Ball Lightning In Irish Grove

     Police records of the investigation reveal that at 11:15 pm a phenomenon known as ball lightning was observed by Smythe in his ranch-style house on Penfold Avenue, not far from the campus of Morris College. According to the report, an electrical storm released a basketball-sized globe of electricity that entered the house through an open window, proceeded to circumnavigate the house (supposedly directed by electrical fields from the house's wiring), then left through another open window. In the interim, the lightning did no damage to any of the objects in the home, although Smythe himself received multiple burns and shocks.

     "First of all, I don't remember there being a thunderstorm or anything like that that night," says the forty-eight year old bank vice president. "But I do remember there was a certain sort of electricity in the air that night. I had stayed up late reading Foucault's Pendulum and was just thinking about going to bed when I noticed a glow coming from one of the living room windows.

     "Naturally, I got up to investigate. My first response was that it may be a burglar out there with a flashlight, so I got ready to scare him off or fight, if necessary. Living on my own for all these years has tended to make me very self-reliant and I can watch out for my own. I got closer to the window, and then I could see that there was no-one out there, and could see just a globe of flickering light. And it was bright, too! Terribly hard to look at.

     "Now, in the police report they say that the window was open, and that that's how the lightning got in. But I swear all the windows in my house were closed that night on account of I was running my air-conditioning like I do almost every day of the summer."

     At that point, the latch on the window supposedly undid itself, and the window banged upward. Smythe, nervous, stepped away from the window quickly, and was horrified to see the globe of light enter the room. He says that it hummed like a live wire, and occasionally crackled, and when it did, little veins of blinding-white light would arc across its surface. The ball floated to the center of the room, staying about three feet above the floor. Then it started to move toward Smythe.

     "I got scared, then. I'd heard of ball lightning before, sure, but I never heard of it opening windows. It was then I thought that maybe it was going to attack me. I don't know why I thought that, exactly, but I did. I ran, and ended up taking the hall to my bedroom. If I would have had my wits about me, I would have gone to the kitchen where there is an exit to the garage, and therefore escape, but I got to tell you, I wasn't even close to rational at that point."

     The ball lightning picked up speed and followed Smythe to his bedroom, and on the way managed to avoid furniture and other obstacles. In his room, Smythe was trapped. The ball moved toward him and shot small bolts of electricity at his body.

     "The pain was excruciating," reports Smythe. "Every time it zapped me, and it must have gotten me a couple of dozen times, my body would clench and twist up. There was nothing I could do when it was attacking, just lie there controlled by pain. Finally, after what must have been only a minute, the thing stopped, moved toward my bedroom window, somehow unlocked and opened it and flew on outside. I've never seen the likes of it before or since."

     Fortunately, Mr. Smythe's burns were only first-degree with a few second-degrees, and he has had no lasting repercussions from the massive doses of electricity he received.