THE Mysterious Lights OF Longdendale
Longendale via WikimediaCommons
IN VARIOUS PLACES around the world, strange and otherworldly light phenomena have been witnessed and reported by many people for hundreds of years. The most well-known and popular of these are the Hessdalen Lights in Norway. But here in the UK, there is a similar and just as bizarre phenomenon which has involved very similar mysterious lights being seen over a long period of time.
Located between Sheffield and Manchester in northern England, the Longdendale valley stretches for 15 miles and is nestled between two peaks, Shining Clough and Bleaklow. It is a quiet area alongside reservoirs and moorland. Dating back hundreds of years, the valley has built quite a reputation for strange phenomena, ranging from ghostly apparitions to UFOs and everything in-between.
Locally, the most well-known of these phenomena is the mysterious “Longdendale Lights”’, described over the years as “strings of lights”, orbs, light beams and other unnatural light formations. The lights witnessed have also varied in colour, including orange, yellow, white and blue lights of varying brightness that have been reported on the ridges and throughout the valley. Over the years many witnesses have come forward to tell of their encounters with these anomalous lights while hiking or driving along the gloomy, quiet valley.
Some sightings of the lights have been mistaken for hikers torches signalling for assistance, plane crashes and other prosaic explanations. Often one of the local mountain rescue teams will be called out to help, yet upon searching for the source of the lights found there to be nothing whatsoever in the area where they were witnessed. Other witnesses tell of lights following their cars down the valley, some even claiming that the lights have entered their vehicles before zipping out again.
For some years the area was monitored 24 hours a day by a webcam where the curious could watch an area of the valley via an internet website, though this no longer operates.
Could the lights have a more earthly explanation? Longdendale is scattered with pylons and there is a flashing beacon on a TV transmitter in the area. The valley is also close to the flight path of incoming aircraft descending towards Manchester Airport. Yet none of these theories account for the range of unusual light phenomena witnessed in the valley or the traditional accounts of lights on the hills, many of which were reported long before the arrival of aeroplanes, pylons and other man-made sources of electricity. One of the other theories is that the lights are caused by ball lightning. Ball lightning is an unexplained phenomenon described as luminescent, spherical objects that vary from pea-sized to several metres in diameter. Scientists have proposed a number of hypotheses to explain ball lightning, but data remains scarce. Its existence has depended on public sightings which have produced fairly inconsistent results. Owing to the lack of reproducible data, the existence of ball lightning as a distinct physical phenomenon remains unproven.
Dr. David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam University is one of the leading authorities on folklore and contemporary legends and has researched and written about the Longdendale Lights in depth, including multiple witness stories of their encounters in the valley.
This coming summer, myself and fellow UAPMedia colleague, Dan Zetterstrom, plan to visit Longdendale and traverse part of the valley in the hope of seeing something for ourselves.
