By Bob Ray Sanders
bobray@star-telegram.com
Had it been the Fourth of July, I probably would have thought a gigantic fireworks show was being staged in my neighborhood.
But that night last year (May 10, to be exact) was almost two months before July 4, and some of the things I witnessed later had me wondering whether our east-side community was experiencing electrical and/or gas explosions, bomb attacks or an invasion from outer space.
It was unlike anything I had ever seen, and although I really didn't suspect extraterrestrial visitors, a couple of officers I met on a dark road later that evening only added to the mystery.
Many of you probably have seen video from that night taken by a resident of The Tower in downtown Fort Worth who just happened to have been on his balcony with a video camera facing east. Had he not captured the event on tape, I'm convinced many people would think I had lost my mind.
In fact, when I first called in a report to the newspaper about it, I could hear the doubt in editor Ann Thompson's voice as she took dictation of what I claimed to have seen. There had been no other reports when I called.
By the time reporter Marty Sabota called me, she at least knew
something was going on because of calls coming into the police and fire departments, but no one was sure what was happening.
I'm still not sure we know all the details of what occurred that night.
There had been a thunderstorm with a lot of lightning that evening, and the power had gone out on several streets.
Later, when I looked out my front door, I saw in rapid succession two giant fireballs above treetops that lined the hill. My first thought was that it was a transformer exploding because it was in the vicinity of a row of power lines.
But then there was a series of other fiery blasts in other directions, and they were bigger and brighter than transformer explosions I've seen before. I felt compelled to check it out.
I got in my car and drove through the neighborhood, witnessing dozens of fireballs in the sky and on the ground. Several occurred behind the Chesapeake facility on East First Street, and that's when I thought the phenomenon had something to do with gas wells.
By the time I headed back toward home, police had blocked off East First Street and part of Randol Mill Road, where I parked and approached two officers standing outside their cars. Because the street lamps were out, the cops were silhouetted by the flashing emergency lights atop their vehicles. I identified myself and asked what was going on. They slowly looked at each other and one said I would have to ask someone else because they weren't authorized to talk.
That's when
The Twilight Zone theme music began playing in my head, and for a moment I wondered whether there was something going on so strange that the general public was never supposed to know.
The official explanation from the power company was that the occurrence was caused by "lightning hitting transformers."
As I told the newspaper that night, lightning may have hit a transformer that set off a chain reaction, but the flashes I saw were no lightning strikes.
The video taken by Brian Luenser from this 34th-floor balcony was shown last week on the SyFy network's
Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files. Even before the program aired, Luenser's video on YouTube had received more than 1.3 million views.
Watch it at
Star-Telegram.com, and you'll see a spectacular light show. But I guarantee that you won't see lightning.
Cue
The Twilight Zone music.
Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. 817-390-7775Twitter: @BobRaySanders
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