#earthlights — Public Fediverse posts

New paper fails to connect Summerville spook light to earthquakes

A new article by seismologist Susan Hough was published this week in Seismological Research Letters that attempts to connect the legend of the Summerville, South Carolina spook light to earthquake lights (EQLs) resulting from the faults around Charleston that caused the great 1886 quake. Since Hough is a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, her words carry credibility. News of her findings have been appearing in the media strongly suggesting that the mystery of the Summerville light is solved by this conclusion. It is not.

Unfortunately, my read of it is that this paper shows that Hough didn’t know much about the wider scale of reports of either earth lights (spook or ghost lights) or earthquake lights (luminous phenomenon associated with seismic events). As part of the release of the paper, Hough says that the idea came to her after reading a Halloween-week USGS newsletter with links to “spooky science” studies and that it sparked an idea she hadn’t thought much about – connecting the ghost stories of Summerville to EQLs.

To make a convincing case, the Summerville story would have to be sufficiently unique to other spook light stories and temporally tied to earthquake lights to suggest this cause. Hough’s paper, Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights?, fails to make that case.

The Summerville spook light

Charleston, SC has a lot of ghost stories. The Summerville light is included in common and widespread lore related to a ghost walking the railroad track with a lantern. Associated strange events near Summerville noted by Hough include car engines stopping, frost appearing on windows, audible whispers or voices, strange fingerprints found later on cars, visible apparitions, and cars that “violently shook”. The latter is considered by Hough to be evidence of small shallow, localized quakes.

The paper goes on to talk about a nearby “haunted house” and weakly ties apparition sightings to hallucinogenic gases released (as with Delphi) along faults. This is an unconvincing stretch – the two locations are not comparable. Gases aren’t causing people to hallucinate ghosts.

The earthquake history of the Charleston/Summerville area is obvious, but it is not possible to correlate seismic activity with sightings of the Summerville light because of the lack of recording of small quakes at this time and the inability to cite all reports of the light. Perhaps this can change, maybe a result of this paper – an exciting possibility.

Hough then moves to the similar story of the Maco light of North Carolina. I cannot follow the connection that can be made to seismic activity and this spook light location. Kaczmarek (2003) noted that the Maco light sightings stopped after the tracks were removed. I’m not sure if this is true but maybe the rails are more of a key to the spook light mystery than faults.

Spook lights not by de-fault

It is a mistake to generally link earth (spook) lights to fault lines. The sheer number of earth light locations worldwide have not correlated well to fault areas. It may be possible that some are, and that the mechanism remains difficult to resolve, but earth lights are their own phenomenon separate from EQLs.

Several years ago, I began a database to collect locations of earth lights. I let the work slide as it became overwhelming; I reached an incomplete list of 214 different locations of anomalous earth lights worldwide. These locations consisted of tales (usually multiple occurrences) of near-ground sightings of luminous phenomena. While some of these are dubious, faked, or one-off events, many of these locations became notable for their spook lights – Marfa, Min Min, Joplin, Brown Mountain. This list is biased toward US locations because of my sources (Kaczmarek, Gritzner and Palmer).

I pulled up the database again to cross-check the details. Though I did not confirm all of their characteristics, 129 of 214 were explicitly called “ghost lights”, “spook lights”, or were directly connected with a ghost legend. (I’m not sure about the rest because I haven’t looked into the details enough, but I would bet that many more have associated ghost tales.) Such phenomenon accrue strong local folklore aspects and are thus reinforced over time.

Out of the 129, 34 were associated directly with railroads. And, 31 were described with a distinctive “swinging lantern” movement that people connected to the action of someone walking along the tracks searching for something. (This may be a natural results of our visual capability in tracking light sources in the dark – UFOs are also said to move back and forth in response to our involuntary eye movements.)

Paul Devereux is my favorite resource on earth lights. In his Earth Lights Revelation, he explains that earth lights may be conflated with UFOs, but they appear to be internally produced by the earth in several places where they can be regularly observed. They have been reported across much of human history to the point that they obviously exist, but the mechanism is unclear or has multiple sources. Those mechanisms include electrical phenomenon (including a variant akin to ball lightning), burning gases, and metal deposits (acting like a battery).

Because of their unpredictability and association with haunted areas, earth lights exists on the edge of scientific awareness. This is similar to earthquake lights, which have different characteristics that set them apart from general earth/spook lights. EQLs appear as upward floating orbs, glows, curtains, or flashes. While it is possible that EQLs could be associated with faults, EQLs aren’t associated with railroad tracks and ghost stories which are very much a subset of anomalous light stories.

In short, it has been speculated by some researchers that earth lights may be associated with stressed rock along fault lines (3 such places appeared in my list), but they are not usually associated with earthquake events. If these earth lights appear with coincident earthquakes, that correlation would already have been made long ago. There are many more places that have earth/spook light legends that are not associated with fault lines than places that are.

Interestingly, Hough admits in the paper that earthquake lights are a recognized natural phenomenon. This is a substantive admission since the USGS has always downplayed the idea of EQLs. To me, this shows that the scientific community is now recognizing that the research into EQLs is legitimate.

The press release concludes that “maybe the friendly ghosts are illuminating fault zones in the east”. Again, that is far too much of a reach from this paltry data set.

Unsatisfactory conclusion with a glimmer of hope

The conclusion reached by Hough is baffling. She writes:

Although earthquake phenomena cannot explain every ghost story in every region, considering the lore of the Summerville Light, one is left with three plausible explanations: (1) there was no physical basis for the lore, beyond fanciful imaginations among a local population “spooked” by stories, (2) the legends are true, the ghost of a bereaved wife wandered along a stretch of an old trunk line with a lantern, searching for the head of her decapitated husband, or (3) accounts of apparently supernatural phenomena in and around Summerville can be explained by local earthquake activity starting around or before 1959, including small events that were not recognized as earthquakes.

She favors the last one resulting from ignition of water-soluble gases emitted from faults, like radon or methane, that were then ignited by a spark of static electricity or rock movement. She said that the gases trapped in water droplets might also help explain why these tales of ghost lights seem to occur on dark and misty nights. High humidity is not conductive to static sparks, so this makes little sense.

Left out of these possibilities are other obvious explanations for the stories of famous earth lights. These involve a combination of optical and atmospheric effects, local history and perceptions, social interest in the stories, legend tripping, etc. Speculatively linking the Summerville (and Maco) lights with EQLs in this paper feels misleading and overly simplistic, ignoring the influential social aspects at play with ghost legends and haunted places. And, it may be considered explaining one unknown with another.

Finally, there are two exciting bits in this paper: First, a USGS scientist admits that EQLs are worth scientific attention, and second, it favorably presents the option that EQLs may occur in the seismically stressed area of Charleston, so monitoring and collection of reports of lights should be considered. Hough cites the Enomoto paper, which I also referenced in this recent piece, that provides examples of the stronger evidence emerging in support of EQLs. I am all for more research into this area.

But as for the Summerville light being fault-related, this paper poorly supports that hypothesis. Spooky geology must include the wider, social component to be viable.

References

Devereux, Paul. (1990) Earth Lights Revelation.

Gritzner, Charles F. (2019). North Carolina Ghost Lights and Legends.

Hough, S. E. (2025). Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights? Seismol. Res. Lett. XX, 1–7, doi: 10.1785/0220240442. https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/srl/article-abstract/doi/10.1785/0220240442/651455/Haunted-Summerville-Ghostly-Lights-or-Earthquake (Paywalled)

Kaczmarek, Dale D. (2003) Illuminating the Darkness: The Mystery of Spooklights.

Palmer, Sean B. (undated) Earth Lights: Spooklights and Ghost Lights. http://inamidst.com/lights/earth

#earthLights #earthquakeLights #folklore #ghostLight #HauntedSummerville #legends #seismology #spookLight #spookyScience #Summervillle #SusanHough

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9241

New paper fails to connect Summerville spook light to earthquakes

A new article by seismologist Susan Hough was published this week in Seismological Research Letters that attempts to connect the legend of the Summerville, South Carolina spook light to earthquake lights (EQLs) resulting from the faults around Charleston that caused the great 1886 quake. Since Hough is a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, her words carry credibility. News of her findings have been appearing in the media strongly suggesting that the mystery of the Summerville light is solved by this conclusion. It is not.

Unfortunately, my read of it is that this paper shows that Hough didn’t know much about the wider scale of reports of either earth lights (spook or ghost lights) or earthquake lights (luminous phenomenon associated with seismic events). As part of the release of the paper, Hough says that the idea came to her after reading a Halloween-week USGS newsletter with links to “spooky science” studies and that it sparked an idea she hadn’t thought much about – connecting the ghost stories of Summerville to EQLs.

To make a convincing case, the Summerville story would have to be sufficiently unique to other spook light stories and temporally tied to earthquake lights to suggest this cause. Hough’s paper, Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights?, fails to make that case.

The Summerville spook light

Charleston, SC has a lot of ghost stories. The Summerville light is included in common and widespread lore related to a ghost walking the railroad track with a lantern. Associated strange events near Summerville noted by Hough include car engines stopping, frost appearing on windows, audible whispers or voices, strange fingerprints found later on cars, visible apparitions, and cars that “violently shook”. The latter is considered by Hough to be evidence of small shallow, localized quakes.

The paper goes on to talk about a nearby “haunted house” and weakly ties apparition sightings to hallucinogenic gases released (as with Delphi) along faults. This is an unconvincing stretch – the two locations are not comparable. Gases aren’t causing people to hallucinate ghosts.

The earthquake history of the Charleston/Summerville area is obvious, but it is not possible to correlate seismic activity with sightings of the Summerville light because of the lack of recording of small quakes at this time and the inability to cite all reports of the light. Perhaps this can change, maybe a result of this paper – an exciting possibility.

Hough then moves to the similar story of the Maco light of North Carolina. I cannot follow the connection that can be made to seismic activity and this spook light location. Kaczmarek (2003) noted that the Maco light sightings stopped after the tracks were removed. I’m not sure if this is true but maybe the rails are more of a key to the spook light mystery than faults.

Spook lights not by de-fault

It is a mistake to generally link earth (spook) lights to fault lines. The sheer number of earth light locations worldwide have not correlated well to fault areas. It may be possible that some are, and that the mechanism remains difficult to resolve, but earth lights are their own phenomenon separate from EQLs.

Several years ago, I began a database to collect locations of earth lights. I let the work slide as it became overwhelming; I reached an incomplete list of 214 different locations of anomalous earth lights worldwide. These locations consisted of tales (usually multiple occurrences) of near-ground sightings of luminous phenomena. While some of these are dubious, faked, or one-off events, many of these locations became notable for their spook lights – Marfa, Min Min, Joplin, Brown Mountain. This list is biased toward US locations because of my sources (Kaczmarek, Gritzner and Palmer).

I pulled up the database again to cross-check the details. Though I did not confirm all of their characteristics, 129 of 214 were explicitly called “ghost lights”, “spook lights”, or were directly connected with a ghost legend. (I’m not sure about the rest because I haven’t looked into the details enough, but I would bet that many more have associated ghost tales.) Such phenomenon accrue strong local folklore aspects and are thus reinforced over time.

Out of the 129, 34 were associated directly with railroads. And, 31 were described with a distinctive “swinging lantern” movement that people connected to the action of someone walking along the tracks searching for something. (This may be a natural results of our visual capability in tracking light sources in the dark – UFOs are also said to move back and forth in response to our involuntary eye movements.)

Paul Devereux is my favorite resource on earth lights. In his Earth Lights Revelation, he explains that earth lights may be conflated with UFOs, but they appear to be internally produced by the earth in several places where they can be regularly observed. They have been reported across much of human history to the point that they obviously exist, but the mechanism is unclear or has multiple sources. Those mechanisms include electrical phenomenon (including a variant akin to ball lightning), burning gases, and metal deposits (acting like a battery).

Because of their unpredictability and association with haunted areas, earth lights exists on the edge of scientific awareness. This is similar to earthquake lights, which have different characteristics that set them apart from general earth/spook lights. EQLs appear as upward floating orbs, glows, curtains, or flashes. While it is possible that EQLs could be associated with faults, EQLs aren’t associated with railroad tracks and ghost stories which are very much a subset of anomalous light stories.

In short, it has been speculated by some researchers that earth lights may be associated with stressed rock along fault lines (3 such places appeared in my list), but they are not usually associated with earthquake events. If these earth lights appear with coincident earthquakes, that correlation would already have been made long ago. There are many more places that have earth/spook light legends that are not associated with fault lines than places that are.

Interestingly, Hough admits in the paper that earthquake lights are a recognized natural phenomenon. This is a substantive admission since the USGS has always downplayed the idea of EQLs. To me, this shows that the scientific community is now recognizing that the research into EQLs is legitimate.

The press release concludes that “maybe the friendly ghosts are illuminating fault zones in the east”. Again, that is far too much of a reach from this paltry data set.

Unsatisfactory conclusion with a glimmer of hope

The conclusion reached by Hough is baffling. She writes:

Although earthquake phenomena cannot explain every ghost story in every region, considering the lore of the Summerville Light, one is left with three plausible explanations: (1) there was no physical basis for the lore, beyond fanciful imaginations among a local population “spooked” by stories, (2) the legends are true, the ghost of a bereaved wife wandered along a stretch of an old trunk line with a lantern, searching for the head of her decapitated husband, or (3) accounts of apparently supernatural phenomena in and around Summerville can be explained by local earthquake activity starting around or before 1959, including small events that were not recognized as earthquakes.

She favors the last one resulting from ignition of water-soluble gases emitted from faults, like radon or methane, that were then ignited by a spark of static electricity or rock movement. She said that the gases trapped in water droplets might also help explain why these tales of ghost lights seem to occur on dark and misty nights. High humidity is not conductive to static sparks, so this makes little sense.

Left out of these possibilities are other obvious explanations for the stories of famous earth lights. These involve a combination of optical and atmospheric effects, local history and perceptions, social interest in the stories, legend tripping, etc. Speculatively linking the Summerville (and Maco) lights with EQLs in this paper feels misleading and overly simplistic, ignoring the influential social aspects at play with ghost legends and haunted places. And, it may be considered explaining one unknown with another.

Finally, there are two exciting bits in this paper: First, a USGS scientist admits that EQLs are worth scientific attention, and second, it favorably presents the option that EQLs may occur in the seismically stressed area of Charleston, so monitoring and collection of reports of lights should be considered. Hough cites the Enomoto paper, which I also referenced in this recent piece, that provides examples of the stronger evidence emerging in support of EQLs. I am all for more research into this area.

But as for the Summerville light being fault-related, this paper poorly supports that hypothesis. Spooky geology must include the wider, social component to be viable.

References

Devereux, Paul. (1990) Earth Lights Revelation.

Gritzner, Charles F. (2019). North Carolina Ghost Lights and Legends.

Hough, S. E. (2025). Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights? Seismol. Res. Lett. XX, 1–7, doi: 10.1785/0220240442. https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/srl/article-abstract/doi/10.1785/0220240442/651455/Haunted-Summerville-Ghostly-Lights-or-Earthquake (Paywalled)

Kaczmarek, Dale D. (2003) Illuminating the Darkness: The Mystery of Spooklights.

Palmer, Sean B. (undated) Earth Lights: Spooklights and Ghost Lights. http://inamidst.com/lights/earth

#earthLights #earthquakeLights #folklore #ghostLight #HauntedSummerville #legends #seismology #spookLight #spookyScience #Summervillle #SusanHough

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9241

New paper fails to connect Summerville spook light to earthquakes

A new article by seismologist Susan Hough was published this week in Seismological Research Letters that attempts to connect the legend of the Summerville, South Carolina spook light to earthquake lights (EQLs) resulting from the faults around Charleston that caused the great 1886 quake. Since Hough is a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, her words carry credibility. News of her findings have been appearing in the media strongly suggesting that the mystery of the Summerville light is solved by this conclusion. It is not.

Unfortunately, my read of it is that this paper shows that Hough didn’t know much about the wider scale of reports of either earth lights (spook or ghost lights) or earthquake lights (luminous phenomenon associated with seismic events). As part of the release of the paper, Hough says that the idea came to her after reading a Halloween-week USGS newsletter with links to “spooky science” studies and that it sparked an idea she hadn’t thought much about – connecting the ghost stories of Summerville to EQLs.

To make a convincing case, the Summerville story would have to be sufficiently unique to other spook light stories and temporally tied to earthquake lights to suggest this cause. Hough’s paper, Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights?, fails to make that case.

The Summerville spook light

Charleston, SC has a lot of ghost stories. The Summerville light is included in common and widespread lore related to a ghost walking the railroad track with a lantern. Associated strange events near Summerville noted by Hough include car engines stopping, frost appearing on windows, audible whispers or voices, strange fingerprints found later on cars, visible apparitions, and cars that “violently shook”. The latter is considered by Hough to be evidence of small shallow, localized quakes.

The paper goes on to talk about a nearby “haunted house” and weakly ties apparition sightings to hallucinogenic gases released (as with Delphi) along faults. This is an unconvincing stretch – the two locations are not comparable. Gases aren’t causing people to hallucinate ghosts.

The earthquake history of the Charleston/Summerville area is obvious, but it is not possible to correlate seismic activity with sightings of the Summerville light because of the lack of recording of small quakes at this time and the inability to cite all reports of the light. Perhaps this can change, maybe a result of this paper – an exciting possibility.

Hough then moves to the similar story of the Maco light of North Carolina. I cannot follow the connection that can be made to seismic activity and this spook light location. Kaczmarek (2003) noted that the Maco light sightings stopped after the tracks were removed. I’m not sure if this is true but maybe the rails are more of a key to the spook light mystery than faults.

Spook lights not by de-fault

It is a mistake to generally link earth (spook) lights to fault lines. The sheer number of earth light locations worldwide have not correlated well to fault areas. It may be possible that some are, and that the mechanism remains difficult to resolve, but earth lights are their own phenomenon separate from EQLs.

Several years ago, I began a database to collect locations of earth lights. I let the work slide as it became overwhelming; I reached an incomplete list of 214 different locations of anomalous earth lights worldwide. These locations consisted of tales (usually multiple occurrences) of near-ground sightings of luminous phenomena. While some of these are dubious, faked, or one-off events, many of these locations became notable for their spook lights – Marfa, Min Min, Joplin, Brown Mountain. This list is biased toward US locations because of my sources (Kaczmarek, Gritzner and Palmer).

