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From: tom@cafes.net (Tom Niemiller)I have two stories from the Estill Springs area of Tennessee in Franklin County. I have never seen any likeness to my personal experience, and I'm looking for information or other people who have seen similar happenings or have seen something wierd on the upper end of Tims Ford Lake or ANY lake.
My personal story =>
I was fishing from the riprap of a bridge that traversed the upper end of the main part of Tims Ford Lake in the summer. After the sun had gone down for 20 or 30 minutes and the lake was like glass, my brother, dad, and I heard a strange, whirring wind coming from behind us. Shortly thereafter, the wind seemed to be coming from all around, and then the water at the shore started to ripple. Up until then the only movement in the water was the plunk of our lures. The "wind" was traveling in an absolutely straight line, perpendicularly away from the shore, and it was pushing or affecting the water somehow through its course down the lake. It started traveling at a walking speed, leaving behind a V-shaped wake as if a toy boat were in the water but you could not see the boat. Then it changed pitch audibly and instantly went to a running speed down the lake in a straight line. There were two more similar speed increases to what I would estimate as increases to 60 and 120 mile per hour. After traveling at this final unnatural top speed, the wind made a 90 degree left turn, traversed the middle third of the lake, then made a 90 degree right turn and continued to the horizion. We decided the fish had probably been scared away after a couple more casts.
This was honestly witnessed to me and two other people, and I can't explain it. This was NOT a whirlwind, the lake was like glass and there was absolutely no wind. Whirlwinds do not travel in absolutely straight lines and then make 90 degree turns. I think this thing was acually checking us out. It could have appearred anywhere along the .10 mile stretch of bridge but it appeared in the middle of us, and it speed up after passing by us. Please help. I have also talked to friends of mine, who with other witnesses, saw stange things within the same county. One UFO and this story :
Another person saw a ghost run across a field near this area (in the same county).
They were bailing hay by car headlights when a white figure ran from one side of the field out of the woods and then all the sudden went turbo and shot into the woods on the other side of the field. Perhaps these spirits are related.
If you have positive genuine insight into this please contact me - Tom Niemiller at nie@acpub.duke.edu
Tom adds the following to his story (7/21/99):
Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 13:23:14 -0500
From: Tom Niemiller (tom@cafes.net)
To: obiwan@best.com
Subject: Revised Explanation
I just had a response today from Steve Barlett that suggested an electormagnetic or plasma type disturbance on a fault line, and it led me to a very plausible solution to this mystery. Would you please post this explanation?
You'll want to read my original posting tennessee.haunts first at http://www.ghosts.org/stories/tales/tennessee-haunts.html .
Here's the revised better explanation of the "water wierd":
A fault line formed the Elk River valley on Tims Ford Lake where we were fishing. The man made lake has added water and weight to the geological structure of the area and is accelerating fault activity. While we were on the lake, an almost imperceptable earthquake took place that shook the land along a fault line that runs the length of Tims Ford.
As the earthquake took place the two small plates of land on either side of the fault vibrated. This caused the water in the lake to vibrate as well. The small unnoticable waves from the vibrating plates constructively interfered along the fault line. It took a second or two for the vibrations to build up to a rippling froth. The length of time for the constructive interference to build up is directly related to the depth of the water. Small depth means quick waves at the surface, whereas deep water takes a little time to build up. The water around the bridge was artifically shallow and was therefore, the first to show disruption at the surface. Then the wave fronts built up towards the surface along the rest of the lake. The lake simply gets deeper as you go downstream and so the small water eruption appeared to travel down the lake at great speed where the depth was similar. The fast changes in the speed of the "wind" were a reflection of drop offs and depth changes in the water. A slight wind was created, but the noise that we heard was not the wind, but the frothing water and millions of water molecules colliding.
There really was a wind and a weak tornado created. (The air was absolutely still that day, and the lake surface was extremely smooth. Perfect for setting up constructively interfering atmosphereic effects. And no fish were moving at ALL. Come to think of it - the evening was very very quiet.) I have often wondered how the wind could create such a perfectly smooth linear wave, but this explains it! What we saw was not a fast moving whirlwind that was making waves, but a wave of a crustal vibration that created a wind. This event also occured at dusk when the stress on the earth's crust is the greatest (besides dawn), so it was most likely an earthquake event.
This can also explain the second little blurb of a story that I put up. Near the same area, a friend of mine saw a ghostly figure run across a field at night "but you couldn't see his legs" and then "go turbo" - very fast to the other side of the field. Since it was pitch black, he probably saw the glowing "arms" of a whirlwind that excited the air with static electricity.
Thank you to Steve Bartlett for his geological insight. Thank you to obiwan for his web site that ultimately got this case solved.
Tom Niemiller
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