Analysis of Conditions favorable for Ball Lightning Creation
  This report uses a few well documented cases of Ball Lightning (or BL for short) observations to demonstrate a correlation between BL and positive lightning, especially strong positive lightning. This allows to draw conclusions and predictions about future BL observations and the pro- duction of these objects in the laboratory. Contrary to many current BL theories, these objects can be created without direct contact to a lightning channel. Very high electric fields appear to be essential for the creation, together with the proper temporal structure of the field. So far no experiments have been performed along the ideas presented in this report. 
H. Boerner
physics.ao-ph