I pulled up the database again to cross-check the details. Though I did not confirm all of their characteristics, 129 of 214 were explicitly called “ghost lights”, “spook lights”, or were directly connected with a ghost legend. (I’m not sure about the rest because I haven’t looked into the details enough, but I would bet that many more have associated ghost tales.) Such phenomenon accrue strong local folklore aspects and are thus reinforced over time.

Out of the 129, 34 were associated directly with railroads. And, 31 were described with a distinctive “swinging lantern” movement that people connected to the action of someone walking along the tracks searching for something. (This may be a natural results of our visual capability in tracking light sources in the dark – UFOs are also said to move back and forth in response to our involuntary eye movements.)

Paul Devereux is my favorite resource on earth lights. In his Earth Lights Revelation, he explains that earth lights may be conflated with UFOs, but they appear to be internally produced by the earth in several places where they can be regularly observed. They have been reported across much of human history to the point that they obviously exist, but the mechanism is unclear or has multiple sources. Those mechanisms include electrical phenomenon (including a variant akin to ball lightning), burning gases, and metal deposits (acting like a battery).

Because of their unpredictability and association with haunted areas, earth lights exists on the edge of scientific awareness. This is similar to earthquake lights, which have different characteristics that set them apart from general earth/spook lights. EQLs appear as upward floating orbs, glows, curtains, or flashes. While it is possible that EQLs could be associated with faults, EQLs aren’t associated with railroad tracks and ghost stories which are very much a subset of anomalous light stories.

In short, it has been speculated by some researchers that earth lights may be associated with stressed rock along fault lines (3 such places appeared in my list), but they are not usually associated with earthquake events. If these earth lights appear with coincident earthquakes, that correlation would already have been made long ago. There are many more places that have earth/spook light legends that are not associated with fault lines than places that are.

Interestingly, Hough admits in the paper that earthquake lights are a recognized natural phenomenon. This is a substantive admission since the USGS has always downplayed the idea of EQLs. To me, this shows that the scientific community is now recognizing that the research into EQLs is legitimate.

The press release concludes that “maybe the friendly ghosts are illuminating fault zones in the east”. Again, that is far too much of a reach from this paltry data set.

Unsatisfactory conclusion with a glimmer of hope

The conclusion reached by Hough is baffling. She writes:

Although earthquake phenomena cannot explain every ghost story in every region, considering the lore of the Summerville Light, one is left with three plausible explanations: (1) there was no physical basis for the lore, beyond fanciful imaginations among a local population “spooked” by stories, (2) the legends are true, the ghost of a bereaved wife wandered along a stretch of an old trunk line with a lantern, searching for the head of her decapitated husband, or (3) accounts of apparently supernatural phenomena in and around Summerville can be explained by local earthquake activity starting around or before 1959, including small events that were not recognized as earthquakes.

She favors the last one resulting from ignition of water-soluble gases emitted from faults, like radon or methane, that were then ignited by a spark of static electricity or rock movement. She said that the gases trapped in water droplets might also help explain why these tales of ghost lights seem to occur on dark and misty nights. High humidity is not conductive to static sparks, so this makes little sense.

Left out of these possibilities are other obvious explanations for the stories of famous earth lights. These involve a combination of optical and atmospheric effects, local history and perceptions, social interest in the stories, legend tripping, etc. Speculatively linking the Summerville (and Maco) lights with EQLs in this paper feels misleading and overly simplistic, ignoring the influential social aspects at play with ghost legends and haunted places. And, it may be considered explaining one unknown with another.

Finally, there are two exciting bits in this paper: First, a USGS scientist admits that EQLs are worth scientific attention, and second, it favorably presents the option that EQLs may occur in the seismically stressed area of Charleston, so monitoring and collection of reports of lights should be considered. Hough cites the Enomoto paper, which I also referenced in this recent piece, that provides examples of the stronger evidence emerging in support of EQLs. I am all for more research into this area.

But as for the Summerville light being fault-related, this paper poorly supports that hypothesis. Spooky geology must include the wider, social component to be viable.

References

Devereux, Paul. (1990) Earth Lights Revelation.

Gritzner, Charles F. (2019). North Carolina Ghost Lights and Legends.

Hough, S. E. (2025). Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights? Seismol. Res. Lett. XX, 1–7, doi: 10.1785/0220240442. https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/srl/article-abstract/doi/10.1785/0220240442/651455/Haunted-Summerville-Ghostly-Lights-or-Earthquake (Paywalled)

Kaczmarek, Dale D. (2003) Illuminating the Darkness: The Mystery of Spooklights.

Palmer, Sean B. (undated) Earth Lights: Spooklights and Ghost Lights. http://inamidst.com/lights/earth

#earthLights #earthquakeLights #folklore #ghostLight #HauntedSummerville #legends #seismology #spookLight #spookyScience #Summervillle #SusanHough

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9241

New paper fails to connect Summerville spook light to earthquakes

A new article by seismologist Susan Hough was published this week in Seismological Research Letters that attempts to connect the legend of the Summerville, South Carolina spook light to earthquake lights (EQLs) resulting from the faults around Charleston that caused the great 1886 quake. Since Hough is a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, her words carry credibility. News of her findings have been appearing in the media strongly suggesting that the mystery of the Summerville light is solved by this conclusion. It is not.

Unfortunately, my read of it is that this paper shows that Hough didn’t know much about the wider scale of reports of either earth lights (spook or ghost lights) or earthquake lights (luminous phenomenon associated with seismic events). As part of the release of the paper, Hough says that the idea came to her after reading a Halloween-week USGS newsletter with links to “spooky science” studies and that it sparked an idea she hadn’t thought much about – connecting the ghost stories of Summerville to EQLs.

To make a convincing case, the Summerville story would have to be sufficiently unique to other spook light stories and temporally tied to earthquake lights to suggest this cause. Hough’s paper, Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights?, fails to make that case.

The Summerville spook light

Charleston, SC has a lot of ghost stories. The Summerville light is included in common and widespread lore related to a ghost walking the railroad track with a lantern. Associated strange events near Summerville noted by Hough include car engines stopping, frost appearing on windows, audible whispers or voices, strange fingerprints found later on cars, visible apparitions, and cars that “violently shook”. The latter is considered by Hough to be evidence of small shallow, localized quakes.

The paper goes on to talk about a nearby “haunted house” and weakly ties apparition sightings to hallucinogenic gases released (as with Delphi) along faults. This is an unconvincing stretch – the two locations are not comparable. Gases aren’t causing people to hallucinate ghosts.

The earthquake history of the Charleston/Summerville area is obvious, but it is not possible to correlate seismic activity with sightings of the Summerville light because of the lack of recording of small quakes at this time and the inability to cite all reports of the light. Perhaps this can change, maybe a result of this paper – an exciting possibility.

Hough then moves to the similar story of the Maco light of North Carolina. I cannot follow the connection that can be made to seismic activity and this spook light location. Kaczmarek (2003) noted that the Maco light sightings stopped after the tracks were removed. I’m not sure if this is true but maybe the rails are more of a key to the spook light mystery than faults.

Spook lights not by de-fault

It is a mistake to generally link earth (spook) lights to fault lines. The sheer number of earth light locations worldwide have not correlated well to fault areas. It may be possible that some are, and that the mechanism remains difficult to resolve, but earth lights are their own phenomenon separate from EQLs.

Several years ago, I began a database to collect locations of earth lights. I let the work slide as it became overwhelming; I reached an incomplete list of 214 different locations of anomalous earth lights worldwide. These locations consisted of tales (usually multiple occurrences) of near-ground sightings of luminous phenomena. While some of these are dubious, faked, or one-off events, many of these locations became notable for their spook lights – Marfa, Min Min, Joplin, Brown Mountain. This list is biased toward US locations because of my sources (Kaczmarek, Gritzner and Palmer).

I pulled up the database again to cross-check the details. Though I did not confirm all of their characteristics, 129 of 214 were explicitly called “ghost lights”, “spook lights”, or were directly connected with a ghost legend. (I’m not sure about the rest because I haven’t looked into the details enough, but I would bet that many more have associated ghost tales.) Such phenomenon accrue strong local folklore aspects and are thus reinforced over time.

Out of the 129, 34 were associated directly with railroads. And, 31 were described with a distinctive “swinging lantern” movement that people connected to the action of someone walking along the tracks searching for something. (This may be a natural results of our visual capability in tracking light sources in the dark – UFOs are also said to move back and forth in response to our involuntary eye movements.)

Paul Devereux is my favorite resource on earth lights. In his Earth Lights Revelation, he explains that earth lights may be conflated with UFOs, but they appear to be internally produced by the earth in several places where they can be regularly observed. They have been reported across much of human history to the point that they obviously exist, but the mechanism is unclear or has multiple sources. Those mechanisms include electrical phenomenon (including a variant akin to ball lightning), burning gases, and metal deposits (acting like a battery).

Because of their unpredictability and association with haunted areas, earth lights exists on the edge of scientific awareness. This is similar to earthquake lights, which have different characteristics that set them apart from general earth/spook lights. EQLs appear as upward floating orbs, glows, curtains, or flashes. While it is possible that EQLs could be associated with faults, EQLs aren’t associated with railroad tracks and ghost stories which are very much a subset of anomalous light stories.

In short, it has been speculated by some researchers that earth lights may be associated with stressed rock along fault lines (3 such places appeared in my list), but they are not usually associated with earthquake events. If these earth lights appear with coincident earthquakes, that correlation would already have been made long ago. There are many more places that have earth/spook light legends that are not associated with fault lines than places that are.

Interestingly, Hough admits in the paper that earthquake lights are a recognized natural phenomenon. This is a substantive admission since the USGS has always downplayed the idea of EQLs. To me, this shows that the scientific community is now recognizing that the research into EQLs is legitimate.

The press release concludes that “maybe the friendly ghosts are illuminating fault zones in the east”. Again, that is far too much of a reach from this paltry data set.

Unsatisfactory conclusion with a glimmer of hope

The conclusion reached by Hough is baffling. She writes:

Although earthquake phenomena cannot explain every ghost story in every region, considering the lore of the Summerville Light, one is left with three plausible explanations: (1) there was no physical basis for the lore, beyond fanciful imaginations among a local population “spooked” by stories, (2) the legends are true, the ghost of a bereaved wife wandered along a stretch of an old trunk line with a lantern, searching for the head of her decapitated husband, or (3) accounts of apparently supernatural phenomena in and around Summerville can be explained by local earthquake activity starting around or before 1959, including small events that were not recognized as earthquakes.

She favors the last one resulting from ignition of water-soluble gases emitted from faults, like radon or methane, that were then ignited by a spark of static electricity or rock movement. She said that the gases trapped in water droplets might also help explain why these tales of ghost lights seem to occur on dark and misty nights. High humidity is not conductive to static sparks, so this makes little sense.

Left out of these possibilities are other obvious explanations for the stories of famous earth lights. These involve a combination of optical and atmospheric effects, local history and perceptions, social interest in the stories, legend tripping, etc. Speculatively linking the Summerville (and Maco) lights with EQLs in this paper feels misleading and overly simplistic, ignoring the influential social aspects at play with ghost legends and haunted places. And, it may be considered explaining one unknown with another.

Finally, there are two exciting bits in this paper: First, a USGS scientist admits that EQLs are worth scientific attention, and second, it favorably presents the option that EQLs may occur in the seismically stressed area of Charleston, so monitoring and collection of reports of lights should be considered. Hough cites the Enomoto paper, which I also referenced in this recent piece, that provides examples of the stronger evidence emerging in support of EQLs. I am all for more research into this area.

But as for the Summerville light being fault-related, this paper poorly supports that hypothesis. Spooky geology must include the wider, social component to be viable.

References

Devereux, Paul. (1990) Earth Lights Revelation.

Gritzner, Charles F. (2019). North Carolina Ghost Lights and Legends.

Hough, S. E. (2025). Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights? Seismol. Res. Lett. XX, 1–7, doi: 10.1785/0220240442. https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/srl/article-abstract/doi/10.1785/0220240442/651455/Haunted-Summerville-Ghostly-Lights-or-Earthquake (Paywalled)

Kaczmarek, Dale D. (2003) Illuminating the Darkness: The Mystery of Spooklights.

Palmer, Sean B. (undated) Earth Lights: Spooklights and Ghost Lights. http://inamidst.com/lights/earth

#earthLights #earthquakeLights #folklore #ghostLight #HauntedSummerville #legends #seismology #spookLight #spookyScience #Summervillle #SusanHough

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9241

New paper fails to connect Summerville spook light to earthquakes

A new article by seismologist Susan Hough was published this week in Seismological Research Letters that attempts to connect the legend of the Summerville, South Carolina spook light to earthquake lights (EQLs) resulting from the faults around Charleston that caused the great 1886 quake. Since Hough is a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, her words carry credibility. News of her findings have been appearing in the media strongly suggesting that the mystery of the Summerville light is solved by this conclusion. It is not.

Unfortunately, my read of it is that this paper shows that Hough didn’t know much about the wider scale of reports of either earth lights (spook or ghost lights) or earthquake lights (luminous phenomenon associated with seismic events). As part of the release of the paper, Hough says that the idea came to her after reading a Halloween-week USGS newsletter with links to “spooky science” studies and that it sparked an idea she hadn’t thought much about – connecting the ghost stories of Summerville to EQLs.

To make a convincing case, the Summerville story would have to be sufficiently unique to other spook light stories and temporally tied to earthquake lights to suggest this cause. Hough’s paper, Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights?, fails to make that case.

The Summerville spook light

Charleston, SC has a lot of ghost stories. The Summerville light is included in common and widespread lore related to a ghost walking the railroad track with a lantern. Associated strange events near Summerville noted by Hough include car engines stopping, frost appearing on windows, audible whispers or voices, strange fingerprints found later on cars, visible apparitions, and cars that “violently shook”. The latter is considered by Hough to be evidence of small shallow, localized quakes.

The paper goes on to talk about a nearby “haunted house” and weakly ties apparition sightings to hallucinogenic gases released (as with Delphi) along faults. This is an unconvincing stretch – the two locations are not comparable. Gases aren’t causing people to hallucinate ghosts.

The earthquake history of the Charleston/Summerville area is obvious, but it is not possible to correlate seismic activity with sightings of the Summerville light because of the lack of recording of small quakes at this time and the inability to cite all reports of the light. Perhaps this can change, maybe a result of this paper – an exciting possibility.

Hough then moves to the similar story of the Maco light of North Carolina. I cannot follow the connection that can be made to seismic activity and this spook light location. Kaczmarek (2003) noted that the Maco light sightings stopped after the tracks were removed. I’m not sure if this is true but maybe the rails are more of a key to the spook light mystery than faults.

Spook lights not by de-fault

It is a mistake to generally link earth (spook) lights to fault lines. The sheer number of earth light locations worldwide have not correlated well to fault areas. It may be possible that some are, and that the mechanism remains difficult to resolve, but earth lights are their own phenomenon separate from EQLs.

Several years ago, I began a database to collect locations of earth lights. I let the work slide as it became overwhelming; I reached an incomplete list of 214 different locations of anomalous earth lights worldwide. These locations consisted of tales (usually multiple occurrences) of near-ground sightings of luminous phenomena. While some of these are dubious, faked, or one-off events, many of these locations became notable for their spook lights – Marfa, Min Min, Joplin, Brown Mountain. This list is biased toward US locations because of my sources (Kaczmarek, Gritzner and Palmer).

I pulled up the database again to cross-check the details. Though I did not confirm all of their characteristics, 129 of 214 were explicitly called “ghost lights”, “spook lights”, or were directly connected with a ghost legend. (I’m not sure about the rest because I haven’t looked into the details enough, but I would bet that many more have associated ghost tales.) Such phenomenon accrue strong local folklore aspects and are thus reinforced over time.

Out of the 129, 34 were associated directly with railroads. And, 31 were described with a distinctive “swinging lantern” movement that people connected to the action of someone walking along the tracks searching for something. (This may be a natural results of our visual capability in tracking light sources in the dark – UFOs are also said to move back and forth in response to our involuntary eye movements.)

Paul Devereux is my favorite resource on earth lights. In his Earth Lights Revelation, he explains that earth lights may be conflated with UFOs, but they appear to be internally produced by the earth in several places where they can be regularly observed. They have been reported across much of human history to the point that they obviously exist, but the mechanism is unclear or has multiple sources. Those mechanisms include electrical phenomenon (including a variant akin to ball lightning), burning gases, and metal deposits (acting like a battery).

Because of their unpredictability and association with haunted areas, earth lights exists on the edge of scientific awareness. This is similar to earthquake lights, which have different characteristics that set them apart from general earth/spook lights. EQLs appear as upward floating orbs, glows, curtains, or flashes. While it is possible that EQLs could be associated with faults, EQLs aren’t associated with railroad tracks and ghost stories which are very much a subset of anomalous light stories.

In short, it has been speculated by some researchers that earth lights may be associated with stressed rock along fault lines (3 such places appeared in my list), but they are not usually associated with earthquake events. If these earth lights appear with coincident earthquakes, that correlation would already have been made long ago. There are many more places that have earth/spook light legends that are not associated with fault lines than places that are.

Interestingly, Hough admits in the paper that earthquake lights are a recognized natural phenomenon. This is a substantive admission since the USGS has always downplayed the idea of EQLs. To me, this shows that the scientific community is now recognizing that the research into EQLs is legitimate.

The press release concludes that “maybe the friendly ghosts are illuminating fault zones in the east”. Again, that is far too much of a reach from this paltry data set.

Unsatisfactory conclusion with a glimmer of hope

The conclusion reached by Hough is baffling. She writes:

Although earthquake phenomena cannot explain every ghost story in every region, considering the lore of the Summerville Light, one is left with three plausible explanations: (1) there was no physical basis for the lore, beyond fanciful imaginations among a local population “spooked” by stories, (2) the legends are true, the ghost of a bereaved wife wandered along a stretch of an old trunk line with a lantern, searching for the head of her decapitated husband, or (3) accounts of apparently supernatural phenomena in and around Summerville can be explained by local earthquake activity starting around or before 1959, including small events that were not recognized as earthquakes.

She favors the last one resulting from ignition of water-soluble gases emitted from faults, like radon or methane, that were then ignited by a spark of static electricity or rock movement. She said that the gases trapped in water droplets might also help explain why these tales of ghost lights seem to occur on dark and misty nights. High humidity is not conductive to static sparks, so this makes little sense.

