From the Vault: Fata Morgana

of my favorite episodes that we did. Okay, downloading into your Brain. Now welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm

Joe McCormick. And you know, we just came off of doing a couple of episodes about the artistic convention of the halo and how that comes through in in various different religious concepts, and how it might be related to optical phenomena that are sometimes observed in the sky, like like solar halos or sun dogs, and jumping off of that, we wanted to hop over to explore another theme today that the sort of in the same wheelhouse, not quite halos,

but an optical phenomenon that has some connection to legendary accounts and myths. And so I thought a great place to start today to get us in the mood would be a reading from the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Now, I think this is going to be probably what would you guess, Rob, like the seventh time we've quoted this poem on the show, always introducing a different type of subject matter. It seems to

go off in a lot of great directions. Well, you know, it's a it's a long work, and it it has a lot of cool things happening in it has a great story and just an infectious cadence. You know, it's just gets gets into your brain. Right. Uh So in this poem, the narrator here, I guess this is a narration within a narration. So this guy gets accosted by an ancient graybeard. He says, like, unhand me, graybeard loon.

But then the graybeard loon starts telling his story and and his story is of course one of of terror and tragedy in the high sea is he He tells that he was once out on a ship and I think they've been sailing around in the south seas, and uh, he somehow brings a curse upon his ship and its crew by shooting an albatross out of the sky with an arrow. And after this their ship falls into unnatural

duldrums in the equatorial regions. There are no winds for it to sail, so it's just sitting there in the water, and and the mariner and the rest of the crew are dying of thirst without fresh water. Yeah, And it's one thing that I guess worth noting about this. You know, we were talking about the ships at sea in these days and superstition among the um among the crew is that on one hand, absolutely the best science and navigation of the day was utilized to get where you're going

and to survive on the open seas. But the crew was often held together by by also this this tenuous web of superstitions, and you you read about some of them, and at times it seems like it would not take much to shift things into the realm of of of you know, dire omens well sailing vessels really are at

the at the mercy of forces beyond your control. Yeah, I mean there's a lot you can do to design a ship well and work hard to you know, do everything you can to get where you're going, but you're still at the mercy of the seas and the weather, and that can make it feel very much like you are a sinner in the hands of an angry god. Yeah, sailing beneath this uncertain sky and uh a top this just dark, unfathomable ocean. Right, So, in the context of the part of the poem we're about to read, so

the curses already come upon them. They're out there diet you know. You get to the part about water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. They're all parched and thirsty, and the boat is just floating around in the oldrums. And then the mariners see something horrible. So I'm gonna read this first bit here and then Rob I I don't think I can do a sailor voice, but I hope you can hear the sailor voice for your part. Okay,

So the mariner says, there past a weary time. Each throat was parched and glazed, each eye a weary time, A weary time how glazed each weary eye. When looking westward, I beheld something in the sky. At first it seemed a little speck, and then it seemed a mist. It moved and moved, and took at last a certain shape. I whist, A spec a mist A shape, I whist, And still it neared and neared, as if it dodged a water sprite. It plunged and tacked, and veered, with

throats unslaked, with black lips baked. We could not laugh nor whale through utter drought. All dumb we stood. I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, and cried A sail, a sail. The western wave was all aflame. The day was well nigh done. Almost upon the western wave rested the broad bright sun. When that strange shape s dove suddenly betwixt us and the sun, and straight the sun was flecked with bars. Heaven's mother send us grace, as if through a dungeon grade. He peered with broad and

burning face. Alas thought I, and my heart beat loud. How fast she nears and nears? Are those her sails that glance in the sun like restless Gossimir's rob I give that four hours? Why why thank you? Uh so? Yeah, so he sees something approaching. They see a weird, a spectral type of ship coming close. And when this phantom ship gets up close to them, they see the figures of death and life in death I think, represented as a skeleton and then like a pale naked body casting

lots to claim the fate of the sailors. Creepy stuff. Yeah. Also a great couple's halloween cost him to keep in mind, right, death and life and death I call life and death. Uh So these passages from the rhyme of the ancient mariner. Uh It's not known for sure, but they may well have been influenced by the legend of the flying Dutchman, a set of related folk tales shared by the seafaring people of Europe at least as far back as the

eighteenth century, probably earlier. And usually the way this legend goes is that there is some kind of spectral ship, a ghost vessel that's doomed to sail the globe in a terrible limbo, forever circling the seas and never allowed to come into port. Often it's regarded as an omen of disaster. If a sailor sees the flying Dutchman. He

knows he's going to die in a shipwreck. Yeah, like this is one of the big ones, uh, you know, as opposed to you know, things like say killing I mean, I mean, certainly killing an albatross clearly can be a big deal, you know, not touching the horseshoe nailed to the mast, you know, things like that. But to see

the flying Dutchman like all is lost. In some versions, even worse than seeing it is that sometimes the ship will come up next to you and the doomed crew will try to hand off letters for you to give to their loved ones, because you know, they can't call de port to send the letters themselves, and you are not supposed to accept these letters. You you say, sorry, I I can't, I can't do it. Oh man, that's

so creepy that that totally holds up. Now. There are a number of popular stories explaining the origin of the Flying Dutchman. I think the belief itself goes back farther than any of these, like written versions of the stories. But in one version, there's a captain named Vanderdecken or sometimes just the Dutchman, who's on a sea voyage home from Batavia, which is in present day into Nisia around the area of Jakarta, but at the time would have

been in the duchyst Indies. And he's traveling from Batavia trying to go back around the southern tip of Africa to a place called Table Bay. And so he's trying to round the Cape of Good Hope, but his ship falls under a terrible squall, and in defiance of God, he swears a brazen oath that he will round the Cape of Good Hope despite the storm, even if it

