I Saw "Ball Lightening" Last Night!

I had heard of the term, but didn't really pay attention to it until last night, when we had a heck of a monsoon thunderstorm. We turned off the computers and unplugged the TV components and were just talking. My husband went into the kitchen and I was staring out at the sky, when a huge ball of light appeared and exploded right before my eyes! It only lasted a second. My mouth dropped open and I was speechless as I watched a "regular" lightening strike a second later in the same place. After several seconds, I found my voice and excitedly told my husband about it. The storm continued east with some very close (and LOUD) strikes during the next few minutes.

Of course, I didn't get a picture of the ball lightening, but I looked through some pics and videos to make sure of what I saw...

It looked pretty similar to this:

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

That's awesome! I always wanted to see it but so far haven't. Some people have all the luck.

Cool stuff. I had the bad fortune of being away during an interesting ball lightning strike.

The night my grandfather died a bad sand storm blew through town, with lightning but no rain. Everyone who arrived at his house that first night saw lightning strike his neighbors lawn, followed by a glowing ball that bounced cross the yard touching down in several places then fizzling out- none of which left even the slightest scorch mark in the grass.

Grandpa being an old rancher and his neighbor being the lawn care expert at the hardware store, they had always been in competition over front yards- so the idea of lightning striking but doing no damage there was just too appropriate. I wish I'd seen it myself, but there's no way 6 members of my family all made up this story.

Seeing ball lighting is one of the last things on my bucket list , you are so lucky to see it

So tell me, having seen it, you think you could have mistaken it for an alien ship flying around? Just curious since this is a conspiracy site and well, I feel it's got to be asked.

originally posted by: Puppylove
So tell me, having seen it, you think you could have mistaken it for an alien ship flying around? Just curious since this is a conspiracy site and well, I feel it's got to be asked.

What I saw didn't bounce around or fly around. It just appeared like a stationary ball of fire and BOOM and it was gone. I did see some videos in my search that people were calling ball lightening. They looked like a light flying around and yes, those could be mistaken for a UFO of some sort, I think. But that's not what I saw.

I'd be lying if "alien origin" didn't cross my mind in the second I saw it, though. I live in New Mexico, after all.

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

Thank you for your response.

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

That's very weird BV because last week here in NJ, I saw one also exactly as you explained. It happened the night before we had an earthquake, which is very odd for NJ and after being here 30 years only witnessed 2 quakes, both recently.

Another odd thing is for the past 12 days consecutively I've seen at least one shooting star during my late night smoke before bed. I know the Pleiades was happening but in all the years never had such luck.

This is my second experience with ball lightning. The first was in ABQ, NM and was way more impressive. It lasted about 5 seconds and looked like a projectile with erratic movement, very bright. Maybe the altitude, we lived at 6,000' ASL, had something to do with its intensity.

Very cool, AB

a reply to: AnteBellum

Wow! Twice so far, huh? You're very lucky! We're at 6000', too, so that may have something to do with it.

a reply to: Benevolent Heretic

When living in the Jemez mts, fishing from a canoe on a mtn lake, a storm suddenly rolled in with multiple flashes of ball lightening in the clouds. Bright, short lived flashes in otherwise very dark storm clouds.

And once in a perfectly clear sky at 3am, a flash of light that lit up the valley like daylight and lasted for about 2 seconds, I didn't see the source.

I attributed that to some experiment taking place in Los Alamos or Sandia, but who knows....

As beautifuland incredible as it looks is that photo in the op(I know it's not yours) actually ball lightening, the "ball" looks to be part of the fork.

I always believed ball lightening was a phenomenon that produces a tennis to watermelon size ball of lightening, this lightening ball will hover around for a minute or so.

That's amazing. I'd love to see something like that, you're so lucky. I very rarely get to see lighting these days but it's always so calming to watch. To see ball lightning would blow my mind.

I just realized that I've been mispelling lightning all my life! LOL! There's no "e" in the middle. That's a different word. Grammar lesson over.

originally posted by: kamatty
As beautifuland incredible as it looks is that photo in the op(I know it's not yours) actually ball lightening, the "ball" looks to be part of the fork.

