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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."

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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.

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That is a very cool experience. I wish I could have seen it! If there is a genuine electrical phenomenon going on, it most certainly is complex and involves the subsurface and atmospheric conditions at the time and place.

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I lived in that house for several more years after this incident. Pretty much every time I looked out that window, I glanced over at the spot where I had seen the light, on the off chance that it would recur. Never saw it, or anything like it, ever again. So yes, it must have taken a very specific and unusual set of conditions to create the phenomenon. What exactly those conditions were, I couldn’t say.

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