Cold Harbor, Hanover Co., Virginia—two men in a field—“an apparently
clear sky.” In the _Monthly Weather Review_, 28-29, it is said that upon
Aug. 7, 1900, two men were struck by lightning. The Editor says that the
weather map gave no indication of a thunderstorm, nor of rain, in this
region at the time.
In July, 1904, a man was killed on the summit of Mt. San Gorgionio, near
the Mojave desert. It is said that he was killed by lightning. Two days
later, upon the summit of Mt. Whitney, 180 miles away, another man was
killed “by lightning” (_Ciel et Terre_, 29-120).
It is said, in _Ciel et Terre_, 17-42, that, in the year 1893, nineteen
soldiers were marching near Bourges, France, when they were struck by an
unknown force. It is said that in known terms there is no explanation.
Some of the men were killed, and others were struck insensible. At the
inquest it was testified that there had been no storm, and that nothing
had been heard.
If there occur upon the surface of this earth pounces from blankness and
seizures by nothings, and “sniping” with bullets of unfindable
substance, we nevertheless hesitate to bring witchcraft and demonology
into our fields. Our general subject now is the existence of a great
deal that may be nearby, or temporarily nearby, ordinarily invisible,
but occasionally revealed by special circumstances. A background of
stars is not to be compared, in our data, with the sun for a background,
as a means of revelations. We accept that there are sunspots, but we
gather from general experience and special instances that the word
“sunspot” is another of the standardizing terms like “auroral” and
“meteoric” and “earthquakes.” See Webb’s _Celestial Objects_ for some
observations upon large definite obscurations called “sunspots” but
which were as evanescent against the sun as would be islands and jungles
of space, if intervening only a few moments between this earth and the
swiftly moving sun. According to Webb, astronomers have looked at great
obscurations upon the sun, have turned away, and then looked again,
finding no trace of the phenomena. Eclipses are special circumstances,
and rather often have large, unknown bulks been revealed by different
light-effects during eclipses. For instance, upon Jan. 22, 1898, Lieut.
Blackett, R. N., assisting Sir Norman Lockyer, at Viziadrug, India,
during the total eclipse of the sun, saw an unknown body between Venus
and Mars (_Jour. Leeds Astro. Soc._, 1906-23). We have had other
instances, and I have notes upon still more. The photographic plate is a
special condition, or sensitiveness. In _Knowledge_, 16-234, a
correspondent writes that, in August, 1893, in Switzerland, moon-lighted
night, he had exposed a photographic plate for one hour. Upon the
photograph, when developed, were seen irregular, bright markings, but
there had been no lightning to this correspondent’s perceptions.
The details of the sheep-panic of Nov. 3, 1888, are extraordinary. The
region affected was much greater than was supposed by the writer whom we
quoted in an earlier chapter. It is said in another account in _Symons’
Meteorological Magazine_, that, in a tract of land twenty-five miles
long and eight miles wide, thousands of sheep had, by a simultaneous
impulse, burst from their bounds; and had been found the next morning,
widely scattered, some of them still panting with terror under hedges,
and many crowded into corners of fields. See London _Times_, Nov. 20,
1888. An idea of the great number of flocks affected is given by one
correspondent who says that malicious mischief was out of the question,
because a thousand men could not have frightened and released all these
sheep. Someone else tries to explain that, given an alarm in one flock,
it might spread to the others. But all the sheep so burst from their
folds at about eight o’clock in the evening, and one supposes that many
folds were far from contiguous, and one thinks of such contagion
requiring considerable time spread over 200 square miles. Something of
an alarming nature and of a pronounced degree occurred somewhere near,
Reading, Berkshire, upon this evening. Also there seems to be something
of special localization: the next year another panic occurred in
Berkshire not far from Reading.
