Foxfire

I always liked that term.
It's just swamp gas slowly burning
Above the water
But it is a little spooky
in the calm of night

So have you ever seen this phenomena?
What do you call it where you live?

For me foxfire sounds like the verlan of firefox.

I've never seen it unfortunately, but where I come from we call it "feu follet". Damned poetic, if you ask me.

Edit: actually, no. I was thinking of something else. I didn't even know foxfire before.

@Under-the-radar said in #2:
> For me foxfire sounds like the verlan of firefox.
>
> I've never seen it unfortunately, but where I come from we call it "feu follet". Damned poetic, if you ask me.
>

Le feu follet. Almost as frightening than le Bonhomme Sept Heures. ;-)

I have also heard it referred to as " Will of the Wisp".

@Dukedog said in #4:
> I have also heard it referred to as " Will of the Wisp".
Aha! That was what I was initially referring to. But, upon a quick google search, they're not the same thing.

Foxfire is bioluminescence in certain species of mushrooms.

Will of the Wisp -- feu follet in French -- is caused by the copbustion of gas produced by the natural composting of organic matter.

@Dukedog said in #1:
> I always liked that term.
> It's just swamp gas slowly burning
> Above the water
> But it is a little spooky
> in the calm of night
>
> So have you ever seen this phenomena?
> What do you call it where you live?

I think I may have caught a picture of one once by the house I grew up in, there's a little mire amongst those trees

In Dutch it's called "Witte Wieven".
White Wenches.
I think because people sometimes thought that they were seeing a ghost.

Is it possible to have will o the wisps in your dirty laundry? I saw something like that in my closet for hours once

@twighead said in #8:
> Is it possible to have will o the wisps in your dirty laundry? I saw something like that in my closet for hours once
Are you sure it wasn't your perv brother with a torchlight sniffing dirty underpants?

@Under-the-radar
You're right but that's way we called the swamp glow where I grew up,
Piedmont North Carolina.

Bioluminescence I've seen at sea at the fantail of a ship, pretty cool,you see fish cutting trails through the plankton. Fireflys of course ( also regional) and once camping in the mountains this green glow kept catching my eye,it turned out to be a glowworm ( a larva).

I've also observed photon emission from thorium decay underground in a cave with a dark adapted eye. Amazing to observe a single photon . The human eye is quite remarkable.