8 - Mysteries from East and West

This chapter is about three mysteries which have long fascinated us. Two of them, Spontaneous Human Combustion and the ability of eastern fakirs and pilgrims to withstand the pain of hooks and knives skewered into their flesh, are mentioned in our earlier books, but only briefly. We felt there was little new to say about them, and so, reluctantly, we moved on to consider phenomena upon which researchers had shed new light.

Later, we found that we had been mistaken. A letter from an English doctor convinced us that we should reopen our investigations into Spontaneous Human Combustion; while the answer to the hook hanging mystery lay virtually under our noses.

It came - long after the Strange Powers book had gone to press but fortunately in time for the television series - from a distinguished professor of physiology who had conducted his experiments no more than a mile from Arthur C. Clarke's home in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

He also had much to tell us about firewalking. A set of extraordinary photographs brought back from the Arctic in 1984 reminded us of the third mystery. Perhaps someone, somewhere, will write to explain it, too.

But first we must travel to the East ...

Sri Lankan Superstition

When it comes to investigating the supernatural, the West now has no monopoly. The East, from whence so many mysteries have been reported by generations of marvelling travellers, has begun to produce its own psychical researchers. Few have been more assiduous or successful than two sceptics from Sri Lanka: one an outspoken maverick who devoted his life to the banishment of superstition; the other a respected professor of physiology who believes he can explain the most puzzling feats of the Oriental yogis - the ability to walk on fire and to hang from hooks without suffering serious injury.

On the morning of 13 May 1965 a terrified family gathered amidst the palm trees at the garden gate of a house at Karainagar near Jaffna, the northernmost town of Sri Lanka. They had come to greet a visitor from Colombo (far to the south) in the hope that he would rid them of a poltergeist which, they believed, had been turning their home and lives upside down for almost three months.

They had been bombarded with stones which seemed to materialize inside the house, bruised by flying bottles and tins, and nauseated by the sand and dirt which used to appear suddenly in their rice at mealtimes. Money and possessions had gone missing, including keys, a leather bag and even a pair of false teeth left briefly on a stone by a well while their owner was having a wash. The family had also been plagued with illness since the onset of the sinister events.

The visitor was Dr Abraham Kovoor, then Sri Lanka's foremost psychical researcher, who had come to investigate. First, he walked round the outside of the house, pausing to admire the ornate satin-wood doors and peering into the outhouse at the back where agricultural implements were stored. Then, Poirot-like, Kovoor set up his headquarters in the shed and turned his attention to the family: an elderly couple, their son and daughter, and the daughter's three girls, Devanayaki (thirteen), Sukirtham (eight) and four-year-old Selvamalar.

The adults were each questioned and their stories duly noted in Kovoor's casebook, but these interrogations were a formality: the psychic sleuth had already spotted the culprit. He wrote later:

The fifth person to be questioned was the 13-year-old Devanayaki. Unlike the others who were questioned earlier, I adopted a different technique in dealing with her. I started with the assurance that I was in the know of what had happened in the house, and that I knew who was responsible for them. Without any hesitation, and with a smile on her face, Devanayaki explained to me in answer to my questions all that she had done during the previous two-and-a-half months.

The teenager had been responsible for all the 'poltergeist manifestations', with two exceptions: the disappearance of the false teeth, which had probably been snatched from the edge of the well by a passing crow, and the family illnesses, which were put down to coincidence. Dr Kovoor had simply used his powers of observation to crack the case. 'When I met all the members of the family as I stepped into the house first,' he said, 'I could spot out the poltergeist because Devanayaki's facial expressions betrayed her.'

He had also noticed that the 'poltergeist' was never active between 9 A.M. and 2 P.M., the hours when Devanayaki was at school. Devanayaki, it turned out, had been jealous of her younger sister and, piqued by the lack of attention paid to her, had invented the 'poltergeist' to annoy the grown-ups. Dr Kovoor prescribed a course of deep hypnosis for the unhappy teenager and instructed her family to treat her with extra love and kindness.

The result was that the poltergeist never reappeared. Devanayaki's family was rewarded with good marks from a model schoolgirl, and Dr Kovoor with a large Christmas hamper.

For Abraham Kovoor, however, it was simply another victory in his campaign against the superstitions which, he believed, reached right to the heart of life in Sri Lanka. Fortune-tellers still flourish throughout the island, even in the Fort of Colombo, the city's business district.

Under the shady colonnade outside the Colombo Apothecaries store, for example, queues form early in the day at the stall of astrologer and palmist Miss Kosala Guneratna, who thoughtfully provides newspapers for her waiting clients to read. Near by, at 66 1/3 Chatham Street, another astrologer, Mr B. Wettasinghe, uses a pocket calculator to compute the future. Throughout the Pettah, the city's teeming market area, more exotic seers ply their trade. In Jamahattha Street, Mrs P. Thiyagarajah gives 'light readings' by holding up a soot-blackened saucer to the sunlight and interpreting the patterns made on the surface by the dancing rays. Strangest of all, perhaps, are Rajah and Ranee, the psychic parrots, who hold their consultations on the pavement outside a Hindu temple.

