Thinking Sideways: Min Min Lights

this week we have a phenomena. I want to talk about mysterious phenomena that this mystery sucks. I think it's good. Yeah, well listen here, let me tell these people before you you trod all over it, Joe, what what we're going to talk about? Maybe maybe not well, what we're gonna talk about is we're gonna be talking about the men men lights uh, this which are for people who don't know they're a phenomena that has been witnessed in the

Australian Outback. For the Australian Outback. Yeah, I don't have that accent, So thanks for thanks for the help, but not doing it. And that's not to be confused with the Australian back out It has been reportedly observed in the outback for hundreds of years, and the lights are described as well flora lamps. People see it now, they are They've been described as a lot of different things, uh, their behavior and their color, as well as any sound

or smells that they may or may not make. Um it's ever changing from one wit this to a next, so they're kind of hard to pin down. The only thing that really connects all the various sightings is like mushrooms. No, yeah, no, that's not what connects them. I see mushrooms in this. Yeah, you see mushrooms in everything. Handled mushrooms well before. Before Joe gets us too off topic, I do want to

say that this was a listeners suggestion. Uh. This was suggested by Alex quite a while ago, and I know that some other people have sent it to us since then. So thank you for the suggestion. Guys, Thanks Alex. Um. So let's get into trying to describe and explain the men Men lights. Simplest description is, like I said, their lights that are seen at night by people who are driving or camping in the outback. The most common description is that they're they're kind of a whitish colored round

light unless they're not. Sometimes they're dim, sometimes they're bright. Usually there's one, but sometimes there can be multiple. Uh. They hover in the distance somewhere between three to twenty feet off of the ground, which would be one to six meters off of the ground. The general behavior of the minmn lights is that they keep their distance from people. So if a person sees it and tries to approach,

the lights retreat. But on the flip side, if you try to retreat from the min min lights, they follow you, so they seem to keep the same distance from you. Yes, it's always a consistent distance from the viewer typically, and it's always like a fair distance, right, it's not. Yeah, I mean some some people are reported them approaching kind of close. But then again, you know they might have

been on mushrooms. I don't know, No, apparently that's the theory. Yeah, um, so they know they tend to be a distance away. The lights have been seen by motors who have said that they've seen the lights while they were traveling at highway speeds so sixty miles or a hundred kilometers per hour, and the lights never fell behind if sometimes they actually appeared to gain some distance, so they actually caught up with people. But it seems like the description is always

they imply that the lights are kind of playful. But I've also heard on the opposite side of the spectrum the stories that people who try to follow the lights never return, So there's that kind of danger aspect there um, which I honestly I gotta be telling, like, chalk that up to wandering around in the dark, staring at something ahead of you and not watching where you're walking, that's right, and then you fall, you knock your head and then

the dingo eats you. Yeah, I mean, especially if you're staring at a light, right and it's dark everywhere else and you're kind of burning out your night vision and then you look for something and done spot on exactly. Actually, I don't know how many people have actually been killed pursuing these lights. I don't know. Yeah, the number is

not reported because they were never seen again. Because in Dango eas now, the descriptions that we've given here of the minimum lights probably sounds familiar because depending on where you are in the world, this kind of light has been described just about everywhere. You'll hear them called the jack o landard lights, willow whisps, ghost lights, ghost candles, and then there's like locales, so there's places where they actually get a local name, much like the minimon lights.

So you hear the Marpha lights, the Yeah, we talked about one of those, didn't we know? We even talked about lights. We've talked about swamp gases and stuff like that, but not anyone particular. This is our first actual light phenomena that we've gone over. There's breaking new ground. Don't forget the Marborough lights. We don't ever talk about those either. So let's start off with something that's really easy to define,

and that's the name of the lights. Because it turns out that they are primarily seen in one area, which is in Queensland, Australia, between the towns of Boola and Winton. Between those two there used to be a settlement called men Men and from what I've read, it was a pretty wild and raucous kind of place and kind of lawless, and they had it was kind of deadwood eskin that they had a pub and it apparently lived up to

the reputation of the town as well. But before you get and go and try and book your next vacation there don't because it burned down at the turn of the nineteenth century, and I've heard that it might have been a case of arson. You know. I read that, but I didn't. I didn't really focus too much on it, so I don't know, you know. I mean, obviously it's easy to burn a place down accidentally. It happens all the time, especially when your main source of light is fired.

That doesn't help. Yeah. Sorry, we're talking about the turn between the eighteenth and name teen cent correct between. It burned down in like nineteen ten or nineteen sixteen somewhere in there. Then, okay, yeah, I'm sorry. I said nineteen didn't. It's confusing, it is. I complained about this before. That's the worst. It's a bad system. We should get rid of it. Um. So talking about the phenomena itself, it's like I had mentioned a little bit earlier. It's not

new to the area. According to the indigenous people's there's legends that talk about lights like this having been around for before the white man came to the continent. But the story is also they're a little confusing and conflicting because it it's there's some that say that the lights were observed before you know, settlers came. But then there's also stories that say that the sightings have increased since

settlers came. And there's also stories that blame the lights on the settlers who have killed you know, indigenous people's. This was like in the I think it was between the eighteen fifties and eighteen eighties, there was a number of kind of slaughters and those were pointed to as well, those are the souls of those people. So it's it's it's I can never get a clear read on this

is the story that was there before it morphed in. Well, you know, the cool thing about legends is that, um, different groups of people can have different legends and so those could all be the original legends because you know, each group or tribe or whatever doesn't necessarily have to agree on when they don't have to exactly the same. Yeah, I mean it's the flood legend. Yeah, that's the biblical flood. That legend has been through a whole bunch of cultures.

