Ethereal and fleeting, mesmerizing and elusive, these floating blue flames have been a mainstay
in European folklore since at least the 14th century.
You may have heard the name Will-o’-the-Wisp, but do you know what it is?
Stories of sentient blue flames floating and bouncing across marshes and bogs permeate
cultures from northern Europe to Australia.
While some stories have faded into ephemera just as the floating blue flames that inspired
them, these elusive creatures remain mainstays of myth and legend in pockets across the globe.
So what are they?
Faeries?
Fireballs?
Ghosts?
Atmospheric phenomena?
Here’s the haunting history of the Will-o’-the-Wisp.
[Monstrum intro.]
The Will-o’-the-Wisp are most frequently described as small, moving blue flames that
hover a few feet off the ground and do not flicker.
Cold or cool to the touch -- if you’re brave or reckless enough to touch one—they can
be found in marshlands, bogs, and swamps.
All treacherous places to wander even without the alluring glow of the Will-o’-the-Wisp
leading you deeper into danger.
Follow the Will-o’-the-Wisp’s seductive dance, and you may find hidden treasure…
or a watery grave.
Stories of these elusive and inscrutable flames vary.
Some say spotting the floating flame is an indication that someone is blessed with the
power of foresight, but more often, folklore and literature paints them as impish tricksters,
restless spirits, or malevolent beings.
In Sweden, Will-o’-the-Wisps are ghosts with lanterns fated to wander aimlessly for
removing their neighbours’ boundary markers.
In English tradition, the blue flames are lights carried by elves.
And in Australia, the light may approach someone, but anyone who tries to catch it will disappear.
Other tales say the lights are crafted by fairies, or even a fire species all its own.
In Belgium and the Netherlands, they are the lost spirits of unbaptized children, while
in other places the floating flames are said to be the wandering souls of unhappy women,
unrighteous men, priests who have broken their vow of chastity, or even those souls who escaped
purgatory.
In fact, the ethereal light gleans its most enduring name Will-o’-the-Wisp or “Will
with a Wisp” from the Saxon word “wile” for fraud, trick, or deceit, and the Swedish
word “wisp” meaning a small lit bundle of tinder.
Variations include ‘Will-with-the-Wisp,’ ‘Willy Wisp,’ and ‘Will o’ the Wykes.”
Essentially, the name hints that the light comes from some trickster spirit holding
a flame aloft.
Further north, in Norwegian folklore the Will-’o-the-Wisp is called “Hoberdy’s
Lantern,” “Hobany’s Lantern,” or even “Hob and his Lantern.”
‘Hob’ may come from the Norwegian hoppe meaning mare, or the Old Norse word hoppa which translates to leap or hop.
Which might not be as obvious a name as a deceitful bundle of tinder, until you know
that the Will-o’-the-Wisp’s movement often resembles the cantering motion of a horse.
Yet another moniker for the floating lights?
“Jacky Lantern” or “Jack-o’-Lantern.”
Yes, that’s right —the carved pumpkins that adorn many a stoop or doorstep on Halloween
actually borrow their name from this mysterious light.
Jack-o’-lantern is of English language origin and simply means Jack of the Lantern.
So when did we start hearing about these creatures?
Well, the first recorded sighting of Will-o’-the-Wisp is described in a 1340 text penned by Welsh
poet Dafydd ap Gwilym. He wrote that “in every hollow” live “a
hundred wrymouthed wisps.”
He names the phenomenon canwyll corff, Welsh for “corpse-candle,” thereby introducing
what will become another common name for the supernatural blue flames, and associating
the lights with death and burial sites.
The first appearance of the lights in the English language occurs in 1563 (Book of Meteors
by William Fulke) under the name “ignis fatuus.”
Here they are described as “foolish fire that hurteth not.”
In another variation of the Will-o’-the-Wisp myth, the ghost lights are attributed to a
mischievous sprite called a Puck, which uses the light to lure humans to fall into ditches,
bogs, and pools and then laughs at their predicament before fleeing.
Sometimes referred to in this form as “walking fire” it can also appear as a horse, bull,
or eagle, but it is always a trickster.
Shakespeare adopts the name Puck for the character of a shape-shifting sprite in A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, first performed around 1596.
This Puck turns into a phosphorescent glow and hovers over the marshes at night to trick
travelers.
In Henry IV he uses the name ignis fatuus to refer to “a ball of wildfire.”