I have a datum that looks very much like the revelation of a ghost-moon,
though I think of it myself in physical terms of light-effects. In
_Country Queries and Notes_, 1-138, 417, it is said that, in the sky of
Gosport, Hampshire, night of Sept. 14, 1908, was seen a light that came
as if from an unseen moon. It may be that I can here record that there
was a moon-like object in the sky of the Midlands and the south of
England, this night, and that, though to human eyesight, this world,
island of space, whatever it may have been, was invisible, it was,
nevertheless, revealed. Upon this evening of Sept. 14, 1908, David
Packer, then in Northfield, Worcestershire, saw a luminous appearance
that he supposed was auroral, and photographed it. When the photograph
was developed, it was seen that the “auroral” light came from a large,
moon-like object. A reproduction of the photograph is published in the
_English Mechanic_, 88-211. It shows an object as bright and as
well-defined as the conventionally accepted moon, but only to the camera
had it revealed itself, and Mr. Packer had caught upon a film a
space-island that had been invisible to his eyes. It seems so, anyway.
In _Country Queries and Notes_, 1-328, it is said that, upon Aug. 2,
1908, at Ballyconneely, Connemara coast of Ireland, was seen a phantom
city of different-sized houses, in different styles of architecture;
visible three hours. It is said that no doubt the appearance was a
mirage of some city far away—far away, but upon this earth, of course.
This apparition is not of the type that we consider so especially of our
own data. The so-called mirages that so especially interest us are
interesting to us not in themselves, but in that they belong to the one
order of phenomena or evidence that unifies so many fields of our data:
that is, repetitions in a local sky, signifying the fixed position of
something relatively to a small part of this earth’s surface. We can not
think that mirages, terrestrial or extra-terrestrial, could so repeat.
But if in a local sky of this earth there be a fixed region, perhaps not
a city, but something of rugged and featureful outlines, with
projections that might look architectural, reflections from it, shadows,
or Brocken spectres repeating always in one special sky are thinkable
except by the Chinese-minded who regard all our data as “foreign
devils.” The writer in _Country Queries and Notes_ says—“Circumstantial
accounts have even been published of the city of Bristol being
distinctly recognized in a mirage seen occasionally in North America.”
If we shall accept that anywhere in North America repeated
representations of the same city or city-like scene have appeared in the
same local sky, I prefer, myself, a foreign devil of a thought, and its
significance, whether hellish or not, that this earth is stationary, to
such a domestic vagrant of a thought as the idea that mirage could so
pick out the city of Bristol, or any other city, over and over, and also
invariably pick out for its screen the same local sky, thousands of
miles, or five miles, away.
In the _English Mechanic_, Sept. 10, 1897, a correspondent to the
_Weekly Times and Echo_ is quoted. He had just returned from the Yukon.
Early in June, 1897, he had seen a city pictured in the sky of Alaska.
“Not one of us could form the remotest idea in what part of the world
this settlement could be. Some guessed Toronto, others Montreal, and one
of us even suggested Pekin. But whether this city exists in some unknown
world on the other side of the North Pole, or not, it is a fact that
this wonderful mirage occurs from time to time yearly, and we were not
the only ones who witnessed the spectacle. Therefore it is evident that
it must be the reflection of some place built by the hand of man.”
According to this correspondent, the “mirage” did not look like one of
the cities named, but like “some immense city of the past.”
In the New York _Tribune_, Feb. 17, 1901, it is said that Indians of
Alaska had told of an occasional appearance, as if of a city, suspended
in the sky, and that a prospector, named Willoughby, having heard the
stories, had investigated, in the year 1887, and had seen the spectacle.
It is said that, having several times attempted to photograph the scene,
Willoughby did finally at least show an alleged photograph of an aërial
city. In _Alaska_, p. 140, Miner Bruce says that Willoughby, one of the
early pioneers in Alaska, after whom Willoughby Island is named, had
told him of the phenomenon, and that, early in 1899, he had accompanied
Willoughby to the place over which the mirage was said to repeat. It
seems that he saw nothing himself, but he quotes a member of the Duc
d’Abruzzi’s expedition to Mt. St. Elias, summer of 1897, Mr. C. W.
