Ball Lightning
I've never seen a UFO. I've never seen a ghost. I've never seen a bigfoot. But I have seen ball lightning.
For your edification---ball lightning is also called “globe lightning.”
I was around eight or ten when I witnessed it. I was sitting on the floor in our living room doodling with a pencil on a sheet of paper. It suddenly appeared through a window, hovered above the floor, and before I could reach out to touch it or run away from it, it was gone. There was no sound associated with basketball-sized very bright white ball of light.
Not everyone gets to see ball lightning---only about 5% of our population has the privilege.
In 1195 an English monk reported a “…white substance which grew into a spherical shape under the cloud.” An early incident recorded was in 1638 when “a great ball of fire” came through a church window. Tsar Nicholas reported witnessing ball lightning in a St. Petersburg church as a young child. Hmm…ball lightning seems to be attracted to religious folks and places…naw.
The problem with identifying the nature of ball lightning is that it's more illusive than bigfoot.
Some theories are that it's a plasma phenomena or an air vortex, whatever that is, containing luminous gases or microwaves trapped within a plasma bubble. Are we really surprised we know so little about ball lightning; we can't even explain bigfoot sightings or UFOs.
Here's what we do know: they are referred to as “balls” because they are spherical and range in size from a golf ball to yards across. They hover and may last from a moment to several minutes. They easily pass though glass and can pass through other materials. Not a lot of data.
In 2014, Chinese scientists captured a video of ball lightning which showed it contained silicon, iron and calcium---all elements of soil.
Being that deaths or injuries involving ball lightning are very rare, I guess we can live without knowing everything about it, but we are a curious bunch. We will keep looking for answers.
enough