Upon payment of 1 rupee, the parrots' keeper fans out a pack of cards on the pavement in front of their wicker cage. Then he releases one of the birds, which scurries out and pecks one of the cards. On it, according to the parrot-keeper, his client's fate is written. Many Sri Lankans consult astrologers before making important decisions. Patients have been known to postpone operations because the stars seem unfavourably aligned, and the horoscopes of prospective marriage partners are minutely compared to ensure compatibility.

An ill-starred future can even mean the cancellation of marriage plans. Often, the times of important events are ordained according to the planetary conjunctions - even the opening ceremony of the futuristic Arthur C. Clarke Centre for Modern Technologies was carried out to a precise astrological schedule.

In the country districts, belief in demons is widespread, and Kattadiyas, the local variety of witch doctor, are hired to impose or exorcize curses. In one elaborate ceremony, regularly performed in the villages, the Kattadiya entices the evil demon from a 'possessed' person and, after a colourful wrestling ritual, traps it in an empty bottle which is then consigned to the depths of the Indian Ocean, out of harm's way.

Such strong belief in the forces of the supernatural enraged Abraham Kovoor. 'Superstitions flourish on the ignorance and credulity of people,' he proclaimed, and he made it his business to debunk the beliefs of the 'gullibles', as he called them. Once, in India, he pretended that water from a railway station tap came from the holy river Ganges, and was delighted when 'many miraculous cures' were attributed to it. And he issued this challenge to the magicians and psychics:

He who does not allow his miracles to be investigated is a crook, he who does not have the courage to investigate a miracle is a gullible, and he who is prepared to believe without verification is a fool. If there were a single person with supernatural powers in any part of the world, I would have become a pauper long ago because I have offered an award of one lakh [100,000] Sri Lanka rupees to anyone who can demonstrate any one of the 23 items of miracles mentioned in my permanent challenge under fraud-proof conditions.

Though this open challenge was published all over the world some 15 years ago, I have not lost a single cent. Instead, I have gained a few thousands of rupees, the forfeited earnest deposits of contestants who failed to turn up in the end.

When Abraham Kovoor died in 1978, the reward was still on offer, and few claimants now come forward to be tested by his successor, Carlo Fonseka. Instead, Fonseka, Professor of Physiology at the University of Colombo, has been able to concentrate upon finding a rational explanation for those two Eastern mysteries which have fascinated and baffled travellers from the West since earliest times: fire walking and hook hanging.

Fire-walking

Fire-walking is regularly performed in Sri Lanka, both as a tourist attraction and as a religious ritual at festivals such as the annual pilgrimage to Kataragama, the island's holiest shrine. To conduct his investigation, Carlo Fonseka visited every fire-walk he could find and, with the eye of a trained medical man, watched the devotees as they crossed the burning coals.

He wanted to answer a simple question: How can people walk on fire and not get burned? At each fire-walk, Fonseka began by measuring the distance travelled and the surface temperature. The longest fire-bed he found, at Kataragama, was 18 ft (5.5 m) long, while many were very much shorter. They were between 4 and 7 ft (1.2 to 2 m) wide, and the embers 3 to 6 in (8 to 15 cm) deep. Fire temperatures varied from about 300º to 450ºC.

More crucially, he timed the pilgrims as they crossed the coals and counted the number of steps they took. At Kataragama, the year the professor made his investigations, 100 walkers were on the fire for a mere 3 seconds on average. The fastest rushed across in only 1.5 seconds, and even the slowest traverse took just 6 seconds.

Usually, walkers made it in ten steps, with the soles of their feet barely touching the coals - 0.3 seconds was the average time. These findings prompted Fonseka's first conclusion:

At this stage an obvious question poses itself: is the immunity of fire-walkers from burns due to the shortness of the duration of contact between their soles and embers in taking a step? ... If so, is it reasonable to suppose that those who get burnt as a result of fire-walking are in fact like the children little Alice in Wonderland had heard of, who got burnt all because they would not remember the simple rule that 'a red hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long'?

But this could not be the whole answer: the casualty ward of the Kataragama hospital was grisly testimony to the fact that fire-walkers can suffer massive burns even after coming into contact with burning coals for only a few seconds. One British clergyman who braved the fire-pit -and ended up in the burns unit - later described the experience: 'It was like animals tearing at my feet,' he said. Carlo Fonseka had also noticed another factor:

Examination of the feet of the men who frequently do fire-walking showed that the epidermis of the soles of most of them was thick and rough when compared with that of habitually shod people. On being asked, most of them said that they never use any kind of foot-wear. Two obvious questions immediately suggested themselves: (1) are thick, rough soles more resistant to heat than thin, smooth ones? and (2) does habitual barefootedness increase the resistance of the soles to heat?

