Last night, my friend Jim, one of my correspondents for this blog, sent me some unique photographs of an odd-looking lightning formation called a “Carrot Sprite”, photographed over France this past weekend. The photo was fascinating, as well as the technology being used to capture it… but of even further intrigue was the assertion made today over at The Daily Grail, which likens the sprite to appearing “squid-like”… even reminiscent of “Cthulhu descending from the skies”.

Strange ‘Squid-like’ Lightning Spotted over France

Of course, I couldn’t resist linking to this story with the Lovcraftian references made, but also of interest is the technology used to capture the images; a computerized video observation system called “UFOCapture.”

At the company’s website, they state the following regarding their anomalously-named product: UFOCapture is motion capture software that starts recording on a hard disk drive of a computer from a few seconds before the action recognized to a few seconds after the action finished.

Among the unique phenomenon listed which UFOCapture has been able to observe and record are meteors and “Fireballs”, Sprites, “Elves”, Blue Jets, “and much more unknown phenomena”. Though the word UFO is used in a few instances, it is interesting that the software is clearly used for monitoring primarily known phenomenon, though its unique name certainly implies its more fantastic applications.

Of course, the only other issue I might have is that, in Lovecraftian Lore, Cthulhu, one of “the great old ones” (representative of an alien race which blasted around the cosmos), had apparently been exiled to Earth and kept in a state of suspended animation beneath the Southern Pacific Ocean. Therefore, technically we would be expecting our great sacred squid to be rising, rather than descending. But hey, I guess I’m splitting hairs here… er, tentacles.