Left out of these possibilities are other obvious explanations for the stories of famous earth lights. These involve a combination of optical and atmospheric effects, local history and perceptions, social interest in the stories, legend tripping, etc. Speculatively linking the Summerville (and Maco) lights with EQLs in this paper feels misleading and overly simplistic, ignoring the influential social aspects at play with ghost legends and haunted places. And, it may be considered explaining one unknown with another.

Finally, there are two exciting bits in this paper: First, a USGS scientist admits that EQLs are worth scientific attention, and second, it favorably presents the option that EQLs may occur in the seismically stressed area of Charleston, so monitoring and collection of reports of lights should be considered. Hough cites the Enomoto paper, which I also referenced in this recent piece, that provides examples of the stronger evidence emerging in support of EQLs. I am all for more research into this area.

But as for the Summerville light being fault-related, this paper poorly supports that hypothesis. Spooky geology must include the wider, social component to be viable.

References

Devereux, Paul. (1990) Earth Lights Revelation.

Gritzner, Charles F. (2019). North Carolina Ghost Lights and Legends.

Hough, S. E. (2025). Haunted Summerville: Ghostly Lights or Earthquake Lights? Seismol. Res. Lett. XX, 1–7, doi: 10.1785/0220240442. https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/ssa/srl/article-abstract/doi/10.1785/0220240442/651455/Haunted-Summerville-Ghostly-Lights-or-Earthquake (Paywalled)

Kaczmarek, Dale D. (2003) Illuminating the Darkness: The Mystery of Spooklights.

Palmer, Sean B. (undated) Earth Lights: Spooklights and Ghost Lights. http://inamidst.com/lights/earth

#earthLights #earthquakeLights #folklore #ghostLight #HauntedSummerville #legends #seismology #spookLight #spookyScience #Summervillle #SusanHough

https://sharonahill.com/?p=9241

#307 Bob Rickard and Paul Sieveking (eds) - Fortean Times: The Journal of Strange Phenomena, No 103. John Brown Publishing Ltd, London, October 1997. #ForteanTimes #BobRickard #PaulSieveking #PaulDevereux #EarthLights #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #BookOfTheDay

#307 Bob Rickard and Paul Sieveking (eds) - Fortean Times: The Journal of Strange Phenomena, No 103. John Brown Publishing Ltd, London, October 1997. #ForteanTimes #BobRickard #PaulSieveking #PaulDevereux #EarthLights #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #BookOfTheDay

#307 Bob Rickard and Paul Sieveking (eds) - Fortean Times: The Journal of Strange Phenomena, No 103. John Brown Publishing Ltd, London, October 1997. #ForteanTimes #BobRickard #PaulSieveking #PaulDevereux #EarthLights #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #BookOfTheDay

#307 Bob Rickard and Paul Sieveking (eds) - Fortean Times: The Journal of Strange Phenomena, No 103. John Brown Publishing Ltd, London, October 1997. #ForteanTimes #BobRickard #PaulSieveking #PaulDevereux #EarthLights #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #BookOfTheDay

#307 Bob Rickard and Paul Sieveking (eds) - Fortean Times: The Journal of Strange Phenomena, No 103. John Brown Publishing Ltd, London, October 1997. #ForteanTimes #BobRickard #PaulSieveking #PaulDevereux #EarthLights #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #BookOfTheDay

Earthquake lights (pseudoEQLs) video from India

On 21-March 2023 at 16:47 UTC, an M 6.5 earthquake was recorded in the Hindu Kush region, 40 km SSE of Jurm, Afghanistan (36.523°N 70.979°E). The effects were felt over a wide area in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and other neighboring countries. The quake was noticed at around 10:30 PM in the Haryana district of India, northwest of New Delhi. It was in the town of Yamunanagar where several people recorded lights in the sky soon after the quake and published these videos on social media calling them “earthquake lights” (EQLs).

There were at least three different videos posted to Twitter that showed a fixed spot in the cloudy night sky that is changing colors. The colors cycle in a uniform pattern across the span of a few seconds – orange-red-purple-blue-green. Then repeated. All of the videos appeared to be of the same phenomenon, in the same town, although different locations were mistakenly given in copied social media posts. However, it has not been determined if all the videos were taken on the night of 21-March in association with the quake.

Those that commented on the lights were insistent that they were related to the recent quake and called the sky colors “earthquake lights”. Several people online chimed in authoritatively to describe how earthquake lights form, as if they are a well-known phenomenon. The lights were associated with the flashes that were seen during the Turkey-Syria quake in February. (Those lights were not earthquake lights but exploding transformers.)

Media outlets in India reported on the lights. Some declared they were indeed earthquake lights (EQLs), with a few sources expounding on their scientific formation. In no instance was a seismologist or earth scientist consulted as part of this explanation. It looks like the journalists mostly Googled the topic. Across the web, random people gave their unqualified opinions. This is rather easy to do in the case of EQLs, whose reality is not yet acknowledged by the majority of earth scientists. If they do occur, they would be extremely rare. The mechanism of their manifestation is not yet established.

Those saying these sky colors were EQLs were entirely wrong. They were most certainly human-made lights.

The lights in the sky in Yamunanagar were caused by a reflection of surface lights onto the low clouds.

The giveaway for this is the colors. No EQLs have ever been reported to change colors like this and glow in one specific section of the sky. The source of the lights is almost certainly the City Mall in Yamunanagar which has a light display board that emits these bright colors.

It appears that any lights in the sky associated with the perception of earthquake shaking will be called “earthquake lights” even when they are manufactured, a result of damage to power lines, or storm-related lightning – I’ll call these “pseudoEQLs” because they are not a result of earth stresses affecting the atmosphere.

Videos of the pseudoEQLs are now so well known that people look for lights in response to earthquake shaking. When they find them, they are attributed to the quake because they have been repeatedly told by media misinformation that this is so.

#Delhi #earthLights #earthquake #earthquakeLights #earthquakes #EQL #India #pseudoEQLs #Yamunanagar

https://sharonahill.com/?p=2737

Earthquake lights (pseudoEQLs) video from India

On 21-March 2023 at 16:47 UTC, an M 6.5 earthquake was recorded in the Hindu Kush region, 40 km SSE of Jurm, Afghanistan (36.523°N 70.979°E). The effects were felt over a wide area in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and other neighboring countries. The quake was noticed at around 10:30 PM in the Haryana district of India, northwest of New Delhi. It was in the town of Yamunanagar where several people recorded lights in the sky soon after the quake and published these videos on social media calling them “earthquake lights” (EQLs).

There were at least three different videos posted to Twitter that showed a fixed spot in the cloudy night sky that is changing colors. The colors cycle in a uniform pattern across the span of a few seconds – orange-red-purple-blue-green. Then repeated. All of the videos appeared to be of the same phenomenon, in the same town, although different locations were mistakenly given in copied social media posts. However, it has not been determined if all the videos were taken on the night of 21-March in association with the quake.

Those that commented on the lights were insistent that they were related to the recent quake and called the sky colors “earthquake lights”. Several people online chimed in authoritatively to describe how earthquake lights form, as if they are a well-known phenomenon. The lights were associated with the flashes that were seen during the Turkey-Syria quake in February. (Those lights were not earthquake lights but exploding transformers.)

Media outlets in India reported on the lights. Some declared they were indeed earthquake lights (EQLs), with a few sources expounding on their scientific formation. In no instance was a seismologist or earth scientist consulted as part of this explanation. It looks like the journalists mostly Googled the topic. Across the web, random people gave their unqualified opinions. This is rather easy to do in the case of EQLs, whose reality is not yet acknowledged by the majority of earth scientists. If they do occur, they would be extremely rare. The mechanism of their manifestation is not yet established.

Those saying these sky colors were EQLs were entirely wrong. They were most certainly human-made lights.

The lights in the sky in Yamunanagar were caused by a reflection of surface lights onto the low clouds.

The giveaway for this is the colors. No EQLs have ever been reported to change colors like this and glow in one specific section of the sky. The source of the lights is almost certainly the City Mall in Yamunanagar which has a light display board that emits these bright colors.

It appears that any lights in the sky associated with the perception of earthquake shaking will be called “earthquake lights” even when they are manufactured, a result of damage to power lines, or storm-related lightning – I’ll call these “pseudoEQLs” because they are not a result of earth stresses affecting the atmosphere.

Videos of the pseudoEQLs are now so well known that people look for lights in response to earthquake shaking. When they find them, they are attributed to the quake because they have been repeatedly told by media misinformation that this is so.

More:

EARTHQUAKE LIGHTS feature

Anomalous claims from Turkey-Syria earthquake 2023

Spooky events from the New Madrid earthquakes

#Delhi #earthLights #earthquake #earthquakeLights #earthquakes #EQL #India #pseudoEQLs #Yamunanagar

https://sharonahill.com/?p=2737

Earthquake Lights

Despite centuries of reports of anomalous luminous phenomena (ANP) – lights, glows, flames, sparks and clouds – before, during or after an earthquake, the scientific view of such reports remains deeply divided. The evidence for earthquake lights (EQLs) and associated anomalies consists overwhelmingly of anecdotal accounts. But scientific evidence has been accumulating, and in the past 10 years a plausible theory to explain the host of unusual precursors has been proposed. Geological reference sources fail to address the wide breadth of ideas within this topic, and mystery-themed sources contain mostly non-scholarly information that is dubious or exaggerated. A balanced view was needed. So, here is the Spooky Geology examination of the credibility and cause of earthquake lights and associated ANP.

Quebec, Canada, 25 November 1988, 18:46 local time.
It was dark when Joseph Dallaire, a trapper in Laterriere, was leaving the conifer forest after checking the traps near his home. The weather was mostly clear and cold with a low wind. After exiting the woods, he headed to his house across the open field 700 meters away when he was startled by a crackling sound approaching from behind. This sound was followed by a 6-15 m high curtain of bluish light that passed by him in about 2 seconds. Then he felt the shaking from the magnitude 6.5 earthquake which had occurred in Saguenay 19 km away. Dallaire described the light to a researcher as hugging the ground as it moved past him, passing into the open field, and disappearing to the northwest. He reported that the light was bright enough to illuminate his house. It was not like normal lightning but the crackling sound suggested an electric field buildup and discharge off the tree branches. The curtain or sheet of light suggests a strong electric field from the ground that resulted in a discharge at the ground-to-air interface. The discharge was traveling away from the direction of the Saguenay quake epicenter. [1]

What can we make of this remarkable event? It was not the only luminous phenomenon noted in association with this unusual quake that took place within the continental land mass, far from a plate boundary. At 29 km depth, it produced strong shaking but few aftershocks indicating a distinct release of energy. The Saguenay earthquake lights were relatively well-studied [2] yet we still have a mystery regarding the Dallaire experience.

The topic of earthquake lights is both highly technical and popular with lay audiences, making it difficult to discuss in popular discourse. This is not a unique problem as it occurs in most scientific fields. With most Spooky Geology subjects, there exists a popular idea about the phenomena but the detailed scientific ideas are buried within the specialized literature of various subjects. For EQLs, we can find snippets and threads of the discussion in natural history, geology, geophysics, rock mechanics, and seismology, but also in folklore, psychology, and cultural studies. What typically is supplied to the public from mainstream news and entertainment sources is nontechnical, unchecked, and often exaggerated or wrong.

Scientific journals and reliable media reports hold a wealth of observations and reports of EQLs. Often thought of as folklore, there are many highly technical explanations suggested by qualified experts, not cranks or wacky amateurs. Those interested in strange phenomena likely are not aware of the current state of thinking on the topic so let’s assess the big questions: Is there something here to explain? And what are some reasonable means to explain it? What does the scientific community think in comparison to the public? Could mainstream seismology be missing something or are EQLs all misperceptions or misinterpretations of other things?

Earth Lights

Lights originating from the earth (not the sky) have been reported for millennia. [3] “Earth lights” is a term that encompasses several reported but still questionable phenomena frequently associated with paranormal and fringe ideas. Many places are noted for recurring observations of slow-moving or stationary balls of light with no apparent source – Hessdalen valley in Norway and Brown Mountain Lights in North Carolina. These phenomena have been related to seismic stresses or geochemical processes that generate electric fields. Mysterious balls of light called “spook lights” or “ghost lights” are known from many locations. While these may be at least partially explained by atmospheric conditions that produce refraction of man-made lights from cars, trains, or planes, some have been reported long before modern transportation. Ball lightning, while related to storm events, seems to come from a ground interaction with typical lightning and is reported by witnesses to behave very strangely. Both ball lightning and spook lights are sometimes described as acting “intelligent” – moving away as people get closer or following cars. Earth lights as genuine natural phenomena are controversial for reasons I’ll explain further on. Reports of near-earth lights obviously cross over with descriptions of UFOs. The Condon Report, the US government’s final word on UFOs in 1969, explained some reported UFOs as natural luminous phenomena – that is, it invoked a mystery to attempt to explain another mystery. [4]

Seismic-related lights

Lights in association with seismic activity were reported before today’s modern electrified cities existed. They are also reported over the ocean or as luminous balls in the water. Galli, an Italian priest, published 148 observations recorded from 89 BC to 1910 in Europe. [5] Montandon developed a system in 1948 to categorize lights [2]. Types of ANP include the following:

• Flashes or sheet lightning that illuminates the sky
• Slow-moving globes or floating balls of light
• Bands or rays in the sky, or columns emanating from the ground
• Small or tall flames from the ground that shimmer
• Diffuse glows usually over mountains.

But that’s not all, as the Daillaire event showed. Sparks and electricity crackling on high points have been noted, sometimes related to radio interference as happens during lightning strikes during a rainstorm. [2, 4, 6]

EQLs of these various types have been reported before, during, or shortly after the shaking, mostly related to quakes above magnitude 5. They are witnessed seconds or weeks prior and last seconds to minutes in duration. One researcher estimate they may occur only in association with 5-6% of all quakes. So they are not common. [5]

Key Observations

In 1968, a swarm of quakes occurred that were pivotal to the history of EQLs called the Matsushiro events. Mr. Kuribayashi, a dentist, took a series of photos in succession, showing a sustained hemispherical glow over Mt. Kimyo in Japan, lasting about 90 seconds, and then the glow diminished. Other glows associated with the same event lasted from 10 seconds to 2 minutes. John Derr of the US geological survey was a proponent of EQL in the 70s. He considered these photographs, brought to the public by Yasui (of the Kakioka magnetic observatory in Ibaraki) as the best evidence for EQL we had so far. Yasui also noted what’s called “sferics” – radio interference in 10-20 kHz range – associated with some earthquakes. [4]

On July 1, in either 1972 or 1973 (for an explanation of this discrepancy, see [5 – electronic supplement]) visitor Jim Conacher photographed seven luminous globes on Lime mountain near Taglish Lake, Yukon, Canada. He thought he was seeing UFOs. These slow-moving orbs, also called “slow meteors”, are typical of globular EQLs that travel in curious paths, not like a solid object exhibiting ballistic motion. The Cross Sound earthquake M=6.7 occurred on the suspected date of the photo. The orbs reportedly drifted upwards and there were no known causes for lights to appear there. [5]

The following dramatic and spooky photo depicts a flame-like version of EQLs. Not widely circulated, this spectral photo from Brasov, Romania is said to have been taken 100 km from a M= 7.4 epicenter quake in the Vrancea Mtns in 1977. Damage and loss of life occurred in Bucharest resulting from vertical slip of a thrust fault. [5 – elec. supplement]. Edit: According to Derr (personal communication), this photo may be a result of a camera malfunction).

Old Chinese folklore tales tell of clouds that looked like dragons appearing in the sky as a signal of a coming quake. Iridescent clouds are featured in a video taken about 30 minutes before the Sichuan/Wenchuan quake of May 12, 2008. The rainbow effect of these clouds is the result of small ice crystals or water droplets acting like a prism, diffracting or scattering light.

Skeptics argue that these clouds are neither earthquake lights nor particularly anomalous and are not related to the quake at all. But the observers found it to be remarkable enough to film it, so it was unusual. Ground-based electromagnetic seismic precursor observations have been employed in China for 40 years. For this 2008 quake, equipment recorded different anomalies near the epicenter of this quake from those of the outlying areas 300 km away. Researchers speculated that the difference could be explained by the different stress regimes – compressional vs extensional as the fault stressed a large area of crust. The electromagnetic emissions were three orders of magnitude higher than normal background. Ionosondes in the upper atmosphere recorded a giant positive (charge) disturbance in the ionosphere on May 9, three days before the quake. [7]

Other anomalous phenomena

Besides lights, there are other phenomena associated with earthquake precursors. As with lights, they are diverse with none being systematic or reliable in occurrence.

During the preparation time for a quake, rocks dilate and compress, opening and closing the tiny spaces within the rock. The opening, then squeezing, affects the water and gas in the rock spaces. We, therefore, see changes in the levels of groundwater and radon gas released in response to seismic events. Groundwater changes in wells and springs are commonly reported. This is not controversial. Even as the energy from a strong quake passes around the world, scientists recorded a small but significant effect on groundwater levels. Nearer to the fault, there may be extraordinary changes including temporary artesian effects, the appearance of new springs, or permanent changes in groundwater flow patterns. [8, 9]

Gas release (into air or water) is also not disputed. Radon release can be measured locally several times above the average concentration in the lead-up time to a large quake. Radon is radioactive and ionized the air, but not enough to generate electric currents to explain EQLs. [10] In Kobe, Japan, 1995, radon increased for several months before the main shock, peaking nine days prior at 10x normal concentrations. Radon emissions as earthquake precursors are a focus for Japanese researchers [11, 12] and were highly controversial in the L’Aquila, Italy event in 2009.

