Somewhere in the Skies - Just Another Tin Foil Hat | Beaver County Ghost Light

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Starting point is 00:00:42 Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Welcome to just another tinfoil hat with your host, Zilia Edgar. Join Zilia as she walks us through some of the most bizarre UFO cases and incidents of high strangeness. Beaver County, Oklahoma, sometime in 1905, a sense of darkness and silence. that is truly alien in this age of information. A man is driving a wagon down a desolate road towards his home when up ahead, the ground is illuminated by an orb of light. The horse is startled, nearly upending the wagon.

Starting point is 00:01:18 By the time he has calmed them down, the light still remains unmoving up ahead directly in his path. Today, in honor of the new podcast, The Great Beaver Fiasco, hosted by my mom, L.A. Bass, and two of her friends, Craig Wormboldt and Thomas Rayfeld, I have decided to include a story I briefly mentioned when I guested on their inaugural episode. So today, without further ado, this is the case of the Beaver County Spook Lights. Now, this case was detailed by The Witness, William Bathlot, in the January 1952 edition of Fate magazine. Bathlot opens up by referencing an article entitled Phantom Lights in Nevada, written by Kenneth Arnold of Flying Saucer Fame. Now, Bathlot entitled his article, Phantom Lights in Oklahoma, eager to show that these loose,

Starting point is 00:02:04 luminous anomalies were not restricted to Nevada nor recent to the mid-century. No, as a matter of fact, in his article, he states that, to his knowledge, these lights have been spotted in the Oklahoma Panhandle and other regions nearby since before 1900. William Bathlot moved to Beaver County, Oklahoma sometime in 1905, and shortly after relocating to the area, claimed that one warm June night, he saw a light the size of a toy balloon, floating about a hundred yards away from his house. He claimed that it moved at kind of an even level about a foot and a half above the ground and cast a yellowish glow.

Starting point is 00:02:40 He asked his friend who was sitting with him, who could be out that time of night carrying a lantern? And his friend responded that it was what he referred to as a ghost light, explaining that they were common to the area and often spooked ponies. Bathlot continued to spot these strange lights throughout the summer when he finally had a closer encounter of his own. He was driving a wagon load of lumber home from Kansas one night when suddenly a globe of light that he described as about the size of a man's head suddenly appeared on the road about 10 feet in front of him. It spooked the horses who were so frightened that they nearly upset the cart.

Starting point is 00:03:15 He described the light as casting a rayless, dim glow, and it remained on the road in front of the wagon kind of an equal distance, no matter how long he traveled onward. However, he finally urged his team faster, hoping to keep. catch up to the light, and at one point he said that he got close enough that he can actually see the outlines of the road through it. Now, at this point, when he was at its closest proximity to the light, he said that the light rose up into the air, then came down some distance away, as though it was trying to evade him. Bathlot halted the horses at this point, and went to go search for where the object had gone, however, he found nothing. He did claim, though, that while he was looking, he felt like something ominous or sinister was watching him. About a month after this

Starting point is 00:04:02 incident, Bathelot and a farmhand, were searching for a cow and her calf who had gone missing. After locating them, they decided to return the next morning with a wagon to collect the cows as dark had already fallen. They were returning home about a mile away from the house when suddenly an orb of light appeared just ahead of them on the trail. They described this orb as a transparent ball of light, which they could actually see through, hovering about 18 inches above the ground. After watching it silently for a time, they decided that they would try and walk around it. However, every move that they made, the orb would kind of mirror. It would slide over as though to intercept them. When they moved forward, it backed up and vice versa. Finally, as both men were nearly paralyzed

Starting point is 00:04:45 with fear, Mr. Bathlot raised his shotgun and blasted the orb, with both barrels, as he said, which promptly vanished. When they returned the next day, there was no debris. Now, interestingly enough, and Bathlot mentions this in the article, he at first believed that these orbs were some species of luminous bird, even after his close sighting on the road. However, his mind appeared to be changed after shooting the orb and returning the next day to find no debris like blood or feathers or, you know, a dead bird.