Back at the Medical Faculty, the professor knocked up an ingenious but simple apparatus, consisting of a 40-watt light-bulb in a metal cylinder. Volunteers, among them several experienced fire-walkers, were recruited for an experiment. Each of them simply put the sole of his foot on the top of the apparatus. Then Carlo Fonseka switched on the bulb and timed how long they were able to withstand its heat.

The results showed a clear difference between the people who usually wore shoes and those who went round barefoot and whose soles had thickened as a result. In fact, the unshod 'guinea pigs' felt no heat at all for an average of 29 seconds and could keep their foot above the bulb for over 1 1/4 minutes, while those with soles softened by years of wearing shoes sensed the heat after only 6 seconds and were yelping in pain after 37. Further tests showed that people with cold, wet feet could withstand the heat for even longer.

To confirm his hypotheses, Carlo Fonseka then ordered cartloads of logs - the Vitex pinnata regularly used in fire-walks. Next, he built a series of fifteen fires and carefully reproduced the conditions that obtained at Kataragama and other similar festivals. None of the laboratory walkers suffered burns, although the surface temperature of the fire-pit reached up to 500ºC, but those with the softest feet had to skip speedily across the coals to avoid pain, while those with soles roughened by a lifetime of going barefoot were able to stroll across.

The professor was delighted. Not only had his theories been born out, but he could also dismiss as 'mumbo-jumbo' the widely held idea that the ability to walk on hot coals was a supernatural power or a reward from divine authority for a good and moral life. 'Abstinence from meat, alcohol and sex is unnecessary to walk unscathed on fire,' he decided, and, in the interests of science, the fire-walkers at the Medical Faculty defied religious convention by taking hearty swigs from a bottle of arrack, the potent local spirit, and devouring pork cutlets.

Hook-hangers

No sooner had Carlo Fonseka published the results of his fire-walking experiments in the Ceylon Medical Journal than a challenge from one of his own medical students sent him once more in search of fakirs and holy men. The student published an article in the island's Daily Mirror. Though the headline - HANGING ON HOOKS: WHAT is THE EXPLANATION? - was rather bland, what he had to say was provocative in the extreme - at least to a rationalist professor of physiology.

He had been to religious festivals and was amazed by the pilgrims who atoned for their sins by hanging from ropes attached to their bodies by razor-sharp hooks embedded in their skin. The devotees' ability to withstand pain and to survive their ordeal without any apparent ill-effects seemed to the student to defy medical science. 'Under normal conditions,' he wrote, 'these devotees are susceptible to pain, bleeding, neurogenic shock, tetanus, gas gangrene and bacterial infection of wounds.'

Yet none of these problems affected hook-hangers, nor did the hooks ever tear their flesh, even when the full weight of their bodies was suspended from ropes. He declared hook-hanging to be a miracle, for there were, he said, seven inexplicable mysteries about this 'fantastic feat of faith'.

Carlo Fonseka was not convinced. He was ideally placed to investigate, for in Sri Lanka there are professional hook-hangers who hire themselves out for displays and tourist shows. To them, a scientific experiment at the Medical Faculty was all in a day's work. From the many experts on offer, Professor Fonseka chose 'a young rationalist-minded volunteer named N.C. Jayasuriya' as his 'guinea pig'. Jayasuriya proved to be just the man for the job and, in three long sessions of carefully supervised investigation (for hook-hanging, while not miraculous, can be highly dangerous to the uninitiated), became known as 'the Hero on Hooks'.

Carlo Fonseka examined each of the student's seven 'mysteries' in turn. His findings can be summarized in a series of questions and answers:

Question: Why does the hook-hanger appear to suffer no pain?

Answer: Because he has volunteered to undergo the ordeal. The right mental attitude is vital. Soldiers wounded in battle often say they feel no pain, and this may be because being wounded means they will be out of the combat zone for a time. For devotees, ecstasy and the feeling that they are purging their sins are powerful anaesthetics, but even Mr Jayasuriya, who apparently 'spurned divine aid', suffered no agonies, simply because he had chosen to take part. In fact, he chattered happily to passers-by as he hung from the hooks during the experiments.

Question: Why do the hooks not make him bleed?

Answer: They do, but only a little. There are three reasons. Firstly, piercing the flesh releases the hormone adrenalin, which constricts the blood vessels in the skin and the superficial tissues into which the hooks are inserted. Secondly, the body has a natural mechanism (known as the 'extrinsic mechanism') for stopping bleeding from damaged tissues, which quickly comes into play and releases a chemical to clot the blood. The third factor is perhaps the most important of all: before the hook is inserted, the hanger's assistants firmly pinch the place where it is to go. This puts the surrounding blood vessels out of action, and pressure from the rope to which the hook is attached ensures that they stay that way.

