I found the NY times article he refers to - it's about the Swamp Lights in New Jersey: 1960 - over 50 acres!!
"While the exact connection between Jack’s DIY torch and modern Halloween pumpkins is somewhat hazy, one thing is certain: The flickering lights that led superstitious voyagers astray are not mere legends. So-called ignis fatuus, or “foolish fire,” is a real phenomenon: a ball of flame that hovers above a marsh’s dark, still water for a few minutes before dissipating into the night. Mad marsh science These real-life jack-o’-lanterns most likely occur when a blend of natural gas rises to the surface of a mire, says Jeff Boyd, a microbial biochemist at Rutgers University. Unlike oceans and lakes, bog water is stagnant and oxygen-deprived. This creates the perfect environment for anaerobic bacteria and archaea—microorganisms that live without oxygen—to thrive. And many of them belong to a group known as methanogens. What exactly is a methanogen? “They make a living by eating dead plant material,” Boyd says. “As they break it down, one of the byproducts can be methane gas—the same gas that people are fracking for. When it forms in anaerobic environments, it can get trapped underwater, only to be released by a physical disturbance.” As these methanogens produce the highly flammable gas, they fill up the bogs where they live. If you’ve spent some time in this type of environment, you may have seen signs of methane yourself: As you stroll through the water, dozens of small bubbles will rise to the surface."
I saw him live in one of his last public talks - his last?
'organisms can produce a gas called phosphine. And this chemical, it turns out, spontaneously combusts. It reacts with oxygen to form phosphoric acid, Boyd says, which produces enough heat to ignite.“Imagine that you have a marsh with dead plant material that microbes are converting to methane gas, and somehow phosphine is also being produced,” he says. “As soon as the phosphine reacts with oxygen, it ignites and you have fuel for the fire.”
Not everyone agrees with this theory, and you’ll find plenty of theories about jack-o’-lanterns that don’t involve combustion. Some people have suggested that chemiluminescence—chemical reactions accompanied by light but not heat—might give rise to the apparent flames. Others have reasoned that the culprit could be bioluminescence, such as the glow of a lightning bug.
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