The Egryn Lights: Mary Jones and the Welsh Revival Lights

In the winter of 1904, Wales was in the grip of a religious revival. Evan Roberts led it in the south. On the Merionethshire coast, a farmer's wife named Mary Jones began a mission of her own. On 5 December 1904 she started preaching at Capel Egryn, a small Calvinistic Methodist chapel near Tal-y-bont. That was when the first light appeared.

Beriah G. Evans, a journalist from Caernarfon, described "a luminous arch, of the character of the 'Aurora Borealis', one end resting on the sea, the other on the hill-top". Mary Jones said a "star" guided her. She called the light "a divine guidance".

Others saw it too. On 22 December three observers watched "a large light" with "something like a bottle or black person" in its middle. In January a train driver near Machynlleth saw light "shooting out of ten different directions… coming together with a loud clap". "Never do I wish to see anything like it again," he said.

On 31 January Evans and a party of five saw "an enormous luminous star flashing forth an enormously brilliant white light". It "made a sudden huge jump towards the mountains, returning almost immediately". Then it came "rushing at an immense speed straight for us". Later a blood-red light appeared in the centre of the village street. Apparently within a foot of the ground.

In February the London correspondents arrived. On 11 February the Daily Mail's correspondent saw "a ball of fire above the roof of the chapel". It held a "steady, intense yellow brilliance, and did not move" for about a minute and a half. Up close, it "looked a solid bulb of light six inches in diameter". Two days later at Tywyn, stationmaster R. Bowen followed a light through a telescope. Opposite Harlech, it "suddenly disappeared". In March at Ty'n-y-Drain, a light "played and danced" around a car, turned sharp left at a junction and overtook it for over a mile. P.C. Jones of Dyffryn saw "three columns of copper fire" shoot from a wall.

Not everyone saw them. On 14 February a reporter watched a "most brilliant blue" bar of light blaze out beside the chapel. A group of 15 to 20 people about ten yards away saw nothing. The Daily Mirror's photographer, standing near the reporters, saw nothing either. No one ever photographed the lights.

The Daily Mail's Bernard Redwood carried delicate instruments. When two flashes lit the northern sky on 13 February, they did not respond at all. For the Society for Psychical Research, Rev. A.T. Fryer gathered accounts by post and published them in the society's Proceedings in December 1905. Kevin McClure later called it "the only serious and protracted enquiry" made at the time. It reached no verdict. By then the reports had spread as far as Ynysybwl in South Wales. The last came on 23 July 1905.

Some lights proved ordinary: a farmer burning gorse, oil lamps in windows, motor-car headlights. The Cambrian News took a harsh line against Mary Jones. Prof. J. Castell-Evans blamed luminous insects from the marshes. Others proposed marsh gas, St Elmo's fire, the aurora, mirages, Venus, or mass suggestion.

In the 1980s Paul Devereux mapped the sightings. On geologists' advice he tied them to the Mochras Fault, which runs "almost directly under" Egryn. The sightings, he found, were "strung out like beads on a thread". His earth lights theory remains disputed.

Mary Jones's ministry ended in 1906. She died in 1936 and is buried at Horeb cemetery, Dyffryn. She is remembered as Mari'r Golau. Mary of the Lights. In 1980 Kevin and Sue McClure returned to her story in Stars and Rumours of Stars. Commentators suggest the lights inspired Arthur Machen's novella The Great Return. The chapel has since closed.