I have just been watching a television documentary about ball-lightning and have the urge to record my experience of what I believe to be my sighting of this phenomenon.
As far as I am aware I am the only one to have seen the following and am not able to call upon anyone else to verify my sighting which happened when I was under the age of six years.
At the time my family and I were living in Kabul Street, Wairoa. This would put me, therefore, as being under 6 because I did not start my schooling from this address. On the particlar day of my sighting I recall standing by myself on the threshold of the open front door of our home in Kabul Street when I saw what appeared to be two bright balls of light "chasing" each other down the middle of the street. From that time onwards until I learned about the ball-lightning pehenomenon I often referred to the fact that I had seen two "suns" chasing each other down the street. "Chasing each other" is probably not the right term because the two balls did not change position in relation to each other and maintained a "one following the other" pattern.
It was daylight and fine but I have no idea what time of day it was. The two balls were not overly large and I have always said they were each about the size of a basketball. They were close together with a gap between them which, in later years as I came to understand measurements, I have always referred to as being about 3 or 4 feet. The two balls appeared to my young eyes as being white in colour. They emerged directly in front of me from behind a wall of the house on my left. Their rate of travel was not "flashing by" and they travelled leisurely along the street untill they disappeared at a point, today I would describe as being when my head had reached an angle of 45 degrees. Today I would say I watched their travel for a distance of between 50 to 75 metres. They maintained a steady eye level height from my viewpoint of about 6 feet above the ground level. They made no sound as they went by. I do not recall how, why or where they disappeared.
Often since then I have wondered about the two round white lights I saw and asked myself were these "suns" ball lightning, or, were they "kehua" from someone of my distant Maori antecendents with a message that I have never been able to decipher.
We moved from this address to Lahore Street sometime before I started school at Wairoa Primary School in 1934 aged six.
A picture of me taken 5 October 1930 in the backyard of our home at Kabul Street, Wairoa. I was then aged 3yrs and 5 monhs and it was about this age, probably a year or so later when I saw the two "suns" mentioned above.
Note the "chook" house to my left. I remember one day how brave I was when I climbed onto its roof and jumped off, for what reason I cannot remember now.
This page created by Pat Lawton, 10 May 2001.
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