takes him until Armageddon to do it. And as this oath leaves his lips, the ship sinks, but before it does, the devil hears Vanderdecken's promise and he holds him to it, and this turns the Dutchman and the ghost of his vessel into a kind of wraith of the seas, and they sail forever between life and death without rest until

he can reach his destination. Uh This version is the subject of an opera by Wagner, and I think in that version he actually can go to land once every seven years so that he can try to find the true love that will break the curse. Presumably stop at White Castle or something that this sounds this sounds like a great setup for like a modern horror film, or maybe not a Morrow one modern one, but at least like a nineteen seventies film, you know, or like it

could have been a hammer horror film. You could have have a Vanderdecken as your sort of Dracula s ghostly sailor chap that has come on shore to seduce a hapless woman that that has no idea that this attractive

man is actually the captain of a damn ship. Oh. I mean, that's a great sort of variation on Dracula, right, the more seductive versions of Dracula, where where you know he he falls in love with a woman and he's like, you can be with me, you can we can live forever, but she doesn't realize that that involves being damned along with him. Yeah, should have been Christopher Lee. Yeah, he would have. He would have. He would have made a

good vanderdeck and for sure. But the story that this version of the story was I think very strong around the area of the South Seas and the southern tip of Africa. But there's another common version that takes place in the North Sea, and this is a captain named Heir von Falconberg who sails without rest around the North Sea while playing dice with Satan for the possession of

his soul. And the part about playing dice with the devil for for his soul that recalls very much what happens in the rhyme of the ancient mariner right after the part we read, because remember death and life and death are gambling for the souls of the crew. But there are a lot of other variations on this story with a good deal of elasticity. It is not known

for sure exactly where the legend comes from. Originally. I think I've read some speculation that it could have to do with the Norse legend about a sailor who encounters a kind of uh damned limbo fate, But records of this story go at least as far back as the

late seventeen hundreds. I found one early reference to it from the memoirs of a Scottish man named John McDonald who lived seventeen forty one to seventeen ninety six, and in writing about one of his sea voyages, he writes, quote, the weather was so stormy that the sailors said they saw the flying Dutchman. The common story is that this Dutchman came to the cape in distress of weather and wanted to get into harbor, but could not get a pilot to conduct her and was lost, and that ever since,

in very bad weather her vision appears. Now in some versions of the story, I think the ship is even more spectral, even more of just a clear apparition, something that is on the horizon and with a kind of like ghostly silhouette, or even appears over the horizon. I think it's not exactly clear in the version of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner whether the ship is said to be approaching on the water or when they first

see it it's above the water. He he does say that he looked and he beheld something in the sky that it first looked like it looks like a speck, and then later he realizes it's a ship coming toward them. Uh. And I guess there are a couple of ways you could read that. I know I've always read that as he originally saw the ship flying in the sky. I guess you could also read it as they see the ship on the water and what he's seeing is the

sails poking up over the horizon and the sky. But either way, I think there are some versions where there's a kind of ghost ship that isn't necessarily even confined to the water like it flies. Yeah, yeah, that a

true flying flying Dutchman. Yeah. And of course this is gonna lead us into what we're really talking about here today, a very particular type of of optical phenomena, uh that may be responsible at least in part for legends like this, though of course is always worth remembering that you know, anything like this, like the flying Dutchman for example, in all likelihood, we're dealing with the story that has multiple converging origins. To what extent they are based on things

that people really saw. They were likely different things, you know, like somebody staring into a dark night on a ship, somebody seeing an optical phenomena on the horizon, or somebody you know, looking into the chaos of a storm and

momentarily making out some shape in the flash of lightning. Right, But there are some well known optical phenomenon that fit with some of these accounts so closely that you have to assume at least some of these accounts probably are based on the thing we're gonna be talking about today, which is known as the Superior Mirage, or a variation of Superior mirage known as the Fata Morgana. Um. Now, one thing that will tie into this before we explain

the Superior Mirage and the fatim Organa. Something I noticed that was kind of interesting about the flying Dutchman accounts. A lot of these accounts seemed concentrated towards the polar regions rather than the equatorial ones. The ghost ship usually seems to be sailing either the North Seas or the South Seas more so than anywhere in between. Yeah, quite interesting, So I keep keep that in mind as we proceed here. So yeah, basically from here we're gonna talk about the

mirage itself and mirages in general. But then we'll get back into some more examples of various folk tales and myths that seem to be or perhaps are inspired by fatam Organa sightings. So let's start by talking about the mirage itself. A mirage in general is an optical effect that is sometimes seen at sea, or in the desert or over hot pavement, and in some cases these may take on the appearance of, say a pool of water. Or a mirror surface, and this can cause distant objects

to appear inverted. Uh. Now, to be clear on the language here, you do find the word mirage sometimes used interchangeably with the notion all an illusion, right, and it is something that you're seeing but is not there. So in common language it's sometimes conflated with even like the idea of a hallucination. You know, somebody is just seeing something like it's real in their perception, but there is not an external reality to it, And that's not the

case with the technical meaning of a mirage, right. And I feel like this is also Uh. This is also complicated because a lot of us grew up watching, especially cartoons that would occasionally have a mirage scene, and those would be a bit confusing because a lot of times I feel like they would play it up like just something magical that you're you only saw because you were you were thirsty and dying and you were also a

cartoon dog. Right. Well, in cartoons, I feel like the mirage is always shown in the desert rather than say, over an ice sheet or on the seas. Uh. And and that over the desert you were probably looking at a particular type of mirage. The inferior mirage. Will get into more of the distinctions there in just a minute. But yeah, in the cartoons, it's always like, I don't know that you know, Daffy Duck is seeing a mirage in the desert and it's like an ice cream stand