So like angels, you know, there's flying beings from the Guy that a lot of cultures have, but like we all call them some different. Yeah, absolute next time, thinking stories are told around the campfire, and obviously they are going to diverge because don't talk to one another. In fact, they usually try to kill one another. And it's an oral most of them have the oral traditions. Stories are

going to morph over time. So yeah, of course there's there's a whole bunch of reasons why they're not pinned down or not mating up. But interestingly enough, they do seem to occur, like, for example, the local the local Native Americans in our in our area, you know here in the Pacific Northwest, they don't tell stories about mysterious lights, but they do in the outback, they do tell stories

about mysterious lights. Something seems to be going on. Yeah it's conspiracy, Yeah probably yes, Okay, Um, So what I'm gonna do here is is as I talked about, there's so many different descriptions of the lights that it makes it hard say exactly what's gonna go on or what they are, what they look like, how they act. So I'm going to go ahead and I'm gonna do something different.

I'm going for me and I'm gonna do I'm gonna go through some accounts to help highlight some things, and we'll take this in chronological order, as Devon is about to burst an excitement because I'm winning. Do you see a single bullet point? No, but I don't have bullet points on my last one. My last one looked almost exactly like that with bullet points in it didn't. We're going to move into accountings, um, because there's a there's a number of them. I've picked a handful of them

through time just to kind of help you. I have, I have absolutely have tailored it. Maybe there are a lot of sightings out there. Yes, yeah, And I'm glad you've paired it down somewhat because I don't want to bore the hell of our listeners. So let's go ahead and start with the first one. Uh, this is the first white guy story. This is the first story that is from a white person. And I actually I think almost all of these are, but that's not the point.

The story comes from the early eight teen hundreds. We don't have an exact date. I've seen it listed eighteen thirty eight ten. It's all over the map, but it's the most common one because it references the stockman, which, if you don't know what a stockman is, that's a cattle herder version the stores. Yeah, yeah, at the local average Okay, now, okay, so there's a there's a stockman. He's working near the Men men's settlement, and sometime in the early evening he said he saw a glow app

here in the local graveyard, but the draft away. I don't know if you mentioned that a lot of people got killed in Men because it was a wild West there. Yes, and they did have a little graveyard there, yes, they did. Yeah, yeah, so well as with every town in that time frame, there's going to be a graveyard because people are dying all the time. People are dying like flies, especially in

a rough and tumble area. So he sees this light in the graveyard and he said it started to drift away, and he described it as being about the size of a watermelon, and this an American watermelon or an Australian watermelon. He said it was the size of a watermelon. At which point he decided that a watermelon sized light floating around was probably not something he wanted to be near,

and he wanted to get away from itmelon. So he rode his horse towards the town of Booyum, and it followed him, and it wasn't until he got to town itself that the light disappeared. He went to the local police or constable, whatever the case may be, for that particular location, and he reported it, but of course they

didn't believe him, in typical police fashion. Well, strangely enough, there were two more reports that came in, and again, as with stories like this, the time frames vary, but I'll just give you the second one, which is I think it happened a day or so later. There was a couple. Yeah, we'll see. That's that's the hard part, you know. But this couple came into the police and they said they had seen a light in the area

and they had watched it. It got brighter and then it started to move away, so they decided, not very wisely, to to follow it. After a short bit, decided that was a bad idea and retrace their steps, at which point the light followed them. And the story doesn't say exactly when the light disappeared, but they got to town and then of course gave their story. So that's one of the earliest versions of the story. Their accountings. Well, then move forward to either June or July of nineteen twelve.

I don't know which, And there is a guy by the name of Henry Lamond. Lemon said he was traveling in the early hours of the morning on horseback when he saw what he believed to be the headlights of a car somewhere between five or ten miles away. Uh. The thing to note here is that if you think about a car that far away, it's gonna be a single light far enough that the headlights are going to

stand out as individual headlines. Yeah, I recall from his his account he thought they were a settling car headlights because he had a bit of greenish tinge to it. Yeah, apparently. Yeah, early car headlines were headlights were not just electric, you know, they had different methods of doing it. As as with a lot of things with cars in the very beginning, everybody was doing it their own way, and some were

better than others. Um. But yeah, So he sees this car and he said the light was coming in his direction and then and he thought that it was moving about ten miles an hour, and there were two well, it was still one. And when it got close enough that he figured that if it was a car, they should have split. That's when he knew something was going on because it didn't split. The light was five to ten feet off of the ground, and they he and the light passed each other. I I understand that he

believed the light was on the road. He however, it sounds like was not on the road because it wasn't like they passed, you know, close to one another. But he said the light traveled for about two hundred yards, uh, and then it just sort of faded away. So he was just off roading. I'm guessing that he he was because there was something to do with He was in the sheep trade, and I know he was going from

one place to another. He'd left like four in the morning because he had to be their first light to start working. And I think it was shearing season if I remember right. And this this is totally from memory because his story is one of a bunch. But right, well, this is his stories significantly departs from the other stories because and the other almost all these stories you cannot catch up with the light, and in this one, he not only caught up with it, it passed him and

went by him. He's not the only one that gets close to it, though. But I mean, but but this is this. I do this because this is a slice of different styles of stories. So I'm sorry, maybe I missed it. Did he have the impression that the car was heading towards him or it overtook him? It was head towards it direction they were heading towards each other a little bit. Yeah, So we'll move forward just a year in time to n This is a very simple one.

