Will-o’-The-Wisp: Bioluminescence or Otherworldly Spirits?

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At the risk of sounding completely insane, I think I may have seen a ghost, or a spirit, or a phantasm, or whatever you want to call it. At least that’s what it seemed like at the time.

A few of my friends and I were walking down the road just after sundown when we saw an orb of red light come out of the woods, float up and down in a zig-zag pattern for a few moments, and then disappear.

Now, typically, I might assume that my mind was playing tricks on me and that I could not have possibly seen such a thing. However, I have four other people that can verify that they saw the exact same thing that I’ve just described, and we can’t all be collectively insane, right?

After doing some research, it seems that many other people throughout the world and throughout history have experienced a similar thing. It’s a phenomenon known as “will-o’-the-wisp” and very little is understood about it to this day. 

Now, will-o’-the-wisp is not the only name for this phenomenon. What people call it depends largely on local tradition, where the phenomenon is experienced, and the time period when these orbs of light are seen.

In folklore traditions throughout the world, stories upon stories have been collected of experiences that all bear a striking resemblance to one another: floating balls of light, sometimes differing in color, sometimes following people who are traveling in the night, sometimes considered good omens, and sometimes considered bad.

Whether or not these orbs of light are supernatural is very much up for debate. However, with so many confirmed experiences of this phenomenon, one thing is for certain: these things are real. 

Let’s take a look at the strange balls of light and the many times they’ve interacted with us human beings. 

The Americas

My personal experience with will-o’-the-wisp happened in Panama. In Latin America in general, there are quite a few folkloric accounts of this phenomenon, all of which have different explanations based on the community in which they were experienced. 

In Mexico, they have two separate explanations for these mysterious floating balls of light. One explanation is that they are witches (brujas) who have changed their forms into balls of light that can float around in the night. The other explanation is that these balls of light mark locations where buried treasure is hidden, and that the buried treasure they reveal can only be found with the help of kids. 

In Argentina and Uruguay, the phenomenon is called luz mala (evil light) and is extremely important to the rural mythology of both of the countries. To this day, rural people in both of these countries fear these lights. 

In Colombia, these lights are associated with the myth of La Candileja. As the story goes, there was once a grandmother who did an exceptionally bad job raising her grandchildren and so they grew up without any morals. Eventually, all the grandchildren became murderers and thieves. When the grandmother died, she was damned to wander the Earth as a ball of light for all eternity as punishment. 

Asia

In Bangladesh and India, these floating lights are often called aleya. In the local folklore of that region, the intention of these lights is to confuse fishermen and make them lose their sense of direction or perhaps even lead them to their deaths if they end up navigating into a marsh and getting stuck. 

In Japan, there are two explanations for these balls of light. One explanation is that they are hitodama (human souls) that float around graveyards. The other explanation is that they’re yokai, magical demons with supernatural abilities. According to legend, when two of these balls of light meet, they can combine and form a kitsune, which is a fiery fox demon that torments humans. 

Europe

Britain is absolutely littered with local folktales related to will-o’-the-wisp. It seems like every region of the country has its own stories about this phenomenon, and some of them are quite extraordinary.

In parts of Wales, they believe that the light is a fire that is held in the hand of a small, goblin-like fairy who’s trying to lead lone travelers off their paths at night. In Guernsey, the light is believed to be a lost soul. If you see one of these lost souls, you’re supposed to turn your coat or hat inside-out, which will apparently stop the spirit in its tracks, or put a knife in the ground blade-up, which will apparently convince the spirit to try to kill itself. 

In Finland, will-o’-the-wisps are associated with eternal flames that mark the sites of buried treasure. However, these flames cannot be seen with the naked eye. You need to find the seed of a magical flowering fern to be granted the ability to locate these treasures. 

Scientific Hypotheses

Even before the dawn of the 17th century, scientists were already claiming that the will-o’-the-wisp phenomenon is created by naturally occurring gases igniting when coming in contact with other gases. Modern scientists have come to the same conclusion. 

The leading hypothesis is that these balls of light are caused by the oxidation of phosphine, diphosphine, and methane. When phosphine and diphosphine come in contact with oxygen, they can ignite and then, in turn, ignite the abundance of methane around them. 

Because these compounds are often created through organic decay, they’re commonly found in swamps and marshes, which are often hotbeds of decomposition.

Another possible explanation for will-o’-the-wisp is bioluminescence. Some plants and animals are capable of creating their own light through internal chemical processes, and some of these plants and animals live in the swamps and marshes where people report seeing will-o’-the-wisp.

For instance, honey fungus emits an eerie glow when it’s rotting that could easily be mistaken for will-o’-the-wisp. People have also suggested that the moonlight reflecting off the white plumage of a barn owl could explain the floating orbs of light that people have reported seeing. 

Problems With the Science

Allow me to inject a bit of personal bias into this article for a moment. The light that my friends and I saw was red and moved in a zig-zag pattern. To my knowledge, there are no gases that naturally move in a zig-zag pattern. Why would a ball of phosphine, oxygen, and methane drop quickly then suddenly zip back up into the air over and over again? That’s my first problem with these scientific explanations. 

So, if it wasn’t a ball of gas that my friends and I saw, then maybe it was some sort of bioluminescent animal, right? Well, the only known animals that produce red bioluminescence are found in the ocean. That rules out the bioluminescence argument.

I’m not saying that the will-o’-the-wisp that my friends and I witnessed was absolutely a supernatural being or anything like that. There could be a perfectly logical explanation for it. However, from all of the research that I’ve done on this subject, I haven’t found anything that I can comfortably say explains what my friends and I saw. All I will say is that it was probably a very natural occurrence, but I’m not ready to rule out the supernatural just yet.