MYSTERY OF LIGHTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 September 1922, Page 5

MYSTERY OF LIGHTS.

SIGNALS' SEEN FROM THE SEA. LIGHTNING THEORY DENIED. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, Sept. 12. What were taken to he distress signals seen north of Hokianga on Saturday night are now attributed by shipping people to lightning. The captain of the Manuka says the lightning on .Saturday night in that vicinity might easily have given the impression of rockets bursting. Auckland, Last Night. Owing to the rough sea the steamer Ohinemuri was bar-bound at Whangape to-day and could not search for the origin of the distress signals. The suggestion made in Auckland shipping circles that what was seen was lightning is indignantly denied by residents of the northern districts, who adhere to the story that there were four lights, alternately red and blue. One man says he saw a star fall and then the whole thing burst in a shower of bluish white stars. Another resident saw white lights, sometimes one and sometimes two and three at a time, a lonog way out to sea. Sometimes they were coming and going and sometimes stationary for a considerable period. Horsemen are patrolling the beach to see if there is any sign of wreckage.