There was some folks who were um who were out in the evening hours, and they said they saw a ball of light traveling about five feet off the ground and it passed their buggy as if quote unquote it was controlled by something, but it didn't seem to be going just like Lamon's story. They thought it was maybe going about ten mine obviously obviously were they? I mean, was it? The impression I have of of Henry, right,

is that it's a like a highway kind of situation. Right, as much as he's taken the track that on his horse and it's going down the main road, is that because I think that's what it is. Yeah, but the roads, I mean, yeah, it's just weird because then we've got buggies and but you've also got cars, and it's weird to me. Weird to me that somebody in that day and age would just assume like, that's a car, because cars are the only things at that time that are

making lights bright enough. Yeah, I mean, that's that's what I was thinking to your cars were not that rare in Australia at the time, even in the outback. But it's funny to me, right that we're talking about like people who are not in cars saying well, that's a car, right, I mean if cars are so ubiquitous at this time, they were not ubiquitous at that time, right, but so they I mean, you know what it is, but that you would initially say like, it looks like a car

to me, I don't know. I guess for me, it's just like a weird thing. I don't know. I get it, I get it. I don't know why it's weird. I don't know why it is. But sorry. So the next one that I've got for us is from the tenth of Februaryerable. Well, yeah, I had to because they're so many of you just have to jump them a time. So this is from a man named Mr C. Rhodes and Mr Rhodes standing first cecil. Is it? I have

no idea? Okay, Mr Rhodes said that at about eight thirty at night, he saw the light hovering in the sky about fifteen ft in the air, and it was moving from east to west. Uh. And then as he described it, it moved about forty degrees, which I'm I'm assuming when he's saying the east and west, he's it traveled about forty degrees on the compass from true north

to about north northwest right, yeah, um. And then he said once it did that, it then started to bounce up and down in the sky really fast, very quickly, at which point until it finally it stopped held steady. A cloud went by and it went behind the cloud. But he said he could see it bouncing up and down, peaking above and below the cloud, and then when the cloud eventually went by, it was static in its original position again, and then it's zipped away. I have a

question for you. Isn't February in Australia summer? Would it have actually been dark at eight thirty pm in February? That's a good question. What's the latitude at this place? I don't know the latitude, and I don't know what time it gets dark there in February, so I don't know. I mean, just doesn't have the equivalent of pitch black. You see a light, a bright light in dusky condition. I'm just wondering, based on the next thing you're going to say, if maybe he wasn't seeing the sun, like okay,

So here's here's what. Okay, I know what you're getting at. I have written down in my notes here that we're all looking at that maybe this guy had had too much to drink, and so I had checked lunar cow under, which showed me that the moon was at less than a quarter of a moon, So there was no way that it could have been the moon. You're getting it. And maybe it was the sun and he was in an altered state from mushrooms watching the sun bounce around. That's a I don't know that, that's a that's a

good question. I didn't even think to look at when sunset was, so I just did a quick Google paused look at that where we do that occasionally, not often though, to stop asking, um when, yeah, okay, it could have been the moon, so it had to be a light. It could have been the sun, could have been a star, could could have been an airplane, could have been all kinds of things. So that is what this gentleman said he saw. That seems sorry, that's fine. It just seems

like early or whatever. Okay, so we're gonna move on to nine four again. The month and day are not listed. Uh. There's a farmer's working in his fields and he says that he heard a noise that evening while he was working, and the sound got louder and louder, and he described it like air escaping from a tire, that kind of high pitch. No it's the like, yeah, that kind of

lovely noise. But that guy, this guy was working on a tractor, right, he was driving, but he heard it and he stopped and he got off the tractor and well that he started walking away because he's trying to figure out where this noise was coming from. And he decided that it was coming from behind the boulder. He went over and looked behind the boulder, and that's when he says he saw a bright orange light floating just

above the ground close to him, close to him. Well, he tried to get near it, but he said he felt like there was pressure on him, similar to heat. You know, you feel pressure on your skin from heat. But there was no heat. Every time people do this, I always just think we really are just big monkeys. He grabbed a stick and he tried to poke it with a stick, but he couldn't poke it with the stick.

At it get back, get bad, He said. He was trying to poke it with the stick, but he could never get the stick to touch it or get close enough. It was kind of like it was magnetically being pushed away every time he went for it. I probably would have actually tried to poke it with a stick myself. Yeah, I know to do big monkeys. We do it, and we're tool using apes. So at this point, after having tried to hit it with a stick, he said, that's

the point that it started changing color. It turned to green. It then faded away, as did the sound, after which he said he smelled kind of a sickly sweet smell, which then also kind of quickly dissipated. Yeah, his story is one of the weird ones. But there's kinds of weird. They all vary quite a bit. Yeah, you ready for the next one? Quiet, I gotta just give me just a second here, hang on, okay, okay, okay, good, So we're gonna go to eighty This is one of the

ones that I told you. Just kind of an outlier as well. When we're talking about getting close outliers. Two men were driving from the town of Badouri to Boolia when they saw a bright light on the side of the road. They pulled up next to it, at which point they said, the light took off, sprayed their car with gravel, and they watched it disappear through the trees.

After it was gone, they got out of the car and they said that they saw a fine white powder on the ground, but nobody ever collected that to figure out what it was. Powder like maybe cocaine. I don't know if that's true or not. I'm not sure. Well, I don't know. I don't think at that time, I don't think that would have been as much. But it is weird that this is they say there's this powder. Well, let's spurs recorded incidents, uh, of the light actually spraying

somebody with gravel. I think maybe it was just somebody in a hot rod who just peeled out and just showered them with gravel. And I'm not going to disagree with that, Joe. Yeah, I've just I got to tell the story as as I find it. So but I can't disagree with you on that. But yeah, they had the lights. Normally, don't spray it with gravel. No, no, that's not normally what my lamp does. Um. We're gonna go to our next one. This is on the second

of May, and the person in question is Detective Lyle Booth. Mr. Booth was camping outside of Booya near a dried up watering hole. Um. And just to kind of give a frame of reference for the light, the surrounding vegetation was short trees, so they would have been, you know, like fifteen highest. They weren't tall tall forests, probably less than that. He he said, in the middle of the night, he

saw a light that he first thought was a headlight. Uh, And it wasn't until he realized that the direction he was looking wasn't actually the main road, so it couldn't have been headlights from the road. And he says the light, which he watched for a while, was about fifteen two thousand meters away, and it moved in a straight line across the horizon, but it didn't of course get any farther away from him, and it was whitish in color.

And then after moving for a bit it stopped and stayed in one place steadily for about half an hour, at which point he fell asleep. He woke up, I think, he said, he woke up like one o'clock in the morning. It was a couple of hours later. He woke up, and he said that the light had moved. It had now made its way over to the campsite of another person who was in his party. Uh, and that was maybe that it was a woman. Her campsite was about a thousand meter is away? Actually heard like six away?