or something. It's some variation of the oasis in the desert yet, right, it's something very specific that gives the suggestion that you're seeing like a complicated, detailed hallucination, right, But in reality, the sort of mirage, the specific mirrage that we're talking about here, this is an optical effect

that is visible to all. Like if there is a mirage, if you're in a party of say, you know, five people in the desert or on a ship wherever, if you see a mirage in the distance, everyone with you, you know, assuming they have the same site capacity that you have, they will be able to see the mirage as well, and assuming they're looking from the same place also, right, right, yeah,

you gotta have the same vantage point for sure. Um, but you know, now that's not also not to say that you know, this could not be further distorted by the individual, either visually or in memory, but it is a thing that you could and be people can and do capture photographically or on you know, or with a like a video camera. So it is it is not something you're seeing that isn't there. It is an actual

optical phenomena. Right. Uh. You you are seeing something that is really light coming into your eyes looking that way. It's not in your head though. What you're seeing is very distorted, so you're probably wanted. Okay, mirage. How does a mirage happen? It's you know, not caused by you know, um, you know, weird spirits and the you know, in the desert or on the seas well. Mirages in general occur when light passes through air of differing temperatures and the

light is reflected or refracted a k A. Bent. And there are two types of mirages. We can divide them up generally into inferior mirages and superior mirages. This is not a about their quality. It's not like you know, discount mirages and bespoke mirrages. It has to do with where they fall in relation to the horizon. Right. So the inferior mirage is the kind that is being lampooned in the cartoons where a character isn't you know, daffy ducks in the desert and he thinks he sees an oasis.

This is a very real thing that people often experience in desert climates. And this is the inferior mirage. Yes, so the inferior mirage again is your stereotypical oasis mirrage. It looks like a pool of blue water sometimes, you know, appears when you also look out across the desert or down the highway. You've probably seen one of these on your own drives or in movies, especially in movies that have a desert highway. This is this is like cat

Neet two. Directors, they they got to have it, you know, so they'll they'll get a little bit of that mirrage in their in their shot. Right. And it's not only because the desert is hot and you're thirsty that it looks like there's water on the desert. There is a specific climate related reason that you're likely to see a mirage in the desert that looks like a pool of water. Yeah. These occur when a dense layer of cold air sits on or above line of sight with a layer of

less dense, warmer air below line of sight. Now, um an example to pull from here is consider the desert highway. Okay, the sun beats down heats the asphalt, and the hot asphalt heats up the bottom portion of the air. Rays of light from above are refracted when they hit that refracted towards your eyes, resulting in the mirage. So the light of the blue sky above is bent back towards you from the low the horizon, and thus you have this you know, it's it's like a pool of water,

but essentially like what seems like a pool of sky. Yeah, you're essentially seeing the blue light of the sky that is refracted as it changes from the cooler air above to this pocket of warmer air below, and it bends down and makes it look like part of the sky is just sitting on the ground. And when you see that, that blue sky looks a lot like water. Yeah. Now, the superior mirage works the opposite way. Warm air sits

above line of side, cool layer beneath it, light bends down. Uh. The light is not traveling straight at us, but our visual process assumes that it is, so it makes it appear as if it is. Uh, it is above its actual position, such as above the horizon, hanging in the sky and so of course, in some cases this can cause objects that are actually past where you can see on the horizon, so they're you know, beyond the curve of the Earth from your vision, to appear as if

they are popping up over the horizon. Yeah, they can make something that's that's actually just beyond the optical horizons, such as mountain tops, appear ahead of schedule. You can imagine how this would play into some of your expectations whilst whilst out on the open seas. Uh. It can also make objects appear closer or further away, larger or smaller than they actually are. Um, it's quite interesting. Uh.

And and and for another example of this. Apparently, the most common example of a superior mirage, according to Christine Polam in two thousand eight speaking to Robert Siegel of NPR, is a sunrise or a sunset. Quote. The same phenomenon occurs to the Sun every day and makes it appear to be above the horizon when it's actually slightly below it. Oh, I think I've read that this is even more common, like in polar regions. This might be related to what's

known as the Novaya Zimileia effect. Oh yeah, yeah, it's of course, the thing with the sunrise and sunset is since it happens every day, and you know, generally it's the kind of thing you see every day, it doesn't seem out of place. But where we get into these, you know, remarkable stories and legends arising from from sightings of of superior mirrages, it's because they occur. They don't

occur every day. It's something you would see maybe with some frequency, depending on what part of the world and what the exactive environmental settings happen to be. But they have more mystery to them. They're not part of just the everyday movements of the sun or everyday atmospheric behavior. Yeah, the conditions have to be right, So superior mirages they require there to be a certain kind of pocket of warmer air sitting above a pocket of cooler air, which

is not normally how the atmosphere works. Right, Usually the air up higher is going to be cooler, even though heat rises. Usually it's just farther away from the earth and it's going to be cooler. Now, if you're completely lost at this point, which I will, I will forgive you for for being so um, I will say a couple of resources you can turn to. How Stuff Works dot Com has an article about mirages, but also the University of British Columbia's Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences.

