[spjwebster]

At the risk of being ridiculed, when I was a lad growing up in the UK I saw something that I later learned might be described as ball lightning.

It was late winter in the South West with overcast skies and melting snow on the ground, and looking out of the window of my bedroom across the street and into the opposite neighbour's front garden - which had been dug over to prepare the ground for vegetable planting in the spring - I saw a sphere of pinkish glowing light falling slowly to the ground. At first I thought it was a balloon, but looking at it more intently it seemed perfectly spherical and as it got close to the ground it hovered there for a good 5 or so seconds, illuminating the ground below. Then it completely vanished without a sound - no bang, no fire, just... gone. I ran out of the house and over to the neighbour's garden to see if I could find any remnants of whatever it was but there was nothing to be found except for what I noted at the time was a weird sharp smell and a small dish-shaped depression in the rough ground below where it vanished.

I obviously can't say for sure that it was ball lightning, and I hadn't heard anything about such phenomena at that point so didn't describe it as such at the time, but every now and again when the topic comes up I can't help but see similarities between what I've seen and some of the reports. At the very least, it's a good excuse to retell this bizarre story from my childhood.