Question: How do they avoid tetanus, gas gangrene and infected wounds?

Answer: They don't always. The problem is that the devotees are seldom examined later, but there is evidence that some wounds do become infected. (During Fonseka's experiments the hooks and the wounds they produced were scrupulously wiped and sterilized.) Tetanus and gangrene can be discounted, for they are very rare, especially in the kind of people who practise hook-hanging, who are usually young and in good physical shape.

Question: Why doesn't the hook-hanger faint during his ordeal?

Answer: People usually faint when they are in great pain or when they are emotionally upset. The hook-hanger is not in pain and, far from being upset, is happy to be doing penance in this spectacular way. (Mr Jayasuriya, delighted to be of help in the understanding of a 'miracle', did not faint either.)

Question: Why don't the hooks tear the hanger's back?

Answer: Because he hangs from several hooks. One would certainly tear his flesh, but several hooks distribute his weight and spread the load. Thus, if a devotee weighs 120 lbs (54 kilos) and uses six hooks, each one will have to bear only 20 lbs (9 kilos) - healthy human tissue can take the strain.

Carlo Fonseka is not only a rationalist: he is also a realist. He knows that however energetically he debunks the idea that hook-hanging and fire-walking are paranormal phenomena, people in his own country and abroad will probably continue to regard them as miracles. However, he continues his campaign undaunted, believing 'that it is intellectually degrading to continue to hold primitive beliefs which have become inconsistent with knowledge'.

Indeed, so dedicated is he to his cause, that he has himself often walked on fire, each time emerging from the pit triumphant and, predictably, unburnt.

The Human Candles

Gruesome mysteries may require gruesome solutions. Thus it came about that a university professor, David Gee, could be found in his laboratory in Leeds fabricating a ghoulish test. First he rolled up a chunk of human body fat until it resembled an 8-in (24-cm) candle. Carefully he wrapped the 'candle' in a layer of human skin. Lastly, the whole object was clothed in fabric - dressed as though it were living flesh. Then Professor Gee applied a flame to the end of it.

He was ready to attempt to solve a mystery which has fascinated doctors and scientists for more than two centuries, and intrigued writers from Charles Dickens to Captain Marryat. Can human beings, apparently spontaneously, just burst into flame and melt away?

Professor Gee himself had been called to a case in Leeds in November 1963, when he was a young forensic scientist. He had found the remnants of an elderly woman, almost totally burned away apart from her right foot. Yet all around was undamaged combustible material. The hearth rug itself was intact except where the body had fallen. There was a tea towel, still neatly folded and scarcely singed, only a foot away from the body. The floorboards had burned through, but again only in the spot where the woman had fallen.

The young Dr Gee was intrigued. He knew that temperatures of 250ºC or more were needed to make the human body burn. The precise Inquisitors of the Catholic Church had discovered that whole cartloads of wood were required to burn the heresy from recalcitrant souls and incinerate the bodies that had harboured such vice.

Meaner allocations of fuel merely charred and roasted the sinner. In modern times, the annals of forensic science repeatedly demonstrate how futile it is for murderers to try to destroy the corpse of a victim by fire. Yet there are constant reports from unimpeachable sources of people being spontaneously, and for no apparent reason, consumed in flames.

A doctor from Aberdeen, Mackenzie Booth, recorded an astonishing case in which an old soldier had burned quietly away in a hayloft in Constitution Street in the middle of the city:

What struck me especially [he noted] was the fact that, notwithstanding the presence of abundant combustible material around, such as hay and wood, the main effects of combustion were limited to the corpse, and only a small piece of the adjacent flooring and the woodwork immediately above the man's head had suffered.

The body was almost a cinder, yet retaining the form of the face and figure so well, that those who had known him in life could readily recognize him. Both hands and the right foot had been burnt off and had fallen through the floor among the ashes into the stables below. The hair and scalp were burnt off, exposing the bare and calcined skull. The tissues of the face were represented by a greasy cinder retaining the cast of the features, and the incinerated moustache still gave the wonted military expression to the old soldier.

Dr Booth was baffled.

Two years later, an American doctor was actually to witness 'spontaneous combustion' taking place. He was visiting a patient on the outskirts of the little town of Ayer, Massachusetts, when a girl rushed in begging him to come to her mother, who was being burned alive. The incident was only 200 yards away in some woodland. He arrived to find the woman's body still burning at the shoulder, along the trunk and down the legs.

'The flames reached from twelve to fifteen inches above the level of the body,' he reported. The clothing was nearly all consumed. As I reached the spot, the bones of the right leg broke with an audible snap, allowing the foot to hang by the tendons and muscles of one side, those of the other side having burned completely off.' Yet, bizarrely, except where the body had actually been burning, the mother's clothes were untouched.