Several incidences of radio frequency pulses and anomalies, in the ULF and ELF ranges, have been recorded and later connected to a seismic event. In Loma Prieta, CA, 1989, magnetometers put in place by Stanford University for another purpose recorded a 20x increase in ULF energy 14 days prior to the main shock. [13, 14, 17] In Chile, 1960, an unusual radio event occurred 5 days prior to a large quake. It was recorded via four receivers monitoring solar activity. At the time, the cause was a mystery and the subject of a paper in 1963. Much later, that same researcher correlated the anomaly to the quake and wrote an update in 1982. [15] Unfortunately, this network never again caught a similar event. When very low-frequency anomalies were detected on the San Andreas fault in the 80s, scientists thought this type of monitoring looked promising for prediction. Further studies into the predictive nature of these signals were not so promising and interest waned. [16]

Related to the radio frequency anomalies is the concept of ionospheric coupling. Sergey Pulinets in Russia developed the idea of seismo-ionospheric coupling in the 1990s. [12] He explored the connection between earthquakes over magnitude 5 that sometimes were preceded by anomalies in the ionosphere. The ionosphere is the part of Earth’s upper atmosphere from about 60 to 1,000 km altitude that is ionized by solar and cosmic rays, but reflects radio waves. Russian and Chinese scientists are actively working on gaining more data on this using remote sensing via satellites. Some experiments measuring the ionosphere found a change in total electron content in the general area over the preparation region of a quake. [10, 12, 15, 18] The anomalies, noted a day, to weeks, to months ahead, are suspected to result from a stream of positive charges released from the ground surface in relation to increased stress from the fault, thus changing the electrodynamic properties of the atmosphere. Though it sounds obvious to look for anomalies such as these, it is difficult to pinpoint them because of regular fluctuations in the ionosphere from solar events and other normal causes of disturbance. Not all faults would even produce this signal (especially those underwater). [19]

Surface thermal anomalies have also been spotted via satellite some 100-500 km across a few days before major events. [13] An example included a 2001 quake in Bhuj, India (magnitude 7.9) where infrared emission was spotted several days before. [24] Thermal anomalies fluctuate and disappear and can cause an increase in apparent ground temps. That is, people on the ground report feeling a rise in air temperature but it is not reflected in the recorded local ground temp. [6, 7, 10, 11]

Several other atmospheric anomalies are associated with anecdotal reports prior to earthquakes including fog and strange clouds. Pliny the Elder and Aristotle considered strange clouds as EQ precursors and the belief is still held and reinforced by the “rainbow cloud” reports. [28] The idea of “earthquake weather” is a weak claim. Some local folklore claims the weather gets humid or rainy before a quake, which is consistent with the idea of electrical charge release that ionizes the air and can cause aerosols or nucleation of water vapor and rain. Rain before quakes has led to a mistaken belief that rain “lubricates” a fault. It doesn’t. But some have a local belief that hot and dry weather is indicative of a coming quake. That appears to be a myth since there is no correlation. If there is little moisture in the air but electrically charged particles are flowing out of the ground, then sparks or coronal discharges could be possible from pointed or irregularly shaped objects (also known as St. Elmo’s fire). Recall that a crackling sound preceded Dallaire’s view of the light curtain that came from the trees…

Biological anomalies are legendary when it comes to earthquake prediction. [20, 28] There are myriad tales of animals behaving strangely for days, weeks, or, most often, seconds before shaking is felt. Separate mechanisms are likely involved as animals can certainly detect tiny shaking, low-frequency vibrations or minute signals of the shaking seconds sooner than people. It’s the longer lead time reports that are curious and historically examined as a basis for warning systems. There are some lab data on this but it’s not robust [28]. The idea persists because of post hoc anecdotes. Animal reports from the affected areas are problematic due to the lack of controls for the observations. They are also unreliable due to suggestion and memory contamination because they are described after a stressful event. However, fish and small mammals are sensitive to electrical signals, so if a mechanism is found that produces such signals, it’s reasonable to attribute some anomalous animal behavior to this condition.

There are even reports of plants and trees looking unusual prior to a quake and of people feeling uneasy or ill. [28] From the few studies that exist, there is just not a decent body of evidence to go on.

Other spooky things have been reported in homes. Magnets temporarily seem to “demagnetize” hours before a quake. Radio and TV static is noted, and electronic devices and appliances malfunction. [28] Magnetic field anomalies have been recorded in conjunction with a quake. For the Loma Prieta, California event in 1989, an elevated signal was recorded through a network of devices two weeks prior and a very high signal three hours before. [13, 33] But the instrumentation lost power during the quake itself so there could be no follow-through to check what happened post-quake.

Many of the notable historical reports of lights and other anomalies pre-quake occur in continental areas not near subduction zones in areas where there is a type of extensional faulted area called a “graben”. [5] The earliest reports are vague with later reports being less so but still uncertain in detail.

New Madrid, Mississippi, 1811
This historic quake took place on the Mississippi River graben in an area of America sparsely populated at the time. An incredible 40,000 square miles of land was affected by the estimated ~7.9 magnitude quake. Luminous phenomena appeared in the epicentral area including sparks from the earth, exploding flashes and sheet lightning in the sky, but up to 600 km away, people also saw flashes and a glowing sky like “fires in the air”. [5 – electronic suppl., 21] See Spooky Events from the New Madrid Quake.

Lisbon, Portugal, 1755
8 days prior to this tremendous quake, worms appeared all over the ground. Other unusual animal behaviors, strange lightning and flames from the mountainside were also observed. [22]

Sonora, Mexico, 1887
The 7.2 magnitude quake was very strong for this area and fault movement extended into Arizona. People thought volcanoes were erupting as they observed blazing craters in the mountains. Scientists discovered scorched trees over the fault line. [4]

Idu peninsula, Japan, 1930
1500 reports of luminous phenomena were associated with this quake that occurred at 4:30 am. Carefully recorded eyewitness reports included descriptions of the sky lit up by fireballs and beams and columns of light. A series of round lights in a straight line were seen moving through the sky. [4]

Haicheng, China, 1975
This was a most remarkable event that began in December of 1974 when unusual animal behavior was noted by trained observers. Snakes came out of hibernation and froze on the ground, rats acted confused, chickens and cattle were excitable. In addition, the groundwater table changed, artesian wells appeared, springs became cloudy, and gas bubbles appeared in ponds. Many small quakes occurred but by February, reports of anomalies climbed steeply in number. Ground fog was noted as near-surface humidity increased. On February 4, an evacuation of the town was ordered. Then, at 7:36 pm a 7.3 magnitude quake occurred. The evacuation was credited with saving thousands of lives saved. [23, 20]

Tangshan, China, 1976
Fireballs and flashes were seen 200 miles away from the area where the next night a 7.8 magnitude occurred. 240,000 people were killed (or more). Changes to ground resistivity changes were recorded and there were some reports of fish acting strangely. [22]

Saguenay, Quebec, Canada, 1988
46 good reports of luminous phenomena were collected during this swarm of 67 quakes: light balls floating a meter off the ground, motionless “meteors” (some with streamers) popping out of the ground, rays and bands across the sky. The main shock of 5.9 magnitude produced the Dallaire account of a crackling light curtain. Observation of the lights was found to be correlated to location of grabens. [2,7]

Kobe, Japan, 1995
Seconds before the magnitude 7.2 quake, blue-white streaks were observed from the fault area. The longest lasted more than 30 seconds. White luminous hemispheres 100-200m wide appeared near the ground and floated upwards. Flashes appeared at the same time as the shaking, even on the little-industrialized island of Awaji. At the surface exposure of the fault, plant roots were found scorched, the minerals had been locally heated high enough to melt silicates in the rock. [25, 26]

There are many other similar events associated with anomalies in the historic literature including several reports from sailors who described glowing balls that rise from the ocean depths and burst on the surface and discs of lighted water. Speculation as to the cause of these anomalies include the electrolysis of seawater or response to environmental stimuli by self-luminescent animals. [8]

Modern strong quakes get significant media attention. Events are recorded via security cameras and mobile phones and distributed on social media. Recording of lights, strange clouds, glows, and flashes are the subject of YouTube and Facebook videos prompting interest in the idea of EQLs.

Fidani [6] published a study of observations from L’Aquila Italy in 2010. After several foreshocks, a magnitude 6.3 event occurred in April 2009. Eyewitness interviews resulted in collection of 241 reports of luminous phenomena but 1057 anomalies in total. Locals reported flames emanating from the ground after the main shock 10 m high and small flickers from poles and between the cobblestones just prior to the main shock. The sky glowed red or orange before the quake, with violet clouds and fog, especially over the mountains. Sparks came off rough or pointed surfaces. 71 flashes were cataloged before and during the main shock from a clear sky. Fireballs, glows, and streamers similar to an aurora appeared above. Radio phenomena and unusual sounds were also noted. 305 biological observations were logged including that of a biologist who noted that the toads she was studying disappeared. after several foreshocks. [27] Giampaolo Giuliani was an amateur researcher making radon measurements. He made an unofficial prediction based on his measurements but he was cited by government officials for making dangerous public pronouncements and silenced.

Carlo Strinella, a resident near L’Aquila, already heard of EQLs. When he saw flashes, he took his family out of the house. Here is an account taken from Fidani:

“At about 01:30 on 6 April, just two hours before the main shock, Carlo Strinella saw two white light flashes reflected on the furniture of the kitchen, whose shutter was open. The second flash was intense as daylight, lasted more than 1 s, and was left impressed on his retinas. He checked that everything was fine in the kitchen, and looked out the window but saw the stars, and did not hear thunder. Then, he remembered having read an EQL summary a few months earlier and decided to take his family to a safer structure. He also noticed that the air temperature outside had sensibly warmed up during the night in comparison with the feeling he had immediately after dinner time, at about 21:00.” [6]

L’Aquila reports of anomalies span a wide spectrum. But the Fidani survey was done after the event when the researcher declared one of his aims was to instruct the public about EQLs, so we must be careful about taking these anecdotes at face value. Other than the glowing skies, I can find no other physical evidence recorded. Radon, EM frequencies, groundwater levels and infrared anomalies are measurable. If changes in these parameters did occur, anomalies could be recorded.

Three recent events have increased public interest in EQLs.

Lima, Peru, 2007
Security cameras caught light flashes as the shear waves passed from a magnitude 8 quake. A Navy officer reported blue columns of light bursting four times in succession from rocky outcrops in shallow water between his ship and the shore. [7]

Kaikoura, New Zealand, 2016
This 7.8M event occurred at night. Several people recorded green and blue flashes in the sky. These were said to be over the sea but that is not clear.

Mexico City, Mexico, 2017
Several light flashes in the distance were recorded from surveillance cameras.

Acapulco, Mexico, 2021
Like the Mexico City quake of 2017, people caught on camera flashes in the sky minutes after the quake. This is significant because electrical transformers and wiring were clearly disrupted, and the sky was cloudy to reflect the light. In addition, there were apparently thunderstorms in the area. This event created a flurry of interest in EQL based on a misunderstanding: people assumed the flashes were either a result of the fault break or that all flashes, regardless of cause, should be referred to as EQLs.

All four of these events were called “EQLs” but they are questionable. The flashes look conspicuously like electricity transformers exploding or arcing as electrical wires touch. This produces very bright white-blue light that can be reflected by clouds. (Perhaps even the Matsushiro photo could be an electric transformer.) It’s more plausible that this is the explanation for these lights because we know this happens during large quakes in urban areas.

Frustratingly, we have not seen recorded the more unusual forms of EQLs like ground flames, fireballs, sparks and columns. Light pollution, large swaths of paved areas, and lack of connection with the natural state of the land may mean that subtle natural anomalies are masked or that we don’t notice environmental changes as we did in the past.

Scientific Skepticism

The scientific/seismological view of EQLs remains one of skepticism, for good reason. Science is inherently conservative in changing to a new paradigm. Enough trustworthy evidence must be accumulated for the shift to occur and often various social factors make it happen even more slowly. Most of the evidence for EQLs is anecdotal – the worst kind of scientific evidence. Anecdotes can lead you where to look but they contain noise and errors. How would scientists credibly record these observations? Earthquakes happen all over the world and in indeterminate time frames. To set up observations for EQLs and associated precursors, the scale and scope are huge. [13] There are multiple variables that need to be measured and coverage in time and space must be adequate. [1] Even in the situation of known seismically active areas, this is often prohibitively expensive. Not all faults will produce precursors as subsurface regimes are different, even from one quake to another. Perhaps atmospheric conditions could have an effect on perceiving precursors. Since they clearly are not reliable to the extent that we can readily distinguish them, we can conclude they are more of an exception rather than usual. The lack of a plausible mechanism inhibits research. If we don’t have some idea how they COULD be, it is more difficult to plan to catch them.

Finally, scientists are skeptical because not much progress has been made due to the above problems. EQLs fall into the realm of legend and myth and have been lumped into paranormal subject areas like UFOs, ghost lights, and poltergeist activity. Many claims of EQLs seem to be explainable by other causes such as post hoc claims being inaccurate due to stress or misinterpretation, asserting undue meaning to non-associated events (such as iridescent clouds and animal behavior), and alternative coincidental causes such as electrical arcs or regular fires as a result of quakes.

Traditional research in seismology has been focused on mechanical observations – ground deformation, and prior events. [11] Because the reported precursors are very diverse, it’s hard to fathom whether they have the same mechanism. Besides that, we don’t know what the mechanism could be.

The “father of seismology” Robert Mallet talked about EQLs back in the 1850s in his volumes On the Facts of Earthquake Phenomenon. [7] In 1931, 1500 reports existed, collected by professional researchers. Some said at that time there was no doubt they exist. [1] Again in 1973, John Derr of the USGS called them “well established” based on the many documented reports. [4] Several scientists publishing on these topics repeatedly state that EQLs are accepted to exist. This is curious because they remain notably controversial in the bigger geological framing.

USGS page on EQL:

“Geophysicists differ on the extent to which they think that individual reports of unusual lighting near the time and epicenter of an earthquake actually represent EQL:  some doubt that any of the reports constitute solid evidence for EQL, whereas others think that at least some reports plausibly correspond to EQL.”

Proposed mechanisms

Various mechanisms have been proposed to explain EQLs. But, how does the charge get to the surface? If we confirm the occurrence of the charge at the surface, then there is a basis for the reports and they will be greater acceptance. A mechanism that produces air ionization, where electrically charged particles also act as nuclei for condensation and release latent heat, could be at play. Air ionization could possibly produce coronal discharges, sparks, plasma emissions, effects on animals, fog and clouds, and electromagnetic anomalies. The mechanism derived from fault stress must be able to concentrate and maintain large charge densities to reach the surface and release it. Charge accumulation and movement are a problem. [19] Plate tectonics results in squeezing, grinding, and breaking rock slabs and mineral grains on a huge scale. It would be surprising if you don’t get something electrical going on. Several mechanisms to account for EQL and associated phenomena have been proposed:

• Streaming potential. Fluids forced through small pathways generate electrical charges. This does not seem to produce high enough voltage. [11]
• Piezoelectricity. [11] Some minerals like quartz which is abundant produce an electric charge when pressure is applied. This is a favored idea regarding EQLs, however, this happens in a short span and decays quickly as the + and – charges cancel out due to random distribution of crystals. [23] Though it can be associated with radio frequency emission, there seems no way to concentrate the charges and them get them to the surface.
• Vaporization in shear zone. High stresses in the fault zone can produce charge separation and dramatically increase conductivity. Once again, this only works if the path to the surface is short where it may produce a coronal discharge above the fault. Several variables are also at play: amount of water available, width of shear zone, sliding velocity, the breakage of rock (as in a new fault), and the level of stress buildup. [23]
• Sono luminescence. [30] An intense sound wave can cause gas bubbles in liquid to collapse producing a burst of light. What if the same happens with an intense seismic wave? This idea didn’t go very far as it does not account for reports of light beforehand and the effect must occur close to the surface.

All these processes may be going on but none seem to be able to produce what is observed as EQLs on a large scale.

Peroxy defect theory

The current leading candidate for a mechanism is that of the peroxy defect theory. Friedemann Freund is the discoverer and primary promoter of this unifying theory – combining ideas from semi-conductor physics, chemistry, and rock physics into this framework to explain the generation, concentration and movement of a charge cloud to the surface. In simplified terms, the idea is this: There is a percentage of “peroxy defects” in the minerals that make up igneous and metamorphic rocks. The defects in the molecular structure occur when the oxygen molecules are not in their typical valence state but connected by a weak oxygen-oxygen single bond. Under stress, these bonds break and release positive charge carriers, called positive holes (P-holes), which flow via grain-to-grain contact in the rock. They move fast (200 m/s) and far (several km). The cloud of charged particles moves from high to low stress and upon reaching the surface, the theory goes, the cloud can generate local electrical fields that produce massive air ionization causing coronal discharges or bursts of light. Freund concludes this is what generates the necessary charge for the observed EQL effects and associated phenomena. He has demonstrated the charge concentration and movement in the lab on a small scale by stressing rocks. He reports that at around 2 seconds before the rock slab fails, a burst of positive ions is released from the surface of lower stress. The stress gradient drives the movement of the charge. The flow is away from the fault and, notably, to high points like mountains or asperities (areas of rough surface or points). Pointed and irregular structures produce a higher potential gradient and are more prone to emit the corona discharge. Peroxys are not very controversial but this idea to explain EQLs and precursors has not received much attention from seismologists (who are mostly trained in geophysics, not solid-state physics or chemistry). [1,5,10,11]

The peroxy defect theory has its problems – an obvious one being how to test it. We can’t assume that lab results of stressed rock slabs are equivalent to underground conditions. Real-world conditions may be far more heterogeneous and not conform to the ideal conditions that would allow the formation of currents. Freund notes that charge flow may be focused in some areas and blocked in others due to the heterogeneity of the crust. If valid, however, this theory could account for lights of various kinds, fog, clouds, thermal infrared anomalies, ionospheric perturbations, animal behavior, and even strange everyday anomalies because of the cloud of electrically charged particles leaving the ground surface en masse. Perhaps the passing of shear waves may also produce forces that activate the peroxy defects, which may explain Dallaire’s event.

Spookiness

But it’s still just proposed. Dr. Freund and colleagues are having a difficult time getting a forum with today’s seismologists who, generally, still do not consider EQLs and other precursor reports to be important or meaningful. Scientific data gathered so far in support of EQ anomalies was often lucky observations or anecdotes. There are no statistically meaningful data sets yet. Even though some may recognize widely reported anomalous precursors as an unsolved problem, these observations don’t yet fit into the picture, therefore, mainstream seismology efforts are not geared toward supporting an investigation into it. The non-interest in precursor research may be associated with the geological conditions of the U.S. Earthquake precursors such as EQLs are not as prevalent in the U.S. –  90% of such reports are in rift areas in other parts of the world (though several oddities have been reported in modern times in California including Monterey Bay, Hollister, and Santa Rosa). [5 – elec. supplement] Most papers published on anomalous precursors are not in English but are from China, India, Russia, Taiwan and Japan. And finally, the idea of EQLs is tainted by its association with spooky things.

