Will O’ The Wisp ~ What Really Are They?

Welcome to my channel! Here you’ll find folk tales and legends from across the British Isles. The strange atmospheric ghostly lights that can be found in swamps and marshlands are known by many names, but most commonly they are referred to as Will O' the Wisp. But what are these things? In this video I take a look at a fascinating piece of folklore that is found all over the world.

Filmed on location at Jenny's Lantern Hill, Alnwick, Northumberland.
Video filmed in May, 2024.

Sources:
Trevelyan, Marie (1909). Folk-Lore and Folk-Stories of Wales. London. p. 178.
Briggs, Katharine (1976), A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures, London: Penguin Books.
Edwards, Howell G. M. (2014), ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp: an ancient mystery with extremophile origins?’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 372: 2030, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/do....
Hausman, Leon A., and Joseph S. Hall (1958), ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp’, Western Folklore, 17 (2), pp. 128–29.
Rudkin, Ethel H. (1938), ‘Will o’ the Wisp’, Folklore, 49(1), pp. 46–48.
Sloane, T. O’Conor (1889), ‘A Scientific Will-O’-The-Wisp’, Scientific American, 60 (23), pp. 361–361.
Stoker, B. (1993). Dracula. Wordsworth Editions.
Tolkien, J. R. R. (2005). The two towers. HarperCollins.
Luigi Garlaschelli & Paolo Boschetti. On the track of the will-o'-the-wisp. Dipartimento di Chimica Organica, Università di Pavia.
Will O’ The Wisp: A Fairy, Ghost or Guardian? (2021). Icy Sedgwick.
Lavatar, Ludwig (1596). Of ghostes and spirites, walking by night: and of straunge noyses, crackes, and sundrie forewarnings: which commonly happen before the death of men: great slaughters, and alterations of kingdoms. Blough-Weis Library Susquehanna University. Thomas Creede. pp. 51–52.

Video music by Albert Schofield and Kevin Macleod.

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