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Floating Cities, Phantom Armies and Ghost Ships
Posted on Friday, November 11, 2005 (CST) by Thoth
 One of the strangest spectacles that man has documented is that of Phantom army. History records many instances of whole battalions of soldiers that simply appeared unexpectedly from nowhere to the amazement of witnesses, or floating cities that hover above water for hours at a time, cities that are so real you can see children and dogs playing in the street.
Witness reports suggest that these phenomena appear to have a reality of their own, so what are they?
In the past, this mysterious phenomena has been attributed to everything from the light of God to rips in the space-time continuum. Many thought them to be a supernatural event that forewarned of trouble ahead, while those of a more scientific bent have suggested they might simply be an example of mass hysteria or a trick of the light. It’s worth looking to see if there is a rational explanation for these supernatural events, because whether they can be explained or not, they are fantastic events worthy of investigation.
The Armies from Nowhere
Reports of phantom armies that have marched through countries have been recorded from as early as the seventeenth century, so this is not a modern day puzzle, it is one that has been witnessed many times.
Scotland has a particularly well-documented history of phantom armies dating back to at least 1719. In January of that year, the Laird of Kingswells, Alexander Jaffray, and his riding companion both reported witnessing an army of some 7,000 soldiers west of Aberdeen. It was early in the morning, and a clear sunny day. What he saw was so real that he could make out the battalions colours, see the drums carried by the drummers and clearly identify the commanding officer, who was riding a white horse. The two men watched the army for two hours until it eventually disappeared behind a hill.
The same army, led by the same commander was sighted in October of the same year. Then it was said that smoke could clearly be seen from the muskets they had fired but no sound was heard to indicate shots had been fired.
In 1774, another phantom army appeared, seemingly floating above a mountain in Scotland, it was witnessed by a man named D. Stricket - Stricket had witnessed a lone phantom horseman the previous year in the same area. Like the 1719 sighting, the apparition lasted for a couple of hours until again, the army disappeared behind a hill.
In October 1812, another phantom army, this time in battle was reported, in the English town of Leeds. The town newspaper reported the incident stating:
“These phantoms were four deep, extending over thirty acres, and performed many evolutions. Other bodies, in dark uniforms now appeared, and smoke, as if from artillery, rolled over the grass of the park…”
It seems that there are many consistencies in the eye-witness accounts of the phantom army sighting, all appear in great detail, enough to make witnesses think they are seeing the real thing, but in all cases the armies are silent, neither drum nor gun making a sound. The duration of the sightings are always of a sustained period of time and occur during good visibility, clear skies and sunshine.
Floating cities
Phantom armies aren’t the only anomalous optical phenomena to have puzzled people over the years; phantom cities that appear from nowhere have also been reported. Is there a connection or are the cities something different?
There are many reports of sailors seeing these floating cities, even though there was no land in sight at the time.
One of the best documented cases is the account that occurred in the Mediterranean Sea, east of Malta, in July 1943, when an entire ship's crew of 93 US Navy sailors witnessed a floating city in the sky. It was a nice sunny day and the ship was well out at sea, with no land in sight.
An eyewitness account from a crew member describes the city as follows:
“The city was positioned on the clouds with the rear of the city higher than the front so the whole was in elevation. Now the hard part. How to explain in ordinary words how fantastically beautiful the whole city was. There were ‘buildings’ the very, the very name an insult, these were glistening white palaces with turrets and castellated walls in white marble, sat in fantastic gardens and tree studded parkland, bordered with lawns, flower beds, fountains and pools all in fantastic colour.
Walking, playing, sitting on the lawns and fountains were many people and families, even children and dogs. Although the ship was out of sight of land, it seems strange, we could see people, let alone identify children and dogs, but as previously stated, we were looking at a city one mile away.
The people although very small could be identified as men, women, and children. The ladies were wearing long black skirts, which reached the floor like those in Victorian times. On my original report, I have made two drawings, one of the city and another of the size of the people. The dog was running all over the place.
Through the centre of the city ran a beautiful wide thoroughfare with side roads on each side. Each side road were fringed with fantastic lawns, vivid flowerbeds, flowers and wonderful palaces. The wide thoroughfare was aligned exactly with the starboard side of the ship; we were all looking along it as it tapered to nothing in the distance. (Even the name thoroughfare or roads are crude in trying to explain how wonderful everything looked).
