Engraving
by T. W. Cook
by T. W. CookYarvis was almost certain he'd seen the same tree an hour ago, but then again, didn't all trees look alike? He shelved his doubts and followed the friendly, twinkling motes deeper into the forest.
A spectral light is spotted upon the misty moors one night. If by chance there are travelers who are lost, the Will-o'-the-Wisp's light is an alluring sight, but a savvy traveler knows that the light of the Wisp may only lead them further astray. The light itself is supposed to resemble a flickering flame. The explanation for the lights is that the areas where the flames were often seen were bogs, and the flames were the result of methane combustion in the air.
What the Will-o'-the-Wisp is depends on the source mythology and the individual work. Sometimes they are wandering ghosts, other times they are fairies, demons or nondescript spirits, and in some works they are simply living creatures with a natural glow and an elaborate hunting strategy. In appearance, they can appear as vague floating lights, humanoids carrying lanterns, buzzing insect-like beings and other, more unusual forms. Most of the time, Wisps are malicious, but on rare occasions they can be helpful. They are usually found in desolate environments, primarily moorland, bogs and marshes, but sometimes also in deep, trackless forests. Why exactly they seem so interested in waylaying travelers can be given any number of reasons. Some versions are simply a bizarre natural or magical phenomenon, while others are mindless or lost spirits who draw people along with them unintentionally. Others act out of cruelty and malice, or else are predators who feed on their victims' spirits, life energy, or fear and despair.
Etymologically, "Will-o'-the-wisp" is an archaism roughly translating to "Will of the torch", "Will" here being the given name, similarly to "Jack of the lantern", as both were described as wandering spirits bearing lights. The Latin name for it is ignis fatuus, "fool fire" (plural ignes fatui). Historically, they have also been known by a variety of local names such as friar's lanterns, corpse candles, hinkypunks, and Wills-o'-the-wyke.
Wills-o'-the-Wisp tend to appear in desolate locations with a macabre history, appearing as vengeful apparitions or a lost soul wandering aimlessly. Wisps in video games function as a (usually) weak enemy found in graveyards or swamps, though in some depictions, they're low-level Elemental Embodiments of light, the same way salamanders are for fire or undines are for water.
The will-o'-the-wisp family of myths is broadly part of a larger group of "ghost light" legends born from encounters with phenomena such as ball lightning, St. Elmo's fire, flammable gases, luminescent fungi, or similar things; the Japanese Hitodama Light is another example of this trend. See also Faux Flame for a supernatural illusion of fire conjured up by someone, and Spark Fairy for fairies or magical insects depicted as a point of light. When the wisp is explicitly a living, predatory being, see also Luring in Prey. Supernatural Light is the Super-Trope.
See Eerie Flickering Light, for a more mundane but eerie light source.
A note on plurals: historically, the plural form was Wills-o'-the-wisp. Many modern works use will-o'-the-wisps instead. Having to choose, prioritize how the work being discussed spells it.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Digimon: Kyuubimon's Onibidama is an attack in form of nine ghostly fireballs fired from the tips of its nine tails.
- Pokémon the Series:
- The attack Will'o-wisp is initially portrayed as an offensive attack, unlike in the games where it's just a status debuff. In the games, it wouldn't affect Fire-types, but in the anime, Ash's Charizard got his by this attack as if it's a regular attack. Later generations would depict this attack correctly.
- All of Ash's Fire-types (except Incineroar) teach his Gengar how to learn Will-o'wisp, even though none of them actually know this move themselves. Gengar manages to learn it and uses it on Paul's Metagross to inflict the Burn status on it and win the battle. Gengar continues to use this move during the Master Tournament.
- Invoked in Pumpkin Scissors. The 901st used Bottled Heroic Resolve in the form of a special kind of lamp oil burning at a specific frequency of blue light that drove them Ax-Crazy. At a distance, at night, this looked like Will O' the Whisps, and a legend sprang up around them that they were evil ghosts "guided by the Will-of-the-Wisp".
Card Games
- Magic: The Gathering:
- Will-o'-the-Wisp is a Spirit creature that doesn't do much beyond fly, but it's Black — the color associated with swamps, and its card indeed shows the wisps drifting in a dark mire — and its flavor text references will-o-the-wisp myths of various sorts. Its original text consist of lines from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner describing ghost-fires on the sea, while its modern one references an in-universe myth of the ghost of a deceased woman wandering the moors at night with a lantern in hand, trying to find her lost brother and dooming the living who meet her to join in her endless search.
