Angel hair (folklore)

There have been many reports of falls of angel hair around the world. Angel hair was reported at the Miracle at Fatima on 13 September and 13 October 1917.[10]

The most widely reported incidence occurred in Oloron, France in 1952, when "great flakes" were reported as falling from a nearly cloudless sky.[4] On October 27, 1954, Gennaro Lucetti and Pietro Lastrucci reported standing on the balcony of a hotel in St. Mark's Square in Venice and seeing two "shining spindles" flying across the sky leaving a trail of the angel hair.[3]

In New Zealand and Australia, local newspapers have reported many sightings since the 1950s, although many have been identified as spider webs after analysis.[11] An incident was reported in Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka on October 20, 2014.[12]

Explanations based on known phenomena include:

• Some types of spiders are known to migrate through the air, sometimes in large numbers, on cobweb gliders.[2] Many cases of angel hair were found to be these spider threads and, in one occasion, small spiders have been found on the material.[8][11] Linyphiidae spiders frequently cause showers of gossamer threads in England and the Northern hemisphere.[13] Australia and New Zealand have frequent cases, caused by several native species of spiders and by some introduced species of Linyphiidae.[13]
• In the Portuguese city of Évora on November 2, 1959, a substance described as angel hair was collected and analyzed under a microscope by a local school director and later by armed forces technicians and scientists of the University of Lisbon. The scientists concluded that the angel hair was produced by a small insect of an unknown species or perhaps some kind of single-celled organism.[14]
• Atmospheric electricity may cause floating dust particles to become polarized, and attraction between these polarized dust particles may cause them to join together, to form long filaments.[15]
• On two occasions samples were sent for testing. On October 13, 1917, a sample found at Cova da Iria was sent to Lisbon and on October 17, 1957, another sample found at Cova da Iria was examined. The analysis found this to be natural, consisting of white flakes. When put under a microscope it was found to be a vegetable product not animal.[10]

Unscientific explanations based on beliefs regarding Unidentified Flying Objects include:

• Ionized air may be sleeting off the electromagnetic field that surrounds a UFO.[9]
• Excess energy converted into matter.[3]
• The usage by UFOs of a G-field would cause heavy atoms in ordinary air to react among themselves and produce a kind of precipitate that falls to the ground and disappears as the ionization decreases.[16]

Explanations based on folklore include:

• During the ascension of the Virgin Mary, her veil was torn and spread throughout the air, leading to the title of Mary's yarn.[17]

"Angel grass" is a related phenomenon. It is when short metallic threads fall from the sky, often forming intertwined loose masses.[8] They are a type of chaff, a radar counter-measure which can be in the form of fine strands, which is dropped by some military aircraft.[8] It can also come from sounding rockets and balloons, which would have released it at high altitude for radar tracking.[8]

• William R. Corliss: Tornados, Dark Days, Anomalous Precipitation, and related weather phenomena (The Sourcebook Project, 1983), pages 60 to 62, GWF8: Prodigious Falls of Web-Like Material.

• Pele's hair
• Manna
• Star jelly
• Ectoplasm
• Yellow rain
• Red rain in Kerala

• Angel hair at How Stuff Works
• Episode number 2 of the Portuguese 2008 TV series "Encontros Imediatos", featuring extensive images and accounts on the Évora case.
• Australia in 2015