On a spring night in 2019, in the bowels of Tornado Alley, nature documentarian Hank Schyma was out photographing a storm when he captured something mysterious. A “ghost,” but not of the paranormal sort. In the distance, this specter appeared as a faint green blob over a red flash of light. The red flash was familiar to Schyma, a savvy citizen scientist. The technical name for it is a sprite, an electrical discharge that occurs in the upper atmosphere during intense thunderstorms, glowing red in the sky because of excited…