- Withering Wisps are a Black enchantment that damages creatures once for each swamp card you have in play.
- The Shadowmoor set includes a group of five cards — Aphotic Wisps, Cerulean Wisps, Crimson Wisps, Niveous Wisps and Viridescent Wisps — depicted as clusters of floating, ghostly lights, which whisper indecipherable messages to the living and show omens and visions in their glow.
- Beckoning Will-o'-Wisp depicts a group of floating flames in a forest. Its special rule, Lure the Unwary, allows it to mark an enemy creature so that the player's own get a bonus when attacking it.
- Roaming Ghostlight depicts a floating orb trailing ethereal wisps and broken chains, and is described in its flavor text as the aimless spirit of someone who died a senseless death.
- Misleading Motes depicts a string of floating blue flames drawing a traveler deeper and deeper into a forest.
- Will-o'-the-Wisp
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Evilswarm Obliviwisp, whose name was originally Vers O-Wisp, is an Evil Counterpart of a fire elemental.
Comic Books
- Johan and Peewit: In "Le Pays Maudit", the duo is crossing a bog on a raft when they notice Will o'the Wisps. Unfortunately, the King is traveling with them, and he is superstitious; he soon causes the raft to capsize.
- Spider-Man: There's a villain named Will o'the Wisp, who most often fights Spider-Man. He can control his density and hypnotize targets.
Fan Works
- Fate/Revelation Online: Will-o-Wisps are ethereal monsters that are intangible to physical attacks and have a compulsion spell to lure players into the swamps of the Fourth floor, before shanking them with a knife projection.
- Lost Cities: The spirits of the northern forest include little motes of light that flit among the trees, wavering and bobbing, vanishing and reappearing, fading and waxing, tempting travelers to wander deeper and deeper into the wood to get just another glimpse of their fascinating dance...
- The Meaning of Harmony: The group runs into several Will-o'-Wisps in the Hayseed Swamps, the first of which nearly manages to kill them by luring them into the swamp.
- Nine Days Down: Will-o-Wisps are fey creatures resembling floating lights, and take malicious joy in leading other beings into danger. Twilight and her group see them while crossing a dark forest in Tartarus, but Twilight knows enough to give them a wide berth.
- Pokémon Untamed: Gulpi and Malharo are functionally a marine, fishlike version. Gulpi live close to shore use their glowing horns to lure swimmers into treacherous flooded caves, while Malharo appear before ships caught in storms and pretend to be glowing, helpful guides while they lead them towards whirlpools.
- The Power of the Equinox: There lives in the Everfree Forest a fiery fae that giggles a lot and loves enchanting whatever creatures it can, leading them to Ghastly Gorge, and causing them to fall to their death. When it enchants Scootaloo, its flames glow blue (though it shows itself to be capable of changing colors), as do the victim's eyes. Fortunately, Scootaloo is saved at the last minute by Zecora who proceeds to destroy the dark fairy by throwing at it salt and wrought iron shavings, causing it to change colors in agony before exploding in flames.
- Unova Undertakings: In "The Library," blue and purple will-o-wisps appear in the eponymous library and guide Jermaine and his friends to Shauntal.
- VIMALION PROJECT: Archie's design is based on ghost lights, represented through a bright cyan being used as an accent color in flame-like areas. His lower clothing also somewhat resembles a blacksmith's apron, as reference to one of the common stories about the phenomena.
- The World is Filled with Monsters: Will-o-Wisps are among the creatures that have been encroaching on the lands around Hazelnacht. They're described as clusters of little lights that appear on the moors at night, bobbing and weaving and enticing travelers to head closer and investigate them. They have an almost hypnotic effect, making victims obsessed with reaching them and finding out what their excited movement is about, luring them further and further away from the path. Particularly lucky or perceptive people are able to see past the light and see the wisps' wings, eyes, and teeth. The rest are eaten.
Film — Animation
- Brave has the Wisps, which appear as glowing blue lights and apparently have the power to lead people to their fate and encourage them to change it. They are based on Scottish lore of will o' the wisps that lead people to treasure or doom. They guide Merida to the witch's cabin. At the end of the movie, it's shown that they are actual ghosts.