A woollen skirt, a cotton vest, a calico dress, underclothes, had all survived in parts unburnt. All around, the ground was untouched apart from a few charred leaves under the corpse, and her straw hat, slightly scorched, a few feet away. The woman had been out in the woods, clearing stumps and undergrowth, and had indeed started a fire which might have caught her clothing. But that in no way seemed to Dr Hartwell to explain the human incendiary which he had seen before his very eyes.

Both these cases are nearly a century old. Yet incidents keep recurring which confound the results of another 100 years of research into the properties of flame.

Fireman Jack Stacey was called to an incident in a rundown part of Vauxhall, South London, at Christmas 1967. A fire was reported. When the fire engines arrived, the crew found some down-and-outs awaiting them. They had been using an old building. Inside was the body of another vagrant. Said Mr Stacey, 'It was still alight. There were flames coming from the abdomen. They were coming out of a four-inch slit in the abdomen. It was a bluish flame. It seemed as though the fire had begun inside the body.' The building itself was undamaged, although there was charring of the woodwork underneath the victim.

At the end of 1985 the BBC showed a programme in which a police officer, John Haymer, testified to a strange death in South Wales in 1979. When he arrived at the house he was immediately struck by an orange-red glow in the main room.

The walls were generating heat. The window and lightbulb were covered in an orange substance. The lightbulb was bare because the plastic shade had melted. The settee still had its loose covers. The carpet was largely undamaged.

On the floor was a pair of human feet clothed in socks. They were attached to the lower portion of the body. This was clad in trousers, undamaged as far as a distinct burn line. From the trousers protruded the calcined bone. And just beyond the knees, this disintegrated into an amorphous mass of ash.

The debris was all that remained of the elderly man who had lived in the house. Haymer was puzzled enough at the almost total destruction of the body, but what was even more baffling was the lack of damage elsewhere. The TV set was still on, though its plastic control knobs had melted. The grate itself was undisturbed, with unburnt firewood still in place. No cause of death, no source for the fire was ever found. Haymer, a sober individual who had investigated many deaths and had never flirted with the paranormal, believes to this day that the case defies rational explanation.

These modern cases of bodies reduced to ash in unscorched surroundings are the more incomprehensible to investigators because the technology of consuming a corpse in fire is now well understood as a result of the advancing fashion for cremation in both Britain and America. Crematoria have become remarkably sophisticated and automated, now that most people choose to have their earthly remains rapidly obliterated. The ovens which do the job operate at temperatures of at least 800ºC and, even after an hour or more, quite large fragments of bone will remain. Rarely is there the complete reduction to ash which is a feature of the 'spontaneous combustion' cases.

These burnings are not usually witnessed, and there is only circumstantial evidence as to how long the process takes. But even in modern times there are cases of the most spectacular and horrible form of 'spontaneous combustion', when people burst into flames in front of friends, families or passers-by. These are the cases which have truly horrified, rather than merely intrigued, those unfortunate enough to see them - a man so angry during a dispute with a neighbour that he simply exploded into flame; in 1973 a baby who was suddenly alight in his pram; the six Nigerians in 1976 all consumed in a fire which hardly damaged their room. These dramas have all surfaced in the newspapers with neither explanation nor serious investigation.

However, in the winter of 1985 there was a dreadful incident in Cheshire, which was investigated at first hand by police, fire officers, a forensic chemist working for the British Home Office, and by the prestigious Shirley Institute in Manchester. A seventeen-year-old student, Jacqueline Fitzsimon, was walking down some stairs with a group of friends at Halton College of Further Education, Widnes, when she suddenly burst into flame. Although three staff members quickly arrived on the scene and smothered the flames, Jacqueline subsequently died.

Witnesses under oath at the inquest described the events of that February morning in apocalyptic terms. Two girls, Carina Leazer and Rachel Heckle, had passed Jacqueline on the stairs. Carina told the coroner that she noticed a strange glowing light above Jacqueline's right shoulder. It appeared in mid-air and then seemed to fall down her back. Two men, both mature students, were also on the stairs.

John Foy, aged thirty-four, who worked for a chemical manufacturer, described hearing Jacqueline cry out. They turned to see her on fire. 'She was like a stunt man on TV,' he said. 'The flames simply engulfed her.' He and his companion, Neil Gargan, had seen no sign of smoke or smouldering as they passed the girl just a few seconds before. They helped put out the fire. Jacqueline herself only complained that she had burnt her finger trying to put out the flames, though there was melted nylon all over her back. She died in hospital.

Initially there seemed to be a fairly simple explanation. Jacqueline was a cookery student and had been working in the cookery room where a number of gas cookers were in use. She had finished her work early and had stood about talking to friends. The assumption was that she had perhaps leaned against a cooker where the gas ring was still on, her white catering jacket had started to smoulder and then, when she went out to the stairway, the increased oxygen and air-flow had fanned it into flame.

