Red haze is called a swirling fog of dark scarlet or crimson color, which is observed in the Arctic regions. There is still no scientific explanation for this rare natural phenomenon.
Everything is engulfed in flames
Here is an excerpt from the memoirs of the sea captain Yu. N. Vasyukevich: “Everyone knows about the red glow in the North. I have been at sea for forty years and once I watched it myself. In winter, we unloaded goods in Chukotka. They were removed from the ship and put on fast ice. From there, the inhabitants carried the cargo to the shore. The sky was overcast, there was a light fog. Visibility is a quarter of a mile. Suddenly everything around went dark. The water has become lingonberry in color, and the ice is just like blood! The phenomenon is terrible and unpleasant. I was standing on the bridge then. He went down and looked into the hold: was it a fire? And there everything was red as from fire. But there was no smoke or heat. I rushed to the cabins. Everything is red there too. Yes, and on the deck the masts, the tank, the poop, the gangway, the railings - everything seemed to be hot. And if you touch it, it's normal temperature. It lasted about ten minutes. Before they knew it, the flame disappeared. Then we didn't believe ourselves."
Escape from fiery lava
The next evidence is curious because the eyewitnesses were not in the zone of red haze, but next to it, seeing it as if from the side.
Promotional video:
“On the third day of the journey, after a very long trek through the taiga, we decided to stop early for a halt, especially since some unpleasant haze began to descend,” says engineer Vadim Fedoseev, head of a group of tourists from Tomsk. - We climbed the almost treeless top of a low hill to settle here for the night, and suddenly we saw the incredible. The entire space on the northern horizon was filled with seething fiery lava! So, in any case, it seemed to us in those minutes. From this boundless sea of fire escaped the same fiery clubs, similar to prominences. And, what is most terrible, all this fiery mass was rapidly rising to our feet. A few more minutes, and it will sweep over the top of the hill …
Probably, we broke all the records for cross-country running then. Then they came to their senses for another hour. We exchanged the most fantastic assumptions. Since nothing else was happening, I went with two comrades to investigate. I confess that we approached the top of the hill like a novice parachutist to the edge of the tower, and stopped, struck no less than the first time. The fiery lava is gone. Below, behind the trees, a small, cozy lake was visible, further to the horizon stretched an endless strip of taiga.
The expedition had to be stopped. Some did not want to go further, besides, we all showed ourselves not from our best side, faced with a mysterious phenomenon. They ran away like hares, throwing things and devices. It's a shame even to remember."
A ghost reflected in the mirror
Geologist G. Permyakov faced a red haze in 1959 at the hunters' camp. Here is what he writes in his essay:
“I was alone in the hut. It was deep night, a blizzard outside the window. I was finishing my report on the expedition, when I suddenly noticed that my hands seemed to be reddened. I rubbed them, and red moisture dripped from them, which at first I took for blood. I confess I was even scared. But I soon found that not only my hands, but also the paper on which I was writing, was covered with red moisture. Looking around, I began to notice that red streaks were appearing on the walls and ceiling. A kind of red mist seeped into the room, settling on objects.
Anxiously, I went out into the hallway and looked out. A blizzard had just been blowing, and now, in the dim light falling from the open door, it was some kind of blood-red clouds moving smoothly like waves. These clubs flowed into the house, and I hastened to close the door tightly. But they had already seeped inside, and everything around was saturated with red moisture. In less than a quarter of an hour, the red liquid stood in puddles on the floor, flowing in trickles from the walls and windows. Red moisture also condensed on the glass of the kerosene lamp. I myself was already covered in this red moisture. It was as if my hands were covered with scarlet gloves.
And suddenly something completely unexpected happened. The red liquid that filled the room suddenly burst into a dark crimson fire. Papers on the table, books, tablecloth caught fire. Flames ran across the floor, instantly engulfing the bed and walls. I looked out the window. Now there, instead of waves of red fog, a solid wall of fire swayed menacingly.
You can imagine my condition. There was nowhere to run. I was in a real fire trap. However, an amazing thing: I should have been fried for a long time, because I literally walked on fire, and yet the flame for some reason did not burn! My clothes were on fire, but not even charred!
I looked at myself in the mirror. From there, in a halo of flame, a strange violet-orange face, similar to a mask, with unnaturally brown eyes looked at me. The hair stood on end and sparkled with thousands of curly fiery threads.
Suddenly the room went dark. She was now like a red-lit darkroom. The kerosene stove went out. All attempts to light it up have led nowhere. The red haze thickened even more. And suddenly a blizzard hit the windows. These were ordinary white snowflakes! There was no trace of the red fog and fire outside the windows! There was no sign of a fire that had just raged in the room and throughout the house. There were no red spots and puddles. The strange bloody liquid was gone from clothes, hands, tablecloths, floors and walls. The steady light of a kerosene stove flooded the room, in which everything was in its place. It seemed to me that the recent crimson fog was just a nightmare. I looked at my watch. The red haze stood for about twenty minutes."
There is still no explanation
All this may seem fantastic, if not for the testimonies of eyewitnesses who even wrote to the USSR Academy of Sciences. Already in the 1950s, a hypothesis was proposed that the red haze is a kind of aurora, which does not occur at an altitude of tens of kilometers, as is usually the case, but directly at the ground. However, this version had to be rejected later. The aurora is a glow in the atmosphere caused by the collision of the solar wind with the Earth's magnetic field. During periods of solar activity, particles of such a wind can indeed approach the very surface of the planet, but they are not capable of causing an effect similar to red haze. In addition, the aurora is observed in clear weather, and red haze occurs, on the contrary, with thick clouds, often during a blizzard or fog.
More recently, a hypothesis has appeared that the red haze is caused by chemiluminescence - radiation caused by chemical processes in the atmosphere. Another version is the strong ionization of atmospheric oxygen caused by solar activity and magnetic storms (oxygen atoms, as you know, highlight a bright red line in the spectrum). This version seems to be supported by the cessation of radio communications in the area of red haze, the accumulation of electric charges in the hair, and the appearance of dots and dashes on the film inside the cameras. However, both of these hypotheses, on closer examination, turn out to be untenable. There is still no convincing explanation for the phenomenon of red haze.