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I actually saw some "swamp gas" back in the summer of 1966. There's a little town south of where I grew up where swamp gas would appear on a dirt road between a railroad track and a wetland area.

My girlfriend and I and another couple drove down and parked aside the dirt road and waited.

It was pretty amazing. A huge ball (about 8ft in diameter) of fire following behind my dad's 1962 T-Bird. We had given up and were leaving when I noticed the ball of fire was right behind the car.

I concluded that the spark from the cars tailpipe ignited the methane from the swamp which had been drawn into the vacuum created by the car as I drove along the dirt road.

As an aside, this was in the days before car mufflers had spark suppressors.