180 years ago amateur scientist Andrew Crosse accidentally created life. Well, he never actually claimed as much, but he was never able to determine where his little creatures came from if not conjured from the aether.

After the death of his parents-his father in 1800, his mother in 1805-Crosse inherited the family’s vast English estate known as Fyne Court. Crosse converted the old manor’s music room into a laboratory, his “electric room,” where he conducted numerous experiments throughout the years. He erected an enormous apparatus to study atmospheric electricity, and was among the first to create large voltaic piles. But it would be a series of seemingly mundane experiments to artificially create minerals that would cement his strange place in the annals of history.

The experiment in which the “insects” first appeared consisted of a mixture of water, silicate of potassa, and hydrochloric acid dripping onto porous Vesuvius rock that was being continuously electrified by two wires connected to a voltaic battery. “The object of subjecting this fluid to a long continued electric action through the intervention of a porous stone was to form if possible crystals of silica,” Crosse wrote, “but this failed.”

The process didn’t yield the results Crosse hoped for, but something completely unexpected happened instead. On the fourteenth day of the experiment Crosse noticed small, white excrescences projecting from around the middle of the electrified stone. On the eighteenth day Crosse noted the growths had enlarged, and now had long “filaments” projecting from them. It soon became clear these were not the artificial minerals Crosse was trying to create, but something which would deny all explanation.

“On the twenty-sixth day,” Crosse observed, “these appearances assumed the form of a perfect insect, standing erect on a few bristles which formed its tail. Till this period I had no notion that these appearances were other than an incipient mineral formation. On the twenty-eighth day these little creatures moved their legs. I must now say that I was not a little astonished. After a few days they detached themselves from the stone, and moved about at pleasure.”

Crosse duplicated his experiment several times using different materials, but still achieved similar results. In some instances, he was amazed to observe the insects growing several inches below the surface of the caustic, electrified fluid but “after emerging from it they were destroyed if thrown back.” In another case, he filled the apparatus with a strong chlorine atmosphere. The insects still formed under those conditions, and remained intact inside the container for over two years, but never once moved or showed signs of vitality.