Birmingham age-herald., 1895-08-15
AN ECCENTRIC BALL OF FIRE.
It Wandered All Over the House in Thun
 der Storm.

The most extraordinary lightning ball in all the records of Nutmeg thunder storms visited Mrs. George H. Ward, at her home at Point Pleasant, near Stony creek, last week. It was about the middle of the afternoon when a big, bel1ying blue black cloud sailed above the house and began volleying the earth with forked thunderbolts. Some of the cleo tric projectiles appeared to explode just above the roof trees of the hamlet in a myriad dancing, dazzling bright balls of fire, that drifted about the place like clusters of jack-o'-lanterns.
 At length a thunderbolt came down near Mrs. Wards house and instantly was smashed in a thousand fragments. The largest fragments, looking like a vast, parti-colored glittering bubble, struck the ground, rebounded and fioated grace fully into the house. It made the entire circuit of the dwelling, visiting one room after another, while the landlady and her guests moved not, so daZed were they with awe and fright. The ball moved along so slowly that one could easily have overtaken it and gone along with it. Said Mrs. Ward, speaking of the oc- currence:
 Tt was just about as big as a toy bal loon, and it came into the house through an upstairs window, imagine. Then it must have caromed on the chimney in the room up there, for it came down the chimney to the floov of the kitchen, in which all of us were sitting, and it just rolled slowly across the floor toward me. Oh, all of us were too scared to do or say anything, and we sat there and watched it. It was simply awful to see it creeping along the floor, but it sheered off before it quite got to us. and then wandered along into the front hall, almost passing the parlor door, when it suddenly took a flip and rolled into the parlor. all the time keeping to the floor. It went twice around the parlor. as if it was looking for some thing, but touched nobody, although Mrs. Gaynor and her son were seated in the room.> Then it went strolling into every other room down stairs, but did no harm at all to any one or anything; and everybody was so startled no one made a move all the time. 1t must have been rolling about the house as much as a minute. Finally, of a sudden, it scooted up the front stairs, and probably it went through all the rooms in that part of the house, and at last I suppose it slipped out of the same window again. At any rate, we saw no more of it."
 Later Mrs. Ward and her guests found that a fragment of the original projectile had come down on the roof of the dwell- ing, for there was clear, round hole burned in the roof and a corresponding hole in the floor of room directly under meath. The chimney had been badly shaken. The upstairs room into which the fire ball flew first was fired, and a lively blaze was going on when the land lady and her guests arrived there. They easily extinguished the flames. When the fireball drifted into the kitchen it drifted along between Mrs. Wards chair and that of her daughter, but neither was shocked by it. Said she:
 "To make matters worse the whole house at one time seemed as if it was filled and ablaze with lightning, and we thought then that the place was doomed. There was one very curious thing about it. Some of the lightning fluid must have hit Q picture frame hanging on the par Tor wall. for it was badly scorched. and. strange to tell, the lightning just followed the guilt holding all around the room"
 For long time after tha electric visi- tation the whole dwelling was Sled with a strong odor of sulphur s3 that its-on-