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Mysterious celestial sights of this kind were extremely common in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England. They were the stuff of rumour and gossip and the subject of dozens of pamphlets and broadside ballads reporting strange and sensational news. Fascination with such phenomena was not confined to the credulous poor. Worthies and men of letters were quick to interpret these sightings. In the case of Edgehill, the spectral battle was seen as a sign of God's displeasure with the Civil War, which was seen as purely political rather than religious.

Reports of celestial battles were not confined to the British Isles. Damascius tells us in 'Vita Isiclori' that after a battle outside the walls of Rome against Attila and his Huns in AD 452, the ghosts of the dead were reported to have fought for three days and nights, the clash of their weapons could be heard all over the city. In some cases, the phantom battles lasted more than just a few nights. Pausania records in his 'Guide to Greece' that at Marathon, where the Athenians repulsed the Persians in 490 BC, the ghostly sounds of men fighting could be heard 500 years after the battle had finished!

Celestial phenomena has always been seen as a portent of change. Comets have always been seen as omens of doom. The ancient Chinese manuscript, 'The Book of the Prince of Haui-Nan' tells that, as King Wu marched on Zhou, a comet appeared in the sky. In 240 BC huge floods devastated China following a comet, and similarly in England, sightings of Halley's Comet preceded the Great Famine (AD 989).

Interpreting celestial phenomena became the practice of a select few. Philostratus records in 'Heroicus' that on the plain outside Troy, the sight of the dead heroes of the Trojan War (c. 1200 BC) were seen as harbingers of specific omens. Spectres covered in dust forecast drought, those covered in sweat foretold rain, while those drenched in blood forecast plague.

In Sixteenth Century Italy, the people of Verdello in Bergamo were terrorised between 15th - 22nd December 1517 by aerial visions of a fierce battle that replayed several times a day. Onofrio Bonnuncio wrote about the spectacle "...and in the most terrible battle all are cut to pieces ...half an hour later everything is still, and nothing else in seen...". The sightings came to the attention of Pope Leo X who interpreted the event as a portent of Turkish attacks. Days later, the Turks did indeed attack. Similarly, in 1735 on Midsummer Eve, a ghostly army was seen over the Cumbrian mountains of Souther Fell. The event was seen as a warning of the Scottish Rebellion of 1745.

So why aren't these reports of phantom celestial armies seen today? Of course the world today is a very different place than the Sixteenth Century. We still have civil wars, in Europe, of course, as well as the occasional riot in England. And what about UFOs? Reports of red, blue and black 'globes' were witnessed by many people in Nuremberg in Germany on 14th April 1561. Are these examples of historical UFOs? What are we to make of these reports, especially in relation to sightings of Phantom Airships of the 1800's and Ghost Planes and Rockets of the early 1900's? In 1907, at the instigation of the poet W.B. Yeats, the anthropologist and religious scholar W.Y. Evans-Wentz embarked on a two year journey through Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany to interview people who had allegedly encountered fairies and other supernatural beings. One thing Wentz noticed from his research was that one common activity that fairies seemed inordinately fond of was waging war. In his book 'The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries' (1), Evans-Wentz presents the testimony of dozens of individuals who claimed to have seen these spectral conflicts. Reports included moonlit meadows thronged with men battling in medieval armour, or desolate fens covered with soldiers in coloured uniforms. Sometimes the battles were eerily silent. Sometimes there were terrible dins. And sometimes they could only be heard but not seen.

What makes Evans-Wentz's accounts most interesting, is that they show how cultural and historical expectations can colour experiences. Modern day UFOlogists will have no trouble interpreting the Nuremberg sighting above as a UFO, in the same way that the Irish peasant farmer saw fairies. A good example of this is the aerial phenomena that occurred at Fatima. The event, which is traditionally associated with a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary, was witnessed by hundreds of people. However, what was reported depended very much on the individual. Those of a particular religious belief saw Moses, while others saw Jesus. A photograph of the event shows that the camera simply saw a luminous ball of light!

When examining reports of phantom battles we must also remember that they were used as an important political and theological tool of the period. (Finucane, 1982 2) Blatantly exploited as propaganda by Royalists and Parliamentarians alike during the Civil War, the reports were used by each side to show that God was on their side. A striking example of this is the report that the headless body of the royal martyr, King Charles, had been seen hovering over the place of his execution in Whitehall in 1649. Similarly, in a series of three tracts with the title 'Mirabitis Annus' published in 1661 and 1662, the beleaguered non-conformists assembled a collection of celestial signs and wonders to support their cause. In one of many reports, they had celestial armies thrusting preachers from their pulpits above East Sussex. Over the years there have been countless attempts by researchers to explain apparitions like these away as superstitious nonsense. Psychical researchers have been tempted to use these reports to add credence to their own particular theories, most notably electromagnetic and geomagnetic fields without fully realising that in themselves these theories are a product of their time and will soon be replaced by a new orthodoxy.

With the advent of Protesentism and the Scientific Revolution, celestial armies and even ghosts in general were dismissed as Popish superstition. Even when the new faith found itself unable to completely vanquish the ingrained belief in ghosts, they were forced to concede that the spirits of the dead could only return at the instigation of demons. (Newton, 2002 3) Religion was losing its iron grip. The great English Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe summed up the feelings of many when he wrote: "I count religion but a childish toy, And hold there is no sin but ignorance" (Marlowe, 1919 4). Even great minds such as the German philosopher Kant were forced to concede that the existence for ghosts could not be dismissed out of hand. So if the belief in ghosts is so ingrained in our folklore, indeed our very psyche, why have reports of phantom armies and battles such as Edgehill declined? Keith Thomas has commented on the popular belief about ghosts in the sixteenth century: "If they stopped seeing ghosts, it was because such apparitions were losing their social relevance, not just because they were regarded as intellectually impossible" (Thomas, 1971 5). More than this we believe, the world had changed too much for the socio-political relevance of phantom armies to have the same hold upon the fears of the masses. Unlike the citizens of Troy for whom the phantoms of the Trojan War were seen as omens, the people of today have other preoccupations in their lonely search for meaning.

References
(1) Evans-Wentz, W.Y., 1911, "The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries", Oxford University Press
(2) Finucane, R.C., 1982, 'Appearances of the Dead", Junction Books"
(3) Newton, J., 2002, "Early Modern Ghosts", University of Durham
(4) Marlowe, C., 1919, "The Jew of Malta", Everyman
(5) Thomas, K., 1971, "Religion and the Decline of Magic", Weidenfeld & Nicolson