Starting point is 00:05:16 Now, what I really love about this case is kind of, again, it's at this very interesting time. the kind of early mid-century when the concept of the UFO is beginning to take flight, no pun intended. However, Bathot refers to these lights as ghost lights, and that's traditionally what they were held to be in that area. Now, again, it's just interesting, too, because these are some of the most commonly reported anomalies that people see are these bizarre orbs of light, and of course, they're of major interest of mind. And one of the coolest things about this is that he includes this really kind of odd descriptive aspect that people mention, which is that it seems

Starting point is 00:05:55 as though these things, they may have some ambient light, they may cast a glow, but the light somehow seems self-contained. Now, of course, Bathlot referred to this as glowing yet rayless. I just think that's really interesting, again, that we have this kind of very niche sort of aspects that people often describe these orbs as being not casting, you know, rays of light, but being very self-contained. Now, of course, there are sightings of lights which appear as rays or casting rays. But again, with these orbs,

Starting point is 00:06:25 it's kind of more of this sort of weird, ambient-type glow. And that's just really neat to see mentioned in these reports from the very early 1900s. Now, interestingly enough, again, we're looking at these reports from the turn of the century. They're referred to as ghost lights. So kind of more of a folkloric or spectral sort of belief system.

Starting point is 00:06:43 Yet, in the incident with a wagon load of timber, we see the same behavior, which is known today as UFO's buzzing cars, getting very close almost to the point of colliding and then flying off. Now, again, if we include people who have stopped short, their cars when they see a cryptid such as Bigfoot up ahead on the road or even many encounters, almost an urban legend by this point, of people stopping for phantoms or phantom hitchhikers,

Starting point is 00:07:09 these disruptions seem the same regardless of what is causing them. And yet again, too, I'd like to bring up the topic of perfect timing. you know, if he hadn't been passing that particular stretch of road with his wagon load of timber and his horses, would the orb still have been there? Or, again, was it in that area? Did it, you know, manifest or come to be simply so the observer could observe it? Another thing that stands out, and this is actually a longer running, I have all of these little like pockets of research, you know, just like weird aspects that, you know, stand out, like, you know, light anomalies, that's one pocket and, you know, faceless entities, that's another one. Another one is this weird kind of concept of whatever the anomaly is, whether it's UFO, cryptid, ghost encounters, even folkloric or accounts of encounters with the fairies. You see this very often where the witness claims that no matter what they do, the anomaly stays

Starting point is 00:08:05 almost an equal distance away from them. It gets to the point sometimes, the point of almost ridiculousness as we see in Bathlott's encounter with his farmhand, where if they back up, the anomaly backs up. If they, you know, move forward, the anomaly moves forward. I just think that's really weird how it seems as though, again, these anomalies are close enough to be observed, yet still far enough away that they are still kind of intangible. Finally, we have the kind of interesting fact that the light simply vanished when it was shot at. It's really interesting to me that it simply vanished. You know, there was no explosion, no pop or release of energy, whether sound or light or anything like that. Just it was there one moment.

Starting point is 00:08:44 Bathlot shoots at it, it's gone the next. Of course, it calls to mind many Bigfoot encounters, where this giant ape-like being simply does the exact same thing when it's shot at, vanish, or even many ghost encounters which end up the same way. However, I think that my absolute favorite aspect about this whole case is that it really shows that, you know, UFOs or unexplained aerial phenomena are not an invention of the mid-century,

Starting point is 00:09:10 but a continuation of this kind of timeless exchange between humans and anomalies. You can keep up with me on my free blog at patreon.com slash or just another tinfoil hat. And remember, check out my mom's podcast. It's the great beaver fiasco available on Podbean or here on YouTube Supper Club Media. I guessed it on the first episode. So you know what? Go check it out. See what I have to say about lots of different paranormal encounters from different beaver named towns across the U.S.

Starting point is 00:09:39 For today, I am Zelia Edgar, signing off. This has been just another tinfoil hat with Zelia Edgar. Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For full video versions of these episodes, be sure to subscribe to Just Another Tinfoil hat on YouTube. Thank you for listening. Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. Oh, no.

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Somewhere in the Skies - Just Another Tin Foil Hat | Beaver County Ghost Light

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