"akin" isn't really much use. To read what visitors to Tesla's laboratory saw it was much like something imagined for a book on magic where a magician conjures a ball of light to illuminate the room and follow around the magician.

It's fun to think about because many many people saw him do it and yet no one has figured out how he did it, and not for lack of trying. Its like the "Fermat's Theorem" of physics phenomena as far as I'm concerned.

Now that I've got a couple of software defined radios (SDRs) that can generate microwaves on demand with an arbitrary modulation, I expect there might be some fun experiments to do here.

Tesla's gear kicked out a lot of power in a way that I'm not sure has really been done since. At least I haven't seen photos looking as impressive as the ones of him in his lab https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Tesla_co...

https://thevelvetrocket.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/nikola-t...

These are very likely long exposures that captured groundings over time. It'd look much less impressive in person, and more in line with what you've seen reproduced.