They have a great page that I was looking at earlier with very helpful illustrations, included one of these for you to see here, Joe. But uh, just very well presented information about like light bending downward, that's your superior mirage, light bending upward, that's your inferior mirrage. Than now, the superior mirrage can actually get even more complicated than just making something appear above where it actually is, because of the bending of light through these pockets of air when

there are very specific conditions. I think this is something that's usually called atmospheric ducting, Like when a certain kind of duct or column of atmospheric conditions and different temperature gradients in the atmospheric gases are created. This can lead to what's known as fata Morgana right. These occur when there are several layers of warm and cold air that cause what is actually a combination of superi area and

inferior images. The uneven inversion causes the light to refract and ultimately bizarre ways, so you can wind up with multiple segmented reflections in there. So um, you know, it's here that we get into the you know, the confusing images that may be interpreted as floating walls or castles in the sky, or gigantic ships that are flying through

the atmosphere above the horizon, that sort of thing. Now you might wonder where the name Fatim Morgana actually comes from, like why would an optical effect have a name like this? The name Fati Morgana actually comes from the character from our Thurian legend, usually known by her French name Morgan la Fay. In English, of course, Morgan la Fay is

Morgan the Fairy. Though when I was writing about this, for some reason, I kept thinking back to our episodes of Invention where we were talking about Alice sky Blush and her first film, The Cabbage Fairy La Faye a shoe, So I kept thinking about Organ the cabbage Faery. But she she is not merely a cabbage fairy. She is a fairy, sometimes a fairy of of helpfulness and and medicine, and sometimes a fairy of lies and destruction. It always makes me think of the wonderful film ex caliber where

Helen Mirren plays MORGANA do you remember seen it? Oh? It's pretty great, has a very shiny armor, a great cast John Boorman picture. He's got Nissan's in it. Oh really, yeah, this is John Boorman. Did he do it before or after Deliverance? That's a strange eighty one? So okay, I can't remember when Deliverance came out. It was seventies film, right, I think, so? Yeah, Well, maybe i'll check that one

out soon. Yeah, Deliverance was seventy two. Okay, well, so Morgan suddenly I'm imagining Burt Reynolds is King Arthur, but Morgan la Faye is a character that exists in multiple stages throughout the evolution of the Arthurian legendary corpus uh As. You probably know that there are lots of different types of stories of Arthur and the character of Arthur and the stories about him and all the characters around him.

They change a lot over the centuries as this story, uh As, the story is retold and retold, and so she is usually some kind of sorceress or witch or fairy. In earlier sources, it seems she's more often a sympathetic character, a kind of helper or a healer, sometimes a sister

or half sister of King Arthur. In later stories, she's presented as more morally ambiguous, or even the vindictive and deceitful villainous of the plot, as in the fifteenth century Lamorte d'artour in by That one's by Thomas Mallory, Sir Thomas Mallory, uh, and that one is the source of a lot of the Arthurian stories that people know. But La fata Morgana is just the Italian for Morgan la

Fay or Morgan the fairy. But you still might be wondering, Wait a minute, why is this type of complex superior mirage associated with a fairy or sorceress from Arthurian literature. Well, remember that fairies are tricksters first of all, and Morgan le Fay in these later tellings of the arthur saga, is known for her deceptions. But the connection appears to

run even deeper than that. So I was reading about this in a article for Wired by Matt Simon, that is, in part, I think a review of a book by Marina Warner called Phantasmagoria, published in two thousand eight from Oxford University press, and Matt Simon is writing up a section from this book that is about the discovery of the Fatim Morgana, or at least an early documentation of the Fatim Morgana with a with a scientific point of view.

So he tells the story of a Jesuit priest named Father Domenico Giardina, who lived in the seventeenth century on the island of Sicily. And so I'm about to describe some visions. I think there's some confusion about whether Giardina saw the visions himself or whether he was describing the visions of another person. But either way, one day in the sixteen forties, somebody, maybe Jardina, was gazing out across the Strait of Messina, which is the stretch of ocean

between Sicily and mainland Italy. And according to Jardina's writings, uh, what was seen here was quote a city all floating in the air, and so measureless and so splendid, so adorned with magnificent buildings, all of which was found on a base of a luminous crystal. So, okay, that's impressive, but it didn't just remain that way. Jardina claims that the city transformed itself into a garden and then into

a forest. And I can't help but notice the dangerous inversion that might imply the city, of course is the place of order and humanity, and it transforms into the woods, which is the place where the power of nature rules and travelers become lost. And in some of the classic Arthurian stories, I think that's a place you you really see this like civilization versus the woods distinction where the woods are just full of unaccountable magic that has power

over you rather than you over it. Yeah. Absolutely, And uh. One thing I love about this is this is already hit on several different themes that we will find not only in you know, um, you know, tales from you know, elsewhere in Europe, but but tales from the other side of the world. Uh, and you know other you know, other other cultures seem to have possibly or in some cases possibly seen um optical phenomena of this nature and

had some of the same interpretations. Uh So, anyway, Jardina's description goes on after that, even after it becomes a bunch of woods, there are more transformations and more chaos. He saw what looked like armies attacking towns and then eventually the entire scene just vanishes. And Jardina tried to explain this vision in terms of science other than magic.

He he blamed salts in the region, which he wrote, quote rise up in hot weather in vapors from the sea to form clouds which then condensed in the cooler upper air to become a mobile specchio, which means a moving polyhedracal mirror. Now this is not correct, but as

we've seen, this actually isn't very far off. It doesn't necessarily have to do with salts, but the effect probably was something like a superior mirage of the opposing shore and things on it, or a fata morgana even more complex, uh sort of shifting, quickly transforming mirage that was caused by the vertical arrangement of of gases of different temperatures

and atmospheric ducting. Yeah, and you know, one of the interesting things about this I was reading from a source that i'll side later in the episode, and they were talking about how indeed we we didn't really um begin to understand what was going on with mirages like this, and the eighteenth and nineteenth century and even even a say Arab scientists who during the medieval period. Like that was, they knew more about optics than anyone else in the world.

