Black Light

Black Light is a visible energy manifesting as intense inky blackness to creatures such as human who see in the arbitrarily defined part of the spectrum known as visible light. It is freezing cold to the touch, and burns flesh in a manner equivalent to intense infrared energy exposure.

Black Light was discovered in 1834 by an experimenter, Johann Conrad Dippel, who was attempting to reproduce active energy alchemical experiments from certain scrolls that had come into his possession.

Black Light can be generated by electromagnetic engines as a side effect of misaligned electro-gravitic lensing. In this format it provided the energy discharge for a variety of related firearms most of which were configured in the form of pistols during the mid 1930s. By 1956, the US Federal Government had used the FBI to suppress this technology with nearly 100% success, and so this type of sidearm disappeared from common knowledge.

Black Light seems to have a moral or spiritual as well as a purely physical effect on those who immerse themselves in it or with whom it comes into direct energy to flesh contact. People experiencing contact report the feeling of a cold inhuman presence in their mind, and a soul chilling effect. These subjective experiences, or hallucinations, have never been observed, reproduced or confirmed by any form of scientific experimentation.

The hereditary superhero persona The Owl is equipped with a Black Light pistol.

Older texts and legends use the term "The Shadow" for Black Light phenomena.