- Sleeping Beauty (1959): Maleficent has the power to turn herself into just the eerie green sphere of light cast by her magic staff, she uses this ability to mesmerise Princess Aurora and draw her up to a room where Maleficent manifests a spinning wheel in order to get Aurora to enact the sleeping curse on herself.
Film — Live-Action
- Apparitional: The ghosts haunting the Freeling State Penitentiary are shown to manifest as little balls of light.
- El amor brujo: Candela thinks she's being haunted by the ghost of her dead lover, Diego. In one scene she goes to his grave and sees will-o'-the-wisp that seem to be leading her to him.
Gamebooks
- Deathmoor: The titular moor is inhabited by swamp ghosts, who appear only at night as shining orbs of gases, and are capable of attacking passersby with their ice-cold touch.
Literature
- The Bartimaeus Trilogy: Will-o'-the-wisps are small spirits that are described as "struggling to keep up with the times." Visible as flickering flames on the first plane, they were once employed to lure travelers to their death in pits or quags, but with the invention of cities, were employed to lurk over manhole covers, to rather less effect.
- Britsune Garden: According to the lore, there are many kinds of will o' the wisps.
- Small wisps that are summoned by Britsunes are called kitsunebi (meaning "fox fire" in Japanese). They have different purposes, depending on their wielder.
- Larger wisps of lights with long, streaky tails are one of the two forms of deceased spirits, the other being their true form.
- "The Buried Moon": The Moon is captured by evil creatures while Walking the Earth (long story), and buried under a great stone at the foot of a twisted tree, with a will o' the wisp keeping watch to make sure she doesn't escape. After a time, a local wise woman has a vision of "a coffin, a cross, and a candle," and sends a few brave souls out to search for those signs, and find where the Moon is hidden.
- Chime: The "false lights" that lead you astray in the swamp are referred to as Wykes.
- Dracopedia: Willowisps are a species of feydragons native to marshes, with bioluminescent tail tips and throat sacks. They feature in many folktales and legends, but hunting for their luminous glands has devastated their populations and they're believed to be extinct.
- Earth's Scariest Monsters!: In "Phantom Power," the ghost Ashley (who's in her Samhain Form at the time) conjures three will-o-wisps (one blue, one green, and one purple) and bombards the ghostly evil female Necromancer Lavinia with them during the two ghost girls' battle in the Ghost World. Smoke then emanates from Lavinia's body.
- Harry Potter has a creature called the Hinkypunk that floats around bogs and marshes and glows. In Prisoner of Azkaban, Professor Lupin tells the third year Defense Against the Dark Arts class that they "[Lure] travelers into bogs. You notice the lantern dangling from his hand? Hops ahead — people follow the light — and then..." "Hinkypunk" is the name for a will o' the wisp in the West Country region of England, where J. K. Rowling grew up.
- How to Survive Camping: There are lights that attempt to lure people into danger; while there are few terrain hazards on the campgrounds, they do tend to leave people at the mercy of other far more dangerous creatures. Rule #3 is "Don't follow the lights", to the chagrin of the owner who thinks it should be blatantly obvious that you shouldn't.
- The Lord of the Rings: When Sam and Frodo are being guided across the Dead Marshes by Gollum he warns them not to look at them. His term for them is "corpse candles."
- The Nautical Ballad of Ben Bo Bohns: Will o' the Wisp is the name of the main phantom ship.
- The Neverending Story: The first native of Fantastica seen is a will-o'-the-wisp, a ball of light containing an androgynous figure that flies through the air in erratic zigs and zags. Normally will-o'-the-wisps cause others to lose their way, but in this instance the wisp in question, traveling as a messenger, has become lost itself.
- The Spiderwick Chronicles: Will-o'-the-Wisps are fairies resembling fat little insects with glowing bodies. They inhabit desolate places, their bioluminescent forms often attracting the attention of lost humans who mistake them for artificial lighting and perishing as a result of getting further lost.
- The World of Lightness, drawing upon Northumberland folklore, notes the Duergar, a tribe of hill-dwelling dwarfs, to be fond of shining their torches through darkened trees and luring travellers into difficult terrain.
Live-Action TV
- Lost Girl: Will, the Will-of-the-Wisp of the "Where There's a Will There's a Fae" episode is a humanoid Fae that has the ability to create bursts of green flames that he uses to lead humans away from his home and treasure.