Even they were not able to to make sense of what they were experiencing when they too experienced uh you know, superior inferior mirages on the horizon. Yeah, exactly so. So this explanation is not correct, but I think it's surprising how close he got yea. So here here's the question, where does Morgan la fay come in? Right? Well, here

I'm going to read from from Simon's article. According to Warner, the Norman's brought stories of Morgan's magic to Italy, particularly her penchant for luring sailors to an undersea palace with visions of castles in the air. Fata Morgana is particularly prevalent in southern Italy straight of Messina, where Father Giardina experienced his own vision, and then later Simon writes, and long before arthury legend it could have been the sightings of these phenomena gave rise to any number of woe

something is appearing in the sky scenes in antiquity. Warner argues, So, I think the the idea of the fatim organa is that there is some equation of this optical phenomena of seeing things far away or over the horizon, appearing up in the air above the horizon, and in some cases even uh distorted, inverted and stacked upon themselves, forming bizarre visions that could look like castles in the sky, cities in the sky, uh, weird floating objects, ships sailing in

the air, or among the clouds. And you might be tempted, reading accounts of things like this to think, well, okay, you know, it's either just creative the creative mind at work, or it is uh it is you know that these people's mythology or or legends that are then described. But the fatim organa gives us the opportunity to look to actual optical nomina as a is it possible or in

some cases like it seems almost definite? Cause yes, though I guess somebody would not be could not be blamed too too much for thinking of it as a kind

of deceptive fairy magic. Yeah, no, I think so, because ultimately, like we've said before, when you when you witness something that you cannot explain, a lot of times you have to go to the pre existing h narratives, the pre existing scripts uh to figure out what it might be, and that might be aliens, it might be um you know, fit that the fairy folk, it might be the gods

or sea monsters, etcetera. It seems like the sea in particular is full of a lot of characters who want to lead you astray and get you into trouble with deceptive visions or invitations. You know, the sirens, the all those things. So I guess the woods too. I don't know, the woods in the sea have some things in common. Yeah, they're both wild realms and there you know, there's a plethora of of mythical creatures and beings and strange lights that will lead you astray. Now I came across what

I thought was a pretty interesting hypothesis. I'm not sure how well supported it is, but at least in this one case, the fotom Organo mirage has been said to not just influence supernatural legends, it may possibly explain specific catastrophic navigational blunders in maritime history. And the main possibility that has been proposed here is the iceberg collision that sank the Titanic. Okay, so this hypothesis is covered in an April article for the New York Times by William J. Broad.

In short, there's British historian named Tim Malton who was working with the help of somebody named Andrew T. Young, who's an astronomer and mirage specialist at San Diego State University and uh. With Young's help, Malton refined and put forward a hypothesis that could explain why the Titanics lookouts failed to spot the iceberg in time to avoid the collision, and end why a nearby ship failed to respond to

a distress signal. Uh So, Malton claims that the conditions of the icy water in the North Atlantic on the night of the sinking of the Titanic were responsible for creating a kind of wall of water illusion that could have obscured the approaching iceberg from view. And Broad describes the fatim organa effect as follows quote. Most people know mirages as natural phenomena caused when hot air near the

earth surface bends light rays upward. In a desert, the effect prompts lost travelers to mistake patches of blue sky for pools of water. But another kind of mirage occurs when cold air bends light rays downward. In that case, observers can see objects and settings far over the horizon. The images often undergo quick distortions, not unlike the wavy reflections in a fun house mirror. Okay, so this is in line with what we've been talking about, but broad

on to say. In an interview, Mr Malton said he first learned the possibility of cold mirages when reading a nine British inquiry on the Titanic sinking. It suggested that the icy waters could have cooled the adjacent air and warped images that confused the Californian, a nearby ship that could have rushed to the Titanic's aid but instead did nothing.

Fascinated Mr Malton, who sailed boats in his youth, dug into navigational records and found that both the Californian and the Titanic had moved into the icy Labrador current that night and had encountered conditions ideal for cold mirages. He then hunted through reams of official and unofficial testimony to see what people saw, or what they thought they saw.

A drama of misperceptions ensues. Mr Malton's book shows how mirages could have created false horizons that hid the iceberg from the Titanic's lookouts by this theory, the intersection of dark sea and starry sky would have looked blurry, reducing

the contrast with the looming iceberg. And then he goes on to site some of the testimony of the lookouts who were who were watching the horizon that night, and and so they put together this idea that superior mirages could have hidden the iceberg from site as they were approaching it by creating a kind of blur or haze along the horizon. And then also that that a type of superior mirage caused by the the icy currents in the cold water could have interfered with the Californians ability.

I remember that was the other ship that was nearby that did not intervene, could have interfered with its ability to correctly assess what was going on with the Titanic. And this led to a series of misunderstandings that caused them not to help. That is interesting. Yeah, Now I don't know how much you know, the most relevant experts would put into this hypothesis. Today, I was trying to see if I could find criticisms of it, and I did find a series of papers in the journe An

