Our Lady of Assuit Need Debunking

[shawnfrye]

Many people online claim there were supernatural lights at Assuit, Egypt in 2000. Looking at the video I linked, it seems like there are lights on top of/near a church with no known source. Some have put this forth as evidence for Christianity.

Here's the video that shows the lights I described.

From 2:03 to 2:25 there are intermittent flashes of light from unknown places

From 2:26 to 2:47 there is a bright light on the top left corner

From 2:48 to 4:08 there is a bright light near the cross which seems to move

Here's some pictures:

How would you explain this? What is the source of the lights? Are these photos/videos doctored?

 

[Mauro]

Well, most of the pictures are just of... lights in the LIZ. They could be anything, from the Moon to Jupiter to a plane and even to an apparition of the Virgin Mary, or maybe ET crafts or Athena having a quarrel with Ares... who can possibly know. I'd stick to things proven to be real and eliminate the last three possibilities.

Picture #2 looks to me like a window reflection of some light fixture inside the room.

You might be interested also in Our Lady of Zeitoun and Our Lady of Warraq, and undoubtely many more I guess.

Desire to believe + someone starting a rumour = UFO apparitions flaps.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

They actually remind me of fireworks.

 

[Giddierone]

There are several alleged mass sightings of an apparition of the Virgin Mary in Egypt (as well as other place in the world). For example 2 April 1968 over a Coptic Orthodox church of Zeitoun, (see https://skeptoid.com/episodes/766). Then a couple more (17 Aug 2000, March 2004) over Saint Mark's Coptic Christian Church in Assuit.

Legend has it they've been happening "for centuries"...

Assuit has a specific significance for Coptic Christians in Egypt because it's apparently where the "holy family" sheltered when hiding from Herod's soldiers.

However, despite the claim that thousands have seen it the apparition all the evidence is as poor or worse than the video posted in this thread.

Later cases just look like spotlights on low cloud, camera flashes, "exceptionally large pigeons" caught in those lights, or could even be lights deliberately shone from the nearby hills.

In a 90% muslim community novel evangelising methods by a minority might be employed...

Other newspaper stories were suitably pun heavy.

 

[John J.]

(The place is probably Asyut, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asyut), less often written as Assiut).

The video and audio are poor quality, maybe filmed from the screen of another device- there's maybe a hint of fingers at the right side of the screen at approx. 16:40.

From approx. 17: 44, there's a BBC news report from Caroline Hawley, a BBC correspondent who covered Egypt, Libya and Sudan from 1999 (BBC profile http://news.bbc.co.uk/aboutbbcnews/hi/profiles/newsid_3787000/3787599.stm); the original must have been in much better quality.

The story is in the context of claimed Marian apparitions (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_apparition) but we don't see any Marian apparitions, so we are left with various lights and brief illuminations of the church. The latter might be due to entirely mundane sources, e.g. spotlights being flashed on and off, perhaps powerful photography flashes.

The perhaps out-of-focus "globular" light from approx. 1:29 could be almost anything. We don't see any part of the Church (or anything else) in this sequence.
The light very near the cross from about 2:47 might be the Moon; I'd guess there are others here who would be able to establish if this might be a possibility (if the camera time and date are correct).

If accurate, the dates at the lower left of the screen are from 21 August 2000 to 10 September 2000; plenty of time to arrange for good quality filming from a number of different viewpoints. But this doesn't appear to have happened.

If this (low quality) footage has been filmed from the screen of another device, the opportunities for hoaxing might be greater- manipulation of imagery on the first device might be harder to detect; the editing might allow inclusion of non-authentic footage though my feeling is perhaps this didn't happen- but nevertheless all lights seen probably have prosaic explanations.

The burden of proof is on claimants to demonstrate that these lights are probably not of mundane origin.