Slowly, however, doubts began to build up about this straightforward theory. There had been plenty of people about and no one had noticed any sign of scorching or smouldering on Jacqueline's back. Indeed, she had walked down the stairs linking arms with two friends, and they had not noticed anything. Then the cookery lecturer, Robert Carson, swore that all the rings had been turned off an hour before the end of the study period. 'In any case,' he told the coroner, 'in twenty years I have never seen a catering jacket on fire.'

Next, the Home Office chemist, Philip Jones, described how he had been unable to make a smouldering catering jacket burst into flames, even when it was exposed to a strong air-flow. The Shirley Institute report also acknowledged that they could not get a smouldering catering jacket to flame. If it was directly ignited the whole thing burned within twenty-five seconds. Yet all the evidence indicated that a considerable time - several minutes - had elapsed between Jacqueline's departure from the cookery room and the fatal conflagration on the stairs.

The jury's verdict was 'misadventure'. But few people, either among the witnesses or among those who had attended the inquest, felt that they had heard a satisfactory explanation of why a seventeen-year-old girl should, without warning, be consumed by fire while walking downstairs arm-in-arm with friends one February morning.

The most relentlessly investigated case of modern times was the death of sixty-seven-year-old widow, Mary Reeser, in St Petersburg, Florida, in 1951. Her son, Dr Richard Reeser, had last seen her sitting in an armchair reading as he left for an evening out. When he returned there was nothing left of the chair except the metal springs. Of his mother there remained only her left foot, bizarrely unscorched, a few pieces of backbone and, apparently, a skull shrunk to the size of a baseball. The room was covered in oily soot, and a pair of candles 12 ft (3.5 m) away from the body had melted. Yet newspapers and linen only inches away were intact. The room was stiflingly hot.

The local fire chief, Jake Reichert, confessed that it was the 'most unusual case I've seen in my almost twenty-five years of police work'.

Dr Wilton Krogman of the University of Pennsylvania reported the circumstances. He noted that not only was it peculiar that the fire was so localized and yet had clearly generated great heat, but also that there was an odd absence of smell. 'How could a hundred and seventy pounds of mortal flesh burn with no detectable or discernible smoke or odor permeating the entire apartment building?' Krogman remarked on the shrunken skull, 'I have experimented on this using cadaver heads,' but no similar effect had ever been produced.

Arson specialist Edward Davies was despatched by the National Board of Underwriters to analyse the death. He could find no cause.

More than thirty years later, two investigators, Joe Nick-ell and John F. Fischer, reworked the evidence for the Journal of the International Association of Arson Investigators and came to the conclusion that Mary Reeser had taken sleeping pills and had probably set herself and the chair alight with a cigarette. They dismissed the shrunken skull as it was reported only by Dr Krogman, who did not claim to have seen it for himself.

However, the great heat, the undamaged flammable material all around, the unburnt foot all remain as imponderables in Mary Reeser's death.

Ever since the drive towards 'science and enlightenment' began three centuries ago, there have been repeated attempts to explain a phenomenon which has regularly attracted the attention of journals and physicians.

Pierre-Aime Lair produced an 'Essai sur les Combustions Humaines' for the Paris medical publishers Crapelet in 1800. Most of the examples he cited were culled from the British Annual Register and the Transactions of the Royal Society. He describes the expiry of Grace Pitt from Ipswich, who died in April 1744. She was found by her daughter, who threw two vases of water over her. All that remained was what Lair described as a carpet of ash with some white cinders. He also cites the 1779 report by a surgeon, Muraire, from Aix-en-Provence. A widow, Marie Jauffret, 'small, fat and fond of the bottle', had burnt away to a cinder, leaving 'one hand, one foot and the bones of the skull' unconsumed.

Lair was primarily concerned to show that over-indulgence in 'spiritous liquors' was responsible for spontaneous combustion. His theory was that most of the victims he recorded had been fat and addicted to alcohol. The alcohol, he opined, would build up in their tissues until finally they exploded into flame - rather, one assumes, like burning brandy on a Christmas pudding.

This prognosis - popular, naturally, among temperance campaigners - remained the favoured solution for the best part of a century, while the list of victims of the 'heavenly fire' steadily increased.

There are now hundreds of cases, many photographs, reliable witnesses, medical and forensic testimony, all demonstrating that human beings can be reduced to ash. Many show the most grotesque features of 'spontaneous combustion' - a hand or a foot left behind without a mark. Invariably, although there are signs of great heat, combustible materials near the body have been untouched. Usually there is no obvious source of fire - certainly not sufficient to generate crematorium levels of heat. Sadly for Pierre-Aime Lair and his successors, there is by no means always evidence of an addiction to strong drink.