Thornton, of Seattle, who saw the spectacle, and wrote—“It required no
effort of the imagination to liken it to a city, but was so distinct
that it required, instead, faith to believe that it was not in reality a
city.” Bruce publishes a reproduction of Willoughby’s photograph, and
says that the city was identified as Bristol, England. So definite, or
so un-mirage-like, is this reproduction, trees and many buildings shown
in detail, that one supposes that the original was a photograph of a
good-sized terrestrial city, perhaps Bristol, England.
In Chapter 10, of his book, _Wonders of Alaska_, Alexander Badlam tries
to explain. He publishes a reproduction of Willoughby’s photograph: it
is the same as Bruce’s, except that all buildings are transposed, or are
negative in positions. Badlam does not like to accuse Willoughby of
fraud: his idea is that some unknown humorist had sold Willoughby a dry
plate, picturing part of the city of Bristol. My own idea is that
something of this kind did occur, and that this photograph, greatly
involved in accounts of the repeating mirages, has nothing to do with
the mirages. Badlam then tells of another photograph. He tells that two
men, near the Muir Glacier, had, by means of a pan of quicksilver, seen
a reflection of an unknown city somewhere, and that their idea was that
it was at the bottom of the sea near the glacier, reflecting in the sky,
and reflecting back to and from the quicksilver. That’s complicated. A
photographer named Taber then announced that he had photographed this
scene, as reflected in a pan of quicksilver. Badlam publishes a
reproduction of Taber’s photograph, or alleged photograph. This time,
for anybody who prefers to think that there is, somewhere in the sky of
Alaska, a great, unknown city, we have a most agreeable photograph:
exotic-looking city; a structure like a coliseum, and another prominent
building like a mosque, and many indefinite, mirage-like buildings. I’d
like to think this photograph genuine, myself, but I do conceive that
Taber could have taken it by photographing a panorama that he had
painted. Badlam’s explanation is that mirages of glaciers are common, in
Alaska, and that they look architectural. Some years ago, I read five or
six hundred pounds of literature upon the Arctic, and I should say that
far-projected mirages are not common in the Arctic: mere looming is
common. Badlam publishes a photograph of a mirage of Muir Glacier. The
looming points of ice do look Gothic, but they are obviously only
loomings, extending only short distances from primaries, with no
detachment from primaries, and not reflecting in the sky.
For the first identification of the Willoughby photograph as a
photograph of part of the city of Bristol, see the New York _Times_,
Oct. 20, 1889. That this photograph was somebody’s hoax seems to be
acceptable. But it was not similar to the frequently reported scene in
the sky of Alaska, according to descriptions. In the New York _Times_,
Oct. 31, 1889, is an account, by Mr. L. B. French, of Chicago, of the
spectral representation, as he saw it, near Mt. Fairweather. “We could
see plainly houses, well-defined streets, and trees. Here and there rose
tall spires over huge buildings, which appeared to be ancient mosques or
cathedrals.... It did not look like a modern city—more like an ancient
European City.”
_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 27-158:
That every year, between June 21 and July 10, a “phantom city” appears
in the sky, over a glacier in Alaska; that features of it had been
recognized as buildings in the city of Bristol, England, so that the
“mirage” was supposed to be a mirage of Bristol. It is said that for
generations these repeating representations had been known to the
Alaskan Indians, and that, in May, 1901, a scientific expedition from
San Francisco would investigate. It is said that, except for slight
changes, from year to year, the scene was always the same.
_La Nature_, 1901-1-303:
That a number of scientists had set out from Victoria, B. C., to Mt.
Fairweather, Alaska, to study a repeating mirage of a city in the sky,
which had been reported by the Duc d’Abruzzi, who had seen it and had
sketched it.