Aerial music
Further to audio phenomena in Canada [ FT349:10]: in 2012 strange sounds were recorded in the vicinity of North Battleford, Saskatchewan, and later featured on BBC 2’s Nature’s Weirdest Events. They resembled avant-garde electric guitar, as though Jimi Hendrix were making a comeback with the Neil Young of Arc and Fred Frith of Henry Cow. Appealing as that scenario is, the cause was probably distant industrial noise distorted by a temperature inversion.
Simon Young’s column on the gnomes of Wollaton Park [ FT348:23] reminded me of another sighting involving primary school age children, the Little Blue Man of Studham. This case, I believe, can be attributed to blue ball lightning, as Theo Paijmans [ FT339:56-57] presents ample evidence of unusual atmospheric conditions. The glowing entity, with its long split beard, has more in common with a garden gnome than an extraterrestrial: did familiarity with these ornaments influence the childrens’ hallucination (for want of a better word)? Richard George St Albans, Hertfordshire