Well again again six hundred or thousand, it varies. That's just one of the things I wondered about in this story, that she's in the same party, but she's she's like a thousand meters away. Is that what it is? I mean, I mean, you know a kilometer, I mean, you do a hundred feet that would probably do it. Well, you know what I've I've been camping and I've heard you snore, and sometimes I think six hundreds might be what it takes. Okay. No, I have no idea why she was so far away.

I really don't. But you know, his his story goes on. He said the light had dimmed, it had gotten more yellowish, and it was now about three to six feet off of the ground, and it lit up the ground below it, meaning that it was casting light in her camp. Yeah, it's just it's it actually is a little floating fireball something like that. Yeah, And he said he watched it for about five minutes, at which point it's suddenly just dropped to the ground and it went out. It dropped

and disappeared. And again kind of like with um was booth or not? No, this is booth with Rhodes. I checked the lunar calendar and the new moon was on the sixth of that month, which was four days afterwards, which means there wouldn't have been but the barest sliver of moons. So again, this guy couldn't have been just staring at the moon. If it was six days after it would be a crescent moon. It wouldn't be, but

it wouldn't be much of a crest now, it wouldn't. Yeah, no, it wouldn't be a half moon or anything like that now, but it would be a quarter moon something like that. Well, okay, listen that that's actually the last one that we're going to go through in terms of stories, because we could really keep this up all night. Yeah, there's lots of stories. There are tons and tons. People are chased by lives, people chase the lines, people shot at the lights, people

are shot at by the lights. Well, okay, not quiet that what didn't happen? But no, it's it's been all kinds of colors. So it's been white, bluish, grayish, orangish, yellowish. It's steady, it's pulsed, it's moved towards people, away from people, parallel to the ground, bouncing up and down. It's been noisy, it's been smelly. It hasn't been smelly, it's been quiet. I mean, there's just all these things. Yeah, I think human imagination, at least I'm not saying all lifes don't exist,

but human imagination is drawn a few things any here. Well, and I think you know, one of the things that I've I've noticed in the stories in the lot, the stories from the last thirty years, that I think is a good example of what you're talking about things that have been added to it, is that radio and electrical interference have been added. So suddenly it's the light showed up in my radio went crazy and my car conked out, and I really feel like that is something that has

made its way in from UFOs stories. Ufologists are going crazy over because now, oh well that got added in, so it must be an alien thing. That's that's what it is for sure. So it's it definitely has changed over time. I'm in total agreement with that. So with that, I guess it's time to go into theories mushrooms. Mushrooms are not on the theory list, but thank you for

adding that one, Joe. Now that we've covered that, um, the first theory is I'm going to say the easiest to discredit, and that is that the lights are birds or insects. Yeah, well, let me let me explain it. So this is this is what the theory says. Is it says that us, there are a swarm of bugs that have eaten a naturally bioluminescent plant or fungus of some kind, or are naturally bioluminescent themselves, or a bird that has eaten a bunch of bioluminescent bugs, or a

bird that might be bioluminescent. Is what these people are seeing, right, And so none of these things actually exist, right, None of the things have ever been found. The whole idea that a bird could ingest a bunch of say, like you know, blowing nats or fireflies, fireflies and then start glowing those itself is like ridiculous. Yeah, okay, but that assumes that it's a natural occurrence, right. I mean there's a TV show used to watch where they engineered like

chipmunks to be bioluminescent. They just like found the gene and switched on. They've done those things, So we're assuming that this would be the natural. I mean, it's possible that Australian scientists near min Men were ago yeah around ye okay, I'm not explaining, but maybe as as recent as fifty years ago, maybe even as recent as a hundred years Probably not, but it would be like time travel too. I mean, you know, you know BELLI and

I did do a lot of research. Scientists have traveled back in time with bioluminescent chipmunks to create these lights or birds. I mean, it doesn't have to be chipmunks, right, it's just anything. I like the idea of chipmunks. Yeah, but I mean, I guess that's just assuming, right. I'm not I hate the theory too, I agree, but I just feel like I have to pitch in for the

fact that, like, scientists could have created a bioluminescent bird. Fine, they could and it could have as they were, like, I'm not going to tell anyone, Yeah, but yeah, but birds scientists that swear protected by luminescent birds, as birds don't usually stick together in a tight little ball when they fly, no insects neither. Yeah. Birds are pretty bad at night anyway. So the next theory that we have is swamp gas, which is also known as ignis fatuous.

That seems silly, Okay, yeah, I know, I know, it's it's they say it like a hundred times in every Men in Black movie. There are many swamps near this area, only hundreds and maybe thousands of miles away. So swamp gas is and is actually the common name for biogas, which typically forms in a wetland environment. Those gases are primarily methane with hydrogen and some carbon dioxide in them.

Um and they it is truly, it does actually happen because there's all that organic material and waters and it it rots and then as the gas is released, it can create that can be enough heat to cause a spontaneous ignition. If you've ever watched Princess Bride and you look at the fire swamp, you know that all of the explosions constantly. That's the Hollywood amped up version of

what swamp gas can do. And interestingly, there's there's quite a few reachers researchers who have seen these fireballs and they seem to have been spontaneously combusting in these swamps. One thing that is noted is the fact that when and these are researchers, not necessarily today, but some of these are in the eighteen hundreds, they would try to approach the fire. So they would see this gas starting to ignite, they would try to approach it, and it

would retreat from them. It's believed that the reason is is that because these people are moving forward, they're causing an air current and that is pushing this fuel source, the gas forward as well, which is why the fire seems to move away. So that's that's that's some older research on swamp gas. But you know the thing about it is is we're talking to like people are saying that they're at a distance of say a thousand meters in this light and then moving towards it is and