Old Weather from twenty nineteen by Mila's in Cova. The first one of the four part series is called Titanic's Mirage Part one, The Enigma of the Arctic High and

a Cold Water Tongue of the Labrador Current. I didn't have time to get into this whole series in depth, but it looks from what I can tell like the author argues that maybe the mirage explanation is possible, but probably not the explanation that they think is most consistent with the facts, and other explanations for the haze over the water that night that would reduce visibility would include something that is more commonly known as sea smoke, which is just a kind of natural fog that forms when

very cold air moves over warmer water. Yeah, and that, coupled with the fact that Billy Zane is chasing Leonardo DiCaprio around ship, that's probably distracting everybody. I mean, that's going to create a steamy fog of its own, right, Yeah, thank thank um. Yeah. I have an interesting historic tidbit here that I think you know that flows nicely out of the Titanic example. Uh, this one takes place uh well techno, technically it takes place on water as well,

but on frozen water. Uh. And it concerns uh something that pops up as well, the idea of like phantom islands, phantom mountains. Uh, something in the distance that you know, looks like some sort of large geographical um occurrence, but then as you get closer it does not. And this particular tidbit concerns crocker Land. Have you ever been to crocker Land, Joe, I don't think so. Now for some reason, I'm thinking Betty crocker Land. Well, as it turns out,

nobody has been to crocker Land, and uh. And here's the story. So it's nineteen six and Robert E. Perry Arctic explorers exploring the polar regions, and he makes an alarming sighting a range of mountain peaks rising above the ice cap some what looks like four hundred miles uh, you know, west of Greenland's northern tip. So he names

this crocker Land, and it apparently goes from there. It ends up appearing on at least one published map, and then seven years later, Arctic explorer Donald B. McMillan he ventures into the same region in search of crocker Land. Um, you know, thinking that he's going to, you know, arrive there and further study it. And he initially sees these mountains, but then they slowly vanish as he draws closer, and as it turns out, there was nothing there at all

but flat, featureless ice. And this is how he describes it. This is from his beliefs. Is from his autobiography quote. The day was exceptionally clear, not a cloud or trace of mist. If land could be seen now is our time. Yes, there it was. It could even be seen without a glass.

Extending from southwest true to north northeast. Are powerful glasses, however, brought out more clearly the dark background in contrast with the white, the whole resembling hills, valleys and snow capped peaks to such a degree that, had we not been out on the frozen sea for a hundred and fifty miles, we would have staked our lives upon its reality. Our judgment then, as now is that this was a mirage

or loom of the sea ice. Oh. I guess the thing that we haven't discussed yet but is related, is that there is another phenomenon called looming that can also cause illusions of this kind. Seeing different things like with relationship to the horizons, sort of appearing out of place that works by a different mechanism. Yeah. Now the next example I want to cover though, is almomst definitely an example of the Fata Morgana. Uh. And this is actually the one that that led me uh to uh to

bring this up as a potential topic. Um, because I was researching the shan Haijing for our recent episode on the shan Haijing and h I ran across a Chinese connection to the Fata Morgana in an article from n nine by Edward H. Schaefer published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society titled Foos Sang and Beyond the Haunted Seas to Japan. Now. Edward H. Schaeffer lived nineteen

thirt through ninete. He was an American historians, sinologist, and writer noted for his experience on the Tang dynasty, and he was a professor of Chinese at the University of California, Berkeley for thirty five years. He also did some key English translations. In this article, however, Schaefer is looking at various examples of a class of Chinese poem about travel, particularly about this very specific about saying goodbye to honored

guests as they depart on a journey. I'm trying to think if there are any um like English poems that come to mind that have a similar theme. I don't know, not that I can think of at any rate. It was a popular motif at the time in China and a popular journey. Specific journey for these poems during the Tang dynasty, which which was six eight through nine oh seven, was a journey across the Sea of Japan, frequently taken

by monks, diplomats, and others. So this was and is the puffing Sea, the bursting Sea, the domain of danger, for sure, but also of supernatural wonder. Now, as we've said, this can be said of basically any large body of water. This can be said of any seafaring civilization. Right anywhere people meet the ocean, you find these descriptions of the ocean as a as a potentially deadly place, a mysterious place. And we've developed rich myths and legends to account for it. Uh,

you know, any time, you know, just across cultures. But Schaefer points out that there was really a lot of this talk regarding the Eastern Sea, and you'll find it in poems and in accounts of all sorts, including from very well traveled and well educated individuals, and he describes these sightings as being marked with quote greater awareness than ever before of the denizens of the oceanic world. So what are these denizens? Particular? Note here are the shin

or clam monsters of the Eastern Sea. And uh, this is where we get shin jing, which is or um or high fish and low, which are terms for mirages in Mandarin. Oh wow, So if you were talking in Mandarin about a mirage, you're saying something that literally could mean something like clam monster. Uh yeah, yeah, Like the

these terms are are all connected. Yeah. So while the pre Han genesis of the term shafer rights would seem to apply to real world clams, you know, the type of clams you might catch and eat and some culinary traditions, uh, it clearly evolved into a legend. And so this is what he writes. Quote. Beginning as an unassuming marine invertebrate, the shin was later imagined as a gaping, pearl producing clam, possibly to be identified with the giant clams of tropical seas,

for instance, Tridactna. That's the genus of these if you've ever seen images of the giant real world giant clams, that's uh, that's the genus, he continues. Quote Finally, by early medieval times, it had become a monster lurking in submarine grottoes, and was sometimes endowed with the attributes of a dragon, or, more likely, under Indian influence, a naga. So it gets this gets like just super super super weird, and I love it. So these the shin were said.

These giant clams in the ocean deep were said to exhale and belsh up bubbles and froth which that they could. They could then manifest into spectral castles and haunted palaces made of what Schaefer translates as a kind of plasma and later describes as being something between flesh and energy, like a kind of ectoplasm. Quote, dreamlike correscant with strange

lights and prismatic hazes. These seemingly insubstantial confections or counterparts of the sea asle pin lay and also of the astral places of the high gods of Dalis m wow. All from clams. Huh, Well, giant clams, giant magical clams that breathe ectoplasm and use it to craft massive illusions in the sky. So he from here he goes on to share what I believe his translation, one of two translations he provides of a poem by Wang Chi uh rhapsody on the high House of the clam Monsters, and

it's it's just glorious. Um. You can look up the Shaffer article. You can find it. Uh. I think it's on j store and you can access it for free, and you can you can read the full version of both poems. I just want to read the first part of the initial I think was supposed to be a more accurate translation. There in the peeing Bird's basin, shoreless and boundless are the clam monsters high houses crag crested.