- Once Upon a Time (2011); The Wisps from Brave also appear in the first episode of Season 5. Merida needs one to find her brothers; Emma needs one to find Merlin.
- So Weird: The Phillips family encounters a chaotic and hostile Will-o-the-Wisp on several occasions, the first incident happening when Fiona and Jack are lost in the woods. It can possess people or objects (first Jack, then Molly, then a failed attempt at Annie, and then Fi's computer) and work various forms of magic, and it can only be sent away either by invoking its true name, Bricriu, or by fulfilling a deal. In its last appearance, Fi traps it on a floppy disc, keeping it captive and harmless indefinitely.
Music
- The Danish folksong Lygtemandens Sang- Hvor er mine fødder dog ømme (the Lantern Man's song - How my feet are aching) is about a man who follows the titular Lantern Man, convinced that it will lead him to treasure. He ends up wandering forever.
- Manuel de Falla includes a song about it, titled "Canción de Fuego Fatuo," in the ballet El Amor Brujo.
- Miles Davis's version of this tune on Sketches of Spain is titled "Will o' the Wisp."
Mythology
- The common form of this trope in fiction derives chiefly from British and Irish folklore, where glowing lights (termed wills-o'-the-wisp, wills-o'-the-wyke, hinkypunks, friar's lanters, pixie-lights, fairy lights, ghost fires, and various other regional names) that wander in lonely moors or swamps and leader travelers astray are a common element. The most common versions of this is part of the broader Stingy Jack family of myth, where a ne'er do well is doomed to wander the Earth for all time for his misdeeds, usually after either being thrown out of both Heaven and Hell or after wasting a second chance at life, with only a single lantern to light his way. Other versions instead have the lantern be carried by a fairy or a ghost who extinguishes it after leading travelers away from the path and into danger, such as the Welsh púca or the Lantern Man of the East Anglian Fenlands. A Scottish version, called the spunkie, is blamed both for misleading travelers and for causing shipwrecks due to being mistaken for a harbor light.
- Continental "cousins" to the will-o'-the-wisp are also widespread. Yan-gant-y-tan is a Breton demon with a glowing hand or burning candles for fingers, who wanders alone at night in lonely places. The German Feuermann is a burning ghost who is usually helpful and guides lost travelers back to safe roads to expiate the sins it committed in life, but can become malicious and try to deliberately lost travelers if mistreated. The Paasselkä devils of Finland's Lake Paasselkä are fairly typical versions, being usually described as balls of light that hover over the lake itself or in the forests and swamps around it.
- Ghost lights are a recurring element in American ghost stories and cryptid legends, such as the Maco Light and Brown Mountain Lights of North Carolina, the Cohoke Light of Virginia, the Gourdon Lights of Arkansas, and the Missouri-Arkansas Spooklight. These are usually described with details such as odd bobbing or wandering movements or a variety of colors, and are typically associated with railways, remote wooded or mountain areas, or both. Legends around them frequently involve their being the ghosts of railroad workers killed in accidents, with the lights frequently being their lanterns as they search for their missing heads; more modern legends tend to shift away from the ghost element to instead associate eerie lights in remote places with UFO activity or shady government projects. Others, such as the Marfa Lights of Texas and the Paulding Light of Michigan, were conclusively proven to be automobile lights distorted by distance, heat haze, or both.
- In Brazilian Folklore, will o' wisps were said to be the Boitatá, an enormous fire serpent that went after hunters and loggers. Similar to a basilisk, its blinding brightness could drive people insane or cause death. Oddly enough, it could also try to crush people by turning into a burning tree trunk and in the state of Santa Catarina it was depicted as a cyclopean bull instead.
Professional Wrestling
- Jeff Hardy's masked gimmick, Willow The Wisp, in OMEGA. In TNA, it is stated Willow is nothing but a figment of Jeff Hardy's imagination. Willow's light show makes his surroundings deliberately monochrome.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: Will-o'-wisps are a mainstay of the game's Monster Manuals, depicted as malicious glowing orbs of light that haunt dangerous and deserted places like catacombs, swamps, and bogs with hungry monsters or traps that can kill the unwary (Pit Traps, Quicksand Sucks, etc.). They lure victims into these hazards and feed on their Life Energy (or their pain and fear depending on the edition). And while their behavior is uniformly malevolent across editions, their origins have never been consistent; sometimes they're fey, other times Eldritch Abominations, and still other times a form of undead.
