Tales of the Strange

An intriguing item my husband regaled me with the other day. He said he'd seen online that there was some astrophysicist who took pictures of the aurora borealis that showed things that look like jellyfish inside. Now, my hubby is among other things a graphic artist. He can spot a Photoshopped picture a mile away and isn't afraid to point it out and call shenanigans- this was not the case on this one. He also said that it might be like looking at clouds and finding the images in them - not that there were real jellyfish inside the aurora borealis - just that it looked like it.

Now, I'll admit I looked for the pictures online and couldn't find them. Sorry, I really wanted to post them here, and since he's asleep, I'm not going to wake him in order to find out the exact web address where they were located. But I am curious enough to try again when he wakes up.

Even so, what a cool idea: Space Jellies!!!

I am an off again-on again reader of Fate Magazine. Inside their pages is a vast world full of the strange, paranormal, unexplained and just plain wild. It's a great place to find story ideas, though I can't say I've ever developed one directly from a story they've had, but I think bits and pieces have filtered into my brain and germinated over the years. They then get spit out wrapped up in some other tale and hardly recognizable. But that's cool. That's the way ideas work. Take something you find interesting and then develope something unique taking elements from that and something else. My point here is that years ago in Fate Magazine they ran a story about commercial pilots reporting seeing things in the air that looked like jellyfish. I remember the story distinctly and thinking, "What, are you kidding me?"

Now, I don't know about you, but when I fly my eyes are closed and I'm snoring at an altitude of 35,000 feet. I wouldn't have seen any jellyfish like creatures if they'd have been pushing the drink cart.

But for the sake of argument (and creative exercise) let's say there really are jellyfish living up in the atmosphere somewhere. What do you think their story is? Are they repairing the wilting ozone? Are they star-travelers who can traverse the galaxy without the benefit of ship or FTL drives? Or do they live up there cleaning the pollutants that are belched out from factories and car emissions? Is that what they eat? Maybe they survive on the chemicals floating around in our atmosphere and the more polluted it becomes the better eats for them.

What do your jellyfish do?

-Kate