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."
John J.
Senior Member.
There doesn't appear to be any commentary on the video describing what is being seen, although there are a number of voices.
What they say sounds fragmentary, and lacks context.
We have no way of telling if the voices we can hear/ crowd noises are synchronous with the visuals. As far as I can tell there's no obvious increase in crowd noise when lights appear or the church is illuminated.
No-one we can hear on the video is commenting on any specific light or moment of illumination.
What I first thought was commentary from BBC reporter Caroline Hawley from approx. 17:44 is clearly not her voice, and sounds very much like the female we hear speaking intermittently from 04:38 (see below). The phrasing is not what a native English-speaking BBC reporter would use,
There is a female voice from approx. 4:38 on, but she doesn't seem to be commenting about what is being filmed; it sounds like she might be translating the singing we can hear, though if this is right it might not be a very fluent translation, e.g. from approx. 9 mins. 11 secs. in,
(my best effort at understanding what she says, much of it might be wrong),
We don't know what the person/ people doing the filming made of what we see in the video, or if they thought it showed anything extraordinary (as opposed to noteworthy or unusual, e.g. the happy crowd who had come in the belief that there had been Marian apparitions).
Maybe they were just recording an exciting scene, and were aware (or suspected) that the flashes of illumination of the church were from nearby electric lights. We don't know.
Either they didn't record their thoughts/ observations, which seems a little odd, or their comments were discarded by whoever edited the video.
If the yellowish round light in the sky is the moon, it must be unlikely that the cameraman/ woman misidentified it (though I guess not impossible, many surprising misidentifications have been documented on threads here).
The lights in the video are consistent with, e.g., brief flashes of bright electric lights.
They might have been used to add a sense of drama and occasion, not in an attempt to hoax anyone. Along with the (amplified?) singing, a sort of improvised "son et lumière".
Maybe this was tacitly understood by many of those present. The video doesn't demonstrate that anyone, either the filmer or anyone in the crowd, thought that the lights captured on the video were of extraordinary origin (though presumably many present believed extraordinary things had been seen).
The video is arguably evidence that people in Egypt have electric lights, and that people viewing edited low quality videos made in connection with extraordinary claims interpret them in different ways.. Not much else.
What they say sounds fragmentary, and lacks context.
We have no way of telling if the voices we can hear/ crowd noises are synchronous with the visuals. As far as I can tell there's no obvious increase in crowd noise when lights appear or the church is illuminated.
No-one we can hear on the video is commenting on any specific light or moment of illumination.
What I first thought was commentary from BBC reporter Caroline Hawley from approx. 17:44 is clearly not her voice, and sounds very much like the female we hear speaking intermittently from 04:38 (see below). The phrasing is not what a native English-speaking BBC reporter would use,
Why not use the sound from the BBC report?External Quote:
There is a female voice from approx. 4:38 on, but she doesn't seem to be commenting about what is being filmed; it sounds like she might be translating the singing we can hear, though if this is right it might not be a very fluent translation, e.g. from approx. 9 mins. 11 secs. in,
(my best effort at understanding what she says, much of it might be wrong),
If she is witnessing the lights, and thinks they're extraordinary, she doesn't comment on them.External Quote:
We don't know what the person/ people doing the filming made of what we see in the video, or if they thought it showed anything extraordinary (as opposed to noteworthy or unusual, e.g. the happy crowd who had come in the belief that there had been Marian apparitions).
Maybe they were just recording an exciting scene, and were aware (or suspected) that the flashes of illumination of the church were from nearby electric lights. We don't know.
Either they didn't record their thoughts/ observations, which seems a little odd, or their comments were discarded by whoever edited the video.
If the yellowish round light in the sky is the moon, it must be unlikely that the cameraman/ woman misidentified it (though I guess not impossible, many surprising misidentifications have been documented on threads here).
The lights in the video are consistent with, e.g., brief flashes of bright electric lights.
They might have been used to add a sense of drama and occasion, not in an attempt to hoax anyone. Along with the (amplified?) singing, a sort of improvised "son et lumière".
Maybe this was tacitly understood by many of those present. The video doesn't demonstrate that anyone, either the filmer or anyone in the crowd, thought that the lights captured on the video were of extraordinary origin (though presumably many present believed extraordinary things had been seen).
The video is arguably evidence that people in Egypt have electric lights, and that people viewing edited low quality videos made in connection with extraordinary claims interpret them in different ways.. Not much else.
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Giddierone
Senior Member.
I hadn't adjusted for the timezone in Stellarium initially but the Sitrec is correct. The light in the frames dated 10 Sept 2000 is the moon.
Also, the first image in post #1 is not from the video linked in that post. It's dated 15 Sept 2000.
If you adjust the date/time in the sitrec linked above you can see the moon was full and would have been directly in the field of view of the camera on 15 Sept 2000 at 04:21.
@shawnfrye where do these two images come from?
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Going back to the video on YouTube, it does have a "dubbed audio" label. Then I went to the channel for the poster, Flip'n Eleanor. What exactly the Assuit compilation video is supposed to be, is unclear, but Flip'n Eleanor also has videos explaining that the Earth is flat, lizard people walk among us, volcanoes are fake and a whole obsessive series of short "Transvestigations" that suggest Bridget Bardot was a dude, while Mohamed Ali was likely a female, among others. Seriously. As such, the creator may have chosen any number of audio clips for the Assuit video that they thought made sense to them.
It's a very strange and conspiratorially minded channel.
Yeah, good call. I can't find them in the few videos I did look at, including the OP one. They seem to come from the same time-stamped video that is used throughout in multiple videos.
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