It was against this background that Professor Gee of Leeds began his ghoulish but necessary experiment with a human candle. Gee knew that human body fat, even when melted down in a crucible, will only burn at a temperature of about 250ºC. However, a cloth wick in liquid fat will burn like a lamp when the temperature is as low as 24ºC. With this in mind, Gee constructed his human candle wrapped in layers of cloth. He then set a bunsen burner at one end. It took about a minute for the fat to catch fire. As his report dispassionately records:

Although the bunsen was removed at this point, combustion of the fat and cloth proceeded slowly along the length of the roll, with a smoky yellow flame and much production of soot, the entire roll being consumed after about one hour. In the experiment the draught of air from an extractor fan was arranged so that combustion proceeded in a direction opposite to the flow of air.

Another forensic professor, Keith Mant, summed up the current state of scientific thinking in the 1984 edition of Taylor's Principles and Practice of Jurisprudence.

It seems that the probable course of events in these cases is that the victim collapses, for instance from a heart attack, or from carbon monoxide poisoning, and falls so that part of the body comes into contact with a source of heat such as a small domestic fire. This part of the body, usually the head, is thus ignited, and adjacent body fat when melted soaks into the layers of clothing, which, the victim being an old lady, are likely to be present in abundance.

The clothing, acting as a wick, melts the next zone of adjacent fat, and the process is repeated along the length of the body. If floorboards beneath the body are ignited, they will be burnt through, and the sudden increase in draught which results will considerably raise the temperature and incinerate the rest of the body. By the time the lower legs are reached there is less fat and few, if any, layers of clothing, so the process ceases.

The scenario is as plausible as the evidence allows. But for the sceptic there remain ample imponderables. Can such great heat be generated as to pulverize bone too, and yet not burn surrounding combustibles - cloth, paper, even hay and straw? What about flames coming out of the victim's stomach? What about those fearful cases where people catch light suddenly in front of friends and passers-by? What about the shrunken skull?

The manifestations of the heavenly fire still throw up questions which have not yet proved amenable to the inquests of the laboratory and the bunsen burner.

Arthur C. Clarke comments:

The Strange Powers television programme devoted to fire-walking and religious rituals such as hanging on hooks was broadcast in Sri Lanka (where much of it had been filmed) on 17 October 1986. I had rather hoped that my - and still more, Professor Carlo Fonseka's - 'debunking' of fire-walking would promote the ire of the professionals. Not a bit of it. In fact the only local criticism I received was from Mr A. C.B.M. Moneragala of Kelaniya (not far from Colombo, and the site of a famous Buddhist temple). He complained that we didn't do a thorough enough job of rationalizing, and enclosed an article he had published in the Ceylon Daily News for 16 October 1981, entitled 'Natural Pain Killers'. This discussed the recently discovered natural opiate, beta-endorphin, which the body appears to produce in direct proportion to the severity of the pain suffered.

To quote from Mr Moneragala's article:

Apparently, powerful and awesome religious emotions are able to release this natural narcotic ... controlling both physical and mental pain ... In the presence of death and in the fearsome havoc of the battlefield beta-endorphin is released into the limbic area of the brain and gruesome injuries and death are faced with apparent indifference ... [When] one of Napoleon's generals had his legs badly shattered by a cannonball they were amputated on the battlefield itself, without an anaesthetic and then thrust into a cauldron of boiling tar to be disinfected. All this time the general showed no sign of pain. His only antidote was his cigar which he smoked continually during this ghastly butchery ...

I have little doubt that some such explanation is correct -and quite marvellous. All we have to do now is to explain the explanation. And that is a matter of no small importance, for it may lead to results of immeasurable value to the human race - the Conquest of Pain.

As for the 'human candles', in the Introduction to Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World, I classified mysteries into three categories, according to our current level of understanding:

Mysteries of the Third Kind [I wrote] are the rarest of all, and there is very little that can be said about them ... They are phenomena - or events - for which there appears to be no rational explanation; in the cases where there are theories to account for them, these are even more fantastic than the 'facts'.

Perhaps the quintessential M3K is something so horrible that -even if the material existed - one would prefer not to use it in a television programme. It is the extraordinary phenomenon known as Spontaneous Human Combustion.

There have been many recorded cases, supported by what seems to be indisputable medical evidence, of human bodies being consumed in a very short period of time by an extremely intense heat which has often left the surroundings - even the victim's clothing!

- virtually untouched. The classic fictional case is in Dickens' Bleak House, but there are dozens of similar incidents in real life - and probably a far greater number that have never been reported.

The human body is not normally a fire hazard; indeed, it takes a considerable amount of fuel to arrange a cremation. There seems no way in which this particular mystery can ever be solved without a great deal more evidence - and who would wish for that?

Well, since I wrote those words, more evidence has -tragically - become available. And I am indebted to Dr Geoffrey Diggle of Croydon for reference to experiments that suggest that, in his words, 'this previously baffling phenomenon has now been elucidated and shown not to require any preternatural explanation. In other words, the M3K had graduated to an M1K!'

I am still not completely convinced, despite the experiments which have been conducted in attempts to solve this bizarre mystery. I know of nothing else in the whole range of 'paranormal' literature that gives me such a feeling of unease. Some of the evidence seems beyond dispute - yet, if accepted, it hints that there are forces in the universe of which we know nothing. And even that there may be something in the old horror movie cliche: 'Such knowledge is not meant for Man ...'