it's moving away from them. Yep, that that that is in doesn't follow along with this. But one of the things you can think about, right, is that even so they've estimated what they how bright they think that light is, and how big they think that light is, and that they think it is that distance. But we know, like there's there's such thing as an optical illusion, right, so it may be a dimmer, smaller light than the brain

is perceiving. Therefore, it may be much closer to that person than they are anticipating, right, And that's reasonable to Yeah, that's that's absolutely true. That's fair. Although you're you know, we do have two eyes, which gives us kind of like you know, but it's also dark and you're looking at a light, and you know, if you're thinking it's

much brighter. I've done this before. I thought, oh, you know, that car behind me has a headlight out, and then suddenly it's like, no, that's a motorcycle right behind me. Oh god, what you know? That happens You're laying in the dark and you see what looks like a light way far away, only to realize that it's actually something that's only a couple of feet away, but very you know, very dim it's just it's a perspective thing. Or sometimes

it's something that's like stuck to your glasses. But yeah, that's that that could for you be it. Yeah probably, But but generally speaking, that you're gonna move around a little bit, you're gonna just not it's not just the three inches or porches between your eyes. You're gonna actually be moving around side to side. You've got a really good idea that this is this thing. Not always but but that's you know, I understand where you're going. But

that's that's not a percent, especially in a dark environment. Um. Something about swamp gas that I did want to point out that I found that was really interesting is that there was a researcher in two thousand. He was a British guy. Um, he suggested that And by the way, the fun note is this is after his failure for twenty years in a controlled environment to create swamp gas to create the fireballs that the lights were what's called cold flames. And I don't know if you guys have

ever heard this before. It's uh so I don't I don't completely understand the science behind it, but it's that gases that are neararing their ignition point will put out some light and that maybe what it is. So there it's warm enough that they should they're almost going to ignite, but they don't actually, but they're creating then this luminescence problem.

Of course, you know, for all of for the entire swamp gas issue is the location is Joe very very wisely pointed out in the very beginning of this, which is it's not swampy. This is known as channel Country, which if you look at it from the aerials, it is nothing but just fingers of rivers and creeks going uphills. It's all dry. It's it's in the out back. They I looked up the rainfall and they get on average a hundred and eighty eight millimeters of rain a year,

which is about seven and a half inches. Compare that to a place like say western Oregon, where we get two hundred inches a year. That's five meters of water. If you look at southern California they're at they're kind of in a bad, bad decade. They are averaging about twenty three inches a year with and this is and they're getting way up and above. You actually have to go to a place here in the States like Arizona, which is a desert to get the same levels of

minimal rainfall swamps in this area. No, there's not enough constant water to create the the rot to then create the gas. It dries out, the gas would escape on top of that, it's like swamp gas. You know, it can rise epic and it can sup ignite, but it can't just chase a car or run away from a car. No, not really, absolutely not. So let's move on to our next one. Because we've obviously none of us are in love with swamp gas smelling theory. We're gonna go to

one that I know, devil like Aliens. Yeah, this is obviously Actually unfortunately for this one, I don't think it's as see. I actually like Aliens for this one, just because it ties together some of the inconsistencies and I find a lot of humor in it. I really I would love this to be a situation where there's some race that has decided that the outback is the best place that they need to do air version of Mario Kart at night and they're awesome, glowing a little spaceships.

I mean, it makes it's like a very realistically right this is a country where there's a strong history of documentation, versus like say Africa, where it's all like a lot of it is still oral tradition has been like so like there's people who are like have this written history, right, it's white people, and like everybody loves to mess with

white people. It's also like this great landing ground where it seems like if you were coming to Earth, you were like, there's kind of a smaller place that we can still land at, that we can be like self container. We can like you know, land without being observed. But here's the thing. Here's why I don't like the aliens. Thing is because they stand down these little drones or whatever to to observe and gather information, and yet they make they make them glow hugely. I mean, wouldn't you

want a stealthier little drone? Maybe they don't have um, you know, night vision technology. Yeah, what do you mean? What like you have literally no way of perceiving how different technologies in this universe have evolved. Let's be fair, right if they don't even have to be carbon based entities. But yeah, seriously, why would their little drones or their little spacecraft low? Maybe they perceive light a different way

than we do. Okay, now that that I will accept as a possible reason of why they glow if they see on a different spectrum or they just create different I mean, there are there life forms on Earth that are in a different spectrum than our human eyes can

even perceive. So like, yeah, but if they're let's let's presume these these are advanced, fairly smart aliens, so they know they understand the whole electromagnetic spectrum, and they recognize that if they're down here to observe us stealthily, they will know that they shouldn't be mitting in the visible light range. They would know that they should. But they also might be like humans and so self important where

they're like they won't notice they're dump. But it also could be just you know, like we think we are so smart as humans that like aliens would be smart. But if we, you know, if there were a race that we're smarter than us, they might be like, all these guys are freaking idiots, Like, well, we're gonna screw

with them. That's my favorite theory, right, is that like aliens just messing with you, right, But also it could be like they won't notice, Yeah, they don't notice like they're not the other I could sort of sort of kind of see that in this in the sense that

you know, there was this dumb, bureaucratic mindset mentality. You know, maybe I guess, but it just seems to me like at least one alien scientists would have said, hey, you know, they might perceive electromagnetic radiation in this bandwidth which we can't perceive, but maybe they can, so maybe we should like not yeah, but like put that in and but no, I know what happened then was he was taking before a special committee and accused of crabs against the state

and executed. So I think, like my argument against that is, like put that in our terms, right, think if like we discovered aliens and like one scientist at NASA was like, but wait, they might perceive sound in this way, so we have to make our spaceships that are going to go investigate this silent. Obviously everyone would be like, no, that's too expensive, we're not doing that. And also they don't perceive that. There's no way they purceive sound like that.

