The Mysterious Lights at Golden Ball Hill

You can’t go far in Wiltshire without coming across a story about some sort of strange phenomenon. There are plenty of tales of lights in the sky and sometimes stories of lights moving along the ground. These quite often occur in and around crop circle hotspots. Talking of which, I’m going to dip into crop circles a bit today, as well as the strange ball-like lights that have also been spotted a few times floating around the Vale of Pewsey in the north of Wiltshire.

Don’t worry if you are more of a ghost story fan, I’ve squeezed in a short one for you today!

Golden Ball Hill is a prominent feature in the north of Wiltshire near Marlborough and is notable for its Mesolithic remains, including flint floors and evidence of buildings. It is part of the chalk hills that form part of the northern rim of the Vale of Pewsey. West of Golden Ball Hill are the Neolithic sites of Knap Hill, Rybury and Adam’s Grave on Walker Hill.

Golden Balls!

I’m not talking about David Beckham’s nickname here. I was first alerted to these mysterious balls of light by a follower back when I was on Twitter (the place of which we no longer support).

She said she had spotted a ball of golden light gently bobbing through the fields in Pewsey and wondered if it was a ‘known’ thing. You can’t dangle a carrot of mystery like that under my nose without me biting, so I took a chunk of that carrot and started doing some research.

It seems there are many appearances of balls across the area and other parts of Wiltshire too, particularly around Avebury. There have been many reports of silver, purple, orange, red and blue balls. Let’s stick with golden balls for today though.

Dr Simeon Heon has been investigating crop circles and other Forteana: bigfoot, cryptids, resonance, UFOs and more for years and has spent many nights sitting up on the ridge watching for crop circles to appear.

He tells of several stories of balls of light in this area. In 1998, he witnessed a purpleish blue ball emerge from the ground at Golden Ball Hill himself. He also talks about a tale, told to him by a policeman, of two balls of light appearing near a couple on Knap Hill. They ran back to their car and balls circled the vehicle as the frightened couple drove away, followed by the balls of light. They lived nearby, apparently, and as they arrived home, other occupants at the house witnessed the balls of light following the car as it screeched into the driveway.

If you want to watch Simeon’s video, it’s here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-K0aJL_wME .

Here’s another link to YouTube that I came across. Don’t get too excited; it’s not a great one but it does show a ball-like light, flashing its way across the field. For the sake of including all the information I could find, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gewegFGNvAk

Bath’s Golden Balls

Another lady randomly contacted me to tell me about what she had witnessed back in the mid-eighties when she was 17 years old.

She described a clear sunny day when she spotted a ball. It looked solid and shiny gold and just travelled in a straight line. It wasn’t, however, at Golden Ball Hill but at Bathampton Woods near Monkton Farleigh, some 25 miles to the west.

She said a Spitfire plane had just flown down through Limpley Stoke Valley and as it passed a round golden ball appeared in the sky. It appeared smaller than a football, but it was hard to get the scale. It just rolled through the sky in a straight line towards the village of Box.

This lady had, at some point, posted her experience on her Facebook page and an old friend of hers contacted her. She too had seen one of the golden balls in 1989, while looking out of a window of an attic room in Somerset Place in Bath. Maybe golden balls are not just a Wiltshire phenomenon?

Rudloe Manor – Britain’s Area 51?

The lady did flag up that these particular balls were seen heading towards Rudloe Manor, a most mysterious place! This 17th-century Grade II*-listed building is in Corsham. After serving for many years as a manor house, it had a new lease of life from 1942 when it was purchased by the Air Force. It was the home of the RAF’s secret service where they carried out lots of James Bond-style espionage and counterintelligence operations. But they also investigated something else – UFOs. It’s the United Kingdom’s very own Area 51. Of course it’s in Wiltshire!

This claim was consistently denied by the MOD, as they do, but in 2007 they finally blabbed. During a release of declassified files from the National Archives, it was finally confirmed the site was the centre for UFO investigations in the 1950s. Corsham is known for its underground tunnels and bunkers; could they have been storage spaces for anything alien-related? Who knows?!

The RAF moved on and after a period of serious deterioration, Rudloe Manor landed into private hands and has now been saved from structural demise. The latest update I can find is the family that purchased it are busy turning it back into a family home.

Could those golden light balls have been heading to Rudloe Manor to see what’s going on? Personally, I think it’s a tentative link, but for the sake of this article, it has allowed me a good opportunity to tell you about Wiltshire’s most secret squirrel location.

Since we’re on the subject of Rudloe Manor

Two ghosts are said to haunt this old manor. One is thought to be a German prisoner of war who was kept there during WW2. His spectre is so scary that those witnessing him have needed medical attention afterwards.

The other is a young girl dressed in white, perhaps a maid.

Anyway, back to Golden Ball Hill…

Why is Golden Ball Hill called so?

Along with its fellow Knapp Hill, these two hills do look like big golden balls on the landscape. When covered in late summer grasses, I suspect they do emanate a yellow hue, especially when the sun hits them. According to Mr. C. E. Ponting, writing in the Wiltshire Archive and Natural History Magazine of 1897, the name is down to a bright yellow flower.

According to medieval maps, it seems this hill has had its name for some time now. It’s a totally viable reason that the lovely Ladies’ Fingers flowers covering the hill gave it its name. Ladies Fingers’ are now called Birdsfoot Trefoil now which is different to Mr. C. E. Pointing’s name, just in case you are a budding botanist and you spotted the difference in the image above!

Maybe it’s a combination of its shape and the glow it produces when the sun hits it just so, bathing the rounded hill in golden light, along with yellow flora and fauna.

Of course, it could also be something to do with the golden ball lights seen floating around the fields that many people have witnessed over time. Maybe they have been around for centuries! I found an interesting article on my virtual travels which suggests these golden, and other coloured, balls of light have a perfectly viable scientific explanation.

The Science of the Golden Balls

The possible scientific explanation for the balls of light, as outlined by Brigitte Trahan on Colin Andrews website, centres on natural plasma phenomena. These orbs may be a form of ball lightning or ‘fireballs’, persistent, slow-moving electrical discharges. Unlike typical ball lightning, which fades quickly, these can last longer by drawing energy from ambient electromagnetic fields. Some scientists link them to tectonic stress, producing ‘earthquake lights’ through piezoelectric effects in the Earth’s crust. These lights may also interfere with electronics and trigger unusual human sensations. Others suggest exotic energy sources, such as scalar or longitudinal waves, could explain their sustained appearance and unusual behaviours.

We have to dip back into crop circles for a bit now as the two seem to be connected. Scientific research into crop circle creation also suggests the presence of electricity, magnetism and/or electromagnetism when the strange circles appear. This is, of course, only applicable if you haven’t already completely written off ALL crop circles as being down to ingenious human crop artists!

In a nutshell, other odd phenomena witnessed around the vicinity of crop circles, in addition to the balls of light, can be explained by science:

Electricity in the air where crop circles are found can be due to:

• Increased levels of magnetism,
• Strange noises coming out of nowhere (knocks, hissing, crackling sounds)
• Compasses spinning in a counterclockwise direction
• Bright flashes, maybe due to electrostatic reactions.

The article also mentions the geology of the Wessex Triangle could be what creates the right situation for balls of light by creating electromagnetic conditions. Something to do with the chalk aquifers running beneath great swathes of this vast chalk downland county, combined with just the right rocks, containing just the right minerals. I can’t pretend to fully understand how this works, but it seems like a decent hypothesis to me and one well worth exploring.

At the end of the day, whatever the cause of the golden balls, they just add to the weirdness of Wiltshire, and I always think, the weirder the better!

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