The Maracaibo Humming Light Injuries, 1886

In 1886 a short letter reached the editor of Scientific American. Its writer offered it as "an addition to the list of electrical eccentricities." He was Warner Cowgill, writing from the U.S. Consulate in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on November 17, 1886. On December 18 the magazine printed it on page 389 of volume 55. The title was "Curious Phenomenon in Venezuela."

October 24, 1886. The night was rainy and tempestuous. A family of nine persons lay asleep in a hut a few leagues from Maracaibo, in what is now Zulia State. Every door and window was closed.

A loud humming noise woke them. Then came "a vivid, dazzling light, which brilliantly illuminated the interior of the house." It gave no heat. There was "a smoky appearance and a peculiar smell." Terror stricken, and believing the end of the world had come, the family fell to their knees and prayed.

The prayers were cut short almost at once. Violent vomiting. Then swelling across the upper body, worst around the face and lips. The family never described an object, only the light inside their home. And they all agreed there was no detonation. Only the hum.

By morning the swelling had gone down. Large black blotches remained on the face and body. No special pain was felt until the ninth day. Then the skin peeled off, and the blotches became "virulent raw sores." Hair fell from the side of the head that had been underneath during the event. In all nine cases, that same side of the body was the more seriously injured. On the ninth day, too, the trees around the house suddenly withered. The house itself was uninjured. No trace of lightning was found.

Cowgill visited the family in one of the city's hospitals. He wrote that their appearance was "truly horrible," though it was hoped that no injury would prove fatal. No source names them. Nothing more is known of their fate.

Cowgill never saw the light. He saw what it left behind. Retellings often call him the U.S. Consul, but Political Graveyard lists Eugene H. Plumacher in that post from 1883 to 1909. No official investigation is known, and no medical records have surfaced. In 2011, Physics Forums user Ivan Seeking got a copy of the original page through a university library. It confirmed the letter is genuine.

Cowgill blamed "susceptibility to electrical effects." In 2011, Dan Schlenoff of Scientific American suggested a rare natural discharge, pointing to the Catatumbo lightning of the Lake Maracaibo basin. He also criticised the way the report was recycled online as alien visitation. Forum readers proposed ball lightning, X-rays from a high voltage discharge, a nearby strike rather than a direct hit, or a tropical disease that happened to coincide with a light.

In 2000, Gordon David Kaswell called it "A Documented Case of Unexplained Radiation Exposure" in Infinite Energy, and William Corliss revived it in Science Frontiers. EsoterX later compared the symptoms to medical reports from Nagasaki. It toyed with the idea of a spacecraft, but conceded that "concrete evidence for this is a bit thin."

Patrick Gross set the case beside the 1980 Cash-Landrum injuries in Texas. There, a bright light was followed by vomiting, blisters and hair loss. Yet nobody in 1886 linked the Maracaibo light to anything from space. It remains one letter, nine sufferers and an unanswered question.