That's insane, So we wouldn't do it. And then we would, like you know, have a bunch of alien stories, lore of people being like the it's weird you just hear this abound and that they may not I mean something that you hinted at earlier in that is that they may not perceive light in the same way. It's like, there's that what is that crazy shrimp that breake um aquariums, and they have figured out that they see a million

more colors than we do. So it's they may not have ever figured it out, but we've labored that enough. I don't know. I like we should talk about aliens probably soon, but well, for this, I don't I like the idea that it's aliens messing with people, but I also don't think it's the strongest theory. So this that we we're going to go to the next one, which is related, which is that these lights are actually from

some sort of dimensional rift. In other words, there's something that is on another plane of existence that is trying to either is leaking through or trying to come through into our dimension, at which point it may or may not be an intentional set of lights. No. I mean, that's that's it's debated by a lot of people how this works, not by me because I don't really buy it. But that's another theory that you see out there. Yeah,

I like the idea of a dimensional rift. But you know, I think that you wouldn't just see lights coming through. You would see dude, would see cars, cars, houses, large rocks. Uh you know, I mean, you'd see all kinds of crap coming you would think, but you would think, but not just lights. Okay, well let's move to the next theory after that, which is ball lightning. So I remember when I was a kid, this is it's understan it's believed,

it's a thing. We know it's a thing now, but I still remember ball lightning being kind of a myth when I was a kid, and it's it's always I thought ball lightning was always kind of proven to you know, they didn't really prove ball lightning was actually a true thing until I think about twenty or thirty years ago, like or no, No, it was in the No, I'm lying, I'm making that data. It was in the mid sixties. They had really they knew. But we still don't know

exactly how it happens. It's probably electricity like lightning. We've got to capture some of those balls and interrogate the problem is we have never been able to do that they've been observed in nature. But that's it. But interestingly, for this particular story for the men Men lights, there are some similar descriptions for ball lightning as there are for the lights. I'm just gonna go through this list here, um, and you'll see some of the similarities. There's the ones

that are completely dissimilar, but I've prune those out. I just want to make these little connections. Uh So. The similarities are moves erratically or slowly, up and down or left and right, can cover in place. Generally spherical, though sometimes pear shaped with fuzzy edges, which I feel like that sometimes. Um. The diameter is anywhere from one to one centimeters, which is half an inch to forty inches. They range in color from red, orange, and yellow. Yellow

is the most common. They are rarely reported creating any heat, though sometimes when they disappear they can cause heat or a bit of an explosion. And they do tend to have a smell associated with them, which is the smell of ozone. Um makes sense, but yeah, it totally makes sense. Now. Of course, the problem with ball lightning is there's never any storms reported. I mean, it's good weather. That's why

people are out exactly ball lightning. There has to be a lightning storm, right, yes, thunderstorm usually yes, not always usually, but this would be a like statistically improbable amount of ball lightning without storm. Yeah, there would have to be some It's almost it would have to be there's some kind of catalyst to cause it, which is actually something

that's in a later theory. Next theory of the seventeen thousand theories that I have listed here for real is um settle in that you might want to go to the back right now. So our next one is, Joe, how do you pronounce this? You've said this word thank you? Okay, so fati morgana there I got it right once. Um. So there's this series put out there by Professor Jack Pettigrew who's observed the minmn lights many many times, um, and he's done some actually some really good research into it.

And just so we know the how do I say this word again? Thank you? That thing is a type of mirage or a light reflection, and it's typically seen on the horizon or high up in the clouds sometimes and it's usually at the horizon. So if anybody remembers last year, there was all that stuff going around the internet of that Chinese city in the clouds. I remember that that was That was pretty awesome. That was really cool.

That's what this this phenomena is. I gotta say, if I looked up at the clouds and I saw a city up there, I'll crap my pants. I would be very very curious. Is what was going on? What was about to come down? Um? Well, okay, so what what it's caused by is it's caused by a temperature in version where cold, dense air is trapped next to the ground under a layer of warmer air. And depending on they say, the shape, so I'm guessing it's the mass or the density, and how far of an area covers

of that inversion. Light near the ground can be refracted and sent through that cold So light normal normally travels in straight line or the curvature of the Earth. Eventually it's going to go away and the farther way you are over the horizon, you're not going to see it. If this cold air is covering that area, the light can then travel through it, so light actually bends and follows the curvature of the Earth because the air is

trapped next to it. Yeah. Well, what it is is like you know, I imagine your eyeglasses and they refract. That's how they correct your vision. Is because the glass is a different density than the air around it, and the same thing with that, I mean hot air versus cool air, different density. Had that sharp lair, it's going to bend that light just the way the lenses in your eyeglasses. And yeah, that's how it works, you know. It's it's a very similar set of conditions to what

I still feel is my favorite theory for sky quakes. Right, it's the same. It's the visual version of the audio version of what you were saying for skyquakes exactly. Um And and normally this happens over water because that's where you get a good inversion of air temperatures, because the

water temperature itself is going to help cause that. But according to Pedigrew, the channel country of the outback is also a really good I mean I would assume I would I would guess that the outback is kind of the opposite of a cool, watery area, right, It's a dry, hot area, so it may create an opposite inversion, which I guess I don't know enough about science to say.

One way that version is like the same either way. Well, it's because of the fact that a channel country, so it's a lot of ravines and valleys and so which cold air can get trapped in there. So that's that's how I understand here talking a small version the land. It doesn't seem to be Essentially, the land has been bombarded by sunlight all day. It's hot, it's hot, and then the atmosphere cools down barely rapidly, but especially there's no ozone. Yeah, and the land is still still warm,

still re radiating, and everything has still got warmed. But but and that's when that temperature verst occurs, you know. And so but it's the same either way. Right, if it's hot on the bottom or cold on the bottom, the inversion creates a similar effect. I think it's gotta be gotta be cold on the bottom. No, that's gotta be cold on the top and warm on the bottom. Cold air is trapped next to the ground under a layer of war were air, So it is cold air

