A gamekeeper in Norfolk, England, in the year 1897 observed the flight of an unusual luminous object. According to his story, he was “... out one very dark night stopping up fox-earths. While I was so engaged I saw a very bright blue light pass close to my face and was very much startled as I saw it going away from me ... I put it down as some insect.” After the mysterious light reappeared a few nights later, the gamekeeper prudently began carrying his gun and eventually he managed a shot at the light. To his amazement he brought down “a poor old half-starved barn owl, Tyto alba, whose body continued to glow for some hours after death.”[[VI-1]]
The Luminous Owls of Norfolk
Some ten years later, on the night of February 3, 1907, another Englishman and his son while taking a walk observed a similar luminous phenomenon. Apparently about a quarter of a mile away, it moved horizontally over a course several hundred yards in length, reversed direction, then rose into the air to the height of forty feet or more. “It then descended and again went through the same evolutions many times. The light was slightly reddish in the centre, and resembled a carriage lamp for which we at first mistook it. We watched it for twenty minutes and were quite at a loss to ascertain its cause.
“On December 1st, 1907, when again reaching the top of Twyford Hill, I noticed what I took to be the lamp of a motor bicycle moving rapidly along the Bintree road to the south. The light suddenly stopped, rose into the air above the trees and retraced its course. This it did several times, sometimes rising twenty to forty feet into the air, and then rapidly descending. I called my groom and his wife from their cottage a few hundred yards away, and they watched it with me for several minutes. I then went to my house about half a mile off, and from one of the attic windows watched it with my son and three servants for a short time....”
The mysterious light appeared frequently for a period of weeks, maneuvering silently, its luminosity sometimes so great that “it literally lighted up the branches of the trees as it flew past them.” Attempts to identify it through a telescope were unsuccessful but eventually one observer was lucky enough to hear a sound as the light soared past, and at once identified it by its unique call as a white owl, Strix flammea[[VI-2]].
If these sightings had occurred half a century later, the witnesses might well have called them flying saucers.
Things That Glow in the Dark
The luminous owls of Norfolk have appeared at intervals since 1866 to frighten the superstitious and puzzle the naturalist, but ornithologists managed to solve the mystery some years ago[[VI-3]]. The birds acquire their temporary luminosity from contact with a common fungus, Armillaria mellea, popularly known as “honey-tuft.” This mushroom, which mycophagists prize for its delicious flavor, grows in large clumps on dead trees and stumps. The dark-brown cap is rough, with fibrous scales, while the white gills are hooked or toothed at the end and the spores are white. The dense white lacework of the root system or mycelium, which gives off a phosphorescent light, may permeate the entire tree and extend even into the fibers at the base of the tree. Wood infested with the fungus can glow in the dark, sometimes so brightly that a man could read his watch by its light.
Many of the tales of fox fire, corpse candles, and lanternmen undoubtedly come from glimpses of this fungoid phosphorescence. Owls that seek refuge in the dark interiors of hollow trees during the daytime may brush against the veins of the mycelium, which adheres to the feathered body. Flitting about at night, the luminous bird becomes the dancing flame of the will o’ the wisp.
Other luminous mushrooms abound in woods, swamps, and marshy areas. Decaying, they may produce an unearthly light and can give off a peculiarly unpleasant odor. Unexpectedly seeing and smelling a bird touched with the substance, on a dark night, a witness might well feel bewildered and even frightened. Polyporus sulfureus, which grows in dense masses on dead trees, often phosphoresces brilliantly in the early stages of its decay, as does Clytocobe illudens, the jack o’ lantern. In the tropics these fungi may produce enough light to read by. Birds, insects, and animals that brush against them can carry away some of the luminous material and thus, for a time, appear to be luminous themselves.