Ann K
Senior Member.
Illuminated birds look brilliant against a black sky. People exaggerate. Religiously extreme people exaggerate a lot, or choose from a different set of words than most people would use.
Our Lady of Assuit Need Debunking
- Thread starter shawnfrye
- Start date
But like half of the testimonies I've seen mention them being bright. I don't know if exaggeration is gonna cut it.
John J.
Senior Member.
(It would be useful if you could provide a link to claims).
I would perhaps ask,
(1) How do you distinguish between something being luminous and something reflecting light?
(2) Where is the evidence?
Many Egyptians would have had cameras, some would have owned video cameras in 2000, and there was at least one professional film crew from a major news organisation present.
These sightings supposedly went on for weeks or even months.
There are Egyptian meteorologists, astronomers, and there's a reasonably capable Egyptian Air Force. Any interest from them? Doesn't seen so.
John J.
Senior Member.
But how do you quantify anecdotes?
I'd say the lights in the sky in the first picture in your post #37 look relatively bright. But I suspect they're birds in the night sky reflecting light.
Bright things show up quite well in photos. Do we have any photos or footage of mysteriously glowing birds?
Edited to add: Large numbers of people claiming to see or experience something extraordinary in the absence of convincing testable evidence is nothing new, and no doubt will happen again in the future. Think the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima- it's often overlooked that there were photographers present, nothing unusual was photographed.
Or the Farmington UFO flap of 1950 (albeit with perhaps many fewer witnesses than some accounts claim); supposedly hundreds of UFOs in the sky over three days- but not a single photo. Or any evidence that the overwhelming majority of people in that modest town did anything other than carry on with their lives as per usual (my musings post #66, Major UFO experiences are specific to the observer thread).
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That is not the standard here. No one has to explain something to your satisfaction. Do you have evidence to support whatever claim you're making?
If the time is off, it couldn't possibly be the moon right?
Edit: Sorry John J, I didn't mean to reply to you
Please provide evidence. What was the position of the moon at the time listed? How about other times? Playing Whack-a-Mole with your theories is not in keeping with the Posting Guidelines.
He says "the time in the video might be off, but an hour earlier the moon was low and pretty much where the bright light is in the video." So, the only way the position of the moon lines up with the video is if the time was off. But if the time is correct, it couldn't possibly be the moon.
JMartJr
Senior Member.
White or light-clored birds with a light shining on them from below, seen against a dark sky background. will look luminous -- they are, after all, being illuminated.
Here are some probably-gulls over the Luxor in Vegas...
This would work for almost anything -- birds, bats, bugs, balloons -- that fly over bright lights.
Edit to add -- seconds after posting, my computer showed me this excellent video of gulls over St. Paul's Cathedral at night.
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZyUH0Gojdj/
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NoParty
Senior Member.
They kinda lost me when lots of people (including professional media) had lot & lots of time to get decent images of the Virgin Mary,
and, failing that, some decent shots of remarkable lights in the sky (boy, is that a fall-off in ambition)...but instead we get an image that could be an AT-AT as much as it could be anything else...
FatPhil
Senior Member.
Things in the dark that reflect bright light can be described as luminous.
This is starting to look a bit gish-gallopy.
Giddierone
Senior Member.
Here's a Sitrec. It's 100% the moon. You can scrub the time forward from 2:03 to 2:26 (and beyond) and see how the moon moves in the sky. This lines up exactly with the video stills.
https://www.metabunk.org/sitrec/?custom=18302/Assiut Egypt/20260720_114933.js
Then why did you say the time was off? I'm not being adversarial here, I just want clarification.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Obviously this thread is your first experience here, so some things to consider:
1. Witness Testimony. This forum is full of threads about all kinds of events, sightings and claims based on what people claimed to have seen or witnessed. Very often, what people thought they saw, is incorrect when it can be checked against other evidence. There is a vast amount of research showing that what we see and what we remember seeing can be seriously flawed.
