Will-o’-the-Wisps: A Mini-Essay

    

     From the Naga fireballs of the Mekong River in Thailand to the Marfa lights along U.S. Route 67 in Texas, folklores throughout the world attest to the bizarre occurrence of will-o’-the-wisps, glowing lights ranging in color from green to white that appear at night over bogs and swamps or within fields and woods and hover mysteriously until ultimately disappearing.[1] For some, these floating orbs are spiritual or extraterrestrial entities who either benevolently guide lost travelers out of the wilderness or maliciously lead unsuspecting individuals to their deaths.[2] For instance, the devil’s bonfires of Longdendale, England, have, since the sixteenth century, been assumed to be the products of witches, who use them as a means to lure gullible individuals into entrapment for sacrifices.[3] While earlier generations turned to supernatural explications, more contemporary scholars explain the will-o’-the-wisp as a misunderstood natural phenomena. In 1898, Dr. M.A. Blunard proposed phosphuretted hydrogen caused by reactions between calcium phosphide and water produced these occurrences at sea and, since then, other scientists have presented their own hypothesis, ranging from clusters of fireflies to the luminescent fungus Panelluses stipticus.[4]

Works Referenced

Blunard, M.A. “Will-o’-the-Wisps.” English Mechanic and World of Science 1761 (1898): 433. 

Gisondi, Joe. Monster Trek: The Obsessive Search for Bigfoot. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2016.

Jones, Richard. Haunted Britain and Ireland. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2002.

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[1] Gisondi, 41-42.
[2] Gisondi, 41-42.
[3] Jones,  97-98.
[4] Blunard, 433.