A recent Reddit post has various speculations over what a series of images of red lights over the Atlantic Ocean signify. The images, which show three strange glowing orbs, were taken by a pilot who saw them while flying. Some explanations of the images were mundane, with the most objective one suggesting they were red lights used by fisherman to attract saury. Some of the other suggestions entered the realm of the fantastic, with one user noting “The new Stranger Things season looking wild.” Another Redditor brought up the plot of the popular video game, DOOM. The game, which was made in 1993, takes place in 2022 when a horde of demons invades the earth.

These recent images were reminiscent of a similar scene reported by pilot JPC Van Heijst. Enroute from Hong Kong to Anchorage, Heijst noted a single flash. He did not think much of it until he dimmed the lights to take a picture of the night sky. Heijst described it as, “a deep red/orange glow appearing ahead of us” and that, “The lights we saw were much larger in size than your average city or group of boats, but they also glowed red and orange, instead of the normal yellow and white that cities or ships would produce.” He then wrote that the lights were “illuminating the clouds and sky below us in a scary orange glow that you would expect with a massive fire on the ground” yet they were in an area of all water.

Strange lights in the sky are not only a modern phenomenon. On April 14, 1561, the residents of Nuremberg in Germany witnessed what people referred to as an “aerial battle.” Hans Wolff Glaser published a broadsheet of the event, describing how, “a dreadful apparition occurred on the sun… At first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood-red semi-circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter. And in the sun, above and below and on both sides, the color was blood, there stood a round ball of partly dull, partly black ferrous color.” The people took it as a sign from God, with Glaser writing, “Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows.”

In 1566 over the Swiss town of Basel, a similar sighting was described over three separate days. A pamphlet published at the time described a scene where, “First, the sun lost all its radiance and luster, and it was no bigger than the full moon, and finally it seemed to weep tears of blood and the air behind him went dark.” As to whether or not the lights are a sign of the end times, Luke 21:11 says “fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.” However, the exact dates and times are hidden, even from Jesus (Matthew 24:36). However, despite not knowing the exact dates, Matthew 24:44 does offer this helpful advice for how to live in the meantime, saying, “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.”