- In Nomine: Will'o'wisps are the least form of ghosts, having sacrificed every part of their spiritual selves save for sheer Will in their struggle to remain anchored to the physical world. They cannot affect the material realm beyond manifesting as balls of light or pockets of cold, and lack the intelligence to do much even if they could do more. They're sad, lonely, wandering things, lacking the ability to let go of the material realm and having long forgotten why they wanted to stay.
- Middle-Earth Role Playing:
- Corpse candles are the restless spirits of mortals who drowned or whose graves were flooded. They create illusory guises to make themselves seem like living creatures and create beckoning glows to lure living victims into watery graves of their own. Stronger specimens, known as corpse lanterns, can create more complex and convincing illusions tailored to whoever their current victim is — for instance, a compassionate person might see a wandering child with a lantern, while a thief might see a fat merchant burying a load of glinting coins in the marsh.
- Swampstars are lesser spirits that can only appear as small, bright lights. They lead travelers to become mired in bogs, quicksand, or deep pools in marshes and swamps, allowing the swampstar to feed on the helpless victim's life energy.
- Pathfinder:
- Will-o'-wisps are aberrations resembling floating spongy orbs that glow with eery light but can selectively dim and modify their illumination to take on a number of forms — winged humanoids, floating skulls, and so on. They live in lonely bogs, moors and forests, usually alone but rarely in groups called strings or chandeliers, and lure travelers into the wilderness to feed on their fear and life energy when they die. Although they aren't fey, they're fairly common in the First World where the true fey live. In addition to common will-o'-wisps, there's also a large number of variants and related creatures:
- Dread wisps haunt the depths of the underground, and feed on despair as well as fear.
- Dune candles inhabit the depths of the desert. Their glow burns with true fire, and in addition to luring travelers into the depths of the desert or into areas prone to sandslides, they also enjoy just setting their victims aflame.
- Flickerwsips are lesser relatives of will-o'-wisps that resemble three-foot-long clumps of trailing hair that pulse with flickering yellow light. They have similar habits to will-o'-wisps, but feed on confusion and doubt instead of fear, especially the unease of lost travelers.
- Groetan candles serve Groetus, the god of the end times, and always take on the appearance of the skull-like moon that is their god. Their fires burn deadly cold.
- Voidgluttons are stronger relatives to will-o'-wisps and flickerwisps, and take the form of glowing, disembodied eyes and claws swirling around a seething black core. Their preferred haunts are sites of great misery, such as graveyards, prison camps, and battlefields.
- Spellvoids are a variant that, instead of eating emotions, feeds on magic and drains it from living spellcasters.
- Will-o'-the-deeps live over seas and occasionally large lakes. They tend to live in groups and use their collective light to create beautiful vistas and beacons that they use to lure ships into reefs and away from safe waters.
- The empyreal lord Ashava is a benevolent version of this. Her true form is a hazy sphere of silvery moonlight, and she entices others to follow her so as to lead them home (if they're living) or to the afterlife (if they're dead). Conversely, she despises true will-o'-wisps due to them deliberately leading people astray and encouraging fear of the wilderness and the night.
- This is a common shtick for fey as well as true wills-o'-the-wisp:
- The Lantern King, one of the Eldest of the fey, resembles a floating orb of light crowned with arcane symbols, endlessly wandering the roads and paths of the First World. He is speculated to be the father of will-o-wisps, in part because of his appearance and in part because he has many in his service, though he laughs off all inquiries on the subject without answer.
- Yaganties, a type of fey described in the Extinction Curse adventure path, have a set of burning candles instead of fingers on one hand. Travelers sometimes become misled by their lights and follow them into the dark forests where they leave, after which the fey will either help, steal from, or kill them based on incomprehensible whims.
- Lampads, nymphs who live in cavern systems, can create glowing wisps of magical light, which they use to guide lost travelers to safety and to lure monsters to their doom.
