"They and Their Families Would See Balls of Light Inside Their Homes"

Veteran UFO reporter George Knapp has co-authored a recent news story making this claim:

"At least five highly experienced intelligence officers who went to the ranch to check things out, came into contact with paranormal phenomena, and then took it home with them. They and their families would see balls of light inside their homes, shadowy figures, even creatures that were physical, not a mere mental image."

From an evidence standpoint a report like that has relatively little strength (although it might be that a different report of the same events could be strong).  On the plus side, the report mentions more than one witness. On the minus side, it is a second-hand account not quoting any direct witnesses. And we have no named witness of these spooky orb events. But many named witnesses have said they saw mysterious orbs with the naked eye, as you can read about by looking at my 180+ posts here (keep pressing Older Posts at the bottom right to read them all). Many of those 180+ posts include the name of the witness. 

There are various factors that can increase the reliability of reports of the paranormal. They include these:

(1) Having a named witness.

(2) Having multiple witnesses.

(3) Having eyewitness testimony directly from an observer, rather than someone else's claims about what someone saw. 

(4) Having an observation account published very soon after the reported events. 

(5) There is some photographic evidence. 

In the account above, we have only one of these desirable features. But very many accounts of the paranormal have more than two of these features, as many as four or five.  The original published evidence for mysterious raps rates highly as good evidence, because we had a published report on the observed phenomenon, with multiple witnesses, and their eyewitness testimony gathered very soon after the original observations, and the relevant document quoting the eyewitness testimony published very soon after the reported events. I discuss the case here. The phenomena involving Florence Cook also meet such a high standard, as I discuss here. 

Many of the reports of spooky phenomena on this blog meet 3 out of 4 or 4 out of 5 of these hallmarks of good evidence. One of the reasons I am good about promptly publishing reports of strange things I see is that I want to meet as many of these hallmarks of good evidence as I can. An "I just saw this" report is usually better evidence than a "let me tell you about what I saw long ago" report.