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What is the will-o'-the-wisps?

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By Chelsie Vandaveer

October 31, 2005

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Night came early. The road was poor, not much better than a path through the heath. A distant storm was brewing and the man wanted to get to an inn before the wind and rain caught him. Tired, the traveler could barely follow the road in the dark. Several times he stumbled off the trail; he was increasingly alarmed that he might lose his way. He cursed that he had neglected to carry a lantern, thinking his journey would have had him safe by
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To his great relief, he saw a light ahead and hurried to keep it in view.
Will o' the Wisp Giclee Print
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sunset.

To his great relief, he saw a light ahead and hurried to keep it in view. He could see it was carried by a small person, a dark silhouette in the increasing darkness. That traveler seemed to know the way, so the man felt safe following him.

For a while the path was good, but then the man found it was mired in places and stony in others. Suddenly, the light ahead stopped and its carrier turned to look back. The man rushed forward to catch up with the fellow traveler, but the path wound upward through large boulders.

Puzzled, the man could hear a roar of water. He didn't remember anyone telling him the road passed near a river. He could barely make out the figure with the lamp, but in the dim light could see he was standing on the opposite side of a deep chasm with a raging river below. The light vanished and he heard a high wild laugh. He was now quite alone and bewildered in the night.

The Ignis Fatuus or Marsh Light Lures the Unwary Traveller
into Dangerous Marshwaters Giclee Print
J.w. Whimper
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So goes one legend of the will-o'-the-wisps, the peculiar light said to lead travelers astray, lure children into a fen never to be seen again, and guardian of vast treasures. The will-o'-the-wisps has been seen by thousands of people through the centuries. It flits over damp ground, first here, then there. It skips away when one approaches and beckons when one stands still. It was believed the souls of stillborn children, fairies, spunkies, or corpse candles.

Rational men called it ignis fatuus [ig' nis fah' chu us], foolish fire, implying that only fools—the ignorant and superstitious—believed in will-o'-the-wisps*. By the 1800s, though, enough rational men had seen the phenomenon to realize that indeed foolish fire existed.

But science could not explain it—maybe flammable marsh gases, some sort of static electricity, a strange fungus, or perhaps an unknown form of lightning. Though the light is often white or blue, no noticeable heat is generated. When the marshes were drained, the lights went away.

It is now hypothesized that a little known gas, phosphine (aka phosphane, PH₃) and diphosphine (P₂H₄) are created in frequently wet soils by bacteria decaying the vegetation. Bacteria and action are still unknown, but phosphine and diphosphine have been detected in rice paddies and at sewage and animal waste treatment plants.

When these unstable gases escape to the atmosphere, they spontaneously oxidize, ignite, and set the more mundane swamp gases like methane (CH₄) and hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) aflame. The effect is usually brief and the fire appears to dance over the marsh as other bubbles of escaping gases catch fire.

But, then again, there are other strange lights that have eluded explanation....

*Will-o'-the-wisps is not capitalized (except of course at the beginning of a sentence). It apparently derived from an older meaning of will—to wander, go astray, or be lost—and wisps, thought derived from the Norwegian vippa meaning to skip about or perhaps the small bundles of twisted straw (wisps) used to light fires. The term today means any person or thing that leads one astray by visionary or dazzling appearance.

Marfa, Texas has its share of strange lights that have never been explained. The Marfa Chamber of Commerce celebrates these lights every year on Labor Day weekend. To learn more about the Marfa Lights, click on the link:

http://www.marfacc.com/marfa_lights1.htm

On Friday, September 1, 1905, the beach at Kittery Point, Maine caught on fire. The Maine Geological Survey has a page with the story of the fire that burned even over the waves lapping the shore. To learn more about Kittery Point's burning beach, click on the link:

http://www.maine.gov/doc/nrimc/mgs/explore/marine/sites/feb00.htm

In 1908, a ghost (corpse candle) danced and entertained viewers near a stone bridge in Belle Plaine, Minnesota. The Scott County Historical Society has an article about the ghost taken from the Belle Plaine Herald published in December, 1908. To read the article in Connections, click on the link:

http://www.scottcountyhistory.org/newsletter/schs_connections_2003_fall.pdf

The Outback has its share of weird phenomenon. Bill Chalker has posted a page dedicated to the history and mystery of the Min Min Lights. To learn more about what some consider simply a mirage, click on the link:

http://www.theozfiles.com/min_min_lights.html

(Compiled from: "Will-o'-th'-wisp", James B. Calvert, Geology and Scenery, The Remarkable Surface of our Planet, University of Denver, 2003; The Century Unabridged Dictionary, 1889, Global Language Resources, Inc. 2005; "Phosphorus cycling through phosphine in paddy fields", Sheng-Hui Han, Ya-Hui Zhuang, Ji-Ang Liu, and Dietmar Glindemann, The Science of the Total Environment, 258, 2000; and "Phosphine" and "Will o' the wisps", Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2005.)

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The first half of this volume is devoted to the various species of elves, a species that has existed since the dawn of time. These creatures flourish in both the daytime and the nighttime, undoubtedly the most complex and mysterious species of the fairy world. Some of them are well-known like Sylphs, Selkies and Will-o'-the- Wisps, while other more obscure elves are revealed here for the first time.

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