The tectonic strain theory is popular with paranormalists who wish to explain ghosts and hauntings by a localized, natural mechanism. [29] Michael Persinger is a neuroscientist who proposed that fault areas produce stress-induced, transient geophysical fields. Even when no quake occurs, these fields may affect the temporal lobe of the brain which could explain why people report lights and bad feelings, possibly have hallucinations, and experience strange electrical malfunctions making a house appear “haunted”. The data is not robust and additional investigation into the TST petered out.

Strange lights before catastrophes have a folkloric connotation of being “fire from heaven,” “the opening of Hell,” and are associated with superstition and bad omens. During a stressful time, people report weird events and exaggerate or get confused about what they saw which is why anecdotes surrounding earthquakes may be unreliable.

As mentioned previously, earth lights including EQLs overlap with reports of UFOs and spook lights. The association with paranormal or supernatural beliefs means several scientists will steer clear of such anomalies. The paranormal taint may also prevent reputable investigation into these observations which deserve some attention. Note how seriously the public takes reports of strange lights and how most scientists will brush these concerns away as mistakes. People will still seek out information, and if there are no reasonable explanations provided, the public (and media) will pick up on non-reputable explanations. Considering all this, changing scientists’ perception of EQLs is a tough goal.

Establishing the validity of EQLs

The first task to establish the validity of EQLs is to get more reliable data to build the case that they are feasible. There is a lack of facilities to record EQLs or other environmental anomalies. There is insufficient instrumentation to cover large areas for the various parameters that could be measured. Systems designed to detect anomalous fields must be able to distinguish normal fluctuations from anomalies that may be precursors. Quakefinder in Palo Alto, who works in association with Dr. Freund, is a private venture deploying magnetometers. Their goal is to get those large data sets, look for statistical significance, obtain calibrated local background measurements, and get past the anecdotes.

Much related work is going on in earnest in other countries. Cooperation is necessary. Bigger, more robust data sets, and subsequently better results can help bring additional resolution to the picture of all that may happen prior to a quake. Other countries and scientists of other disciplines are moving down this path of exploration.

In conclusion, there is much we don’t yet know about what happens prior to earthquakes. If precursors exist, they can be used to provide some warning – if not perfectly reliable in all cases. Reports of EQLs will remain unconvincing to scientists (but a fascination to the media and public) until more credible evidence is produced. The uncritical and unsophisticated promotion of EQL phenomena on the internet will lead to additional hoaxes and misidentification, making the subject more muddled. Other related observations such as ionospheric anomalies, electromagnetic anomalies, radio frequency interference, infrared anomalies, groundwater changes, and increased radon emissions also need more robust data sets and analysis. There’s a lot of work to do and it’s costly in terms of money, time, and effort.

Mainstream seismologists may be looking in the wrong place or not looking at all for those whispers from the earth that tell us something is about to happen. I’m excited about what will happen with this field of research in the future. Perhaps the next big quake will bring more convincing evidence that mysterious and spooky EQLs are genuine warning beacons that we should watch for and heed.

See me give this talk at the Goddard Scientific Colloquium on March 28, 2018.

References

1. St-Laurent, F., Derr, J.S., & Freund, F.T. (2006). Earthquake lights and the stress-activation of positive hole charge carriers in rocks. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. 31, 305-312.

2. St-Laurent, F. (2000). The Saguenay, Quebec, Earthquake Lights of November 1988-January 1989: A Comparative Study with Reference to the Geo-atmospheric Lights Classification Proposed by Montandon in 1948 and Description Put Forward by Yasui in 1968. Seismological Research Letters. 71:2, 160-174

3. Deveraux, P. (1990). Earth Lights Revelation: Ufo’s and Mystery Lightform Phenomena: The Earth’s Secret Energy Force. Sterling Pub Co Inc.

4. Derr, J.S. (1973). Earthquake Lights: A Review of Observations and Present Theories. Bull of the Seismological Soc of Am. 63:6, 2177-2187.

5. Theirault, R., St-Laurent, F., Freund, F.T., & Derr, J.S. (2014). Prevalence of Earthquake Lights Associated with Rift Environments Seismological Research Letters 85:1, 159-178 and electronic supplement.

6. Fidani, C. (2010). The earthquake lights (EQL) of the 6 April 2009 Aquila earthquake, in Central Italy. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 10, 967–978.

7. Zhang, X., Shen, X., & Mioa, Y. (2012). Electromagnetic Anomalies around Wenchuan Earthquake and Their Relationship with Earthquake Preparation. Procedia Environmental Sciences. 12A, 693-701.

8. Corliss, W. (2001). Remarkable luminous phenomena in nature: A catalog of geophysical anomalies. Sourcebook Project.

9. Sidorin, A. Y. (2003). Search for earthquake precursors in multidisciplinary data monitoring of geophysical and biological parameters. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 3, 153–158.

10. Freund, F.T., Kulahci, I.G., Cyr, G., Ling, J., Winnick, M., Tregloan-Reed, J., & Freund, M.M. (2009). Air ionization at rock surfaces and pre-earthquake signals. J of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. 71, 1824–1834.

11. Freund, F.T. , Ouillon, G., Scoville, J., & Sornette, D. (2018). Earthquake precursors in the light of peroxy defects theory: critical review of systematic observations. European Physical Journal, in press.

12. Pulinets, S.A. (1998). Seismic Activity as a Source of the Ionospheric Variability. Adv. Space Res. 22: 6, 903-906.
and
Pulinets, S.A., & Boyarchuk, K. (2004). Ionospheric Precursors of Earthquakes. Springer-Verlag: Berlin Heidelberg.

13. Bleier, T., Dunson, C., Maniscalco, M., Bryant, N., Bambery, R., & Freund, F.T. (2009). Investigation of ULF magnetic pulsations, air conductivity changes, and infrared signatures associated with the 30 October Alum Rock M5.4 earthquake. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 9, 585–603.

14. Kirschvink, J.L. (2000). Earthquake Prediction by Animals: Evolution and Sensory Perception. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of Am., 90: 2, 312–323.

15. Warwick, J.W., Stoker, C., & Meyer, T.R. (1982) Radio Emission Associated with Rock Fracture: Possible Application to the Great Chilean Earthquake of May 22, 1960. J of Geophysical Research 87:B4 2851-2859.

16. Tate, J., & Daily, W. (1989). Evidence of electroseismic phenomena. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors. 57:1-2, 1-10.

17. Park, S.K., Johnston, M.J.S., Madden, T.R., Morgan, F.D., & Morrison, H.F. (1993). Electromagnetic Precursors to Earthquakes in the ULF Band: A Review of Observations and Mechanisms. Reviews of Geophysics, 31:2, 112-132.

18. Chuo, Y.J., Chen, Y.I., Liu, J.Y., & Pulinets, S.A. (2001). Ionospheric foF2 Variations Prior to Strong Earthquakes in Taiwan Area. Adv. Space Res. 27, 6–7, 1305-1310.

19. Parrot, J.S.E. (1990). Electromagnetic Disturbances Associated With Earthquakes: An Analysis of Ground-Based and Satellite Data. J of Scientific Exploration. 4: 2, 203-221.

20. Tributsch, H. (1982). When the Snakes Awake: Animals and Earthquake Prediction. MIT Press: Cambridge MA.

21. Fuller, M.L. (1912). The New Madrid Earthquake. USGS Bulletin 494.

22. Enriquez, A. (2003). The shining. New Scientist, 179: 2402, 26–29.

23. Lockner, D.A, Johnston, M.J.S., & Byerlee, J.D. (1983). Nature 302:5903 28-33.

24. Saraf, A.K., & Choudhury, S. (2005). Thermal Remote Sensing Technique in the Study of Pre-Earthquake Thermal Anomalies. J of Indian Geophys. Union. 9: 3, 197-207.

25. Enomoto, Y., & Zheng, Z. (1998). Possible evidences of earthquake lightning accompanying the 1995 Kobe earthquake inferred from the Nojima fault gouge. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS. 25: 14, 2721-2724.

26. Losseva, T.V., & Nemchinov, I.V. (2005). Earthquake lights and rupture processes. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 5, 649–656.

27 Grant, R.A., & Halliday, T. (2010). Predicting the unpredictable; evidence of pre-seismic anticipatory behaviour in the common toad. Journal of Zoology 281:4, 263-271.

28 Ikeya, M. (2004) Earthquakes and Animals: From Folk Legends to Science. World Scientific Publishing Co., Pte. Ltd.: Singapore.

29. Persinger, M.A. (1985). Geophysical variables and behavior: XXII. The tectonogenic strain continuum of unusual events. Percept Mot Skills. 60: 1, 59-65.

30. Johnston, C., Light from seismic waves. Nature. 354, 361.

Mexico “earthquake lights” of 2021

An earthquake of magnitude 7.0 occurred 11 miles (17.7 km) northeast of Acapulco, Mexico on the evening of September 7, 2021. As usual, the event was followed by personal videos flooding social media showing people scrambling outside. The sky is full of light bursts. Quickly, the media reported that these were “earthquake lights” or “rare lightning” (as reported by Reuters).

In footage from Acapulco, the flashes start shortly after the ground starts shaking, illuminating previously darkened hills behind the ocean bay and at one point appearing to bathe buildings on the shoreline in bright light.

In Mexico City, panicked residents tried to keep their balance outside an apartment building while the sky flashed blue, white and pink, another video on social media showed.

Reuters news

The sources seemed to do a poor to nonexistent job of critically assessing this information and took the opinion that these flashes were unusual or natural. Maybe it’s because earthquake lights sound plausible and are a dramatic explanation for the flashes. But there are three specific reasons why we can reasonably conclude that these flashes were NOT earthquake lights. 1. They appear to be along the horizon, not high in the sky. 2. They occurred after the quake, sometimes minutes later. 3. They are not the typical and unique descriptions of earthquake lights as glows, balls, or unusual sparks, curtains or flames.

Instead, these flashes are almost certainly from arcing wires from electrical lines that are broken or touching each other. Or, they are electrical transformers that have been damaged and emitting flashes. They can also be normal lightning flashing. Due to most reports being in Spanish, I’m not readily able to tell if a thunderstorm was occurring but it is visibly raining in some news videos. So, a thunderstorm is also a possible explanation. If so, that event is unconnected to seismic activity.

A final point: it’s absurd to report on earthquake lights as if they are a regular occurrence. If they exist at all, they are very rare and our documented evidence for them is scant and questionable. Usually, the evidence is only eyewitness accounts. If these flashes were anomalous, and indicative of earthquake lights, that would be huge news. However, like other recent quakes that follow the same pattern of flashing lights immediately after shaking, we know these are not anomalies.

If people have recordings of pre-earthquake glows, lights, or other anomalous phenomena, I’d love to hear it. But so far, I see no evidence of earthquake lights in these post-quake videos. Do not assume that news sources, even normally reliable sources are scientifically informed on this niche subject. If the reports are simply repeating accounts that have someone’s personal opinions embedded in them, that’s not factual.

Disclaimer: All images are used for educational purposes. Inevitably, there will be errors in the above. Please contact the site owner with comments or corrections or leave a comment below. Comments are moderated.

More:

Earthquake lights (pseudoEQLs) video from India (2023)

Anomalous claims from Turkey-Syria earthquake 2023

Media hypes questionable “mysterious” earthquake lights in Morocco (2023)

#Canada #Spookygeology #earthLights #earthquakeLights #earthquakePrecursors #earthquakes #EQL #seismic

https://sharonahill.com/?p=692

Despite centuries of reports of anomalous luminous phenomena (ANP) – lights, glows, flames, sparks and clouds – before, during or after an earthquake, the scientific view of such reports remains deeply divided. The evidence for earthquake lights (EQLs) and associated anomalies consists overwhelmingly of anecdotal accounts. But scientific evidence has been accumulating, and in the past 10 years a plausible theory to explain the host of unusual precursors has been proposed. Geological reference sources fail to address the wide breadth of ideas within this topic, and mystery-themed sources contain mostly non-scholarly information that is dubious or exaggerated. A balanced view was needed. So, here is the Spooky Geology examination of the credibility and cause of earthquake lights and associated ANP.

Quebec, Canada, 25 November 1988, 18:46 local time.
It was dark when Joseph Dallaire, a trapper in Laterriere, was leaving the conifer forest after checking the traps near his home. The weather was mostly clear and cold with a low wind. After exiting the woods, he headed to his house across the open field 700 meters away when he was startled by a crackling sound approaching from behind. This sound was followed by a 6-15 m high curtain of bluish light that passed by him in about 2 seconds. Then he felt the shaking from the magnitude 6.5 earthquake which had occurred in Saguenay 19 km away. Dallaire described the light to a researcher as hugging the ground as it moved past him, passing into the open field, and disappearing to the northwest. He reported that the light was bright enough to illuminate his house. It was not like normal lightning but the crackling sound suggested an electric field buildup and discharge off the tree branches. The curtain or sheet of light suggests a strong electric field from the ground that resulted in a discharge at the ground-to-air interface. The discharge was traveling away from the direction of the Saguenay quake epicenter. [1]

What can we make of this remarkable event? It was not the only luminous phenomenon noted in association with this unusual quake that took place within the continental land mass, far from a plate boundary. At 29 km depth, it produced strong shaking but few aftershocks indicating a distinct release of energy. The Saguenay earthquake lights were relatively well-studied [2] yet we still have a mystery regarding the Dallaire experience.

The topic of earthquake lights is both highly technical and popular with lay audiences, making it difficult to discuss in popular discourse. This is not a unique problem as it occurs in most scientific fields. With most Spooky Geology subjects, there exists a popular idea about the phenomena but the detailed scientific ideas are buried within the specialized literature of various subjects. For EQLs, we can find snippets and threads of the discussion in natural history, geology, geophysics, rock mechanics, and seismology, but also in folklore, psychology, and cultural studies. What typically is supplied to the public from mainstream news and entertainment sources is nontechnical, unchecked, and often exaggerated or wrong.

Scientific journals and reliable media reports hold a wealth of observations and reports of EQLs. Often thought of as folklore, there are many highly technical explanations suggested by qualified experts, not cranks or wacky amateurs. Those interested in strange phenomena likely are not aware of the current state of thinking on the topic so let’s assess the big questions: Is there something here to explain? And what are some reasonable means to explain it? What does the scientific community think in comparison to the public? Could mainstream seismology be missing something or are EQLs all misperceptions or misinterpretations of other things?

Earth Lights

Lights originating from the earth (not the sky) have been reported for millennia. [3] “Earth lights” is a term that encompasses several reported but still questionable phenomena frequently associated with paranormal and fringe ideas. Many places are noted for recurring observations of slow-moving or stationary balls of light with no apparent source – Hessdalen valley in Norway and Brown Mountain Lights in North Carolina. These phenomena have been related to seismic stresses or geochemical processes that generate electric fields. Mysterious balls of light called “spook lights” or “ghost lights” are known from many locations. While these may be at least partially explained by atmospheric conditions that produce refraction of man-made lights from cars, trains, or planes, some have been reported long before modern transportation. Ball lightning, while related to storm events, seems to come from a ground interaction with typical lightning and is reported by witnesses to behave very strangely. Both ball lightning and spook lights are sometimes described as acting “intelligent” – moving away as people get closer or following cars. Earth lights as genuine natural phenomena are controversial for reasons I’ll explain further on. Reports of near-earth lights obviously cross over with descriptions of UFOs. The Condon Report, the US government’s final word on UFOs in 1969, explained some reported UFOs as natural luminous phenomena – that is, it invoked a mystery to attempt to explain another mystery. [4]

Seismic-related lights

Lights in association with seismic activity were reported before today’s modern electrified cities existed. They are also reported over the ocean or as luminous balls in the water. Galli, an Italian priest, published 148 observations recorded from 89 BC to 1910 in Europe. [5] Montandon developed a system in 1948 to categorize lights [2]. Types of ANP include the following:

• Flashes or sheet lightning that illuminates the sky
• Slow-moving globes or floating balls of light
• Bands or rays in the sky, or columns emanating from the ground
• Small or tall flames from the ground that shimmer
• Diffuse glows usually over mountains.

But that’s not all, as the Daillaire event showed. Sparks and electricity crackling on high points have been noted, sometimes related to radio interference as happens during lightning strikes during a rainstorm. [2, 4, 6]

EQLs of these various types have been reported before, during, or shortly after the shaking, mostly related to quakes above magnitude 5. They are witnessed seconds or weeks prior and last seconds to minutes in duration. One researcher estimate they may occur only in association with 5-6% of all quakes. So they are not common. [5]

Key Observations

In 1968, a swarm of quakes occurred that were pivotal to the history of EQLs called the Matsushiro events. Mr. Kuribayashi, a dentist, took a series of photos in succession, showing a sustained hemispherical glow over Mt. Kimyo in Japan, lasting about 90 seconds, and then the glow diminished. Other glows associated with the same event lasted from 10 seconds to 2 minutes. John Derr of the US geological survey was a proponent of EQL in the 70s. He considered these photographs, brought to the public by Yasui (of the Kakioka magnetic observatory in Ibaraki) as the best evidence for EQL we had so far. Yasui also noted what’s called “sferics” – radio interference in 10-20 kHz range – associated with some earthquakes. [4]

On July 1, in either 1972 or 1973 (for an explanation of this discrepancy, see [5 – electronic supplement]) visitor Jim Conacher photographed seven luminous globes on Lime mountain near Taglish Lake, Yukon, Canada. He thought he was seeing UFOs. These slow-moving orbs, also called “slow meteors”, are typical of globular EQLs that travel in curious paths, not like a solid object exhibiting ballistic motion. The Cross Sound earthquake M=6.7 occurred on the suspected date of the photo. The orbs reportedly drifted upwards and there were no known causes for lights to appear there. [5]

The following dramatic and spooky photo depicts a flame-like version of EQLs. Not widely circulated, this spectral photo from Brasov, Romania is said to have been taken 100 km from a M= 7.4 epicenter quake in the Vrancea Mtns in 1977. Damage and loss of life occurred in Bucharest resulting from vertical slip of a thrust fault. [5 – elec. supplement]. Edit: According to Derr (personal communication), this photo may be a result of a camera malfunction).

Old Chinese folklore tales tell of clouds that looked like dragons appearing in the sky as a signal of a coming quake. Iridescent clouds are featured in a video taken about 30 minutes before the Sichuan/Wenchuan quake of May 12, 2008. The rainbow effect of these clouds is the result of small ice crystals or water droplets acting like a prism, diffracting or scattering light.

