two about weird lights in his Sourcebook series, but I didn't know that there was much active interest in it, or that there's an umbrella term like ALP. I'll definitely check out Gordon's website.
As for ball lightning, aren't articles about it beginning to appear in mainstream scientific journals? They don't have a handle on it yet, and yes, it's probably rare, but I don't think its mere existence is as controversial as it used to be.
Do you need to substitute the word "unusual" for the word "usual" in the second line of the next to last paragraph under the heading "Anomalous luminous phenomena?" And second line of the third from the bottom paragraph should say "phenomena have" instead of "phenomena has."