Ball Lightning Photographs

Abstract

Photographs of ball lightning occurrences are relatively few considering the large number of normal lightning photographs that have been made. A conservative estimate of the number of normal lightning photographs would be well over 10⁵. We are aware of only about 60 photographs or drawings that have been published as those of natural ball lightning. Some, of course, are duplicate publications of an earlier original or a slightly different view of the same subject. Once these are separated out, there are only 24 individual and distinctly different photographs that have been available for evaluation. (Refer to Table 6.2, Chapter 6.) Moreover, analysis of each of these photographs, the associated reports, and the subsequent published discussion, allows us to conclude that most of these are spurious.