on the bottom. So cold are close to the ground. I mean, I mean, you're not gonna have a layer like this high. It's gonna be cold air that it's gonna be warm warm ground, cold air for god knows how, and then and then warm air above it. Is that kind of what you're thinking, Well, I mean that's the way it's described as this cold air trapd next to ground. The exact the exact amount we're laboring. The point is is that this seems to be the place that it

happens a lot um. Now. I could see it in an arid environment, you know, dry and you know you're not gonna see it in the temperate environment like we have here in Oregon. But in arid environment or at sea or like down around see Antarctica, I can see it happening all the time. Yeah. Well, and and here's

what Pettigrew did. He and six observers. They parked a car and they left the headlights on, and then they drove ten kilometers away, which is six miles, and so that means that of course, put some high ground between them and the car. They then and they went out obviously at a time that they expected this to take place, so they knew the conditions were right, and they parked and they waited, and sure enough, in those conditions they could see the headlights of the car that they had

parked several miles away. They actually they put out a set of really awesome photos as well, because that morning there was the inversion was still there and a mountain range that was a plateau range that was over the horizon was projected up and you can see in the images as it's as the temperature is inversion is eliminated, it looks like that mountain range sinks back into the horizon.

So it's really cool. And then they went back to the car they left there and they found the battery run flat and they didn't bring I'm surprised the car was still there. But my main problem with with this theory. What he has done makes total sense to me. What it doesn't clarify or fix for me is that when we're driving cars around that are generating very very bright lights. I get it, but two hundred years ago, the brightest

light at night was a campfire or the mood. So it's and you would think that you would probably recognize some of this, So I don't think that they would be bright enough, and it doesn't work for me. I have a problem with it. It's only when we have

this technology. Here's the deal is that you know when when the Aborigines were occupying Australia, you lived in a fairly confined area that you ranged in and at night you look over you look over that direction, and you know there's not the hillside up there that somebody can build a fire on. Right, there's no there's no campfire

on the hillside because that's just open flat range. But if this, if this phenomenon is occurring, if there's somebody over the horizon kind of up on the hillside that built built themselves a nice, big, bright campfire and you're seeing it, and you know that that cannot possibly be where you're looking at because there ain't no hillside there.

I could see why that would give you the will And I will add on to that that, like I understand your whole it would be like you would be able to see, like that's a fire looking at those images from China for instance, right, you see, yeah, that kind of looks like a city. Oh weird. But if it's a campfire, and I'll agree with you with the like brightness trying whatever is right, But I think that like the shape, it's a light well, but I also but I question how often they would be building big,

old bonfires. But but in fairness, it's not like the Aborigines reported this like as a constant occurrence. It's something that has been reported more and more with the more technology in Australia, the preence of brighter lights. I understand that. I still I like the the It just it doesn't solve it all for me. If you if you read the older accountings, it's especially the ones where it's you know, moves towards and pass somebody. That's when I'm really like, way,

what the hell that doesn't that doesn't work? If indeed it does pass somebody. Yeah, and I agree with that. I think that I look at this phenomena basically being kind of like a rainbow. Yeah, it's an optical illusion. It's a it's a refraction, same thing. Actually a rainbow is just refraction also, but you know, try to catch the end of a rainbow, can't you? But you can't. Really. The other thing that this can't do is it can't cast light at a specific point. In other words, if

you see it, it's an optical illusion. It's ways away. It's not going to light up the ground underneath where you see it, which people have said they have seen it lighting up the area around it. So again that there's there's something that either his theory is is bogus or these people's accounts are bogus one of the two. Yeah, okay, we're going to go onto theory number twenty seven. Yeah,

it's something like that. This theory is natural electrical discharges, which I kind of discount um, And I'll be honest, I I don't completely understand the science behind this, but

I'm going to try and explain it anyway. So the theory is that there are certain minerals in the area that are undergoing some sort of mechanical stress, and that stress is, as a result, creating an electrical charge, and these things are able to retain that charge rather than immediately dissipating it right back away, which I find hard to believe. And it's at night that those charges are then being let go, and that's what people are seeing.

And this, this process of things building up an electrical charge through some form of mechanical action is known as piezo electricity. I believe it's how you say it. And that stress can be according to what I've read a

lot of different things. Um, it can be people say it's tectonic forces, it's magnetic forces, it's vibrations caused by sound or the striking of objects against one another, so like sand against the rock and the wind maybe, and it can be a lot of different materials, but apparently they have to have some sort of crystalline structure to them to be able to retain the charge. So it's really kind of interesting, is that this theory, or this

this piezoelectricity, this is pretty common. It's actually what the igniter on your barbecue does. That's how it works. Yeah, I didn't know that. It's pretty cool. Um, So, like I said, it's it's the theory is that there are multiple things building up charge in the day and then at night they're letting it go, and that's what people are seeing. The problem is that nobody has ever been able to make but the smallest of sparks with this process. Yeah,

it's silly, no, it is. It's it's kind of like the idea that you can you can apply like like put two wires on a light bulb, cause the light bulb to light up, and then lift the light bulb off of those wires and float it through the air, and the light bulb is going to stay lit up somehow. That's that's that's basically what this series says. Yeah, yeah, yeah, essentially, Yeah, it's ludicrous. Yeah, so it's it's luminescent bugs. Yeah. Next theory is awesome because it had to be made in

the seventies, and that is psychic influence. And the theory, if I understand it, which honestly I don't, is that the viewer is psychically projecting their thoughts ahead of them and they are seeing that maybe and that's what this causing. Doesn't really explain how they're like passing in the night. Well, actually, I mean that's just the Freudian thing that explains it better than the other theories, because if it's all in your head, then sure the lights can go wherever they want.

That's all in your head. The lights don't pass through things ever, which if they were all in your head, I would imagine that they could go anywhere that you looked. Yeah, I have no idea on this one. Um the last theory that I have that I have, And then you're gonna parade out some something I don't know what it is yet, surprised if I had that black book that you have I'd have it out and you'd be tapping

it as I do. I'm waiting, come on. Okay. Last theory that I have is that it is ghosts and or polter geist, to which I say, boom no. There there is some folklore to this. Western folklore says that these kind of lights typically they're people who have done bad things in their life and are then doomed to eternity to wander the world at night, and they are using this light to attract people and lead them astray. If you go to Eastern folklore, there's a similar vein. Uh.

