Peculiar effect of a thunderstorm near Leadhills, Lanarkshire, on June 7, 1817, reported by surgeon James Braid before the Wernerian Society and later reprinted in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine:

… [T]he master of the house told me that he was very much alarmed as he was going home on Saturday evening, between six and seven o’clock, ‘from,’ as he expressed himself, ‘his horse’s ears being the same as two burning candles, and the edges of his hat being all in a flame.’ …

On Thursday 20th, I was gratified for a few minutes with the luminous appearance described above. It was about nine o’clock, P.M. I had no sooner got on horseback than I observed the tips of both the horse’s ears to be quite luminous: the edges of my hat had the same appearance.

The horse’s ears stopped glowing after a shower of moist snow, Braid reported, “but the edges of my hat, being longer of getting wet, continued to give the luminous appearance somewhat longer.”

“I could observe an immense number of minute sparks darting towards the horse’s ears and the margin of my hat, which produced a very beautiful appearance, and I was sorry to be so soon deprived of it.”