Strange Lights in Wales |
In Wales in 1905, during a brief religous revival, the Egryn Lights phenomenon caused a sensation. The lights appeared to be associated with a woman by the name of Mary Jones, who was a preacher at a tiny chapel at Egryn on the Gwynedd coast between the towns of Barmouth and Harlech. Dozens of witnesses saw the displays, whether indoors or out, wherever she preached, and even normally skeptical journalists of the time were quite impressed. A Daily Mail reporter described "a ball of fire 15 meters above the chapel roof. It had a steady, intense yellow brilliance and did not move...... Suddenly it disappeared, having lasted a minute and a half..... then two lights flashed out, one on each side of the chapel.....They shown out brilliantly and steadily for at least 30 seconds." Another witness, a doctor, recalled seeing a "ball of fire about the size of a cheese plate, over the chapel at Libanus near Brecon," well to the south of Egryn, when Mary was preaching there. Once three clergymen saw balls of fire rise from the ground and explode near the place where Mary Jones was preaching. Another eyewitness account was from passengers aboard a train passing the chapel at Pensarn, near Egryn, saw "a strange light...... shooting out of ten different directions and coming together with a clap." A respected journalist from another national newspaper, this time the Daily Mirror having travelled in a railway carriage with the preacher and three others after a prayer meeting, recorded that "a soft shimmering radiance flooded the road at our feet..... and every stick and stone within twenty yards was visible....It seemed as though some large body between earth and sky had opened and emitted a flood of light from within itself.....I seemed to have seen an oval mass of grey, half open, disclosing within a kernel of white light. As I looked it closed, and everything was once again in darkness." Was Mary Jones touched by something supernatural? Whatever the case may be, the phenomenon of the Egryn lights has never been explained. |