They do not rely on timber to knit their frames, but use their own fnast to fly and float them hidden away without present sign they blaze and splendor, hardly to be matched. Then one of them emitst waves and surges there as if it would stud the sky with them,

forming semilacra. Mutating, it creates porches and railings, preferring to simulate the sun, which melts our cares so large that it would cover giant turtle Mountain with yet another island or dripped down on the shark men's houses and hanging streams. Then it is as if the fogs have used up their mistiness, the melting clouds have gone home, the moon sheds brilliance over a thousand lee vision is terminated only by the eight horizons. Wow, yeah, it's it's I love it.

It's just so full of weird wonder and and again has has just start start? Comparisons can be made to those to the accounts of the Fata Morgana that you were reading earlier from you know, the other side of the world. But I love all the unexplained elements, the shark men's houses. Yeah, yeah, um, I may touch on the shark man in a bit, but yeah, there's just

so much wonder. This feels like some sort of a just a it's a weird hallucinatory vision out of uh, you know that he might find something similar out of say, the weird fiction era in an American literature. Now I am kind of wondering how exactly some of these uh words are translated, because obviously, like so the words simulacras in there, and I understand what that means in context. I wonder if there's actually like a term in the original that is becoming exactly that word, or if there

is something that's somehow the gist of something. Yeah, you know, offhand, I can't recall of Schaefer got into that. He it's a he. It's mostly related to these two translations that he gives, but he does get into some of the specific terminology. Um. But on top of that, Schaefer himself

seemed to be in a pretty poetic in his own right. Um, you know, just as he's describing the text, there's some wonderful sections, Like he writes, in this literary vision, the clammy builders are not ordinary creatures at all, but alien and anonymous natural forces. Their amorphous bodies are unstable and perhaps illusory at least ectoplasmic or spectral. They have no gender. They dwell in the murky bnthos of the Sea of Whales,

beyond the domains of the shark people. And uh and he actually he he provides a second translation in which he uses meter in English rhyme. Uh. And again I just have the first section here. Uh, but but he does the whole thing. I don't know, did Joe do you want to read this one? Oh? Sure I could. If you want juff, go for it. Where giant fish foul range above the seas, and craggy houses clammy monsters, weize they need no didar to build these halls. Extruded

e cores fuse as roofs and walls. Abistle gloom eclipses them below, but spouted up at the shed a fiery glow. When one explodes up through the tossing spume, we hope a vault of spangled stars to bloom. Instead, it seems a shining golden dome to match the Sun, the god's immortal home. It makes the giant seamount seem a hill as vast cascades into the vortex spill. Then, when the upcast spray and froth degrade, and clouds beyond the far horizon fade, the lunar lantern sets the sky alight, and

all the seven seas show clear and bright. The fishy people's shine. Their scales around the waves, now soothed, give out no further sound. A palace heaves and spouting rare perfumes and majesty above the ocean looms pierces the stubborn haze that round it lies and thrusts its mighty walls

into the skies. Yeah, I I absolutely love it. Excellent again, giant clam spouting, uh, you know, bubbles and froth and exoplasm up into the sky and forming an otherworldly castle or city in the sky, and then you know it vanishes and uh. And Schaffer himself points to the connection here between these tales and the very real phenomenon of fatimorgana mirages, which are still seen today on the Eastern Sea. So you know these, uh, these strange castles are are

still glimpsed out there. You know that these are this is an optical phenomenon that still occurs. What who are the shark people? Do you know something about shark? Mean? Yes, I look these up. These would be the jaw rin or the people of the flood dragons. So they were a kind of mir folk um or you know, or a shark person. I like how he describes them as the as as the shark people or fishy people if

you will. Well, that makes them sound more like the subject of that Peter Benchley novel adapted to a made for TV movie that we talked about not too long ago. What was the one about like the shark human hybrid. Oh what was it? It wasn't beast. It had a similar one word name, because you know that you stick with what what works. Kim cot all in its right, Yeah, and Craig T. Nelson and a shark that I think in the book at least wasn't was a Nazi created

mutant intelligent shark. I'm not sure if that translated into the TV adaptation or not, or if it had like big muscular arms or not. Oh, it's a mini series. It's called Creature Creature, Yes, but I I really want to see a film about um, about this giant clam um about the shin and uh, you know, I'm not sure that that it doesn't exist. Clearly, there's a lot of a wonderful and fantastic Chinese cinema out there, and um,

I didn't really dive in enough. So anyone out there, if you're aware of a film that features even a cameo by a giant of fairy city spouting clam, let me know, all right, I have another example I want to turn to, and this one takes this to another continent entirely. This takes us to Africa, specifically, Southern Africa, okay, and this concerns the San people. So these are indigenous people's own, chiefly in Botswana, uh Namibia and southeastern Angola.

Historically they would have been a hunter gatherer people and they've been referred to by several different names over time, and today are apparently not instantly identifiable by any physical features, language or culture. Um. But I was reading an article about this. This is a from the year two thousand by Helmett tributsch Uh title does mirage derived mythology give access to Sun rock Art? And this was published in

the Southern African Archaeological Bulletin. In it, the author contemplates a link between the traditional rock art of the sun, their myths, and the superior mirages they would have observed in their environment that again, like all these can still be observed in those environments today. And the author points out that you know that that naturally the sort of mirage was seen throughout the world for thousands of years.

He's the author who brings up, uh, you know, the the idea that even Arab Sciencests, who we're pretty much masters of six uh, during the medieval period, they weren't able to understand this so it wasn't until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that we we really were able to fully crack what's going on when we behold a superior mirage.