Skeptics argue that these clouds are neither earthquake lights nor particularly anomalous and are not related to the quake at all. But the observers found it to be remarkable enough to film it, so it was unusual. Ground-based electromagnetic seismic precursor observations have been employed in China for 40 years. For this 2008 quake, equipment recorded different anomalies near the epicenter of this quake from those of the outlying areas 300 km away. Researchers speculated that the difference could be explained by the different stress regimes – compressional vs extensional as the fault stressed a large area of crust. The electromagnetic emissions were three orders of magnitude higher than normal background. Ionosondes in the upper atmosphere recorded a giant positive (charge) disturbance in the ionosphere on May 9, three days before the quake. [7]

Other anomalous phenomena

Besides lights, there are other phenomena associated with earthquake precursors. As with lights, they are diverse with none being systematic or reliable in occurrence.

During the preparation time for a quake, rocks dilate and compress, opening and closing the tiny spaces within the rock. The opening, then squeezing, affects the water and gas in the rock spaces. We, therefore, see changes in the levels of groundwater and radon gas released in response to seismic events. Groundwater changes in wells and springs are commonly reported. This is not controversial. Even as the energy from a strong quake passes around the world, scientists recorded a small but significant effect on groundwater levels. Nearer to the fault, there may be extraordinary changes including temporary artesian effects, the appearance of new springs, or permanent changes in groundwater flow patterns. [8, 9]

Gas release (into air or water) is also not disputed. Radon release can be measured locally several times above the average concentration in the lead-up time to a large quake. Radon is radioactive and ionized the air, but not enough to generate electric currents to explain EQLs. [10] In Kobe, Japan, 1995, radon increased for several months before the main shock, peaking nine days prior at 10x normal concentrations. Radon emissions as earthquake precursors are a focus for Japanese researchers [11, 12] and were highly controversial in the L’Aquila, Italy event in 2009.

Several incidences of radio frequency pulses and anomalies, in the ULF and ELF ranges, have been recorded and later connected to a seismic event. In Loma Prieta, CA, 1989, magnetometers put in place by Stanford University for another purpose recorded a 20x increase in ULF energy 14 days prior to the main shock. [13, 14, 17] In Chile, 1960, an unusual radio event occurred 5 days prior to a large quake. It was recorded via four receivers monitoring solar activity. At the time, the cause was a mystery and the subject of a paper in 1963. Much later, that same researcher correlated the anomaly to the quake and wrote an update in 1982. [15] Unfortunately, this network never again caught a similar event. When very low-frequency anomalies were detected on the San Andreas fault in the 80s, scientists thought this type of monitoring looked promising for prediction. Further studies into the predictive nature of these signals were not so promising and interest waned. [16]

Related to the radio frequency anomalies is the concept of ionospheric coupling. Sergey Pulinets in Russia developed the idea of seismo-ionospheric coupling in the 1990s. [12] He explored the connection between earthquakes over magnitude 5 that sometimes were preceded by anomalies in the ionosphere. The ionosphere is the part of Earth’s upper atmosphere from about 60 to 1,000 km altitude that is ionized by solar and cosmic rays, but reflects radio waves. Russian and Chinese scientists are actively working on gaining more data on this using remote sensing via satellites. Some experiments measuring the ionosphere found a change in total electron content in the general area over the preparation region of a quake. [10, 12, 15, 18] The anomalies, noted a day, to weeks, to months ahead, are suspected to result from a stream of positive charges released from the ground surface in relation to increased stress from the fault, thus changing the electrodynamic properties of the atmosphere. Though it sounds obvious to look for anomalies such as these, it is difficult to pinpoint them because of regular fluctuations in the ionosphere from solar events and other normal causes of disturbance. Not all faults would even produce this signal (especially those underwater). [19]

Surface thermal anomalies have also been spotted via satellite some 100-500 km across a few days before major events. [13] An example included a 2001 quake in Bhuj, India (magnitude 7.9) where infrared emission was spotted several days before. [24] Thermal anomalies fluctuate and disappear and can cause an increase in apparent ground temps. That is, people on the ground report feeling a rise in air temperature but it is not reflected in the recorded local ground temp. [6, 7, 10, 11]

Several other atmospheric anomalies are associated with anecdotal reports prior to earthquakes including fog and strange clouds. Pliny the Elder and Aristotle considered strange clouds as EQ precursors and the belief is still held and reinforced by the “rainbow cloud” reports. [28] The idea of “earthquake weather” is a weak claim. Some local folklore claims the weather gets humid or rainy before a quake, which is consistent with the idea of electrical charge release that ionizes the air and can cause aerosols or nucleation of water vapor and rain. Rain before quakes has led to a mistaken belief that rain “lubricates” a fault. It doesn’t. But some have a local belief that hot and dry weather is indicative of a coming quake. That appears to be a myth since there is no correlation. If there is little moisture in the air but electrically charged particles are flowing out of the ground, then sparks or coronal discharges could be possible from pointed or irregularly shaped objects (also known as St. Elmo’s fire). Recall that a crackling sound preceded Dallaire’s view of the light curtain that came from the trees…

Biological anomalies are legendary when it comes to earthquake prediction. [20, 28] There are myriad tales of animals behaving strangely for days, weeks, or, most often, seconds before shaking is felt. Separate mechanisms are likely involved as animals can certainly detect tiny shaking, low-frequency vibrations or minute signals of the shaking seconds sooner than people. It’s the longer lead time reports that are curious and historically examined as a basis for warning systems. There are some lab data on this but it’s not robust [28]. The idea persists because of post hoc anecdotes. Animal reports from the affected areas are problematic due to the lack of controls for the observations. They are also unreliable due to suggestion and memory contamination because they are described after a stressful event. However, fish and small mammals are sensitive to electrical signals, so if a mechanism is found that produces such signals, it’s reasonable to attribute some anomalous animal behavior to this condition.

There are even reports of plants and trees looking unusual prior to a quake and of people feeling uneasy or ill. [28] From the few studies that exist, there is just not a decent body of evidence to go on.

Other spooky things have been reported in homes. Magnets temporarily seem to “demagnetize” hours before a quake. Radio and TV static is noted, and electronic devices and appliances malfunction. [28] Magnetic field anomalies have been recorded in conjunction with a quake. For the Loma Prieta, California event in 1989, an elevated signal was recorded through a network of devices two weeks prior and a very high signal three hours before. [13, 33] But the instrumentation lost power during the quake itself so there could be no follow-through to check what happened post-quake.

Many of the notable historical reports of lights and other anomalies pre-quake occur in continental areas not near subduction zones in areas where there is a type of extensional faulted area called a “graben”. [5] The earliest reports are vague with later reports being less so but still uncertain in detail.

New Madrid, Mississippi, 1811
This historic quake took place on the Mississippi River graben in an area of America sparsely populated at the time. An incredible 40,000 square miles of land was affected by the estimated ~7.9 magnitude quake. Luminous phenomena appeared in the epicentral area including sparks from the earth, exploding flashes and sheet lightning in the sky, but up to 600 km away, people also saw flashes and a glowing sky like “fires in the air”. [5 – electronic suppl., 21] See Spooky Events from the New Madrid Quake.

Lisbon, Portugal, 1755
8 days prior to this tremendous quake, worms appeared all over the ground. Other unusual animal behaviors, strange lightning and flames from the mountainside were also observed. [22]

Sonora, Mexico, 1887
The 7.2 magnitude quake was very strong for this area and fault movement extended into Arizona. People thought volcanoes were erupting as they observed blazing craters in the mountains. Scientists discovered scorched trees over the fault line. [4]

Idu peninsula, Japan, 1930
1500 reports of luminous phenomena were associated with this quake that occurred at 4:30 am. Carefully recorded eyewitness reports included descriptions of the sky lit up by fireballs and beams and columns of light. A series of round lights in a straight line were seen moving through the sky. [4]

Haicheng, China, 1975
This was a most remarkable event that began in December of 1974 when unusual animal behavior was noted by trained observers. Snakes came out of hibernation and froze on the ground, rats acted confused, chickens and cattle were excitable. In addition, the groundwater table changed, artesian wells appeared, springs became cloudy, and gas bubbles appeared in ponds. Many small quakes occurred but by February, reports of anomalies climbed steeply in number. Ground fog was noted as near-surface humidity increased. On February 4, an evacuation of the town was ordered. Then, at 7:36 pm a 7.3 magnitude quake occurred. The evacuation was credited with saving thousands of lives saved. [23, 20]

Tangshan, China, 1976
Fireballs and flashes were seen 200 miles away from the area where the next night a 7.8 magnitude occurred. 240,000 people were killed (or more). Changes to ground resistivity changes were recorded and there were some reports of fish acting strangely. [22]

Saguenay, Quebec, Canada, 1988
46 good reports of luminous phenomena were collected during this swarm of 67 quakes: light balls floating a meter off the ground, motionless “meteors” (some with streamers) popping out of the ground, rays and bands across the sky. The main shock of 5.9 magnitude produced the Dallaire account of a crackling light curtain. Observation of the lights was found to be correlated to location of grabens. [2,7]

Kobe, Japan, 1995
Seconds before the magnitude 7.2 quake, blue-white streaks were observed from the fault area. The longest lasted more than 30 seconds. White luminous hemispheres 100-200m wide appeared near the ground and floated upwards. Flashes appeared at the same time as the shaking, even on the little-industrialized island of Awaji. At the surface exposure of the fault, plant roots were found scorched, the minerals had been locally heated high enough to melt silicates in the rock. [25, 26]

There are many other similar events associated with anomalies in the historic literature including several reports from sailors who described glowing balls that rise from the ocean depths and burst on the surface and discs of lighted water. Speculation as to the cause of these anomalies include the electrolysis of seawater or response to environmental stimuli by self-luminescent animals. [8]

Modern strong quakes get significant media attention. Events are recorded via security cameras and mobile phones and distributed on social media. Recording of lights, strange clouds, glows, and flashes are the subject of YouTube and Facebook videos prompting interest in the idea of EQLs.

Fidani [6] published a study of observations from L’Aquila Italy in 2010. After several foreshocks, a magnitude 6.3 event occurred in April 2009. Eyewitness interviews resulted in collection of 241 reports of luminous phenomena but 1057 anomalies in total. Locals reported flames emanating from the ground after the main shock 10 m high and small flickers from poles and between the cobblestones just prior to the main shock. The sky glowed red or orange before the quake, with violet clouds and fog, especially over the mountains. Sparks came off rough or pointed surfaces. 71 flashes were cataloged before and during the main shock from a clear sky. Fireballs, glows, and streamers similar to an aurora appeared above. Radio phenomena and unusual sounds were also noted. 305 biological observations were logged including that of a biologist who noted that the toads she was studying disappeared. after several foreshocks. [27] Giampaolo Giuliani was an amateur researcher making radon measurements. He made an unofficial prediction based on his measurements but he was cited by government officials for making dangerous public pronouncements and silenced.

Carlo Strinella, a resident near L’Aquila, already heard of EQLs. When he saw flashes, he took his family out of the house. Here is an account taken from Fidani:

“At about 01:30 on 6 April, just two hours before the main shock, Carlo Strinella saw two white light flashes reflected on the furniture of the kitchen, whose shutter was open. The second flash was intense as daylight, lasted more than 1 s, and was left impressed on his retinas. He checked that everything was fine in the kitchen, and looked out the window but saw the stars, and did not hear thunder. Then, he remembered having read an EQL summary a few months earlier and decided to take his family to a safer structure. He also noticed that the air temperature outside had sensibly warmed up during the night in comparison with the feeling he had immediately after dinner time, at about 21:00.” [6]

L’Aquila reports of anomalies span a wide spectrum. But the Fidani survey was done after the event when the researcher declared one of his aims was to instruct the public about EQLs, so we must be careful about taking these anecdotes at face value. Other than the glowing skies, I can find no other physical evidence recorded. Radon, EM frequencies, groundwater levels and infrared anomalies are measurable. If changes in these parameters did occur, anomalies could be recorded.

Three recent events have increased public interest in EQLs.

Lima, Peru, 2007
Security cameras caught light flashes as the shear waves passed from a magnitude 8 quake. A Navy officer reported blue columns of light bursting four times in succession from rocky outcrops in shallow water between his ship and the shore. [7]

Kaikoura, New Zealand, 2016
This 7.8M event occurred at night. Several people recorded green and blue flashes in the sky. These were said to be over the sea but that is not clear.

Mexico City, Mexico, 2017
Several light flashes in the distance were recorded from surveillance cameras.

Acapulco, Mexico, 2021
Like the Mexico City quake of 2017, people caught on camera flashes in the sky minutes after the quake. This is significant because electrical transformers and wiring were clearly disrupted, and the sky was cloudy to reflect the light. In addition, there were apparently thunderstorms in the area. This event created a flurry of interest in EQL based on a misunderstanding: people assumed the flashes were either a result of the fault break or that all flashes, regardless of cause, should be referred to as EQLs.

All four of these events were called “EQLs” but they are questionable. The flashes look conspicuously like electricity transformers exploding or arcing as electrical wires touch. This produces very bright white-blue light that can be reflected by clouds. (Perhaps even the Matsushiro photo could be an electric transformer.) It’s more plausible that this is the explanation for these lights because we know this happens during large quakes in urban areas.

Frustratingly, we have not seen recorded the more unusual forms of EQLs like ground flames, fireballs, sparks and columns. Light pollution, large swaths of paved areas, and lack of connection with the natural state of the land may mean that subtle natural anomalies are masked or that we don’t notice environmental changes as we did in the past.

Scientific Skepticism

The scientific/seismological view of EQLs remains one of skepticism, for good reason. Science is inherently conservative in changing to a new paradigm. Enough trustworthy evidence must be accumulated for the shift to occur and often various social factors make it happen even more slowly. Most of the evidence for EQLs is anecdotal – the worst kind of scientific evidence. Anecdotes can lead you where to look but they contain noise and errors. How would scientists credibly record these observations? Earthquakes happen all over the world and in indeterminate time frames. To set up observations for EQLs and associated precursors, the scale and scope are huge. [13] There are multiple variables that need to be measured and coverage in time and space must be adequate. [1] Even in the situation of known seismically active areas, this is often prohibitively expensive. Not all faults will produce precursors as subsurface regimes are different, even from one quake to another. Perhaps atmospheric conditions could have an effect on perceiving precursors. Since they clearly are not reliable to the extent that we can readily distinguish them, we can conclude they are more of an exception rather than usual. The lack of a plausible mechanism inhibits research. If we don’t have some idea how they COULD be, it is more difficult to plan to catch them.

Finally, scientists are skeptical because not much progress has been made due to the above problems. EQLs fall into the realm of legend and myth and have been lumped into paranormal subject areas like UFOs, ghost lights, and poltergeist activity. Many claims of EQLs seem to be explainable by other causes such as post hoc claims being inaccurate due to stress or misinterpretation, asserting undue meaning to non-associated events (such as iridescent clouds and animal behavior), and alternative coincidental causes such as electrical arcs or regular fires as a result of quakes.

Traditional research in seismology has been focused on mechanical observations – ground deformation, and prior events. [11] Because the reported precursors are very diverse, it’s hard to fathom whether they have the same mechanism. Besides that, we don’t know what the mechanism could be.

The “father of seismology” Robert Mallet talked about EQLs back in the 1850s in his volumes On the Facts of Earthquake Phenomenon. [7] In 1931, 1500 reports existed, collected by professional researchers. Some said at that time there was no doubt they exist. [1] Again in 1973, John Derr of the USGS called them “well established” based on the many documented reports. [4] Several scientists publishing on these topics repeatedly state that EQLs are accepted to exist. This is curious because they remain notably controversial in the bigger geological framing.

USGS page on EQL:

“Geophysicists differ on the extent to which they think that individual reports of unusual lighting near the time and epicenter of an earthquake actually represent EQL:  some doubt that any of the reports constitute solid evidence for EQL, whereas others think that at least some reports plausibly correspond to EQL.”

Proposed mechanisms

Various mechanisms have been proposed to explain EQLs. But, how does the charge get to the surface? If we confirm the occurrence of the charge at the surface, then there is a basis for the reports and they will be greater acceptance. A mechanism that produces air ionization, where electrically charged particles also act as nuclei for condensation and release latent heat, could be at play. Air ionization could possibly produce coronal discharges, sparks, plasma emissions, effects on animals, fog and clouds, and electromagnetic anomalies. The mechanism derived from fault stress must be able to concentrate and maintain large charge densities to reach the surface and release it. Charge accumulation and movement are a problem. [19] Plate tectonics results in squeezing, grinding, and breaking rock slabs and mineral grains on a huge scale. It would be surprising if you don’t get something electrical going on. Several mechanisms to account for EQL and associated phenomena have been proposed:

• Streaming potential. Fluids forced through small pathways generate electrical charges. This does not seem to produce high enough voltage. [11]
• Piezoelectricity. [11] Some minerals like quartz which is abundant produce an electric charge when pressure is applied. This is a favored idea regarding EQLs, however, this happens in a short span and decays quickly as the + and – charges cancel out due to random distribution of crystals. [23] Though it can be associated with radio frequency emission, there seems no way to concentrate the charges and them get them to the surface.
• Vaporization in shear zone. High stresses in the fault zone can produce charge separation and dramatically increase conductivity. Once again, this only works if the path to the surface is short where it may produce a coronal discharge above the fault. Several variables are also at play: amount of water available, width of shear zone, sliding velocity, the breakage of rock (as in a new fault), and the level of stress buildup. [23]
• Sono luminescence. [30] An intense sound wave can cause gas bubbles in liquid to collapse producing a burst of light. What if the same happens with an intense seismic wave? This idea didn’t go very far as it does not account for reports of light beforehand and the effect must occur close to the surface.

All these processes may be going on but none seem to be able to produce what is observed as EQLs on a large scale.

