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| Via Newspapers.com |
This little oddity appeared in the “Millville Daily Republican,” December 28, 1953:
Mrs. Joseph Davison's canaries, which she raises as a hobby, did not get their usual attention last night. And little wonder! Mrs. Davison, who lives on Quaker St. in Port Elizabeth, was frightened away from the outbuilding in which she raises the birds by an eery-looking "thing" that gave off a ghoulish light and hovered closely overhead.It all happened at about 11 o'clock last night. Mr. Davison had retired and Mrs. Davison went into the back yard for a last look at her canaries. She usually checks the heater in the building and does a few other chores just before retiring.
As she neared the outbuilding, Mrs. Davison reports, she was startled by a brilliant, greenish light, which shone down on her from above. Looking up, she told a Daily Republican reporter this morning, she saw a flat, oval-shaped object, somewhat larger than a shoebox, hovering around a willow tree. She said the object came to a point In the back.
Frightened, Mrs. Davison ran into the house, and flipped off the lights. Peering through a window, she says the object flew from one willow tree to another and then disappeared. The Port Elizabeth resident said today that this is the second time in two years she has seen the same object. The mystery is still unsolved.
Now, that's something new...
ReplyDeleteNo joke, this could have been an owl. The size, shape, location, and behavior would all fit with that explanation, and there is some evidence that some owls, on occasion, do in fact glow. Anecdotally, people seeing glowing owls has a surprisingly long and fairly well-documented history; the most widely-held theory to account for this is that many species of tree- or wood-nesting owls (in particular the barn owl) can pick up a harmless infection by colonies of bioluminescent fungi which will live (at least for a while) on their feathers. The competing theory for glowing owls is the fact that most bird species' feathers will fluoresce under blacklight, and so under certain conditions, this could appear to a human observer, likely viewing the owl against a very dark backdrop like the woods at night, as if the bird(s) are glowing.
ReplyDeleteI found a whole webpage discussing this, and Googling "glowing owls" will bring up many more links: https://www.owlpages.com/owls/articles.php?a=18#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20explanation%20for,trees%20(e.g.%20Bunn%20et%20al.
Darn interesting explanation.
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