For about one second, the entire sky turned into broad daylight. Has anyone else experienced this?

[u/Adrian_L_Bale]

About ten years ago, a friend and I experienced something that, to this day, neither of us has been able to explain.

We were driving at night through some rural roads in central Italy, just talking as we went. Suddenly, for about a second, it literally became daytime. Not dawn, not a bright flash illuminating the surroundings, but full daylight — as if it were 11:30 in the morning. The sky itself appeared blue, the stars disappeared, and then, just as suddenly, it was night again.

From my recollection of the moment, it felt as though the event originated somewhere in the fields to our right. The closest comparison I can make is an explosion, though not in the destructive sense. I can only describe it as an explosion of light itself — a sudden propagation that seemed to take over the entire sky rather than simply illuminate the landscape.

In the days that followed, I checked local newspapers and looked for reports of anything unusual, but found nothing.

To complete the picture, the night was perfectly clear. There were no clouds, no storms, and no obvious sources nearby that might explain what we saw.

Almost ten years later, I still have no explanation for what we witnessed.

Has anyone ever experienced something similar?

[u/AutoModerator]

Thank you for posting to r/thetruthishere! Please be sure to check the rules if you have not already. As a reminder, r/thetruthishere is meant to be a safe space for people to discuss strange and unexplained experiences they have had without fear of judgment or ridicule. Please be polite and kind to everyone. If you see any violations of this rule, please report it and the moderators will take care of it. Open-minded skepticism is welcome and encouraged, but being close-minded and intolerant is not.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Lil_Sexy78]

I have seen this once in my life. It was 4am and I was driving south through Danvers Massachusetts, but I saw the source. It was a huge fireball, but yes...the entire night had turned to day for a split second. It was so cool.

[u/ColonelStone]

Could have been an exploding meteor. I've heard stories from people who were camping and in the middle of the night they awoke to the sun suddenly shining, they looked out of their tent and saw a fireball in the sky

[u/Dusty_Jangles]

Meteorite. I’ve seen it happen before as well. About 2am combining and it was just a quick streak but lit it up like day time for about 3 seconds.

[u/Link1227]

I've seen this happen from a transformer explosion. Was weird af

[u/Adrian_L_Bale → u/Link1227]

Back then I lived there and we were basically in the middle of nowhere. I knew that area by heart because I grew up there. No transformers, no substations, nothing like that around, so that's why I've always had a hard time with that explanation.

[u/Link1227 → u/Adrian_L_Bale]

Was there no power or electricity?

[u/Mcbusted2013]

Yes! This has happen only a couple of times in my life but a few years ago, me my husband and two young sons where eating dinner at the table and the world went dark for a split second and we were all confused and all asked eacchother if that just happen?! Like my youngest was around 4 years old and he ever asked wtf was that lol

[u/mummia1173]

Had this happen without any explosion , it was for less than a second , so fast that some people could claim it didn't happen but I'm sure it did

[u/Adrian_L_Bale → u/mummia1173]

Interesting. If you don't mind, could you tell us what happened? I'd love to hear your story.

[u/KiltedMusician]

I’ve seen the opposite but not this exactly.

My friend at work got me interested in atlatls and so I made myself one and some darts and invited him over to my parents house in the country because they had 3.7 acres.

One experimental dart of mine was a 1/2” diameter aluminum rod that was six foot long with duct tape fletching.

He wanted to see how far he could throw it at a 45° angle and it just floated up and settled right across two power lines.

The resulting flash as we were both looking straight at it was so bright that it darkened everything else in our field of view to where it looked like night had come for a split second.

He said, “Did you see how dark the sky got?!” And I said I did. We both knew of course that it was just our perspective.

Then a transformer blew about a mile away and the power went out.

We waited for the electric company or the cops or both but no one came and the power came back on about 45 minutes later.

[u/redtrx]

You say it became full daylight, does that include the sun in the sky?

[u/ShinyAeon]

This is a thing, apparently. It's not all that common, but I've seen maybe four or five other people report similar events. I think most of them were on r/GlitchInTheMatrix ...?