Fireballs in the Sky
Twice a year for centuries, an eerie phenomenon has appeared from the Mekong River in Thailand. Fireballs of different sizes begin rising out of the water into the sky. They have been seen by hundreds of thousands and no one can explain what causes them. In the past they were called ghost lights. Now they are known as Naga fireballs named after a great river serpent of Buddhist folklore. Such phenomena are seen in many places around the world. What is going on in the skies of Earth?
October 8th of 1871 was a terrible day. That was the day the Great Chicago Fire started. In the horrific blaze, 17,500 buildings were destroyed. 90,000 people, one in three residents, were left homeless. While only 120 bodies were found, it is believed that 300 people died. The fire burned for two days and cost 4.5 billion dollars in today’s money. The popular understanding is that the fire was started by Mrs. OLearys cow that kicked over a lantern. The truth is that no one knows how the fire started. It was attributed to Mrs. O’Leary by the Chicago Tribune, which had a history of anti-Irish xenophobia.
According to eye-witness descriptions, tornadoes of fire rose 100 feet into the air howling like thousands of evil spirits. What has been forgotten is that October 8 was a night of fire across large swaths of America. Spectacular fires swept over the entire mid-west including Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas. Wisconsin suffered the greatest loss of life with 1500 dead. 1100 died in Peshtigo, Wisconsin where fire burned a swath ten miles wide and 40 miles long. Most frightening was the attributed cause of those fires. Eyewitnesses state that a gigantic, still unexplained fireball, swept low across the sky and it didn’t act like a meteor.
Peshtigo is a small town in Northeast Wisconsin. The record of that hideous fire is maintained in the town museum. Most of the eyewitness accounts come from the children who lived through the hell storm. Young Wesley Duket remembered it this way. These are his words: “When balls of fire started coming down from the sky, my mother and father took us to the spring and wrapped us in wet quilts. My sister saved the sewing machine by wrapping it up, too. We had a team of oxen. One of them stayed at the spring with us, and the other strayed away and burned. We had a shed of colts, and you could hear them thrashing as they burned. My brother wanted to open the shed door, but my sister was afraid he would burn to death too. My mother and father were (temporarily) blind. I went to see Mrs. Reinhart, our neighbor, and I found her dead. I liked her a lot and that really hurt me. Her shawl had not completely burned, and I took the corner that was left and kept it with me for many years.”
Carrie Jackson was only four months old on that terrible night. She tells her family’s story. “When the fire came, my father was sick, and he stayed in bed until the house caught fire and he had to run. My uncle took my brother and hurried out of the house. My mother wrapped me in a baby blanket and told my dad to come with us. He told us to run into a plowed field. My uncle carried my brother with him, somewhere we didn’t know. But my mother took my father’s advice and hurried into the field. Mother and I were saved, although mother told me that my blanket caught on fire about 45 times and that she beat it out with her hands. When the house caught on fire my father joined us. We were saved, but my uncle and brother were lost. My father found one of my brother’s shoes and some ashes. Most of the ashes had been blown away, but we know they were dead.”
Martha Newberry Coon wrote a letter to her sister. “October 10, 1871 Dear Mary: I have bad news to tell. Charlie and his two little boys are gone. Oh! What a horrible death. There was a tornado of fire swept over the farming district; it came on us very suddenly. Charlie and his family started to flee. They got about a half mile from home when they went into a little pool of water, Charlie had the two children and some things he was trying to save. He passed through the water thinking to get farther away from the fire. Grace turned back into the water and was saved. In the water were brother William and his family; his wife and baby and his wifes sister; they were all that remained.
“Oh Mary, it was truly a night of horror. It rained fire; the air was on fire; some thought the last day had come. My father, four brothers, two sisters-in-law and five of their children, two of Graces, and three of brother Walters are gone. George went over to see if he could find their bodies. He found Charlie and the children about five rods from where Grace was. Charlie and Jessie were lying on their faces, and Frankie was sitting down by a stump with his hands up to his face, poor, poor little ones. Mother was saved; but poor old father, he was burned and most all of my brothers. Grace counted 89 dead bodies within the space of a half mile. There were probably 300 dead. George found the bodies of all our folks except three. He is going tomorrow with some men to bury them. It is too horrible to write about or to believe. Oh if they have only gone to heaven all I can think of is those dead bodies lying there in the woods. Your sister, Martha.”
Witnesses remembered seeing a young girl, sixteen-year-old Helga Rockstead, running desperately to escape the flames. She had waist-length hair and as she ran her hair caught fire. Almost instantly, her head burst into flames and then her whole body was engulfed.
In the history of our country the Peshtigo fire is one of the worst events for loss of life, yet it has been forgotten except by the people who live in the area. What we could call a materialist view of this horror blames all of it on bad forest management, wood buildings, and dry weather. Also, there had been other fires in the area. Certainly, all of those played a part. But that doesn’t explain the sightings of fireballs in the sky across the Midwest or the fires that burned the same night far away.
The fireball phenomenon of 1871 was hardly an isolated event. Such manifestations have appeared around the world over many centuries. A strange meteoric procession was observed on the ninth of February 1913 across Ontario. Eyewitness accounts were published in the May/June edition of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
“As seen from western Ontario there suddenly appeared in the northwestern sky a fiery red or golden yellow body, which quickly grew larger as it approached and had attached to it a long tail. Observers vary in their descriptions as to whether the body was single or composed of three or four parts with a tail to each part. This body or group of bodies moved forward on an apparently perfectly horizontal path with peculiar, majestic, dignified deliberation and continuing its course without the least apparent sinking towards the earth. It moved on to the south-east, where it simply disappeared in the distance.
