Our Skies Contain Sprites, Elves, Trolls, Pixies, Ghosts, and Gnomes

Have you heard of ball lightning? Maybe you have. It's known as an odd weather phenomenon, thought of as supernatural. The oldest written record of it may be an illuminated manuscript from an English monk in 1195, describing a fire-globe dropping out of a storm cloud that fell into the river Thames, logged in medieval chronicle and rediscovered by modern researchers in 2022. Humans have been watching hissing, drifting orbs of light appear out of thunderstorms since before we had the words to record them, and every culture used similar vocabulary: spirits. In Japan, it's called hitodama, translating to "human souls," the glowing balls thought to be spirits of the dead, untethered from their bodies and wandering. In English countrysides, the same lights were will-o'-the-wisps, mischievous fairies leading travelers off the safe path and into the bog. In the Australian Outback, they're Min Min lights, fuzzy orbs that follow you at night. In Argentina and Chile, the Mapuche call them…