- Will-o'-wisps are aberrations resembling floating spongy orbs that glow with eery light but can selectively dim and modify their illumination to take on a number of forms — winged humanoids, floating skulls, and so on. They live in lonely bogs, moors and forests, usually alone but rarely in groups called strings or chandeliers, and lure travelers into the wilderness to feed on their fear and life energy when they die. Although they aren't fey, they're fairly common in the First World where the true fey live. In addition to common will-o'-wisps, there's also a large number of variants and related creatures:
- Shadow of the Demon Lord: Jack-o'-lanterns are malevolent faerie creatures that love to lure travellers to their doom on the moors. From a distance, they appear as plumes of pale fire bobbing in the air, but when approached they transform into orange flames resembling leering faces.
- Shadowrun: The Corpselight, or will o' wisp, is a mysterious magical being that looks like a wisp, floating about two metres above ground in desolate areas. They are solitary and malevolent, draining their victim's essence in a way similar to Vampires.
- Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay:
- Marshlights are ethereal undead that cannot physically harm their victims, instead they mesmerise them and lead them into danger. They can only be harmed by magic weapons, which banish them in a single hit.
- The Marsh Lights spell allows a caster to create a number of lights within 100 yards of themselves and then send them off in any desired direction.
Video Games
- Ancient Empires has Wisps as a type of unit. They appear as bluish balls of light that increase the attack of nearby allied units. Their attack does increased damage to skeletons, but their base attack is still too weak for this to be effective.
- Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura: Several enemies are glowing balls of light found in swampy terrain.
- Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain: They first appear as enemies for Kain to kill in the Oracle's Cave. Soon after, the Oracle tells Kain that in order to seek out the vampire Vorador, he must follow the flames of the ignis fatuus to the Termogent Forest, whereupon Vorador resides in his mansion.
- Darkwood: Glares are strange floating orbs of red light that harm the protagonist if he looks at or touches them. They appear in the Swamp, surrounded by possible high tier loot to draw the protagonist into a deadly area filled with obstacles and traps. They will not harm other enemies, who will gleefully take advantage of the situation to rip you apart, and also appear during two different night events as early as the Old Woods Hideout: one where a Red Glare spawns at random places in the hideout, another where a Red Glare spawns at your current location, forcing you to move in order to avoid it.
- Diablo II: The Willowisp monsters are ethereal undead that are transparent until they use their lightning attack. They shoot incredibly fast, come in packs that will focus fire on one character, and are some of the most prominent Demonic Spiders in the game.
Created from the vapors that rise from the dense jungle swamps, these mindless forms seek out the energy contained in all living things. While not evil in nature, their feeding habits do make them a serious threat to adventurers.
- Dragon Age: Origins: Wisps are demons who lost their power by being in the physical world without a host for too long or by being destroyed, often by other demons. What remains of its mind clings to a hatred of all living things. Wisps mindlessly attack in the Fade while in the physical world, they pose as light sources such as lanterns to lead the living into dangerous areas. The Spell Wisp is a spell from the Creation tree summons a wisp that grants a small bonus to spellpower while maintained.
- Eastern Exorcist is a supernatural-themed game where several of your enemies are ghosts, while floating ghostly orbs resembling Willow-o'the-Wisps will appear in the graveyard levels. They materialize from orbs to ghosts after a while.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- Oblivion has them as a mid-level monster encounter. They're incorporeal like ghosts (meaning they can only be hurt with magic, weapons made of silver, or magic weapons) and can use lightning-based magic.
- Skyrim:
- Skyrim has glowing hostile creatures called Wisps, which are found near feminine, ghostlike beings called Wispmothers. Unlike the Will-o-the-Wisps in Oblivion, these can be hurt by any kind of weapon. Killing a Wispmother disperses the Wisps surrounding her. These also appear in The Elder Scrolls Online.
- Yngol's Barrow has mysterious orbs of light that follow and surround the Dragonborn, but they are harmless.
- Evil Islands: Willow-o'the-Wisps are enemies that appear on the first island (especially around the swamp areas and around the City of the Dead) as a group of lights that start burning when attacking. They throw fire at you, an attack which isn't very damaging at later stages, but makes them quite a threat when first encountered.
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates: An early scene has Latov, Yuri, and Chelinka watching the ignes fatui that hover over Lake Cyela — the ghosts of the people who died there when the Rela Cyel facility collapsed.
- Monster Musume TD: Wiwi's the Will-o-wisp monster girl. She's an orange-skinned, cheeky girl who empowers herself by feeding off the negative emotions of others — aided by her provoking attitude. She's even orbited by red and blue flames, of which she claims are human souls.