The Will-o’-the-Wisp even appears in John Milton’s famous epic poem Paradise Lost
(1667) as a malevolent distraction: “a wandring fire/Compact of unctuous vapour, which the
night/Condenses, and the cold environs round/Kindl’d through agitation to a flame,/Which oft, they
say, some evil spirit attends,/ Hovering and blazing with delusive light,/Misleads th’amaz’d
night-wanderer from his way,/ To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool,/There
swallow’d up and lost, from succour far...”
Like many other references in literature and folklore, Milton’s Will-o’-the-Wisp is
associated with danger, bad news, and even death.
But over time, the elusive blue flame also became a literary metaphor for anything that
is just out of reach, a delusion one may chase endlessly but unsuccessfully.
Will-o’-the-Wisp sightings are reported across the globe, and the frequency of their
marshland appearances points to a very real origin—the stories may be made up, but the
lights themselves are not.
There’s scientific truth to these reports.
Theories explaining the Will-’o-the-Wisp phenomenon circulated in scientific communities
for hundreds of years.
In fact, in 1704 Isaac Newton wrote in Opticks of the “ignis fatuus” as “vapours shining
without heat.”
The vague statement unsurprisingly sparked vigorous debate in the academic communities
of the 18th and 19th centuries.
English folklorist and historian Jabez Allies travelled over Europe collecting
stories and evidence of antiquity—and in 1839 he got lucky with his own first-hand
experience catching a glimpse of the mysterious flame.
Allies claims that while traveling near Worcestershire in England he saw the Will-o’-the-Wisp.
He described the light as “very clear and strong,” unwavering, and “much bluer”
in color than a candle.
He wrote: “Sometimes it was only like a flash in the pan on the ground; at other times
it rose up several feet and fell to the earth, and became extinguished; and many times it
proceeded horizontally from fifty to one hundred yards with an undulating motion, like the
flight of the green woodpecker, and about as rapid; and once or twice it proceeded with
considerable rapidity in a straight line upon or close to the ground.”
Allies reports that the two nights in a row he saw the phenomenon there were only minimal
clouds and bright starlight.
Both evenings were “rather warm” and had no fog.
He speculates that the Will-o’-the-Wisps appear on nights after a rainfall in the winter
season.
Was Allies on to something?
What else could explain these odd flames?
Fireflies?
Too small, and they glow with a yellow or green flickering light.
Glow-worms?
The females do produce a bright light but don’t fly.
Male glow-worms fly—but don’t glow.
St. Elmo’s fire perhaps?
The plasma-creating weather phenomenon does produce a blue glow, though it requires a
strong electrical field in the atmosphere and an encounter with a conductor like the
mast of a ship or the wing of a plane, which doesn’t appear in reported Will-o’-the-Wisp
sightings.
What about ball lightning?
Spherical, glowing, and capable of lasting for longer than a brief flash, yes.
But only during thunderstorms, with ranges in color, and usually accompanied by a hissing
sound and a distinct odor.
Will-o’-the-Wisp aren’t associated with any smell and only seem to appear a day or
more after rainfall or storm.
Perhaps then, dare I say it—luminous owls?
An unusual occurrence in which the feathers of the bird are contaminated by a fungus whose
metabolic process produces a glow when the owl is in the dark.
But Will-o’-the-Wisps move more slowly than owls typically hunt and don’t tend to cover
much ground.
The most likely explanation?
Spontaneous combustion of marsh or swamp gas, a rationale proposed at least as early as
1729 by W. Derham who, after observing the phenomenon over half a decade, directly refuted
the hypothesis that the lights were caused by glowworms flying together.
Given the frequently reported occurrence of the Will-o’-the-Wisp on marshland, swamps,
and bogs, swamp gas seems pretty plausible.
Made up of about 60 percent methane as well as other components like carbon dioxide, swamp
gas is the byproduct of decomposing vegetation in areas like swamps, marshes, and even landfills.
And in some rare cases, if there is enough heat and oxygen produced by the metabolic
process, the gas can spontaneously combust and produce fire.
And methane just happens to burn with a blue flame and a yellowish glow.
Will the mystery of the Will-o’-the-Wisp ever truly be solved?
Even today many people swear the Will-o’-the-Wisp is a supernatural or paranormal experience.
Interestingly, there have been no modern encounters with the Will-o’-the-Wisp and therefore
no new data to add to any potential debunking theories.
Perhaps there are no more Will-o’-the-Wisps because we have drained and demolished so
many marshes and lowlands.
Maybe we’ll never know what caused the glowing blue flames spotted so many years ago.
And I kind of like that.
Glow on mysterious fiery orbs.
Glow on.