Buster, i can give you a link with tons of ball lightning information,
including scientific papers and eyewitness sightings. Of course,
the lights are sometimes attributed to UFO's and sometimes ball
lighting. Balls of lightning have been reported to divide into more
balls, but I'm not sure about the circling maneuver. One report:
"I was living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in September of 1961 and attending Gulf Coast Military Academy. It was about 8 PM at night, and a squall line was approaching from the south out of the Gulf of Mexico. I was waiting for my parents to pick me up from an honor ceremony and passing the time sitting on the front porch of the old barracks. As I looked up, a lightning bolt began as a large ball moving slowly through the sky amongst the clouds. The ball divided into two balls, and then branched out into more and more small balls. As the balls moved and divided, the pathway they took continued to glow. Each bolt lasted several seconds and then faded away. The really odd thing was how slowly the balls moved. The ball lightening was also accompanied by a faint hissing sound. I can now estimate the altitude of this event as about one thousand feet AGL. This repeated over a period of several minutes and drew quite a crown on the gravel drive.
Joseph Chambers <jchambers1@aol.com>
Bartlett, TN USA - Wednesday, October 16, 2002 at 13:28:39 (PDT)"
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/tesla/ballgtn.html