- Genshin Impact: "Mysterious Seelie" are small beings that look like floating blue orbs. Following them to their final destination (called "Seelie Courts") rewards you with hidden loot.
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: At night and within dungeons, only the lanterns of the ghostly Poes are visible to human senses as faint blue flames hovering in midair.
- Mortal Kombat X: Ermac (who is a being made of thousands of souls shoved into one body) has green lights similar to these orbiting him in his Master of Souls variation. He can use them as projectiles to temporarily paralyze the opponent.
- Nexus War: Nexus Clash has them as some of the low-level minions of the Lich. They're not very effective in combat but they're cheap, can heal their masters with Life Drain, and their ghostly nature means that even invisible characters can't hide from them.
- Night Creatures: Will o'wisps are slow-moving green lights found in the mire, and explode upon contact.
- Overwatch references this with the non-canon "Will-o'-the-Wisp" skin for Tracer, redesigning her into a glowing spectre who fires pistols of supernatural fire instead of futuristic energy pulses, and has a new justification for teleporting around beyond time manipulation. The non-canon backstory is that Tracer's spirit was ripped away from her body after a magical accident, but she's come to make peace with the world and uses her powers to her newfound benefit.
- Pokémon:
- Will-O-Wisp (originally named Onibi) exists as a status move that inflicts the Burn status on the target Pokemon if it hits. It is commonly learned by Ghost-type and Fire-type Pokemon.
- A Pokémon that learns this move is Duskull, which has a light floating in its skull. In German, it's called Zwirrlicht, which is a wordplay on Zwielicht (Twilight) and Irrlicht (Will-o'-the-Wisp).
- It is also learned by the Litwick line, which take the shape of animated candles (Litwick itself), lamps (Lampent), or candelabra/chandeliers (Chandelure) lit with ghostly blue-purple flames, which they use to mesmerize people and consume their souls.
- Will-O-Wisp
- Quest for Glory IV: Will-o'-the-Wisps are the souls of dead children, and they hang around the swamp at night. Following them into the swamp, naturally, is foolish, but they're also there for a good reason. The Hero must capture a few of them in order to find one of the Dark One Rituals.
- Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale: Will-'o-Wisps spawn when you spend too much time on a dungeon floor, The first time you see one, Tear recommends outright that you drop whatever you're doing and make tracks for the level exit. Most of the time, Wisps are not worth fighting due to lack of reward except they are the only enemies to drop Salamander Scales which are needed to make high-level items. Since you need a) 28 Salamander Scales total to make all possible items once each and b) the drop rate of them is 1:50, you will have to kill a lot of these very dangerous enemies if you aim for 100% Completion of the item encyclopedia.
- The Rewinder: Floating flames are a common sight in places containing spirit activity, although despite appearing in large numbers they're merely part of the background.
- Resident Evil 4 has an inversion with the Merchant, in the sense that the lights he marks his shop locations with leads you towards safety. His various campsites are marked from a distance by a strong, blue flame that contrasts the darker environments. At one point, when Ada meets him during the course of Separate Ways, he considers his shop incomplete without it. In the remake, he has both a blue-flamed lantern and the larger lamp burning a purple flame. What's implied is that the reason the Plagas don't bother the Merchant is because of the blue-flamed lantern, the same type that Ashley can use to immobilize the Armaduras Leon has to fight to get the Lion Head in the remake.
- The Secret World: The pumpkin patches Jack inhabits are often surrounded by flickering lights.
- The Sims 3: The "Late Night" Expansion Pack adds wisps that can be caught like butterflies and are quite valuable.
- Temtem: Aohi is a Mental and Fire type that's wreathed in blue flames and has a trait called Ignis Fatuus, which is the Latin name for will-o'-the-wisps.
- Tibia: Wisps are non-hostile creatures in the form of an spark-trailed orb of glowing light that appear in various forests around the world. They run away from players by default and use weak defensive abilities (a bit of self-healing, very brief invisibility, and a movement speed buff), though they can pitifully fight back if cornered, and killing them grants no experience. Vast majority of the time, they drop nothing, but they do have a very low chance of a Rare Random Drop — a Moon Backpack, which is functionally identical to ordinary backpacks available for purchase for pennies in a general store of every city.
