Sicilian village spooked by seemingly spontaneous combustion

[Hand of Evil]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4669114/


Blazing mystery is straight from the ‘X-Files’
Sicilian village spooked by seemingly spontaneous combustion

 

[Djeta Thernadier]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4669114/


Blazing mystery is straight from the ‘X-Files’
Sicilian village spooked by seemingly spontaneous combustion

Insert "I'm the Firestarter" music here...

Poor goats.

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

I'd like to hear whether there was any other strange goings-on in the town, as this sort of deal is usually associated with poltergeists. I've heard of this type thing happening before (the fires at Macomb, Illinois), but I've never heard of it being so widespread. Interesting. Maybe Enceladus is coming out from under his volcano?

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

According to my best friend whom I showed the story to, a volunteer with the FD for five years, my hometown had a series of incidents like this back in the 70s... This makes me want to play some d20 Dark*Matter...

 

[Desdichado]

According to my best friend whom I showed the story to, a volunteer with the FD for five years, my hometown had a series of incidents like this back in the 70s... This makes me want to play some d20 Dark*Matter...

It makes me want to finish writing up that d20 Dark*Matter story hour...

 

[Andrew D. Gable]

According to my best friend whom I showed the story to, a volunteer with the FD for five years, my hometown had a series of incidents like this back in the 70s... This makes me want to play some d20 Dark*Matter...

Bolingbrook, yeah...there was an incident of spontaneous human combustion in 1979. I'm not gonna read up more on it (as SHC is one of the few unexplained things that scares me), but IIRC this case wasn't that "spontaneous". I believe the lady was a smoker or something. Dunno about the series bit, but I've heard of instances where a number of small fires are set by poltergeists, and they eventually culminate in the combustion of a person. These are usually all located in one area, though.

Follow-up edit: this is taken from a reader's response to an article on the Skeptic's Dictionary page. Excuse the bad grammar. Also a bit of the reply by the editors.

In the case of Beatrice Ocki of Bolingbrook Illinois the woman's feet were not burnt and it appeared to me that she was wearing nylons (it looked [like it, but] I don't know). Anyway, how come her feet were not burnt and how come the rest of the room was not burnt or the rest of the house for that matter?

Response:

I don't know why her feet were not burned or even if they were not burned. Maybe there was not enough oxygen left in the room to keep the fire going; maybe there was not enough combustible material in her body to keep the fire going.

I don't know why the rest of the house did not burn. Maybe the fire was not hot enough to spread, or the room was too cold.