Peroxy defect theory

The current leading candidate for a mechanism is that of the peroxy defect theory. Friedemann Freund is the discoverer and primary promoter of this unifying theory – combining ideas from semi-conductor physics, chemistry, and rock physics into this framework to explain the generation, concentration and movement of a charge cloud to the surface. In simplified terms, the idea is this: There is a percentage of “peroxy defects” in the minerals that make up igneous and metamorphic rocks. The defects in the molecular structure occur when the oxygen molecules are not in their typical valence state but connected by a weak oxygen-oxygen single bond. Under stress, these bonds break and release positive charge carriers, called positive holes (P-holes), which flow via grain-to-grain contact in the rock. They move fast (200 m/s) and far (several km). The cloud of charged particles moves from high to low stress and upon reaching the surface, the theory goes, the cloud can generate local electrical fields that produce massive air ionization causing coronal discharges or bursts of light. Freund concludes this is what generates the necessary charge for the observed EQL effects and associated phenomena. He has demonstrated the charge concentration and movement in the lab on a small scale by stressing rocks. He reports that at around 2 seconds before the rock slab fails, a burst of positive ions is released from the surface of lower stress. The stress gradient drives the movement of the charge. The flow is away from the fault and, notably, to high points like mountains or asperities (areas of rough surface or points). Pointed and irregular structures produce a higher potential gradient and are more prone to emit the corona discharge. Peroxys are not very controversial but this idea to explain EQLs and precursors has not received much attention from seismologists (who are mostly trained in geophysics, not solid-state physics or chemistry). [1,5,10,11]

The peroxy defect theory has its problems – an obvious one being how to test it. We can’t assume that lab results of stressed rock slabs are equivalent to underground conditions. Real-world conditions may be far more heterogeneous and not conform to the ideal conditions that would allow the formation of currents. Freund notes that charge flow may be focused in some areas and blocked in others due to the heterogeneity of the crust. If valid, however, this theory could account for lights of various kinds, fog, clouds, thermal infrared anomalies, ionospheric perturbations, animal behavior, and even strange everyday anomalies because of the cloud of electrically charged particles leaving the ground surface en masse. Perhaps the passing of shear waves may also produce forces that activate the peroxy defects, which may explain Dallaire’s event.

Spookiness

But it’s still just proposed. Dr. Freund and colleagues are having a difficult time getting a forum with today’s seismologists who, generally, still do not consider EQLs and other precursor reports to be important or meaningful. Scientific data gathered so far in support of EQ anomalies was often lucky observations or anecdotes. There are no statistically meaningful data sets yet. Even though some may recognize widely reported anomalous precursors as an unsolved problem, these observations don’t yet fit into the picture, therefore, mainstream seismology efforts are not geared toward supporting an investigation into it. The non-interest in precursor research may be associated with the geological conditions of the U.S. Earthquake precursors such as EQLs are not as prevalent in the U.S. –  90% of such reports are in rift areas in other parts of the world (though several oddities have been reported in modern times in California including Monterey Bay, Hollister, and Santa Rosa). [5 – elec. supplement] Most papers published on anomalous precursors are not in English but are from China, India, Russia, Taiwan and Japan. And finally, the idea of EQLs is tainted by its association with spooky things.

The tectonic strain theory is popular with paranormalists who wish to explain ghosts and hauntings by a localized, natural mechanism. [29] Michael Persinger is a neuroscientist who proposed that fault areas produce stress-induced, transient geophysical fields. Even when no quake occurs, these fields may affect the temporal lobe of the brain which could explain why people report lights and bad feelings, possibly have hallucinations, and experience strange electrical malfunctions making a house appear “haunted”. The data is not robust and additional investigation into the TST petered out.

Strange lights before catastrophes have a folkloric connotation of being “fire from heaven,” “the opening of Hell,” and are associated with superstition and bad omens. During a stressful time, people report weird events and exaggerate or get confused about what they saw which is why anecdotes surrounding earthquakes may be unreliable.

As mentioned previously, earth lights including EQLs overlap with reports of UFOs and spook lights. The association with paranormal or supernatural beliefs means several scientists will steer clear of such anomalies. The paranormal taint may also prevent reputable investigation into these observations which deserve some attention. Note how seriously the public takes reports of strange lights and how most scientists will brush these concerns away as mistakes. People will still seek out information, and if there are no reasonable explanations provided, the public (and media) will pick up on non-reputable explanations. Considering all this, changing scientists’ perception of EQLs is a tough goal.

Establishing the validity of EQLs

The first task to establish the validity of EQLs is to get more reliable data to build the case that they are feasible. There is a lack of facilities to record EQLs or other environmental anomalies. There is insufficient instrumentation to cover large areas for the various parameters that could be measured. Systems designed to detect anomalous fields must be able to distinguish normal fluctuations from anomalies that may be precursors. Quakefinder in Palo Alto, who works in association with Dr. Freund, is a private venture deploying magnetometers. Their goal is to get those large data sets, look for statistical significance, obtain calibrated local background measurements, and get past the anecdotes.

Much related work is going on in earnest in other countries. Cooperation is necessary. Bigger, more robust data sets, and subsequently better results can help bring additional resolution to the picture of all that may happen prior to a quake. Other countries and scientists of other disciplines are moving down this path of exploration.

In conclusion, there is much we don’t yet know about what happens prior to earthquakes. If precursors exist, they can be used to provide some warning – if not perfectly reliable in all cases. Reports of EQLs will remain unconvincing to scientists (but a fascination to the media and public) until more credible evidence is produced. The uncritical and unsophisticated promotion of EQL phenomena on the internet will lead to additional hoaxes and misidentification, making the subject more muddled. Other related observations such as ionospheric anomalies, electromagnetic anomalies, radio frequency interference, infrared anomalies, groundwater changes, and increased radon emissions also need more robust data sets and analysis. There’s a lot of work to do and it’s costly in terms of money, time, and effort.

Mainstream seismologists may be looking in the wrong place or not looking at all for those whispers from the earth that tell us something is about to happen. I’m excited about what will happen with this field of research in the future. Perhaps the next big quake will bring more convincing evidence that mysterious and spooky EQLs are genuine warning beacons that we should watch for and heed.

See me give this talk at the Goddard Scientific Colloquium on March 28, 2018.

https://youtu.be/IkxrUlBcYQ8?si=zUEJgODaH0FNKtAF

References

1. St-Laurent, F., Derr, J.S., & Freund, F.T. (2006). Earthquake lights and the stress-activation of positive hole charge carriers in rocks. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. 31, 305-312.

2. St-Laurent, F. (2000). The Saguenay, Quebec, Earthquake Lights of November 1988-January 1989: A Comparative Study with Reference to the Geo-atmospheric Lights Classification Proposed by Montandon in 1948 and Description Put Forward by Yasui in 1968. Seismological Research Letters. 71:2, 160-174

3. Deveraux, P. (1990). Earth Lights Revelation: Ufo’s and Mystery Lightform Phenomena: The Earth’s Secret Energy Force. Sterling Pub Co Inc.

4. Derr, J.S. (1973). Earthquake Lights: A Review of Observations and Present Theories. Bull of the Seismological Soc of Am. 63:6, 2177-2187.

5. Theirault, R., St-Laurent, F., Freund, F.T., & Derr, J.S. (2014). Prevalence of Earthquake Lights Associated with Rift Environments Seismological Research Letters 85:1, 159-178 and electronic supplement.

6. Fidani, C. (2010). The earthquake lights (EQL) of the 6 April 2009 Aquila earthquake, in Central Italy. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci., 10, 967–978.

7. Zhang, X., Shen, X., & Mioa, Y. (2012). Electromagnetic Anomalies around Wenchuan Earthquake and Their Relationship with Earthquake Preparation. Procedia Environmental Sciences. 12A, 693-701.

8. Corliss, W. (2001). Remarkable luminous phenomena in nature: A catalog of geophysical anomalies. Sourcebook Project.

9. Sidorin, A. Y. (2003). Search for earthquake precursors in multidisciplinary data monitoring of geophysical and biological parameters. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 3, 153–158.

10. Freund, F.T., Kulahci, I.G., Cyr, G., Ling, J., Winnick, M., Tregloan-Reed, J., & Freund, M.M. (2009). Air ionization at rock surfaces and pre-earthquake signals. J of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. 71, 1824–1834.

11. Freund, F.T. , Ouillon, G., Scoville, J., & Sornette, D. (2018). Earthquake precursors in the light of peroxy defects theory: critical review of systematic observations. European Physical Journal, in press.

12. Pulinets, S.A. (1998). Seismic Activity as a Source of the Ionospheric Variability. Adv. Space Res. 22: 6, 903-906.
and
Pulinets, S.A., & Boyarchuk, K. (2004). Ionospheric Precursors of Earthquakes. Springer-Verlag: Berlin Heidelberg.

13. Bleier, T., Dunson, C., Maniscalco, M., Bryant, N., Bambery, R., & Freund, F.T. (2009). Investigation of ULF magnetic pulsations, air conductivity changes, and infrared signatures associated with the 30 October Alum Rock M5.4 earthquake. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 9, 585–603.

14. Kirschvink, J.L. (2000). Earthquake Prediction by Animals: Evolution and Sensory Perception. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of Am., 90: 2, 312–323.

15. Warwick, J.W., Stoker, C., & Meyer, T.R. (1982) Radio Emission Associated with Rock Fracture: Possible Application to the Great Chilean Earthquake of May 22, 1960. J of Geophysical Research 87:B4 2851-2859.

16. Tate, J., & Daily, W. (1989). Evidence of electroseismic phenomena. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors. 57:1-2, 1-10.

17. Park, S.K., Johnston, M.J.S., Madden, T.R., Morgan, F.D., & Morrison, H.F. (1993). Electromagnetic Precursors to Earthquakes in the ULF Band: A Review of Observations and Mechanisms. Reviews of Geophysics, 31:2, 112-132.

18. Chuo, Y.J., Chen, Y.I., Liu, J.Y., & Pulinets, S.A. (2001). Ionospheric foF2 Variations Prior to Strong Earthquakes in Taiwan Area. Adv. Space Res. 27, 6–7, 1305-1310.

19. Parrot, J.S.E. (1990). Electromagnetic Disturbances Associated With Earthquakes: An Analysis of Ground-Based and Satellite Data. J of Scientific Exploration. 4: 2, 203-221.

20. Tributsch, H. (1982). When the Snakes Awake: Animals and Earthquake Prediction. MIT Press: Cambridge MA.

21. Fuller, M.L. (1912). The New Madrid Earthquake. USGS Bulletin 494.

22. Enriquez, A. (2003). The shining. New Scientist, 179: 2402, 26–29.

23. Lockner, D.A, Johnston, M.J.S., & Byerlee, J.D. (1983). Nature 302:5903 28-33.

24. Saraf, A.K., & Choudhury, S. (2005). Thermal Remote Sensing Technique in the Study of Pre-Earthquake Thermal Anomalies. J of Indian Geophys. Union. 9: 3, 197-207.

25. Enomoto, Y., & Zheng, Z. (1998). Possible evidences of earthquake lightning accompanying the 1995 Kobe earthquake inferred from the Nojima fault gouge. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS. 25: 14, 2721-2724.

26. Losseva, T.V., & Nemchinov, I.V. (2005). Earthquake lights and rupture processes. Nat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci. 5, 649–656.

27 Grant, R.A., & Halliday, T. (2010). Predicting the unpredictable; evidence of pre-seismic anticipatory behaviour in the common toad. Journal of Zoology 281:4, 263-271.

28 Ikeya, M. (2004) Earthquakes and Animals: From Folk Legends to Science. World Scientific Publishing Co., Pte. Ltd.: Singapore.

29. Persinger, M.A. (1985). Geophysical variables and behavior: XXII. The tectonogenic strain continuum of unusual events. Percept Mot Skills. 60: 1, 59-65.

30. Johnston, C., Light from seismic waves. Nature. 354, 361.

Mexico “earthquake lights” of 2021

An earthquake of magnitude 7.0 occurred 11 miles (17.7 km) northeast of Acapulco, Mexico on the evening of September 7, 2021. As usual, the event was followed by personal videos flooding social media showing people scrambling outside. The sky is full of light bursts. Quickly, the media reported that these were “earthquake lights” or “rare lightning” (as reported by Reuters).

In footage from Acapulco, the flashes start shortly after the ground starts shaking, illuminating previously darkened hills behind the ocean bay and at one point appearing to bathe buildings on the shoreline in bright light.

In Mexico City, panicked residents tried to keep their balance outside an apartment building while the sky flashed blue, white and pink, another video on social media showed.

Reuters news

The sources seemed to do a poor to nonexistent job of critically assessing this information and took the opinion that these flashes were unusual or natural. Maybe it’s because earthquake lights sound plausible and are a dramatic explanation for the flashes. But there are three specific reasons why we can reasonably conclude that these flashes were NOT earthquake lights. 1. They appear to be along the horizon, not high in the sky. 2. They occurred after the quake, sometimes minutes later. 3. They are not the typical and unique descriptions of earthquake lights as glows, balls, or unusual sparks, curtains or flames.

Instead, these flashes are almost certainly from arcing wires from electrical lines that are broken or touching each other. Or, they are electrical transformers that have been damaged and emitting flashes. They can also be normal lightning flashing. Due to most reports being in Spanish, I’m not readily able to tell if a thunderstorm was occurring but it is visibly raining in some news videos. So, a thunderstorm is also a possible explanation. If so, that event is unconnected to seismic activity.

https://youtu.be/ndhLCm-ZvyQ

A final point: it’s absurd to report on earthquake lights as if they are a regular occurrence. If they exist at all, they are very rare and our documented evidence for them is scant and questionable. Usually, the evidence is only eyewitness accounts. If these flashes were anomalous, and indicative of earthquake lights, that would be huge news. However, like other recent quakes that follow the same pattern of flashing lights immediately after shaking, we know these are not anomalies.

If people have recordings of pre-earthquake glows, lights, or other anomalous phenomena, I’d love to hear it. But so far, I see no evidence of earthquake lights in these post-quake videos. Do not assume that news sources, even normally reliable sources are scientifically informed on this niche subject. If the reports are simply repeating accounts that have someone’s personal opinions embedded in them, that’s not factual.

Disclaimer: All images are used for educational purposes. Inevitably, there will be errors in the above. Please contact the site owner with comments or corrections or leave a comment below. Comments are moderated.

More:

Earthquake lights (pseudoEQLs) video from India (2023)

Anomalous claims from Turkey-Syria earthquake 2023

Media hypes questionable “mysterious” earthquake lights in Morocco (2023)

Strange lights and levitating rocks at Arkansas crystal mine

Springing from the spine of Arkansas’ Ouachita mountains are several commercial crystal mines open for public collecting of sizable quartz crystals. Only one such mine claims to be an area of bizarre paranormal activity occurring in association with special “crystal energy” at the site. The claims are so extraordinary the owners think it may not be safe for people to visit unaccompanied. The activity at the site has attracted the attention of UFO investigators and a crew from the Travel Channel’s Expedition Unknown series. Stories from the Board Camp Crystal Mine are a perfect example of Spooky Geology.

This fascinating place in Mena, Arkansas is owned by Orville and Cheryl Murphy, who, by all accounts, are God-fearing, hospitable, well-spoken, humorous, and honest people who opened the mine in 2012. According to the local newspaper report, strange incidents began in February of 2017 when the Murphys noticed odd lights including glowing spheres that floated and moved as if under intelligent control. But even more extraordinarily, they have photographs and accounts that claim the rocks there move and even levitate!

Investigators from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) headed to the site. The following is from the Mena Star describing the MUFON involvement:

The Murphys report that since February of this year, there has been phenomena happening at Board Camp Crystal Mine, which was undeniably scientifically unexplained, according to [Chase] Kloetzke and her team of [MUFON] investigators. They conducted the investigation at the mine on February 22, just 4 days after the first oddity was experienced by the Murphys and their son, Josh White, who was visiting from Austin, TX. According to the Murphys, Kloetzke explained that the occurrence of the reported phenomena attracted MUFON’s interest because of the physical evidence left behind and the Murphys’ credibility as witnesses. Upon a visit, Kloetzke herself experienced some of the phenomena!

We aren’t privy to this evidence because the parties involved agreed not to disclose all the information until the Expedition Unknown special episode airs. Josh Gates, the host of the show and a well-known paranormal celebrity figure, visited the site on May 26. The MUFON team had reported their observations to the Travel Channel in March prompting the site to be featured in a four-part mini-series called Hunt for Extraterrestrials. You can view the quite dramatic trailer for the special here. (See update below.)

We can hear many of the claims about the mine from what the Murphys have shared on their Facebook page, YouTube channel, and from promotion on their website. A particularly detailed interview with the Murphys is available from the Inception Radio podcast, which is where I obtained several details below. What’s so weird about this place?

Last winter, Orville reported seeing sparks of light at the site. He calls them “orbs” – a common term for seemingly intelligent and anomalous balls of light. Cheryl didn’t see them at first. Orville then filmed the orbs. The video taken at night shows a light, but size and distance are impossible to judge. They said some friends suggested that the lights could be caused by the “crystal energy” at the location. Claims about the magical properties of quartz crystals are ubiquitous on the Internet. Single crystals are promoted by New Age practitioners as healing devices, having some as yet undiscovered “energy”. Quartz does have piezoelectric properties – a voltage potential can be generated when a stress, like squeezing, is applied to it. Orville clearly understands that quartz has triboluminescent properties. As a demonstration, visitors reported that he heats a crystal, then sprays it with water to rapidly cool it to produce a spark and also strikes the crystals to produce visible light.The Murphys appear to connect the anomalous lights they see to this “piezo energy” feature of the crystals.

One anomaly, however, was described as beyond the normal activity. The Murphys experienced a light event of “major proportions” that lasted 10 seconds. Three beams of light, like spotlights, went an estimated 300 feet in the air and flattened on top. Cheryl said she couldn’t tell if the beams were going up or coming down. They later entertained the possibility that the lights were from some craft floating in the air. What if UFOs were fueling up on crystal energy?! Some neighbors, they said, had also reported lights on adjacent properties and also say they saw some kind of craft in the sky. The Murphys allege that several events were witnessed by multiple people at the same time.

MUFON and other investigators were called in. The timeline and circumstances aren’t exactly clear. But the claims grew to include more than just lights. People at the site reported their batteries were drained unusually quickly, that there were incidents of static electricity and perhaps burn marks or dead plant material, and that the fence posts became “magnetized” and “polarized”. Investigators brought in a hydrophone because they knew crystals were created by water, they said. The hydrophone was said to have detected the sound of water rushing below ground. Water coming up from the subsurface was also reported (after an above-normal rainfall period).