- Torchlight II's third act, set in the swamps of Grunnheim, feature "Corpsefire" enemies, from corpsefire huntsmen that shoot flaming arrows or attack with blazing spears to corpsefire dire wolves that will transform into corpsefire werewolves when damaged.
- Warcraft:
- WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos: Wisps are Nature Spirits that act as the Worker Unit for the Night Elves. Their duties include mining gold from entangled mines, harvesting lumber by cultivating the essence of trees without harming them, creating buildings or being consumed to grow [[Treants Ancients]], which bring Night Elf warriors to the battle and can even attack on their own if need arise, though they're as quick as you can expect a tree to be. They also have the Detonate ability that blows the wisp up to drain mana, banish summoned units by dealing significant damage to them, and dispel buffs, cleansing enemies of good effects and allies of bad effects.
- In the final mission of the game, the combined forces of three factions delay the demon lord Archimonde from reaching the World Tree until an innumerable amount of Wisps accumulates around Mount Hyjal. When signaled by Malfurion, the wisps act as The Cavalry, sacrificing themselves en-masse to kill Archimonde in a World-Wrecking Wave (also a case of Cutscene Power to the Max, since Archimonde is immune to magic in gameplay, Detonate wouldn't affect him, much less deal damage). Watch the ending cinematic here.
- In World of Warcraft, Night Elves turn into wisps when they die, allowing them to move much faster than the ghosts of other races and therefore resurrect quicker. Blizzard announced that Wisps would be a playable race for an April Fools' Day joke in 2006.
- We Know the Devil: Venus sometimes sees these in the distance. It is a character tic that hints towards her element, and the nature she takes on when possessed.
- Witchaven: Willow Wisps are met in the titular land of Witchaven, having pushed through the Veil opened by witch Illwhyrin. They cast fireballs and drain Grondoval's level on physical contact in the first game, but kill him instantly if his experience level is reduced to zero
- ZanZarah: The Hidden Portal: Will-o'-whisps are found in the Great Swamp around the Goblin village of Dunmore. You are supposed to follow them to get to the island in the middle of the swamp, because the area is extremely convoluted (by design) and covered in fog, to boot.
Web Original
- The Gamer's Alliance: Wisps are semi-sentient balls of light that are attracted to anything which oozes with mana, whether it's a place of power or a creature. They live by leeching magic from their target and are thus desired by mages who wish to channel the magic within them.
- In "If You See Ghost Lights, Don't Leave the Trail", a Creepypasta, the narrator describes his run-in with them. His friend, a folklore buff, states that sometimes they lead to a body, sometimes to treasure, and sometimes to the pursuer's death. Subverted, however, because they turn out to be the Glowing Eyelights of Undeath of a group of ghostly murdered factory workers.
- The NoSleep Podcast:
- The narrator of "I Used To Sit There" sees faint lights in the woods across the lake that he sits on the shore of.
- A mysterious light stalks the narrator and his friends in "The Midnight Hike".
- The Thrilling Adventure Hour:
- Will-o'-the-Wisps are a creature present in the "Beyond Belief" universe. They feed by draining people of their souls while lulling them off their guards by telling stories. In the Valentine's Day episode, one tries this on Frank and Sadie Doyle, telling them tales of their exploits only to fail before he even began due to The Power of Love. This particular Will-o'-the-Wisp, known as Spooky Hal, is also the narrator who opens and closes each Beyond Belief episode.
- The episode "The Skeleton Grief" features a Will-o'-the-Wisp trying to force a re-do of a previous story, "The Skeleton Brief." He was dissatisfied with how the antagonists, organ-harvesting skeletons, were hit by a bus and tried to change the story to save them. Spooky Hal eventually takes the story back and forces the enemy Wisp to share in the skeletons' fate.
Web Video
- The Review Team: In "The Ghost Of Slumber Mountain"'s stinger, a different version of Casper (a paleontologist type that leads people to ferocious dinosaurs) is this.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: In the "The Siege of the North Part 2", after being transported to the spirit world, Aang runs through a swampy region chasing a mysterious small light sphere. When he climbed up a tree and grabbed it, it made the tree branch dissolve.
- Willo the Wisp (1981) tells stories of various creatures in an enchanted forest whose adventures are narrated by Willo the Wisp, a ghostly creature voiced by and caricature of Kenneth Williams.
