MORDEN MYSTERY
In "Avebury Magic", another short article posted on this site, I included photographs of apparent "orbs" at a Millennnium Eve gathering in the great Avebury stone circle. There I mentioned that comparable images had never appeared on other photos taken by myself. Well, life is change, and that is no longer really true.
In the summer of 2004 I set out in search of a reported mound in Morden Park, south London. Though its surroundings are mainly cleared of all but grass, the Morden mound has dense tree cover that more or less conceals it from outside view. It is large: I would estimate 13 or 14 feet in height, perhaps a little more. There is a slight but evident surrounding ditch and the mound is steep-sided. Four clear tracks, one of them including relatively modern wooden steps, lead to the top. There, at least in summer, the trees block out what would otherwise be panoramic all round views. On a flattish, grassy expanse of parkland, this visual restriction gives the mound the feel of a demarcated space rather than a significant vantage point, which presumably it once as. The paths, in that sense, draw the walker into the mound-space.
Lack of excavation makes dating difficult and encourages a range of interpretations. The size and steepness of the mound suggest Roman or Saxon builders, though post-Norman Conquest construction has also been proposed. There is local lore of it being a burial place for plague victims. Most intriguing of all is a suggestion that the current mound "was built over a previous barrow". According to an entry on the Modern Antiquarian website, this possible reuse of an earlier structure was mentioned on a now missing information board at the site.
It was an enjoyable visit on a bright, windy summer day and I took several photographs, some of which are reproduced on this page. One contains an anomaly corresponding to nothing that I visually saw in the park. On the face of it the picture shows a brilliant white sphere or disk apparently hovering several feet above the surface of the mound. The "orb" is not quite perfectly spherical. There is a small flattening of the lower right edge and, opposite that, a seemingly matching slight blurring on the upper left.
I have asked several camera obsessives what they make of it but no one seems to have a clue. Does anyone know of any type of film or development fault that might create this effect? Has anyone seen anything similar before? Does anyone have the faintest idea what the (non-digital) camera was "seeing"?
David Binns
November 2004