Netizens were spooked when an eerie “portal to another world” appeared in the night sky in India.
The clip, seen here, was shared by a Twitter user named Waseem, who credited it to another Twitter user named Aditi, on 23rd July.
It shows what looks to be the glowing outline of a giant door suspended in the grey-black sky above Bengaluru.
It has since been watched tens of thousands of times.
Waseem wrote: “A mysterious shadow (object?) was seen in Bengaluru skies last night near Hebbal flyover. Did anyone else see?
“What could this possibly be? A shadow of a building? If it is, then what could possibly be the science behind it?”
In the comments, some netizens compared the images to the “UFO portal” that opened up in skies above China in 2017.
That phenomenon later emerged to have likely been caused by a spotlight projection being beamed onto clouds.
On the video from India, one netizen wrote: “Probably a high-rise building far away & the cloud normally comes down low at night due to decreasing temp during rainy days.
“Light is visible around the building through low-lying cloud. I think it’s an example of optical illusion.”
However, others suggested supernatural forces were at play, leaving comments like “That’s a portal to another world, they will be coming soon” and “UFO, they are watching us”.
Freelance science writer and journalist Sachin Rawat has explained on social media that the otherworldly sight may have actually been a phenomenon called a Brocken spectre.
A Brocken spectre is the magnified shadow of an observer cast in mid-air upon any type of cloud opposite a strong light source.
He wrote: “I can imagine how clouds moving across a boundary of light could give the illusion of them crashing into a solid boundary.
“These spectres can feel so ‘real’, which is why they’re often mistaken to be ghosts.”
