The Naga Fireballs of the Mekong: The Silent Flames That Rise From the River Each Autumn
Every year, on a single predictable night in the autumn, thousands of people gather along the banks of the Mekong River where it divides Thailand from Laos, and they wait, watching the dark water. What they have come to see has been rising from that river for longer than anyone can remember. Out of the depths, without a splash, without a sound, glowing spheres of reddish light emerge from beneath the surface, float silently upward into the night, climb some distance into the air, and then vanish. They make no noise. They leave no smoke. They come in ones and twos or in great numbers, dozens in a night, and they appear year after year at the same season, along the same stretch of river. The local people call them the fireballs of the great serpent — the Naga fireballs — and though modern science has offered its explanations, none has ever fully accounted for them. They remain one of the most genuinely unexplained recurring phenomena on earth, a mystery that keeps its appointment every ...