[Holiday]

Will-o'-the-Wisp is the term for a faery light. They're these supernatural creatures that are generally seen as bad luck, an omen of death, or that make travelers lose their way.

I like them. I think they're neat.

[Bright One]

Swamp gas, I've heard. Ignited by electrical activity in the air or something.

They're referred to by a number of different names - one is "Corpse Candle".

[Rhuen]

the swamp gas thing is an hypothesis, but has never been proven.

the phenomonon is known to science, but argued what it is, ball lightning, earth lights, St. Elmos Fire, ect...

[misan]

When I was little we were visiting my stepdad's family in Kentucky. I was told by his mom not to follow the floating lights because they would lead me into the woods and cause me to be lost. I didn't see them but I kind of wish I had. :)

[Bright One]

Rhuen, on Aug 7 2009, 03:06 AM, said:

the swamp gas thing is an hypothesis, but has never been proven.

the phenomonon is known to science, but argued what it is, ball lightning, earth lights, St. Elmos Fire, ect...

That article says they retreat when approached. I've also read they approach people and strike them down.

I've heard of ball lightening and St. Elmo's Fire - earth lights are new to me.

*looks it up*

I foud this.

Earth lights are a rare anomalous light phenomenon, mistaken throughout history as dragons, UFOs, and ball lightning before being recognised as a separate category. One leading theory is that they are produced by tectonic strain in minor fault lines, so that they are literally generated by the earth.

In America they've been called "spooklights" or "ghost lights" since at least the 1950s, but Persinger and Lafrenière were the first scientists to recognise the phenomenon, in the late 1970s. The lights were renamed and brought to wider public attention by Paul Devereux in 1982 with his publication "Earth Lights".

They appear in many colours, shapes, and sizes, though the basketball-sized globular orange variety seems most common. Most sightings occur at night, when some lights can be seen from miles around. They're reported to be able to move against the wind and reach extraordinary speeds. Their terrestrial nature means that though many sightings are sporadic, there are some locations where they appear relatively often. It's through studying these hotspots, such as Hessdalen in Norway and the Engligh Pennines, that their characteristics become evident.

This post has been edited by Bright One: 07 August 2009 - 07:34 AM

[Gautr]

The physical explanation may be swamp gas, but that doesn't mean it can't be faery light.

No matter wha - it's beautiful to watch.

[Fluid of life]

misan, on Aug 7 2009, 05:43 AM, said:

When I was little we were visiting my stepdad's family in Kentucky. I was told by his mom not to follow the floating lights because they would lead me into the woods and cause me to be lost. I didn't see them but I kind of wish I had. :)

Any child wandering off in the woods might never be seen again. So it is true. Follow Thumper the evil bunny into the woods and the weasels may sup on your innards with no magic involved so the legend serves a purpose.

[Kaddam]

wow, I thought you were talking about Soul Calibur 3 when I read the topic, but this is...ah...just as interesting....maybe.

[Kelly]

I grew up in the Dismal Swamp area in Chesapeake, Virginia. We had some woods and a pond on our property and our house also was on a creek (Deep Creek it's called). So, it wasn't unusual to see some fog. We'd found arrowheads on the property and there was a lot of talk about the ghosts of Indians. Indeed, I did see different kinds of lights. There was an approximate 6-foot light that hovered next to a wild cherry tree all year long. I always felt compelled to try and communicate with the light, thinking it was a ghost. Maybe it was. One evening after dark, I was sitting with a boy (Jeff) on the steps to my house. All of a sudden, he said, "Crap, Georgie is spying on us!" He'd seen Georgie's white t-shirt looming just around the corner of some weeds at the entrance of the woods. Georgie and his family lived next door and were the town's mentally retarded. I looked up and saw the white t-shirt, except I could tell it wasn't entirely opaque. "Oh, that's the ghost that stays next to a cherry tree near the pond!" I was so excited. My friend was so frightened. "Let's go look!" He wouldn't go but I did. The light stayed at the edge of the weeds until I got there, then it drifted off to the cherry tree. Odd thing about that light - not only was I compelled to communicate with it, but I felt like it was always beckoning me when I saw it.

The second light I saw looked like the lighted end of a cigarette. It was small, glowing and orange. I was in the same woods after dark and on my way home. I felt like someone was behind me and turned around to see. I saw the orange light and thought someone was chasing me and smoking at the same time! I began running and turned around to see the light bobbing up and down, getting closer and closer to me. No, it was not a firefly! Last look as I entered my yard and the light was gone. I'd never heard of will-o-the-wisps but now I wonder if that's what it was.

I have started doing fairy art and maybe I should do something with will-o-the-wisps. Bad fairies!