First is the original observation. People routinely misinterpret or misunderstand what they're seeing, particularly if it's something unusual or novel. How fast or far away something is also related to it's size, all of which can be difficult to determine, especially at night creating confusion about what is really happening. People may misinterpret a satellite in low Earth orbit as a drone a couple hundred meters over their head. Or think an aircraft is "hovering" because of the angle of observation.
In this case about Assuit, we must also consider priming. This is a known issue. Many of the people at this event didn't just go there, they made a pilgrimage to see a Marion apparition. They were primed to see something they considered miraculous. So, when a common pidgin gets illuminated by a common street light, they perceive it as a "luminous dove" and a sign from God.
After the original observation, flawed as it may be, we then have to deal with the memory of the observation. Again, there is a vast amount of research showing that human memory is not like a recording, but instead a recollection of sights, sounds, smells and feelings amalgamated into an assemblage, that is often very malleable, particularly over time. Besides time, outside influence can shape a person's memories. Thus, one could have a memory of seeing an illuminated bird while in a crowd of ecstatic, chanting like-minded pilgrims. Then as the other pilgrims share their experiences and some mention the birds were "glowing", one begins to remember it that way. The memory gets changed and modified.
All of this is to say, we have a reserved attitude towards witness testimony. It might be correct, it might not. We know it's subject to interpretation and misunderstanding and can be further convoluted in the witness' memories.
2. Anecdotal Evidence. Similar to witness testimony, this is usually presented as a collection of testimonies that are often argued to add up to something. Each sighting of say, a glowing dove, is considered an anecdote. Even if the witness firmly believes they saw a miraculously glowing dove, we can't be sure what they really saw. It's an anecdote. Some then try to amalgamate various individual anecdotes into a cohesive narrative. Sometimes this can be correct, but sometimes there just anecdotes.
This is common in fields like UFOs or Bigfoot. Lots of people say they saw a UFO or Bigfoot, so there must be something to it. Not necessarily. It could just be a series of anecdotes, that while possibly sounding similar, may be unrelated or misinterpretations of various things.
3. Empirical Evidence. This is the gold standard for interpreting claims. The nice thing here, is the research is a group effort. Some are good at looking stuff up and finding information. Some are experts in photography while others can find nearly any satellite in the sky. So, for example in the post above (#52), @Giddierone used the powerful Sitrec tool to show that the moon, on that particular date would have appeared just as it does in the video. This raises the question or the timestamp on the camera. Which is correct? If the time on the camera is correct, it means that some sort of light created the exact same effect that the moon did, just an hour apart. So, the same effect happened twice? Or, did the user of the camera come from a different time zone and forget to adjust the camera? In which case they recorded the moon exactly the way the Sitrec tool predicted they would. The provenance of the video would be a good start. Where did it come from and who recorded it? Did that person travel to Assuit from another time zone?
In the end, the claims about what happened in Assuit 26 years ago come down to some questionable witness testimony and assorted anecdotes with some poor quality video. Despite the supposed regular occurrence of these sightings, most evidence presented today is the same time-stamped video that gets passed around. That video shows some lights, the moon, some birds and likely other mundane things. That video is often inter-cuts with other video of the crowds to create a narrative.
While there's not much to it, that means it's hard to completely debunk. Much of the main video seems to be the afore mentioned things like birds and the moon. Beyond that, it's anecdotes from 26 years ago. In addition, it's anecdotes about a religious experience, something very difficult to debunk.
Yeah, there are all sorts of reports where people visiting places that are new to them see playful glowing sprites moving acrobatically in the darkness at unknown distances and the witnesses often turn out to be in resorts, camping in the desert, on cruise ships, or in other tourist areas with upward-facing lights where one is also likely to find bats.
(My sister came back from a cruise last year claiming to have seen "UAPs" trailing the ship at night; what she described sounded like the sorts of sea birds that follow cruise ships, which are often festooned with outward-facing lights.)
The common key point being people in unfamiliar locations trying to make sense of some new experience and and interpreting it as "eerie" or "supernatural."
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