Ghost Map

EN PL

Apparitions · Roadside and bridge ghosts

The Min Min Lights of Queensland

When
since c. 1912 date reconstructed from later accounts · first known record: 1937
Where
Around Boulia, Channel Country, Queensland, Australia
Verdict
Disputed

Mysterious lights on the plains of western Queensland are said to follow travellers for miles before suddenly winking out.

Show on the timeline

-22.91°, 139.91° · dimmed: other phenomena within 1,500 km

What happened

On the flat, empty plains of the Channel Country in western Queensland, strange lights have been seen at night for more than a century. Descriptions vary widely: sometimes an orange speck on the horizon, sometimes a large white ball that hovers above the ground, follows a rider or a car and, when someone tries to approach, retreats and vanishes. The name comes from Min Min, a settlement and hotel on the road east of Boulia of which nothing now remains. The best-known early account was published in 1937 in Walkabout magazine by the grazier Henry Lamond. He described an experience from about 25 years earlier: riding across the downs at night, he saw a bulbous, greenish ball of light approach him, float past and slowly fade. In 1955 the writer Ernestine Hill linked the light to the graveyard beside the old hotel, launching stories of the will-o'-the-wisps of the dead. Aboriginal traditions of the region also speak of the lights. Boulia has made them its emblem and runs a visitor centre devoted to the phenomenon.

Witnesses

Henry Lamond (Walkabout, 1937); graziers, drivers and tourists on the roads around Boulia; Jack Pettigrew, who saw the light during field research.

Explanations and hypotheses

In 2003 the neuroscientist Jack Pettigrew of the University of Queensland published an explanation in Clinical and Experimental Optometry: a superior mirage. A cold, dense layer of air near the ground bends light from distant sources – car headlights, campfires – and carries it over the horizon to an observer tens or even hundreds of kilometres away. In a field test, the headlights of a car parked about 10 km away behind high ground looked just like a Min Min light. The explanation fits many reports but not all of them: some early sightings may have been distant campfires, and witnesses' memories may have grown with the years.

Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.

Sources

  1. University of Queensland – UQ scientist unlocks secret of Min Min lights (2003)
  2. John D. Pettigrew, The Min Min light and the Fata Morgana (Clinical and Experimental Optometry, 2003)
  3. Skeptoid – Brian Dunning, Chasing the Min Min Light (2008)

More: Wikipedia (en)