Mid-December 1910, near Listowel, County Kerry — two men reported two glowing yellow sheets of light, each containing a radiant human-form figure, drawing together before a house blocked their view.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT
The 1910 Listowel, Ireland Luminous Beings
Two Radiant Figures in County Kerry
Two men walking toward Listowel, County Kerry, around midnight in mid-December 1910, noticed a light about a mile ahead that they first took for a house. It wasn’t. As they drew closer they watched it move up and down, shrink to a spark, then bloom into a sheet of yellow flame. Then there were two of the lights. Each one expanded into a glowing panel roughly six feet by four — and standing within each panel, they said, was a radiant, human-shaped figure. The two lights drifted together until the figures stood side by side inside a single shared glow. A house came between the men and the lights before they could see anything more.
Date: Mid-December 1910
Sighting Time: About midnight
Day/Night: Night
Location: Near Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland
Urban or Rural: Rural (country road)
No. of Entity(s): 2
Entity Type: Radiant, human-form figures within luminous light-sheets
Entity Description: Only the general outline or shape of each figure was visible; no facial or bodily detail discernible
Hynek Classification: CE-III
Duration: Undocumented; witnessed during an approach on foot before a house blocked the view
No. of Object(s): 2 lights, merging into 1 combined glow
Description of the Object(s): Two lights that expanded into flat sheets of yellow luminous light, each containing a radiant human-form figure
Shape of Object(s): Flat, sheet-like
Size of Object(s): Roughly six feet high by four feet across, each
Color of Object(s): Yellow
Distance to Object(s): Roughly a mile at first sighting, closing as the men continued walking
Height & Speed: Moved up and down, back and forth, shrinking to a spark and expanding again before the two lights drew together
Number of Witnesses: 2 (two unnamed men, walking together)
Special Features/Characteristics: The two lights drew together so the figures appeared side by side within a combined glow before a house blocked further view
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Source: Devereux, Paul, Earth Lights — original underlying source (period newspaper, letter, or folklore collection) not yet identified
Summary/Description: Two men walking toward Listowel noticed a light that moved erratically before resolving into two separate lights, each expanding into a yellow sheet containing a radiant human-form figure. The two lights drew together before a house blocked further view.
Witnesses: Two unnamed men, walking together
Related Cases: Compare the Egryn Lights phenomenon (1904–1906, North Wales), also documented by Paul Devereux and cataloged elsewhere on this site
DETAILED REPORT
The account is preserved in researcher Paul Devereux’s Earth Lights, a work that specifically catalogs and analyzes anomalous luminous phenomena with a documented tendency to cluster along geological fault lines and other tectonically active terrain — the same broad category of research Devereux applied to the Egryn Lights of North Wales, five years earlier and already documented elsewhere in this archive.
Two men were walking toward Listowel late at night when a light, roughly a mile distant, caught their attention. Their first assumption was mundane: a lit window in a house along their route. As they continued walking and the distance closed, that explanation stopped holding up. The light was moving — up and down, back and forth — and changing in intensity, at times shrinking down to little more than a spark before swelling back into a broader yellow luminous flame.
Before they reached the town, they were able to make out that there were, in fact, two separate lights rather than one. Then, according to the account, both lights simultaneously expanded into flat sheets of yellow luminous light, each described as roughly six feet high and four feet across. Within each sheet of light, the men reported seeing “a radiant being having human form” — the account is careful to note that only the general outline or shape of each figure was visible, not any specific facial or bodily detail.
The two lights then drew together, bringing the two figures into apparent proximity, side by side within what had become a single combined glow. At that point, a house standing between the two men and the lights blocked their view entirely, and — still walking, rather than stopping to investigate further — they saw nothing more of the phenomenon.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
Listowel — Kerry’s Place in a Wider Pattern of Irish and British Luminous Phenomena
- This case fits a documented broader pattern rather than standing alone: County Kerry, and the Irish coast more generally, carries a long-noted tradition of reported anomalous lights, and this specific account was collected by a researcher (Devereux) whose work is centrally concerned with exactly that kind of pattern — luminous phenomena with a tendency to recur in geologically active regions. Whether that pattern reflects a genuine, currently unexplained geophysical light-generating mechanism (a hypothesis some earth-lights researchers take seriously) or a recurring cultural narrative shaping how ambiguous lights get interpreted and retold in a region with a strong existing folklore of such things is a real, open question the source material doesn’t resolve.
- The witnesses are unnamed, and the account’s original documentation chain is not fully traceable in the sourcing available for this page — Devereux’s book is a credible secondary compilation, but the underlying original source (a period newspaper, a personal letter, a folklore collection) has not been identified. This limits how much independent verification is currently possible.
- The men’s own behavior during the sighting is worth noting analytically: they continued walking throughout the entire event rather than stopping to observe more closely or attempting to approach, and the encounter ended not because the lights departed but because a house blocked their line of sight. This is a passive, in-transit observation rather than a sustained, focused investigation — which affects how much detail two witnesses walking at night, at a distance, could reasonably have resolved.
- The specific detail that the two lights “came together” so the two figures appeared side by side is one of the account’s more analytically interesting elements — it describes an apparent interaction or coordination between the two light-sources, rather than two independent, unrelated phenomena occurring near each other by chance.
The Listowel case is a quiet entry compared to the loud, multi-witness spectacles elsewhere in this archive’s 1910 record — two men, walking, half a mile of darkness, and a house that happened to block the view at the crucial moment. What makes it worth preserving is the specificity within that quietness: not just lights, but lights that resolved into shape, that seemed to contain something, and that seemed, in their final moments of visibility, to be moving toward each other rather than apart. Paul Devereux thought it belonged in the same category as some of the twentieth century’s most carefully studied earth-light phenomena. This page keeps it there, honestly labeled as unresolved.
“Suddenly both of these expanded into yellow sheets of light about six feet high by four feet across. In the midst of each light they saw ‘a radiant being having human form.'”
— Account of the mid-December 1910 Listowel, County Kerry sighting, as documented by Paul Devereux in Earth Lights
