The several amateur astronomers residing in the shades of the weather-beaten brow of Telegraph Hill were considerably surprised, not to say startled, last Tuesday night [March 22] at the occurrence of a phenomenon that their inexperienced minds could not analyze. As is doubtless well known, the top of the hill is ornamented with a pole about 100 feet high, from the top of which every night are reflected the powerful rays of four electric lights, which are supposed to assist the unwary hillite during his careful descent of the many declivities of Nanny Goat gulch and the surrounding country. The electric wires by which the lamps are lighted run up the side of the pole like flag-halliards, and on stormy nights they are taken in the arms of a norther and slammed unmercifully against the pole, making a noise which might easily be said to sound like the clap of doom.
About 8 o'clock on Tuesday night the phenomenon was first noticed by a child, who quickly communicated the information to others, until over a hundred were gazing at the electric-light pole on the hill. There, about half way between the ground and the electric light, and apparently about ten feet from the pole, was a triangular-shaped blaze. The flame was steady, but of changing color, being sometimes a light yellow and again of a fiery red. It seemed to be attached to nothing, being too far from the pole to be a wire and too steady to be a kite; but, like a will-o'-the-wisp, there it hovered, filling the gazers with wonder. Sometimes the shape also would change, the triangle becoming a square, then a parallelogram. With a glass the thing could be seen to be gently moving as if with the wind, but its general position remained the same. After blazing for about half an hour the fiery figure suddenly disappeared. The conundrum is, What was it?