It all sounds very weird, the Murphys agree. The Murphys and the investigators who have shared bits of their experiences (noting the confidentiality agreements required by the Travel Channel until the show aires) are enthusiastically speculating about the causes. They think that the quartz crystal energy and the flowing water might be connected. In the Inception Radio interview, the Murphys suggest that the natural flow of earth energy has been disturbed. The crystals, they say, emit a “frequency” and they are part of a powerful “energy grid” in the earth – a theme related to ley lines. The crystals are interacting with the water’s electromagnetic charge and creating the light phenomena in the form of plasma. Ideas about the cause of these reported anomalies are all over the place. Also put forward was the idea that sound waves (or “vibrational frequencies”) may be producing the colors in the orbs which, the owners claim, are seen almost every night regardless of weather conditions. It is impossible to tell size and distance, let alone the source of the lights, from videos taken in the dark without markers or direction.

If you can believe it, things got even weirder. Another of the Murphy’s videos purports to show a rock on the site becoming weightless (a scale shown in the picture) and then levitating a foot off the ground! According to the Board Creek Crystal Mine Facebook page, others have reported that crystals obtained from the site levitated when they got home, which appears to exceed the bounds of known geological science (and sort of negates the idea that the site itself is producing some mysterious anti-gravity effect). Falling and rolling rocks, they suspect, might be coming out from “portals” (from another dimension). They also think the mine site may be a “vortex” – an area of the earth with special electromagnetic energy properties. Cheryl suggested that new scientific discoveries could explain this. In a comment to me on the FB page, she writes:

What’s amazing is that this last year or so, on the Science channel we hear scientists sharing theories of multiple universes, our universe is not finite, sound frequencies emitting color, (which is a possible theory for the colorful orbs we’ve been told), all the quantum science, it’s just amazing that we’re hearing things now, we never dreamed of hearing. We believe there has to be something with those levitating rocks to do with sound frequencies, or the continuing elevated electromagnetic field. For example, we just put new fence posts in the ground a month ago. They are now magnetized, when tested with a Gauss meter, and even polarized, when tested with a compass! What could cause that? It’s fascinating, and we prefer to approach this from a scientific viewpoint, but let’s face it… the number of testimonies of UFOs from credible witnesses for the last 50+ years, and now local neighbors who contacted us to share their stories of weird lights they’ve seen around here, does draw our attention!

The Murphys closed the mine until mid-July when it was reopened for special tours but not collecting. The new tours are billed as “UnXplained” and the website is curiously called metaphysicalcrystalsanctuary.com.  For more rampant speculation about the geology and hydrology and various fringe ideas, I suggest listening to the Murphys describe this in their own words available on the Inception Radio podcast, which focuses on potential UFO activity.

I contacted the Arkansas Geological Survey to ask them what they knew about this mine and the bizarre claims surrounding it. They hadn’t heard the news of these extraordinary events! In my discussions with geologist Corbin Cannon, we couldn’t come up with any ideas for why this particular mine is any more geologically special than the rest.

The mine is situated in the Stanley Shale. The quartz veins and associated minerals were hydrothermally emplaced during the closing stages of the mountain building event, around 280 to 245 million years ago. [See Howard, 2008] The Murphys seemed amazed at the consistency of the prismatic crystal shape, however, this is a normal habit of quartz. There are no mapped magnetic anomalies at this location and, though there is plenty of faulting due to the past orogenic stresses, the area is not seismically active. The shale is an aquitard (cannot transmit any useful amount of water) and the location is on a dip slope. This might explain the sound of water reported by the investigators. But it’s unclear if there are pipes underground that could also account for the sounds. The possibility exists that stray current could be leaking from the electrical lines from nearby houses and traveling through the ground. This may account for electromagnetic field observations. With regards to polarization and magnetization of the fence posts, pieces of metal regularly exhibit such polarity. It’s not unusual. I just checked a garden ornament on a metal post outside with a compass and, sure enough, the top and the bottom register differently on the compass. It’s not clear what Orville meant when he said the posts were magnetized, especially if they contain iron. Iron posts in the ground can also conduct any small current running through the ground from stray electricity lines. These various factors could be producing some electromagnetic field variations. So, we can see that many of the so-called anomalous claims aren’t strange at all but can seem so when taken out of context.

It’s not possible to make any conclusions from the videos of the lights. There is not enough information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wntjfrS9Cq8

The videos of the levitating and moving rocks are also not helpful. They consist of series of still pictures taken with a game camera. The levitation effects could easily have been achieved with clear thread or fishing line. The associated flashes of lights in the photos along with the temperature changes and other effects can also be recreated without too much effort. No live video of the anomalous movement is available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIuDhDUP15g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76LoCqKk5jU

Several visitors reported hearing thumps (presumed to be falling rocks) or seeing rocks roll by. I’m afraid that’s just not enough evidence to say something unusual is going on. A few unimpressive videos are not enough to convince most people that the physical laws of the universe are being violated at this location considering that alternative, non-paranormal explanations are readily available. If it is eventually well-documented that the site is one-of-a-kind, where nature behaves supernaturally, or some undocumented stresses are causing the quartz to produce orbs of light, then perhaps we can consider it a phenomenal place.

The paranormal vibe created at the site is a nifty way for the owners to distinguish their mine from the others in the area as a tourist attraction. That the site will be featured on a TV show is priceless promotion. The site joins hundreds of other locations around the U.S. that use spooky claims to draw paying visitors. The Murphys continue to encourage scientists to come and investigate but, so far, only MUFON, the TV crew and some tour groups seem to have been able to make collective observations there. The Arkansas Geological Survey has not been contacted even after this contact was suggested to the Murphys. It is the job of the AGS to catalog the geological information of the state. Documenting claims of a crystal energy vortex that causes all sorts of amazing anomalies and serves as an extraterrestrial refueling station sounds like a very urgent phenomenon to document!

A request to the MUFON investigator for their report on the site has not been answered. But the report is scheduled to be published in the MUFON Journal issue of November 2017, after the TV program airs.

Expedition Unknown special 25 Oct 2017

Part 4 of the series “Search for Extraterrestrials” aired on Travel Channel in October 2017. I’ll be blunt – don’t watch it. It contains basically no interesting information or evidence about the location. The presentation did not live up to the extreme hype and it’s cringey to have to watch Josh Gates act so over-the-top dramatic about a big nothingburger. They did see a light at the Board Camp site at night and recorded it, but it doesn’t tell us anything. It could have been a satellite, a drone, or some other man-made thing, but the details are lacking in order to make that determination. Plus, it didn’t rise from the ground or descend from the sky. It simply floated over. Apparently. Remember: this is television and not good television at that. Do not trust “infotainment”; it is not equivalent to facts.

The show did not mention the levitating rocks or other paranormal effects that the owners and visitors have promoted as happening there. The idea of crystals playing a role was not even broached. No background was really provided at all.

As it stands, the promotion of alien craft, strange lights, crystal energy and physics-defying rocks at this location (or any location) are without substantial evidence to support their reality. There are certainly many subjective claims but those are not reliable enough to make a conclusion about the cause being something otherworldly. Extraordinary claims must have extraordinary evidence to back them up and these crystal claims fizzled out.

#Arkansas #BoardCampCrystalMine #crystalHealing #crystals #earthEnergy #earthLights #levitatingRocks #lights #movingRocks #orbs #Paranormal #quartz

https://sharonahill.com/?p=479

Strange lights and levitating rocks at Arkansas crystal mine

Springing from the spine of Arkansas’ Ouachita mountains are several commercial crystal mines open for public collecting of sizable quartz crystals. Only one such mine claims to be an area of bizarre paranormal activity occurring in association with special “crystal energy” at the site. The claims are so extraordinary the owners think it may not be safe for people to visit unaccompanied. The activity at the site has attracted the attention of UFO investigators and a crew from the Travel Channel’s Expedition Unknown series. Stories from the Board Camp Crystal Mine are a perfect example of Spooky Geology.

This fascinating place in Mena, Arkansas is owned by Orville and Cheryl Murphy, who, by all accounts, are God-fearing, hospitable, well-spoken, humorous, and honest people who opened the mine in 2012. According to the local newspaper report, strange incidents began in February of 2017 when the Murphys noticed odd lights including glowing spheres that floated and moved as if under intelligent control. But even more extraordinarily, they have photographs and accounts that claim the rocks there move and even levitate!

Investigators from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) headed to the site. The following is from the Mena Star describing the MUFON involvement:

The Murphys report that since February of this year, there has been phenomena happening at Board Camp Crystal Mine, which was undeniably scientifically unexplained, according to [Chase] Kloetzke and her team of [MUFON] investigators. They conducted the investigation at the mine on February 22, just 4 days after the first oddity was experienced by the Murphys and their son, Josh White, who was visiting from Austin, TX. According to the Murphys, Kloetzke explained that the occurrence of the reported phenomena attracted MUFON’s interest because of the physical evidence left behind and the Murphys’ credibility as witnesses. Upon a visit, Kloetzke herself experienced some of the phenomena!

We aren’t privy to this evidence because the parties involved agreed not to disclose all the information until the Expedition Unknown special episode airs. Josh Gates, the host of the show and a well-known paranormal celebrity figure, visited the site on May 26. The MUFON team had reported their observations to the Travel Channel in March prompting the site to be featured in a four-part mini-series called Hunt for Extraterrestrials. You can view the quite dramatic trailer for the special here. (See update below.)

We can hear many of the claims about the mine from what the Murphys have shared on their Facebook page, YouTube channel, and from promotion on their website. A particularly detailed interview with the Murphys is available from the Inception Radio podcast, which is where I obtained several details below. What’s so weird about this place?

Last winter, Orville reported seeing sparks of light at the site. He calls them “orbs” – a common term for seemingly intelligent and anomalous balls of light. Cheryl didn’t see them at first. Orville then filmed the orbs. The video taken at night shows a light, but size and distance are impossible to judge. They said some friends suggested that the lights could be caused by the “crystal energy” at the location. Claims about the magical properties of quartz crystals are ubiquitous on the Internet. Single crystals are promoted by New Age practitioners as healing devices, having some as yet undiscovered “energy”. Quartz does have piezoelectric properties – a voltage potential can be generated when a stress, like squeezing, is applied to it. Orville clearly understands that quartz has triboluminescent properties. As a demonstration, visitors reported that he heats a crystal, then sprays it with water to rapidly cool it to produce a spark and also strikes the crystals to produce visible light.The Murphys appear to connect the anomalous lights they see to this “piezo energy” feature of the crystals.

One anomaly, however, was described as beyond the normal activity. The Murphys experienced a light event of “major proportions” that lasted 10 seconds. Three beams of light, like spotlights, went an estimated 300 feet in the air and flattened on top. Cheryl said she couldn’t tell if the beams were going up or coming down. They later entertained the possibility that the lights were from some craft floating in the air. What if UFOs were fueling up on crystal energy?! Some neighbors, they said, had also reported lights on adjacent properties and also say they saw some kind of craft in the sky. The Murphys allege that several events were witnessed by multiple people at the same time.

MUFON and other investigators were called in. The timeline and circumstances aren’t exactly clear. But the claims grew to include more than just lights. People at the site reported their batteries were drained unusually quickly, that there were incidents of static electricity and perhaps burn marks or dead plant material, and that the fence posts became “magnetized” and “polarized”. Investigators brought in a hydrophone because they knew crystals were created by water, they said. The hydrophone was said to have detected the sound of water rushing below ground. Water coming up from the subsurface was also reported (after an above-normal rainfall period).

It all sounds very weird, the Murphys agree. The Murphys and the investigators who have shared bits of their experiences (noting the confidentiality agreements required by the Travel Channel until the show aires) are enthusiastically speculating about the causes. They think that the quartz crystal energy and the flowing water might be connected. In the Inception Radio interview, the Murphys suggest that the natural flow of earth energy has been disturbed. The crystals, they say, emit a “frequency” and they are part of a powerful “energy grid” in the earth – a theme related to ley lines. The crystals are interacting with the water’s electromagnetic charge and creating the light phenomena in the form of plasma. Ideas about the cause of these reported anomalies are all over the place. Also put forward was the idea that sound waves (or “vibrational frequencies”) may be producing the colors in the orbs which, the owners claim, are seen almost every night regardless of weather conditions. It is impossible to tell size and distance, let alone the source of the lights, from videos taken in the dark without markers or direction.

If you can believe it, things got even weirder. Another of the Murphy’s videos purports to show a rock on the site becoming weightless (a scale shown in the picture) and then levitating a foot off the ground! According to the Board Creek Crystal Mine Facebook page, others have reported that crystals obtained from the site levitated when they got home, which appears to exceed the bounds of known geological science (and sort of negates the idea that the site itself is producing some mysterious anti-gravity effect). Falling and rolling rocks, they suspect, might be coming out from “portals” (from another dimension). They also think the mine site may be a “vortex” – an area of the earth with special electromagnetic energy properties. Cheryl suggested that new scientific discoveries could explain this. In a comment to me on the FB page, she writes:

What’s amazing is that this last year or so, on the Science channel we hear scientists sharing theories of multiple universes, our universe is not finite, sound frequencies emitting color, (which is a possible theory for the colorful orbs we’ve been told), all the quantum science, it’s just amazing that we’re hearing things now, we never dreamed of hearing. We believe there has to be something with those levitating rocks to do with sound frequencies, or the continuing elevated electromagnetic field. For example, we just put new fence posts in the ground a month ago. They are now magnetized, when tested with a Gauss meter, and even polarized, when tested with a compass! What could cause that? It’s fascinating, and we prefer to approach this from a scientific viewpoint, but let’s face it… the number of testimonies of UFOs from credible witnesses for the last 50+ years, and now local neighbors who contacted us to share their stories of weird lights they’ve seen around here, does draw our attention!

The Murphys closed the mine until mid-July when it was reopened for special tours but not collecting. The new tours are billed as “UnXplained” and the website is curiously called metaphysicalcrystalsanctuary.com.  For more rampant speculation about the geology and hydrology and various fringe ideas, I suggest listening to the Murphys describe this in their own words available on the Inception Radio podcast, which focuses on potential UFO activity.

I contacted the Arkansas Geological Survey to ask them what they knew about this mine and the bizarre claims surrounding it. They hadn’t heard the news of these extraordinary events! In my discussions with geologist Corbin Cannon, we couldn’t come up with any ideas for why this particular mine is any more geologically special than the rest.

The mine is situated in the Stanley Shale. The quartz veins and associated minerals were hydrothermally emplaced during the closing stages of the mountain building event, around 280 to 245 million years ago. [See Howard, 2008] The Murphys seemed amazed at the consistency of the prismatic crystal shape, however, this is a normal habit of quartz. There are no mapped magnetic anomalies at this location and, though there is plenty of faulting due to the past orogenic stresses, the area is not seismically active. The shale is an aquitard (cannot transmit any useful amount of water) and the location is on a dip slope. This might explain the sound of water reported by the investigators. But it’s unclear if there are pipes underground that could also account for the sounds. The possibility exists that stray current could be leaking from the electrical lines from nearby houses and traveling through the ground. This may account for electromagnetic field observations. With regards to polarization and magnetization of the fence posts, pieces of metal regularly exhibit such polarity. It’s not unusual. I just checked a garden ornament on a metal post outside with a compass and, sure enough, the top and the bottom register differently on the compass. It’s not clear what Orville meant when he said the posts were magnetized, especially if they contain iron. Iron posts in the ground can also conduct any small current running through the ground from stray electricity lines. These various factors could be producing some electromagnetic field variations. So, we can see that many of the so-called anomalous claims aren’t strange at all but can seem so when taken out of context.

It’s not possible to make any conclusions from the videos of the lights. There is not enough information.

The videos of the levitating and moving rocks are also not helpful. They consist of series of still pictures taken with a game camera. The levitation effects could easily have been achieved with clear thread or fishing line. The associated flashes of lights in the photos along with the temperature changes and other effects can also be recreated without too much effort. No live video of the anomalous movement is available.

Several visitors reported hearing thumps (presumed to be falling rocks) or seeing rocks roll by. I’m afraid that’s just not enough evidence to say something unusual is going on. A few unimpressive videos are not enough to convince most people that the physical laws of the universe are being violated at this location considering that alternative, non-paranormal explanations are readily available. If it is eventually well-documented that the site is one-of-a-kind, where nature behaves supernaturally, or some undocumented stresses are causing the quartz to produce orbs of light, then perhaps we can consider it a phenomenal place.

The paranormal vibe created at the site is a nifty way for the owners to distinguish their mine from the others in the area as a tourist attraction. That the site will be featured on a TV show is priceless promotion. The site joins hundreds of other locations around the U.S. that use spooky claims to draw paying visitors. The Murphys continue to encourage scientists to come and investigate but, so far, only MUFON, the TV crew and some tour groups seem to have been able to make collective observations there. The Arkansas Geological Survey has not been contacted even after this contact was suggested to the Murphys. It is the job of the AGS to catalog the geological information of the state. Documenting claims of a crystal energy vortex that causes all sorts of amazing anomalies and serves as an extraterrestrial refueling station sounds like a very urgent phenomenon to document!

A request to the MUFON investigator for their report on the site has not been answered. But the report is scheduled to be published in the MUFON Journal issue of November 2017, after the TV program airs.

I hope to update this entry as more information becomes available.

Expedition Unknown special featuring this location has aired (25 Oct 2017)

Part 4 of the series “Search for Extraterrestrials” has aired on Travel Channel. I’ll be blunt – don’t watch it. It contains basically no interesting information or evidence about the location. The presentation did not live up to the extreme hype and it’s cringey to have to watch Josh Gates act so over-the-top dramatic about a big nothingburger. They did see a light at the Board Camp site at night and recorded it, but it doesn’t tell us anything. It could have been a satellite, a drone, or some other man-made thing, but the details are lacking in order to make that determination. Plus, it didn’t rise from the ground or descend from the sky. It simply floated over. Apparently. Remember: this is television and not good television at that. Do not trust “infotainment”; it is not equivalent to facts.

The show did not mention the levitating rocks or other paranormal effects that the owners and visitors have promoted as happening there. The idea of crystals playing a role was not even broached. No background was really provided at all.

As it stands, the promotion of alien craft, strange lights, crystal energy and physics-defying rocks at this location (or any location) are without substantial evidence to support their reality. There are certainly many subjective claims but those are not reliable enough to make a conclusion about the cause being something otherworldly. Extraordinary claims must have extraordinary evidence to back them up and these crystal claims fizzled out.

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