The Collaborative International Dictionary
Brocken specter \Brock"en spec"ter\ or Brocken spectre \Brock"en spec"tre\ [Trans. of G. Brockengespenst.] A mountain specter (which see), esp. that observed on the Brocken, in the Harz Mountains.
Wikipedia
A Brocken spectre ( German Brockengespenst), also called Brocken bow or mountain spectre, is the apparently enormous and magnified shadow of an observer, cast upon the upper surfaces of clouds opposite the sun. The head of the figure is often surrounded by the glowing halo-like rings of a glory—rings of coloured light that appear directly opposite the sun when sunlight meets a cloud of uniformly-sized water droplets.
The phenomenon can appear on any misty mountainside or cloud bank, even when seen from an aeroplane, but the frequent fogs and low-altitude accessibility of the Brocken, a peak in the Harz Mountains in Germany, have created a local legend from which the phenomenon draws its name. The Brocken spectre was observed and described by Johann Silberschlag in 1780, and has since been recorded often in literature about the region.
Usage examples of "brocken spectre".
He lives for the sake of that Brocken spectre, the reflection of himself in the human opinion.
The religion, ceasing to be a tangible thing, an object uniform for all sane eyes, becomes rather that mist whereon the sun of the soul casts up, like Brocken spectre, certain vast and vague images of the beholder himself, with or without a glory encompassing them.