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Mysterious fire from the sky

In my research into the paranormal, one of the subjects I look into is strange weather patterns. You’ve all heard the stories — fish raining down from the sky, rivers turning red. Stuff like that. In September 1950, the sky went black in mid-afternoon for some reason; I’ve written about that one a few times.

I know someone who saw it rain frogs as a child. (Actually, it was my wife, and I annually have her in to be interviewed by Teen Paranormal as a training exercise.)

Weird fireballs and lightning from the sky fall into this category, too. And in 1968, something like this happened near Piper Aviation.

It was just past midnight on April 4, 1968. Don’t you love the beginning here? “It was just past midnight.” Mysterious and dramatic. What a great phrase that is. Though Lewis DeHaas may not have thought so, that being his shift at Piper.

DeHaas, of Castanea, was working overnight that night, and he happened to be standing near a glass door in the offices. He was looking out when he saw it. The Express said, “He saw what he said resembled about a dozen balls of fire darting from the sky like shots from a Roman candle.”

This was surprising, as there was no sign of rain or storm that night.

“It was just clouding over,” said DeHaas. He described these dramatic balls of flame as “several colors, about the size of a grapefruit.”

The fireballs came down on land owned by Guy Haines, a local farmer who lived in that area. They struck a partially dead tree midway between the Haines house and the Penn Central Railroad tracks, and then nothing happened for about two minutes. Then the tree and some of the grass around it caught on fire.

DeHaas walked outside to take a look, because the other option was going and doing his job, and who seriously wants that? He looked and noticed some flames climbing up the tree. He watched for a little while, and then, like any good citizen, he went back inside and went back to work.

He’d decided that it wasn’t necessary to call in a fire alarm, he said later.

His shift lasted until 5:30 a.m., at which point he got in his car, drove to the tree, and took another look. He saw “flames on a tree,” so it was obviously still burning. And the grass around the tree had been burned. And then he went home, still without notifying the fire department.

It may have been something of a slow news day, because The Express was already out there reporting on this at 12:30 at night, and had the article in the next day’s edition. They ran the story under the headline “Mysterious Fire Burns Tree Near Airport At Lock Haven.” The story began, “Fire of mysterious origin burned a tree and grass on land between the Penn Central Railroad tracks and the farm home of Guy W. Haines, not far from the south boundary of the Lock Haven Municipal Airport, about 12:30 this morning.”

“Mysterious origin” is right. I have no easily available explanation for these strange colored fireballs, and as the only witness died in 1986, I can’t even interview him. The incident may have been caused by ball lightning, another weird weather event that is not well understood. It may have been some sort of atmospheric disturbance, or even some sort of seismic thing—I’ve read that there are sometimes strange colored fireballs spotted before earthquakes occur. Though if there had been an earthquake at the time, I assume someone would have noted it in the newspaper.

In the end, all I can do is shrug. I don’t have any good explanations for what happened that night in 1968. I can only be glad that the city of Lock Haven was the site of an interesting weather phenomenon that isn’t often encountered. Also that it didn’t burn to the ground overnight.

——

Lou Bernard is a Lock Haven resident with a keen interest in the history of this area. He is adult services coordinator at Ross Library and may be reached at ross13@rosslibrary.org or 570-748-3321.

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