I read a lot about ball lightning in the past. And from what I gathered, there are a couple of different phenomena that are described as "ball lightning". The

I read a lot about ball lightning in the past. And from what I gathered, there are a couple of different phenomena that are described as "ball lightning". The one that is most prominent in literature is that of a glowing ball that sometimes can pass through solid objects (windows, sometimes even walls) without any problems, and that stays a couple seconds to minutes. I think that in this case the best explanation is what Wikipedia describes as "Transcranial magnetic stimulation", i.e. a sort of hallucination created by electromagnetic stimulus in the brain, like an optical illusion. It has been shown that strong magnetic fields in the brain can cause "light-effects" to appear which stay for seconds to minutes and then vanish. Having seen what the EMP from a nearby lightning can do (like fry electronics), it's not a long stretch to think that it could cause some EMP-like effects in our brains too... Other phenomena, like the one that was filmed in China (I think?) are probably plasma discharges that are similar but unrelated to "classical" ball lightning.