Another look back at an adventure in my life!
Not many people are privileged to witness this rare natural phenomenon. I had occasion to see, smell and hear one of these oddities when I was 15 years old.
The year was 1958, on my aunt's farm near West Lorne in S.W. Ontario. Two of my cousins and myself were sitting through an intense summer storm in our sleeping quarters in the tobacco barn. It was about midnight and the rain, thunder and lightning had been intense enough that we were awake and curious to watch the results. In the metal barn the thunder was so loud we could barely speak and be heard. The electrical power had been intermittent for a while and we had a small light on in the room. We were looking out towards the curing sheds where my oldest cousin John was checking things with a flashlight, looking for leaks or worse, fire.
A sudden close lightning strike made the three of us jump, the lights went out and a new light lit the inside of our room. The entire room was bathed in a light blue glow coming from the globe on the concrete floor between our beds. This was so startling that we all three jumped on the beds, just to get off the floor. The sudden appearance of this grapefruit sized, luminous, fuzzy ball was terrifying. It hovered or floated just off the floor and slowly moved in a random, searching motion in an area of about 4 square feet. We were awed into silence for maybe 2 seconds but then all three laughed and yelled things. " What is that? What should we do? Do you see this? What's that smell? Listen to the noise."
Our room was a 20 foot by 12 foot room with one outside door and a door leading to the interior of the barn. Our three beds were on two walls under the windows and we were now watching this "thing" wandering about the floor giving off a buzzing sound, like butter sizzling in a skillet, or a cicada in a tree. No more than 10 seconds had gone by when the light began a more determined track across the floor, instead of random motion it moved in a straight line towards my bed then returned to the other side. As it got close to me I yelled and then Ed would yell it was coming to him, Adrian was closest to the door to the barn but none of us were close to the outside door. We had no time to discuss a plan but we all wanted away from this thing or we wanted it away from us. Adrian, the oldest of us, about 18, jumped off his bed and got to the door which led to the barn, opened it and got back on his bed, off the floor, as our visitor moved within a few feet of him. It must have been the correct thing to do because the ball of light now tracked directly through the door and into the large open area of the barn. A bright burst of light, slightly blue, lit up the inside of the barn now and then a sharp crack of sound and everything was in darkness. The power was still off and in the dark we sat silently for another few seconds before we started to make wild remarks about this encounter.
Since none of us had ever heard of ball lightning, the "thing" was determined to be some burning metal fragment of the barn that had been struck by lightning and got in through the wall. We did later find the spot near a wall socket where a small sliver of wood had blown off the wall; a burn mark nearby was determined to be the source, but the explanations of the colour, light, sound and smell (it was ozone, not sulphurous) were hard to explain to those who had not experienced it.
Some months later I spoke about this to the physics teacher in the high school and she mentioned the word "ball lightning". She was interested in my description and asked me to write a short note about the experience. Since that time I have had an interest in physical phenomena and once read a fascinating book, filled with stories and eyewitness accounts, of things experienced in nature which were all almost impossible to believe. I wish I could remember the source of that book.
About 20 years later I went to work in the McMaster Nuclear Reactor and had the chance to view a fissioning reactor immersed in water 20 feet below. I had heard of the phenomenon of Cerenkof Radiation and as soon as I saw the blue glow of the light caused by fission particles slowing below light speed, I knew I had seen the same glow in the ball lightning.
