Ball Lightning.

This is a little something that I wrote on 5th December 1994 to the:

National Meteorology Society, LONDON.

Dear Sirs,

A recent "Equinox" program on channel 4 TV on the mysteries of ball lightning has inspired me to write about an experience that I have lived with for 40 odd years. I hope that you can make sure that it gets to the right department.

I am 55 years old male who is and always has been full of scepticism. I don’t believe in God, ghosts, aliens from space, life after death or even The Loch Ness Monster. But I do believe in ball lightning.

I was a boy of about 10 or 11. Two of my mates and I had been scrumping fruit in an orchard a little ways from home. Whilst we were going about our business of stuffing ourselves and our tucked-in-trouser jumpers with apples and pears etc., the sky blackened suddenly. Huge spots of rain started to fall. We decided that enough was enough and that we would make a dash for the safety of our estate which lay at the other side of the railway.

We raced to the embankment - spilling some of our ill gotten gains as we went - and I was the first up it and on to the line. The rain had changed to hail and it lashed into my face as I ran along the sleepers between the rails. I had only gone a yard or two when, through half closed stinging eyes, I saw a hockey sized ball of light winging it’s way from the sky up in front of me leaving a curving bright trace in it’s wake. (In retrospect I put that down to latent imaging) The ball seemed to change direction slightly and headed straight towards me at speed.

At the last moment, and only about four yards ahead of me, it dipped onto the rail and shot passed me with a sort of sssszssssszsssszsssz sound. I turned to follow it’s path and I watched wide eyed as it bounced along the rail. It jumped from the one rail to the other once and disappeared around a bend in the track still bounding. A second or so later I saw a flash and heard above the storm a bang like a rifle shot from that direction. I was shit scared, (though the apples and pears I had consumed may have had something to do with that) and quickly got down the embankment on the other side and made for the shelter of the houses.

We were all gasping for breath as we hurried into a mates house. "Did you see that?" I asked excitedly. "See what?" came the reply. Neither of the other two had seen what I had seen.

It dawned on me years later that they would not have seen it from where they were on the embankment, for they were a distance behind me and below eye level of the track. What I have been describing about the fire-ball, probably took just two or three seconds. Four at the outside in reality, from start to finish.

They ribbed me a little about it for years after, until even I started to doubt what I had seen. What’s worse, I couldn’t bring myself to tell any adults at the time because of the feared consequences of scrumping and being on the rail line.

Please. I will take any amount of questioning about the incident and would gladly undergo a lie detector test if it would help.

Yours faithfully (and sincerely).


Anthony W. Allsop.

Writers note: Nothing came of it.