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Whatever Angel Hair may be (and the term is probably applied to several different types of substances) it is usually described as being gossamer, silk or cotton wool in appearance - white, shiny and strong. What all accounts have in common is that when attempts are made to gather the substance for analysis it melts away or sublimes into nothing. Skeptics and debunkers claim angel hair is nothing more than spiders silk. A concise statement of this view was given in "The Maine Observer" in October of 1963, in reply to a letter from one Captain Pape, describing a fall of angel hair in the port of Montreal. The author, D.J. Clark of the Natural History Museum in London said: " Spiders are, I think, responsible for the angel hair phenomenom. The family of these spiders belong to the class Linyphiidae, which mature in the late Autumn. On warm mornings, particularly ones heavy with dew, the spiders begin to disperse and migrate in order to colonize new areas where food may bemore abundant. The method they use is known as "ballooning". As the sun dries the dew, upward air currents are created by the evaporation. The spider goes to the top of a plant or fence etc.. and lifting the tip of its abdomen emts a gobule of liquid silk. This silk is drawn out by the air currents and hardens as a result of this drawing out, ot simply by contact with the air. When the thread is long enough to support the spider, it lets go of its support and flies away. The spider is sometimes carried for miles. Eventually they land and release their parachute. This again floats away and can become entangled with other strands. Sometimes thick bands are formed and when they settle they can be quite conspicious. The single thread is very thin and is very difficult to see, although when entangled with other threads they are easy to see. I cannot explain the disappearance of these threads when held in the hand. It may be that the strands you describe were not so entangled and when handled, "broke up" into individual strands, thus becoming "very" inconspicious. Spider silk cannot melt because heat does not effect it, it is on the whole less soluble than real silk." |
Like many explanations the spider thesis succeeds only at the cost of devaluing parts of the evidence to be explained. In this case for example, Captain Pape was supposedly mistaken about the substance disappearing in his hand. It was there but he failed to see it. By the same token, skeptics ignore the fact that not a single spider is observed. Given this general tendency to arrive at explanations by ignoring difficult or awkward evidence, or declaring that evidence invalid or labeling them as coincidences, it is not surprising that angel hair skeptics overlook occassions when angel hair has been reported to fall in the presence of UFO's, although UFO's are not always observed. |
Select Cases |
An early account of the phenomenom known as Angel Hair is found in "The Natural History of Selbourne (England)" by Gilbert White. He described how on September 21, 1741 he went out into the his fields at dawn and found the grass so thickly covered with "cobweb" that his dogs had to scrape it from their eyes. Then about 9 am an unusual appearance "began to demand our attention. A shower of cobwebs falling from very elevated regions and continued without interuption until the end of the day. Most were not single filmy threads floating in the air in all directions, but perfect flakes or rags, between an inch and 5 or 6 long, which fell with a degree of velocity that they were considerably heavier than the atmosphere. On every side the observer looked might he behold a continual succession of fresh flakes falling into his sight, twinkling like stars as they turned their sides towards the sun. How far this wonderful shower extended would be difficult to say, but we know it reached Bradley, Selbourne and Alresford, the three who lie in a sort of triangle, the shortest of whose sides is about 8 miles in extent". |
A fibrous substance resembling blue silk fell in great quantities at Naumburg Germany (Southwest of Leipzig) on March 23, 1665. "Annals of Philosophy, New Series 12:93 August 1826" |
Flakes of coal black fibrous material, some the size of table tops fell on the newly fallen snow near the town of Memel (Now Klaipeda, Lithuania) on the east coast of the Baltic Sea in 1687. The flakes were damp and smelled of rotten sea weed and tore like paper when handled. Once dried, they were odor free. Some of the material was preserved for 150 years, but when the samples were opened to be examined, they quickly sublimed. "Proceeding of the Royal Irish Academy 1:381, December 9,1839" |
Showers of a silky substance fell in October, 1820 around Pernambuco, Brazil, covering an area that extended 90 miles inland and nearly as far out to sea, where a French ship was festooned in it. "Letter from M.Laine, the French consul at Pernambuco to the annual register, 63:681; 1821 |
In Milwaukee, Green Bay and other towns in Wisconsin, strong, very white "spider webs" fell in late October 1881. They ranged in size from mere specks to threads 60 feet long. The webs all seemed to float inland from Lake Michigan, some very thick and extending as high upward as the eye could see. The threads quicly disappeared, without a single spider ever being seen. " Scientific American, 45:337; November 26, 1881" |
On October 16, 1883, a dense cloud appeared over Montussan, in the Gironde district of France. From it, a white wooly substance fell from it in fist sized lumps, leading some observers to speculate the entire cloud was made of this substance. "La Nature, 1: 342, October 27, 1883" |
On November 21, 1898, quantities of a substance resembling spider web, but actually more like asbestos in texture, fell in great quantities on Montgoery, Alabama. Some of the material was in strands and some in flakes several inches long and several inches broad. Most curiously, the substance was phospheresant and quickly dissolved. "Monthly Weather Review, 26:566, December 1898" |
An interesting sub group of angel hair falls is when they are associated with the presence of unidentified flying objects. The following report by P.L. Lewis appeared in "Weather, April 1949": Sunday, September 26, 1948. Port Hope, Ontario. This day was warm and the sky was cloudless. We had dinner in the garden and I was lying on my back on my lawn, my head just in the shade of the house, when I was startled to see an object that looked like a star moving across the sky. The time was 2 pm EDT. At first it was easy to imagine that recent reports of flying saucers had not been exaggerated. More of the objects came into view only to disappear when they were approximately directly overhead. With field glasses, I was able to see that each was approximately spherical, the center being slightly brighter than the edges. The glasses also showed quite a number that were not visible to the aked eye. Also visible every now and then were long threads, apparently from spiders. Some of these were seen to reflect light over a distance of three to four yards, but any one piece may have been longer. In one case an entangled mass of these gave the appearance of a silken cord. These threads appeared only in the lower levels. The way in which they caught the suns rays and shone so brightly was very striking". "Weather, 4:121-22, April 1949" |
On October 17,1952, the people of Oloron-Ste.-Marie, in the French Pyrenees, saw a cigar shaped object flying at 45 degrees above their town. Accompanying it, were 30 smaller saucer shaped craft. About ten days later about 100 people were treated to the same spectacle in the sky above Gaillac. On both occassions, a substance like gossamer fell from the unidentified objects. But when people tried to collect the "angel hair" it turned gelatinous and sublimated. "The Truth about flying saucers" by Aime' Michel; page 64" |
The Roxburgh Castle was morred to her berth in Montreal on October 10, 1962. The Captain, Mr. R.H. Pape, was taking the air on the deck when he noticed "fine white filaments of unknown kind" draped around the railings and stanchions. "Calling the attention of the chief officer, I pulled one of these strands from a stanchion and found it to be quite tough and resilient. I stretched it but it not break easily (as for instance, a cobweb would have done) and after keeping it in my hand for about three or four minutes it disappeared completely; in other words it vanished into nothing. Looking up ( the captain continued) we could see small cocoons of the material floating down from the sky but as far as we could ascertain there was nothing either above or at street level which could account for this extraordinary occurrence. "The Marine Observer, 33:187, October 1963" |