I really don't know. What I saw didn't have any "bolts" coming out from it, but that pic is the closest to what I saw. What I saw was a large round ball, much larger than a tennis ball or watermelon. While I'm not sure what I saw is the phenomenon called "ball lightning", it's my only explanation. I have no way of knowing how big it was, because I couldn't tell how far away it was. But it took up about 8-9 inches on the window's surface.

It was YOOGE! (As Trump would say)

I always believed ball lightening was a phenomenon that produces a tennis to watermelon size ball of lightening, this lightening ball will hover around for a minute or so.

I saw several videos of what you describe in my search. I honestly don't know what I saw. We had another light show last night that could win a strobe light competition. Freaky stuff!

Pleasse don't think im trying to take away the "coolness" of what you witnessed, if you read these accounts of ball lightning (without the e haha) en.wikipedia.org... they are very different to your discription and the photo. I would have come back sooner with this but as im sure you will find, its a fairly long but very intresting. I like the one that flew into the church and exploded into 2 balls. blamed on 2 people playing cards in church which was punished with the wrath of god! (it was 1596)

Another early description was reported during the Great Thunderstorm at a church in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Devon, in England, on 21 October 1638. Four people died and approximately 60 were injured when, during a severe storm, an 8-foot (2.4 m) ball of fire was described as striking and entering the church, having nearly destroyed it. Large stones from the church walls were hurled into the ground and through large wooden beams. The ball of fire allegedly smashed the pews and many windows, and filled the church with a foul sulfurous odour and dark, thick smoke. The ball of fire reportedly divided into two segments, one exiting through a window by smashing it open, the other disappearing somewhere inside the church. The explanation at the time, because of the fire and sulfur smell, was that the ball of fire was "the devil" or the "flames of hell". Later, some blamed the entire incident on two people who had been playing cards in the pew during the sermon, thereby incurring God's wrath.[1]

wood carving of the event

originally posted by: kamatty
Pleasse don't think im trying to take away the "coolness" of what you witnessed,

Oh, I don't. I know you're adding to the information. Thank you!

Sick! Welcome the club my friend



I almost drove off into the ditch when I saw ball lighting, I even reported it here........

Weather is crazy, especially as of late. Yesterday afternoon we had some bad-A thunderclaps going on. I love thunder.

Today, ridiculously gorgeous, blue skies, will probably make it to 80 degrees F this afternoon.


Last night auroras were unreal.........

Yep weather is crazy, space is insane, and the world is cool......sometimes....

Here's a entertaining theory on the ball lightning from the same wiki page. For all on this site that are not satisfied with nature's beauty alone....

The Black Hole Theory

Another hypothesis is that some ball lightning is the passage of microscopic primordial black holes through the Earth's atmosphere. This possibility was mentioned parenthetically by Leo Vuyk in 1992 in a patent applicationand a second patent application in 1996 by Leendert Vuyk. The first detailed scientific analysis was published by Mario Rabinowitz in Astrophysics and Space Science journal in 1999.[75] It was inspired by M. Fitzgerald’s account of ball lightning on 6 August 1868, in Ireland that lasted 20 minutes and left a 6-metre square hole, a 90-metre long trench, a second trench 25 meters long, and a small cave in the peat bog. Pace VanDevender, a plasma physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his team found depressions consistent with Fitzgerald’s report and inferred that the evidence is inconsistent with thermal (chemical or nuclear) and electrostatic effects. An electromagnetically levitated, compact mass of over 20,000 kg would produce the reported effects but requires a density of more than 2000 times the density of gold, which implies a miniature black hole. He and his team found a second event in the peat-bog witness plate from 1982 and are trying to geolocate electromagnetic emission consistent with the hypothesis. His colleagues at the institute agreed that, implausible though the hypothesis seemed, it was worthy of their attention.[76]

The patent is in Germany which I can't read or understand

Lucky. That's the kind of thing some people go their whole lives wanting to see.