“After this group of bodies vanished, another group emerged from precisely the same region. Onward they moved at the same deliberate pace, in twos or threes or fours, with tails streaming behind them, though not so long or bright as in the first case. This group disappeared in the same direction. A third group followed with less luminosity and shorter tails.”
In reading some of the communications from the numerous observers, the extraordinary feature of the phenomenon was the regular order and movement of the groups. Some compared them to a fleet of airships with lights on either side and front and back, others to a number of battleships attended by cruisers and destroyers. What about today?
Beginning in 1978 mysterious fireballs began appearing regularly in the rugged mountains near Veracruz, Mexico. Residents reported that these objects executed what appeared to be intelligent maneuvers. Witnesses describe them as walking among the mango and papaya groves, flying at dizzying speeds, hanging in the air, turning on and off, executing intelligent maneuvers and suddenly multiplying.
Fruit grower Samuel Flores gave the following account. “We were driving in my pickup truck in a place with papaya groves. There’s a nearly U-shaped curve at that location. All was going well, until I suddenly began to feel cold and my arms became heavy. When I was about to reach the curve, two powerful lights lit the driver’s side. It must be a car, I thought. I pulled over and stopped to yield, waited two minutes but the vehicle never passed me by. No sooner had I left the curve when I could see two small fireballs taking off swiftly toward Cerro de la Mesa. They flew at an astonishing speed. They covered more than four kilometers in only five seconds.”
Cold and heaviness was felt by many who saw these fireballs. Throughout history, thousands have experienced such frightening manifestations. Some cultures viewed them as spirits of the evil dead who were forced to wander the earth, others as omens of disaster. In Hawaii, fireballs have been considered a curse sent by an enemy.
An Hawaiian woman named Ilima describes them this way: “Akualele is what they call a fireball, and it is sent by someone who wants you dead. I’ve seen this, so this is not a legend, it’s real. Akualele, is like a flying god, and that’s exactly what it does: it flies. And if it fell in your yard or if it fell on your house, someone in that house is going to die. It’s a fireball that has a tail. And when it hits the ground, the ball will explode, but the tail will keep on going. Like a lizard tail. This would happen usually at night. At night, you could see it fly in the air. I’ve seen akualele several other times. When my Mom and Dad were pastors, I remember going to Kona. We were all in the car, and then this akualele fell right in front of our car. But because my Mom and Dad were Christians, then we just prayed. But I remember the tail going! Yes, it was really scary, really scary.”
All such supernatural phenomena whether traveling in a vast formation across the sky, flying through an orchard, landing in front of your car, or in a thousand other forms, cause bewilderment, foreboding, and, very often, sheer terror. Also, they can actually kill people. I’d call that evil. So is all of this just superstition? Not to the people who have seen the phenomena. Clearly, whatever is behind such manifestations is powerful and has an organized sense of will. It operates with purpose and the initial goal of that purpose is to create confusion. But that is only the beginning. Out of the confusion it tries to generate fear and from fear it hopes to gain control.
In Patterns of Supernatural Phenomena, we are making the statement that all actual supernatural phenomena originates from only one or the other of two possible sources. On his deathbed, the great Christian philosopher G. K. Chesterton is reported to have said these last words: “The issue is now clear. It is between light and darkness and everyone must choose a side.” Of course, what he meant by light and darkness is good and evil.
The problem is that Great Good can appear initially as darkness and Great Evil can appear initially as light. The unseen power behind all evil thirsts for the destruction of humanity. It would love to see us all burn alive. Why this is so, we will talk about in the future. But right now we need to understand that we humans are like sheep without a shepherd living in a land overrun with wolves. The terrain of that land now includes the video streamers, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter where the individual no longer matters. As a culture we have been atomized and then collectivized into gigantic, invisible herds. What is the purpose for this?
Years ago, I read an amazing story about how sheep rustlers of the past in the Middle East were able to steal huge flocks of sheep. A gang of them on horseback would find a flock spread out alone in a large open area with no shepherd. They would start by shooting their guns in the air. This would cause the flock to gather in fear. After they had congregated, the thieves would ride straight into the center of the flock. When they were in the middle, they would shoot into the air again. Then they would ride out from the flock. Do you know what the sheep would do? In their terror, they would follow them. Every time the flock stopped following, the criminals would pull the same tactic all over again. In this way, they could make thousands of sheep run for miles straight to their deaths.
Humans are exactly the same. Terrify us, draw us together in fear and confusion, then terrify us more and we will follow the Evil that has caused it straight to our own destruction. That is happening to millions right now and much worse is coming. I don’t want any of us to be misled that way. That’s why this series exists. We have a lot to talk about. I hope you’ll stay with me and subscribe.
I want to leave you with a last thought about the horror of the Chicago fire. Hard as it is to believe, something wonderful did come out of that great tragedy. On the day it started, a man named D. L. Moody was speaking to a Sunday school class in his church. He had built up that Sunday School to over 1000 young people. As the meeting ended, fire alarms sounded. Everyone left the church to find whole buildings being swallowed in flames. Moody lost both his church and his home.
Devastated, he went to New York to try to raise money for a new building, but his heart wasn’t in it. In spite of the success of his Sunday school, he had felt that God was calling him to become an itinerant evangelist, something he hadn’t been willing to do. Walking down Wall Street, he had such a powerful experience of God’s Presence that it left him in tears. It was so overwhelming that he rarely spoke about it afterward, but his life was forever changed. Instead of returning to what he had been doing in Chicago, D. L. Moody became one of the greatest evangelists in the history of the Christian church sharing the message of Jesus and His love with untold thousands across America and England. The Great Chicago fire had pushed him out. Which proves one thing. For those who have given their lives to Jesus, the Messiah, the Eternal King, as it says in Romans 8:28, all things really do work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. I hope that’s you.
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