Tasmanian lights

In January 2017, I had been hunting for the Tasmanian Wolf with my friend Mike Williams. On our way back to Launceston we stopped for the night with some of Mike’s friends. The couple had a small goat farm close to Bronte Lagoon [in the geographical centre of Tasmania]. Mike told me that weird lights were seen around their farm and in the small woods that separated the farm from the lagoon. He had witnessed these before and the couple had told him that they appeared most nights except during rain.

On that evening we ventured out after dark to look for them. After a while a small white light appeared over the chicken coop. It was about the size of a grape and seemed to hang in mid-air. The light blinked out, but another reappeared in the woods. We entered the woods and approached the light. Others lit up and as many as four were visible at any given time. They would wink out and then appear in another location. Some seemed to be in the branches of trees, some at the base of trees and others hanging in mid-air. When approached, they winked out and reappeared further away in the woods. They were not glowworms or fireflies, both of which I have seen before.

Mike and I decided to visit the lake to see if there was a light source that could explain the phenomenon. At the lake there was a small lighthouse, but its beam didn’t reach the farm or woods, both of which were at a higher elevation. At the far side of the lake we saw a red, spherical light about the size and shape of a football, floating in mid-air in the woods. When we returned to the farm the couple told us that they too had seen the football-shaped light, but they thought it was orange rather than red. The lights disappeared soon after. The couple said that one of the lights had once been seen close to a window above a flower box. In the morning the plants were dead and withered. Richard Freeman Centre for Fortean Zoology, Exeter