A Night at The Shinning Clough

In the midst of the links you sent, maybe off to the side of one of them I came to a some information I kept following about the ‘Longendale Lights’ in the Peak District just outside Sheffield, which has caught my imagination. 

This is a valley near to Sheffield, Longesdale, where for centuries odd lights have been seen occasionally. Of course there has been rumours and folklore they are the work of ghosts, spirits, wil-o-the-whisps, and UFO’s, that the lights are somehow connected to methane and other marsh gases from rotting vegetable and animal matter bubbling up through the bogs, which ignited can produce wispy flames or balls of fire that flit about. There are thought it is also caused by fissures opened up by mining. It seems they are likely there is a kind of natural geological phenomena, the ‘earthlights’ theory is the common one now; apparently, it could be caused by connection between lights and the "faulted geology of the regions in which they appear. Although no clear production mechanism has yet been discovered which scientists are entirely happy with, the theory suggests the lights are the product of a build up of electrical charge in areas of geological stress. Rather than being directly caused by earthquakes or tremors, the lights are symptoms of the earth’s internal traumas, springing into life as electrons are slowly released into the air and possibly through the water table as strain waxes and wanes in zones of geological faulting”(from one of the links below, from David Clarke of Sheffield Hallam Uni). Apparently the locals call this 'the Devil’s Bonfires'. I have no idea if any of that is true, scientifcally, but it's kind of wonderful.

This evening I have read some wonderful witness accounts of this happening but so far I have not seen any pictures of it. So, its evidently hard to capture. It almost sounds like the 'green ray’ phenomena that can be seen sometimes across the suns horizon at dusk or dawn. (And which was nicely touched on by Jules Verne and Eric Rommer). 

It also helps that the topology of the area of the Logendale valley is so nicely named. 

Much of the activity for this happens around ‘The Shining Clough’.
Also, the Lantern Pike
Bleaklow
Woodhead Pass
Devil’s Elbow 
Glossop
Lantern Lane
Tintwistle 
Torside Clough

https://drdavidclarke.co.uk/spooklights/longdendale-lights/
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cu6r1BEXEAAYqBL.jpg
http://www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/Peakland.htm
https://hostdruresidency.wordpress.com/2010/04/22/earth-lights-iridium-flares-and-radio-beacons/
http://explorebuxton.co.uk/16-most-haunted-places-in-derbyshire-the-peak-district/

If you agree, I could go spend the night, or some of it at 'The Shinning Ridge’?  I can just see it: 'A Night at The Shinning Clough’, which also sounds like a Western to me. 

If I don’t get too freaked out. I wouldn't be on my own though, I’ll have my partner John with me, who tells me he knows the area well from his youth. If we agree I should go it is likely I could go searching for the lights but never see anything, but there’s still something in that. I am somehow thinking that something from your words might come to show what I never find literally. And this gap could end up being very resonate. 

If this does't chime with you, do say, there are plenty of other things to go with. 

Isn’t Lynchberg near to the Blueridge Mountains of Virginia? Of Laurel and Hardy fame rather than the famous whiskey. You might have similar phenomena there too?