Along the side roads and main thoroughfare, ran a constant stream of traffic, fine looking cabs drawn by a horse, an open coach, drawn by two horses. A type of London scene, but like a Victorian scene. These would stop at the side of the roads or thoroughfare, passengers would disembark, others would enter and the cab or coach would join the main stream.”
Whatever this amazing city was, the crew seem to have witnessed it in great detail and at such a close range that they could see people in the streets. Interestingly, it was also commented that the city kept pace with the speed of the ship and as with the phantom armies, the sightings occurred not in the space of a few short minutes, but over several hours.
The Arctic
The Arctic too has tales of mysterious cites. In 1906, Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary observed what would turn out to be a phantom city. According to his own account from the summit of Cape Colgate on the north coast of Canada, he could see a strange city on the horizon, stating, "North stretched the well-known ragged surface of the polar pack and northwest it was with a thrill that my glasses revealed the white summits of a distant land." Peary called the land Crocker Land, after one of his financial backers and such was his reputation, it remained marked on some maps for several years until subsequent Arctic expeditions failed to find a trace of it.
In the 1880s, a North American Indian legend of a floating city, that appeared every summer near Mount Fairweather on the Alaska-Yukon border, attracted the interest of an American prospector, Mr. Willoughby. By 1887, Willoughby had succeeded in photographing the miraculous floating city, which was later identified as Bristol, a city on the North West coast of England.
Bad Omens?
Although considered by many to be amazing experiences, some sightings of phantom apparitions, due to their unknown nature, tend to evoke fear and superstition in people. The Flying Dutchman, a phantom ship said to have been sailing in the waters around the Cape of Good Hope, was feared by mariners as an omen of disaster. Unlike the phantom armies and cities, the Flying Dutchman is said to appear when the weather is about to turn bad. Likewise, when a phantom army was seen in Durham, England, on the 27th of September 1703, it was considered a bad omen as it was subsequently followed by an unrelated battle.
The Laws of Optics
According to science, phenomena such as phantom armies, floating cities and even phantom ships could actually be strange optical effects called mirages. An optical mirage is a phenomenon associated with the refraction of light in the gaseous (cloud-free) atmosphere. During a mirage, a visible image of some distant object is made to appear displaced from the true position of the object, the mirage can either be distorted or a perfect mirror image. Light rays travelling from an object to the eye through the atmosphere are bent up or down depending upon whether the density of air increases upward or downward. This results in one of three specific phenomena, a desert mirage, an arctic mirage or a fata morgana which is a combination of both types.
Fata Morganas are most likely to show up after dawn, before dusk or as a storm is building up. They tend to form when the sea is much colder than the atmosphere, as the water cools the air directly above it, a boundary layer is formed. Fata Morgana tend to occur when temperature inversions and complex air layering are present and may consist of a double image of an object, one image inverted, the other right side up. Fata Morganas are often cited as the cause of apparitions such as the legendary phantom ships that sail the sky, which it has been said could simply be the reflection of a distant vessel.
That of course doesn’t explain why the reports often comment that the Flying Dutchman is an old-fashioned masted ship, not a modern one, neither does it explain the absence of an inverted image. Nevertheless, the hypothesis does warrant some serious consideration.
T Neil Davis of the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, explains the difference between desert mirages and artic mirages:
“Just as cold snow differs from hot sand, arctic mirages differ from those of desert regions.
Desert mirages result from the heating of air overlying a warm surface; the hot sand. In a desert mirage objects appear to be lower than they actually are. In addition, the image is inverted top for bottom.
Just the opposite happens in an arctic mirage because it results from the existence of relatively cold air next to the ground surface. That cold layer exists because the cold snow, ice or water surface extracts heat from the air just above. In the arctic mirage, a distant object appears right way up but higher up than the actual location.
Though arctic and desert mirages seem to be quite different, they share a common fundamental cause. It is that light rays passing from an object through air to an observer always refract (bend) in the direction of increasing air density."
Appreciate the Miracle … whatever it is.
Could it be then, that reports of phantom armies are really mirages; a reflection of actual people and places thousands of miles away? Certainly, the absence of noise would support the theory as would the duration of the sightings all of which last for a couple of hours.
Whether an optical anomaly or something more mysterious, this incredible phenomena has never really been fully explained, which may be due to the fact that they are so incredibly rare to start with. As it stands, science may have the upper hand in solving this enigma, but no one has all the answers it has to be said. What the witnesses in all the cases maintain, is that what they saw was as real as everything else around them - whatever they witnessed was clearly amazing.
© ThothWeb
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