The earthquake on February 27 did more than shake people up in the middle of the night. Reports have come in that mysterious lights also appeared around the quake’s epicentre near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire.

One witness described how a grapefruit-sized glowing sphere appeared in her bedroom and then went out like a light. “This thing seemed to be coming across the room straight at me. I was very frightened,” she told the Louth Leader. Another person described flashes like car headlights at her window, and others spoke of lightning flashes after the quake. However, there was no lightning activity at the time of the quake.

In fact, there have been many reports of “earthquake lights” throughout history. Residents of Tangshan in China, for example, were awakened one night in July 1976 by bright flashes in the sky. Two days later an earthquake registering 7.8 on the Richter scale killed 240,000 people and destroyed the city. And a Japanese scientist took photographs of balls of light and red streaks in the sky during a swarm of earthquakes in Matsushiro between 1965 and 1967.

One explanation for his phenomenon is that the electrical properties of rocks may change under severe stress before or during a quake. This may generate changes in the electrical behaviour of the atmosphere, ionising the air and producing glowing lights.