[Holiday]

Kelly, on Aug 11 2009, 10:51 AM, said:

I have started doing fairy art and maybe I should do something with will-o-the-wisps. Bad fairies!

I don't know if they're bad necessarily... it's an adventure to get lost. Maybe they lead us away into the faerie realm!

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God!"

[Bright One]

If you get lost you might never be found again.

If you got lost in a marsh (marshes as they were before they were mostly drained) you'd probably drown. That's why outsiders would get locals, who knew their way around, to guide them through the marshes.

[Holiday]

I just found this old topic about the will-o'-the-wisp and there were some really awesome replies. I'm just going to re-post them here:

Elocin, on 12 July 2004 - 01:58 PM, said:

EVERYTHING THING YOUD WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE WILL O THE WISP...AND SOMETHINGS YOU DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT
The Will'o'Wisp (Granther Willow's Lantern) is often said to represent an malevolent entity that makes its home in swamps, bogs, and moors. When encountered in the wild, Will'o'Wisps normally appear as faintly glowing balls of light. They can alter their own color, shape, and size to some extent and can be easily mistaken for lanterns, light spells, and similar sources of artificial illumination. A Wisp subsists by luring unsuspecting creatures to their deaths amid the natural hazards of such places and feeding on the energies which their death struggles release. They lead travlers in to swamps and off cliffs while promising buried treasure.However, there also seem to exist Will'o'Wisps who are said to guide travelers or lost children onto the right path for home. As these mysterious creatures do not communicate with people directly (unless in fairy tales) it of course is very difficult to judge its intent. However, it is also said that when a traveler finds himself on the right path again, the Wisp vanishes leaving no trace of its existence...

Appearance. Will'o'Wisp are about 12 nailsbreadths in diameter. Considering they are only balls of light, the creature itself (if there is one within the mass of glowing light) would be considerably smaller. The ball of light however can be any color the "fairy" wishes (providing one can call the being actually behind the Wisp's appearance this way), it can fluctuate from bottle green, light green, purple, white, gold, amber, red, blue, sky blue, light blue... in fact any color it really feels like. Travelers and researchers alike believe these creatures actually change their color to their feelings. For example if the glowing orb is a reddish color, then the "fairy" may be angry. If the color is in fact white or gold, then the "fairy" is happy or amused and so on. But to be honest there has been no real explanation into why the creatures change color, or even how... Wisps are among the most mysterious entities of the Caelereth world and are rarely sighted.

Special Abilities. Although Wisps possess no direct possibilities to attack, their command of magic allows them to pose a considerable threat to enemy forces. The most commonly used of these spells is dancing light. The dancing light illusion tries to confuse the watchers by basically spraying the area full of copies of itself basically producing "clones" to confuse the attacker or watchers so that the real entity can escape undetected. Wisps can also rather strangely cast illusions of the watcher's deepest desires such as a fresh lake of water, or a table laden with food, almost a mirage. These tricks however are very rare and have only been seen by travelers or lost people and may only be hallucinations, or hallucinations evoked by a Wisp
If they do not attack, Will'o'Wisps are able to utterly blank out their glows, rendering them invisible to all those who cannot spot invisible objects.

Though Wisps don't actually communicate with people, they must have a language of their own. Will'o'Wisp language is a very unusual one, being purely optical in nature. All communication between Will'o'Wisps seems to work by means of changes in color or brightness, many of which are far too subtle for the average observer to notice. Because this form of exchange is almost impossible to mimic, it is extremely difficult to follow Wisp-communication and evern more nearly impossible to "talk" back. Exceptional examples of this race have mastered a very simple sound-based language. produc�ng sounds by vibrating very rapidly and thus have a shallow and ghostly-sounding voice when they "speak."

Territory. Will'o'Wisps can be found whereever swamps and dark moors are and can even be seen in some orchards and forests depending on the inhabitants of the area. They most keenly stay around settlements of elves and nature loving humans, such as druids and so forth.

Habitat/Behaviour. For the most part, Will'o'Wisps will be found on their own. On rare occasions groups of up to three may be found near a particularly fertile hunting ground. In the latter case, they will work together to trick victims into the traps which they have arranged. They do however have some strange dancing rituals and ceremonies that to the watcher has no meaning, but, when seen, a large green oval shaped disc sits in the center, and on VERY rare occasions, hundreds of the glowing balls of light can be seen floating and dancing in the air around this disc even up to 16 to 20 peds in the air. These rituals are rare, though they have been reported from different sources.

Diet. Although difficult to say with certainty, evidence indicates that the Will'o'Wisp feeds on the fury of electrical activity given off by the brains of panic stricken individuals as they realize that death is inescapable. In order to prolong the suffering of their victims and increase the amount of "food" which they give off, Will'o'Wisps will typically lure their victims into areas like quicksand pits which promise a slow and frightening death.

