Failed rocket launches are ugly, asymmetrical messes. The vapor trails are this jagged, almost sickly sort of tracing in the sky. I remember the Challenger explosion and the trails left by the SRBs, and that to me was more gruesome than the thought of those astronauts burning up.
Nothing is more evil looking than when large structures fail. There’s this ruthlessness of sorts.
Yeah, this story is pure horse hockey.
I have seen a lot of other pics and videos of failed and successful launches and they are, as you say, not pretty geometrical patterns. They don't produce nice pure lights like the white and blue seen in the pics of the Norwegian phenomena.