Wisps – magical creatures or scientific anomalies
Last week, my son cracked his phone screen. Although we had to replace it, I thought the crack was pretty cool looking. My first reaction was that it reminded me of a will-of-the-wisp, but then I realized I known next to nothing about wisps.
What are they supposed to look like? Is it a human fairy looking thing, or a ball of flames? How do wisps differ from sprites?
Well, it turns out wisps are less mystical than other forest creatures you might read about. Wisps are balls of light, usually colored, hovering in the air at night. Although different names have been used, stories of wisps appear throughout history and are part of nearly every culture. Historically, supernatural explanations have been used to explain the sightings. Some societies believed they were the souls of the dead, while others thought they were evil beings attempting to corrupt humans.
In 1776, Allesandro Volta, the man credited with creating the electric battery, developed a more scientific theory. He suggested wisps occur when swamp gases are ignited. People doubted this idea because it didn’t explain where the gases came from, how they were ignited, or why the wisps would disappear when people approached them.
With time, we solved these mysteries. Normally, when organic material decays, the material is exposed to oxygen. In these cases, decay results in water, carbon dioxide, and heat. In wet areas, dead materials are not always exposed to oxygen as they break apart, so the chemical reaction will be different. If organic material decomposes under water or under wet soil, the result will be methane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, phosphines, and other chemicals. Some of these chemicals are so unstable they will spontaneously combust. And when people approach these balls of burning gas, the air currents move the balls away from them.
Volta’s theory is now the most widely accepted theory on what causes wisps, at least the wisps in the wild. How one became trapped in my son’s phone screen still remains unknown.
I had heard of this phenomenon when I saw a documentary on the Civil War. Thanks for sharing!
Amazing how we now canexplain a lot of msyterious things. Thank you for sharing
Fascinating post!
Wouldn’t that be a fun plot bunny for a paranormal? A fairy spirit caught in a phone screen, passing on arcane information through Siri…
Thanks for that fun post.
Cool post! I never really knew about Wisps!
Do you live somewhere dry? I wonder if they are talked about more in damp places.
Science sure does kill the mysticism and intrigue in things. But I guess it also clears up our terror and stops us from burning witches. This was interesting! Very impressive to find inspiration in a cracked phone.
It is a little sad when things are explained by science. My kids ask me if I’d want to live somewhere with magic and I think, isn’t that just somewhere where the science isn’t yet understood?
I think that broken screen would make an amazing cover… further embellished, of course. I love the explanations. I couldn’t help but think of the Lord of the Rings movie where they had the flames in the swamp. Or the gas flames in the Princess Bride. I’m sorry, my mind just goes off sometimes. Thanks for the research and I hope you get to use that broken screen as inspiration for a story. I can just imagine a back story for that creature or maybe it is a sentient flame. Blessings.
It would be fun to write fantasy, wouldn’t it? I wish I had the imagination for it.
Thanks for the cute, informative article! I agree that the crack on the phone screen looks like a wisp!
Thanks! He had to change the screen to white for me to see it, so it has the same disappearing affect. Just add a dark screen and poof… all gone.
I am 40% Scottish in my DNA, and my favorite Disney princess is Merida. I most assuredly know “wisps.”
That was such a cute movie. I loved her fierce independence.