Sometimes they say it's demons. Sometimes they say that it is local people who have died and are trying to help or maybe lead astray the other locals that are around them. I mean, the this is all based on like the Willow whisp Um folklore, which is really like there's some crazy, crazy stories that people have come up with to describe them, like extremely elaborate, Like you know, suddenly they deal with the devil and God and having a hell and like all these things get wrapped up

into it, and it's really quite surprising. I didn't realize how big some of that was. Yeah, the thing about it is is like, if you look at all the evil people have died, all the dead bodies around the world, they're pretty evenly distributed. And yet this, this particularly occurs in only a few places. Well there's bad dead people, magnets. Yeah, yeah,

maybe that's what it is. All the all the all the bad people moved to and die in these these places that have meteorological Yeah, that that go on, which in which were there are these atmospheric inversions. That's where the evil people go to die. That must be what it is. I mean, that's that's I don't know. I mean, I'm not a big proponent of it being ghosts and Google's I have one okay, let's hear it. Meteor showers. Okay,

let let me let's hear it. Okay, well with with like a few and this is just obviously going off of the list provided, right, but with one outlier, most of these fit pretty solidly into what I understand has been the history of the leund meteor showers in Australia. Oh no, it's a different and I like went through kind of circled like, okay, this is a date that you know, a year where it was at its kind of peak, and I can understand how when you see

something flaming coming out of the sky. I'm willing to say that part of it could be your perception of time pausing a little bit right, that things maybe aren't covering as much as you're like, oh my god, that thing and you just in your brain, Yeah, your brain makes it stand still. Have you seen a fireball thoughever? Have I personally? Yeah? Yeah, I saw one once years ago,

and uh, it didn't last very long. No, but I think you know, if you're out by yourself in the middle of nowhere and you're seeing you know, you're driving fast, right. A lot of these are people in cars in modern times. In modern times, there are people in cars driving fast towards a thing that might be hurdling fast to the earth. There could be a perception of that thing is getting closer to me while I'm getting closer to it, and so it's coming towards me, or it's going further away.

But a meteor does come down pretty quick, and people have reported, you know, like fifteen or twenty minutes of travel with this thing in pursuit, so that that causes me pause. Yeah, the media don't last more than a few seconds, granted, but during shower, right, Like, what's to say that it's not like a bunch of different ones because you're obviously not you're looking away, looking back, right, Okay, granted, Okay,

it's not a great theory. But then the outlier here, so yeah, and the outlier here would be the farmer who was on its tractor. Oh, the guy who heard the noise, and he said that it was it was burning orange yellow, and then it turned green and then it died out. And the sound that he was describing, I would not say was unusual for like an actual flame if it was. Yeah, there are some things you've I've heard things when you've when they burn and they

make that high pitch norse. And actually, do you know what burns green? Because it turns out not a lot of things burned green? Borax? And do you know what they use as fertilizers for crops? Borax? It's not just

for cleaning, Nope, not just for cleaning. So it's reasonable to assume in my mind that something caught fire, whether it was you know, again, like a meteor, but there weren't really meteor showers at that time, but there was something that caught fire behind a boulder and it was burning, and he was just like's not it doesn't have to have smoke. I mean, you've been in a chemistry lab for long enough to know, yeah, something's actually burned pretty clean.

Especially they never let me in borax actually burns really clean. This makes mentally no, but I mean, so that's one of those interesting things where as soon as you start talking about like, well it was green, like that's the thing that burns clean, that probably that burns really hot, that burns pretty fast, that can condense down, and that is seen in areas of agriculture where this farmer would have been. So I think there could be a combination

of things. I'm not saying that it's the best theory, but I also do think it's interesting that these meteor showers do seem to coincide pretty concretely with at least the curated list that you've provided. And I think I might be a danger because it is it just a randomly curated list just for the different accounts through I don't know, and you know, let's let's not forget that there could be more than one explanations. Thank you. That

was where I was going to go next. We're out of theories and there's a I don't think it's a single theory. I don't think no, I don't think so either. I think that with as with a lot of unusual natural phenomena, I think that this is probably a bucket load of different things causing similar Yeah, everything from me, like from refraction to mushrooms. But who was the room? Was it mckimmon and mckimmon, What was the guy's name? What guy the professor? That part the part the car

and yeah, what was his name? Yeah? There was no m Yeah. Now, so Pedigrew, I think his theory actually actually accounts for the vac the vast majority of sightings, in that it's something that can't be caught up with like a rainbow, which would describe an article over you know, something over the horizon like the moon or a fire or car headlights or whatever, and they're always moving away from you of course. Okay, So yeah, I think that

accounts for the vast majority of them. Some of it could be misreporting, could be outright lying, could be you know, perhaps the influence of drugs. Yeah, I mean there's these stories are are always as we know, anyone who's listened to the show knows as well as us who have done all the research, that how easily these stories can be embellished and inflated. So that's not just not just by the people who said they saw the thing, but

by well, yeah, by the people who the story. Some of the older ones, it seems, may have been direct accounting because they were in the newspapers and stuff, so that gives you more of a concrete it doesn't it doesn't morph as much if it's being told true to what was in the paper. And again that's up for interpretation if the paper told true to what the person actually said, because frankly, the press was not anywhere responsible back in those days than they are today. So all right,

Well that's that's all I've got on the Men Men Lights. So, as Joe would say, we should probably get to the part that everybody listens for, which is our awesome administrative details. Oh yeah, alright, So this episode, as well as all of our episodes, are available on our website, uh for streaming or download, as well as links for some of our research. Obviously not all of it, but some of it. UH.

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think yeah, I think so too. Um yeah, I got nothing