But you know, everyone who had access to to these mirages would have probably had some thoughts about them, and you can imagine how they might have influenced one's worldview and magical thinking. So sun Rock art in particular depicts in some cases huge flying creatures, upside down creatures and double creatures, finned land creatures, as well as floating waters.

Now there there have been a different ways of interpreting these, Uh, the author points out, so representations of mythic ideas art for art's sake, or and this is always interesting, altered states of consciousness or shamatic visions. But the Tributes presents a what he prefers to with a naturalistic interpretation in which the observation of superior mirages are a key factor. Um,

of course, and we should drive home. Uh. You know, it's it seems like all of these could be in play at the same time, because certainly you could have hallucinations occurring whilst looking at or remembering or or contemplating the nature of things seen on the horizon, combine that with your own myth making, uh, and just creative thinking

in general. Now, as for the specific things he's referring to, first of all, giant sky water snakes or rain animals above the horizon would have been linked to superior mirages that that were often observed in the lull before rainstorms.

So these would have been interpreted as powerful entities responsible for rain that could then be called out to spiritually, like these were the masters of rain, the gods and monsters of rain and uh, and they're the ones who who you need favor from in order to you know, to have a wet and rich environment. And then there's this really fascinating concept of the underwater where souls and

the sorcerer 's went to become stretched. Uh. And this may be linked to glimmering inferior mirages and stretched or elongated forms. Uh. These may derive from superior mirages. And yeah, you look at examples of this and it's like, you know, um, you know, clearly humanoid representations and some will be of what you might take to be normal size and others are greatly elongated. And uh, yeah, I'm particularly interested by

this idea. Of the inverted world, and sorcerers who try to make contact with the inverted world by he points out, adopting an inverted arm position. Here's a quote from the paper quote, what would be more realistic than depicting inverted lions in a mirrage in such an environment the underwater of sun belief. It could even be that trance has developed as a way to imitate the inverted world, the world where everything is the other way around. The body

does not preserve the upright position anymore. Food or liquid does not into the mouth but leaves It has depicted in many scenes where liquid, sometimes interpreted as blood, is streaming from the nose of animals and shamans. Maybe the crossed legs of painted antelopes and trans dancers and sound rock art may simply mean that they do not walk normally, but walk in an inverted way, that is backwards, as

they should in the other world. That's really interesting. Yeah, and again this this connects with with some of what you were sharing earlier on again from the other side of the world, uh, you know, dealing with contemplations of fata morgana and superior and inferior mirages. So from from here really I mean, we don't even have to spend much time at all talking about the nature of unidentified flying objects in the sky um because you can see, I mean, it's all written on the wall here. I mean.

The fotomorgana is sometimes used to explain UFO sightings, which which is just a natural direction to go into, especially when you consider modern sailing vessels, um and and modern vehicles and objects in generals often glinting with metallic details. You can imagine them seeing above the horizon as superior mirrages.

And you know, if you consume enough UFO material, which I think everybody has at this point, that might be one of the first places, if not the first places that your mind goes well, yeah, I mean, I'd imagine that superior mirrages could explain all kinds of especially anomalous lights. Yeah, I've in particular, I've seen it linked to discussions of UFO sightings in Texas and also the so called men Men light in the Australian outback, and and I think, and I think you can you can find plenty of

other examples of this as well. There are similar lights that can be found in the Middle East that have been linked to U two superior mirrages. So again we're dealing with something you can find around the world, and then we find all these interesting stories that are either directly linked to superior mirrages or could easily linked to them, at least at least in part. So it basically explains everything some bigfoot I don't know, I could an elongated humanoid. Um,

you know that that could work. Oh, slender Man is a superior mirrage. Oh you know. I was just thinking about the San Rock illustrations and traditions about people walking backwards. That makes me think of the lesh she again? Oh did the less she walk backwards? Was that? I think you could confuse the leshy by walking backwards. I don't know that's right. Or you could put your clothes on backwards, right, yeah, yeah,

the upside down, the the inverted world moving backwards. Um. Now, as I mentioned earlier on the superior mirages uh and the Fata Morgana, these are things that can and our photograph. They can be photographed. They are photographs. So if you do some image searches you can find some some really excellent examples of these. I remember seeing one in particular that instantly made me think of the gigantic spaceship from Independence Um. Now, Independence Day wasn't an actual movie, it

was not a mirrage. But but the mirages that that that occur can be of that nature. You know. It's like there's something huge in the sky or on the horizon, and it does not confirm, confirm, conform to, uh to, to anything that would occur in the natural world that you you know of. You know, like you have to leap to the the unexplained if you're not aware of the sort of you know, the again, the optical phenomena

that can take place, just some shimmering hulk. Yeah. So, on that note, we would obviously love to hear from anyone out there who has witnessed one of these, you know, because I don't think I have. I don't remember ever seeing a superior mirage, much much less Auto morgana um, unless I was just you know, barely noticing it, certainly. And that's the thing. A lot of these examples that you hear about, they're they're hard to ignore. Uh So, if you have experience with them, please right in and

let us know, tell us all about it. Tell us about your experience with it, what was going through your mind? When you looked at it. Also, if you're familiar with any other of the you know, the many global traditions that either are directly linked to these optical phenomena or could easily be linked to them. We'd love to hear about it, and you know, we'll try and discuss it on an upcoming episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Listener mail that's what publishes Monday's in the Stuff to

Blow Your Mind podcast feed. On Wednesdays we have the Artifact. Tuesdays and Thursdays we have Core episodes, and on Fridays we have Weird House Cinema where we don't so much get into the science, but we talk about a weird movie of note. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact

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