It seems certain that the unusual environment found in bogs and swamps is important to the creature's existence in some way, but the exact nature of this link is uncertain. It seems probable that the ominous and haunting nature of these places increases the fear and dread which their victims feel, and thus the energy which they give off prior to death.

Mating. A mating ritual is vastly unknown, but the balls of light known as Wisps have actually been seen multiplying from one another as if the light has come directly from the wisp and just floated away. It is said that the birth of another "Will'o'Wisp" is basically a clone of the parent, but as these beings seems to be only of ephemeral nature (at least to human eyes) it is nearly impossible to say if one just saw a real reproduction or only a magical cloning. No more is known about this creature, only that the balls of light seem to just appear and float from within the parent, a very mysterious event indeed.

Myth/Lore. Myth and lore seem to say that the Will'o'Wisp seem to be from another plane or dimension explaining why they can appear and disappear in a moment. Rumor has it that the Wisps are actually fairies that live in an opposite dimension and come to Caelereth to feed on the living. The "good" Wisps from the other dimensions are said to be able sense the fear or loneliness of a traveler or child and transport themselves to this world to help him or her. Others believe they are just myth and don't exist at all as they are seen very, very rarely, and probably have their true home only in the imagination of a lost wanderer...

Some fairy tales contained in "Master Tribell's Miraculous Narrations", especially the legend of the "Search of Marinna" even claim that it is possible to traverse time and space with the assistance of Wisps, but whether this is only a fairy tale or is possible in our reality, none can say, as the purpose and laws of the Wisps still remain unknown to us.

Vore, on 12 July 2004 - 03:31 PM, said:

Quite a lot of that Wisp info was taken from some sort of gaming site right?

Yet it remains fairly true...they are one of the most ancient known sightings..with paintings of them on cave walls near marsh land describing their tempting of men to their deaths.

Much like Psirens they seem to lure people to their doom but also offer hope to people lost on the great peat bogs of the world....all folk accounts warn to stay away from them.

My family in the South of England are well aware of them as they often went walking upon the marshes and saw glowing shapes moving in the distance that suggested something alive carrying a torch but when they called out there was no reply and the light would eventualy fade or move away....very creepy but possibly it is simply a natural phenomena.

Clearwitch, on 12 July 2004 - 03:48 PM, said:

We have some of the same legends, we call them elven lights. They would lure people into the marsh. I just didn't connect the name, I thought it would be a ghost story...but this is cool too. :)

Rhuen, on 13 July 2004 - 09:16 AM, said:

the phenomonon is world wide and called by many different names and people seeing it have called it different things,

some people in this day and age even think they are alien probes or ships, or alien beings.

some call them ghosts. "I have seen the exact same thing described on an aliens sightings show and on a show about ghost encounters"

in Japan they call it Kitsune-Bi "fox fire" they say the spirit foxes create them to lure people away.

Ghost lights, Earth Lights, marsh gases... what ever the name its still an interesting phenomonon.

although it is interesting how often what ever they are called the stories tend to say they are used to or do lure people into marshes or off the trails.

NightVision, on 12 July 2004 - 04:06 AM, said:

I know that willo the wisps are marsh gases, but that they were named Ignis Fatuus (foolish fire) over here because stupid people tried to follow them and then ended up drowning in swamps. I suppose the old idea was that will the wisp was a tempter spirit - you followed him to your doom in order to find the buried treasure.

Interesting though that us humans must always follow the light: whether it be the three wise men or UFO spotters. In that respect we have a lot in common with plants . :rolleyes:

[Gabriel de Lorges]

Quote

...

Suddenly, away on our left I saw a fain flickering blue flame. The driver saw it at the same moment. He at once checked the horses, and, jumping to the ground, disappeared into the darkness. I did not know what to do, the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer. But while I wondered, the driver suddenly appeared again, and without a word took his seat, and we resumed our journey. I think I must have fallen asleep and kept dreaming of the incident, for it seemed to be repeated endlessly, and now looking back, it is like a sort of awful nightmare. Once the flame appeared so near the road, that even in the darkness around us I could watch the driver's motions. He went rapidly to where the blue flame arose, it must have been very faint, for it did not seem to illumine the place around it at all, and gathering a few stones, formed them into some device.

Once there appeared a strange optical effect. When he stood between me and the flame he did not obstruct it, for I could see its ghostly flicker all the same. This startled me, but as the effect was only momentary, I took it that my eyes deceived me straining through the darkness. Then for a time there were no blue flames, and we sped onwards through the gloom, with the howling of the wolves around us, as though they were following in a moving circle.

...

Bram Stoker's "Dracula", Chapter One