A superior mirage. Layers of air at different temperatures bend light, and distant ships look raised, stretched or floating above the horizon. In this archive the Fata Morgana turns up again and again as the sceptic's answer. It has been offered for the Airship of Clonmacnoise and for the Flying Dutchman seen by Prince George in 1881. At Souther Fell in 1745, the blogger Beachcombing called it perhaps the only credible theory, though the figures followed the ground. In 2003 neuroscientist Jack Pettigrew tested it on the Min Min Lights. A car parked about 10 km out. A light floated above the horizon.
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