Читать книгу The Element Encyclopedia of the Psychic World: The Ultimate A–Z of Spirits, Mysteries and the Paranormal - Theresa Cheung, Theresa Cheung - Страница 282

Also known as ghost lights, earth lights are mysterious patches of light reported to have been seen at more than a hundred or so sites in remote locations, such as isolated buildings and mountain peaks, in the United States, Britain, Japan and elsewhere. The lights appear at random or regularly at some sites. They often bounce up and down, almost in a playful fashion, and are said to be red, orange, blue, yellow or white in colour.

Earth lights have been linked to locations where sacred shrines have been erected by ancient peoples, and according to some Native Americans they are doorways to the world beyond. Others believe that earth lights are extraterrestrial in origin and convincing evidence of UFOs or some as yet unidentified electromagnetic energy.

Research in the phenomenon of earth lights suggests that that they might be produced by seismic stresses beneath the earth which generate ionized gas that is released into the air near a fault line. Several locations where earth lights have been reported, such as the Brown Mountains in North Carolina and eight of the lochs in Scotland, are near major fault lines.

Some lights have been shown to have natural explanations, such as car headlights, radioactivity from ore in the ground or the shifting of geological plates, but some, such as the Marfa lights seen southwest of the Chinati Mountains, Marfa, Texas, along with those seen in Joplin, Missouri, appear to be true mysteries that defy attempts to explain them.