Here is a somewhat lighter, perfectly genuine and possibly relevant item from the British Medical Journal for 12 December 1964.

I recall a case referred to me many years ago. The patient was a parson who became alarmed when he noticed that his breath took fire every time he blew the altar candles out. I performed a Polyagastrectomy for a duodenal ulcer causing pyloric stenosis, following which he was able to carry out his duties in a more decorous fashion - I am, etc., Stephen Power, Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.

The Ships In The Ice

No picture in this book has a more compelling fascination than one of the photographs in the colour illustrated section.

It shows a dead sailor buried beneath the Arctic ice for 140 years. The hands, manicured, immaculate as though they had just recently scrubbed the planked and caulked deck; the eyes open as if in life; the teeth shining. Only the forehead and nose show the blackening of frost. The corpse is as perfect as that of the baby mammoth found in the Soviet north just five years before. It seems as if only some special stroke of lightning from out of the tundra skies would be needed to reanimate the young man in his icy coffin.

These pictures (brought back from Beechey Island in Canada's Barrow Strait, far beyond the Arctic Circle, in the summer of 1984) are, however, merely the latest clue to the greatest enigma of Arctic exploration - the fate of Sir John Franklin and his ships after they entered the northern ice in the summer of 1845.

The dead seaman is Petty Officer John Torrington. He was only nineteen years old when he sailed with Franklin to try to find the North West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which had eluded explorers for two centuries. Professor Owen Beattie of the University of Alberta, who exhumed Torrington and also Able Seaman John Hartnell, said: 'The bodies were extremely life-like, with skin almost normal and hair intact. It was a very touching experience. We felt very close to a moment of history.'

Professor Beattie was leading the latest of scores of expeditions which have tried to solve the Franklin mystery. At one time, in the summer of 1850, there were no less than ten ships searching for Franklin. Bodies have been discovered, cairns, even messages left behind, but the two ships Erebus and Terror have never been found, and many of the clues merely seem to add to the mystery.

Franklin was already sixty years old when he left Britain in May 1845. The ships had provisions for three years, as it was expected that they would be imprisoned in the ice for at least one winter, perhaps two. After calling in on the west Greenland coast, they were last seen by the whaler Enterprise leaving Melville Bay. None of the 129 crew of the two ships were ever seen alive again. But the deaths of Torrington, Hartnell, and Marine William Braine so early in the expedition - they appear to have died of either scurvy or lead poisoning - less than a year after they set sail, only add to the puzzles of a baffling expedition.

Subsequent expeditions found two messages left behind on King William Island. One reported that Erebus and Terror had wintered in 1846-7 at Beechey Island. The second message read:

April 25 1848. HM's ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on 22nd April, 5 leagues NNW of this, having been beset since 12 September 1846. The officers and crew, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Capt. F.R.M. Crozier, landed here in Lat 69 37 42 N Long 98 41 W.

Sir John Franklin died on 11 June 1847, and the total loss by deaths in the expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men.

Signed James Fitzjames, Captain HMS Erebus
F.R.M. Crozier, Captain and Senior Officer.

and start on tomorrow, 26th., for Back's Fish River.

Later, more than a dozen bodies were found further south at Starvation Cove.

Then, bizarrely, further north and facing out to sea, an extraordinary catafalque was discovered - a full-size ship's boat, mounted on a massive sledge with iron-shod runners, and, in it, two bodies, equipped like some Chinese emperor for the afterworld. Each had a double-barrelled gun with one barrel loaded and cocked. With them were calf-skin slippers, edged with red silk ribbon. One skeleton was wrapped in furs.

There was a complete set of dinner plates with Sir John Franklin's crest and silver knives, forks and spoons with the crests or initials of five of Erebus's officers and three of Terror's. There were books, towels, soap, silk handkerchiefs, and 'an amazing quantity of clothing'. And all this facing back towards the frozen sea. What was the meaning of this extraordinary caravanserai, setting out so caparisoned after three years alone in the Arctic? Why was the mighty sledge-boat facing back towards the sea? Why had nine officers died - such a high proportion? Above all, what had happened to the ships? Not a nail or a plank has ever been found in all the years of searching for Franklin.

Could it possibly be true that the ships were seen high and dry on an iceberg off the Newfoundland banks, as three mariners aboard the brig Renovation reported in April 1851? This was 2,000 miles away from where the ships were abandoned. It seems unthinkable. But then one of the ships searching for Franklin, the Resolute, was found sailing like the Mary Celeste in Baffin Bay, 1,000 miles from where she had been prematurely deserted by her crew.

The Resolute was picked up and taken to New London, Connecticut, where she was refitted and returned, courtesy of the United States Congress, to the British Admiralty. And there is little reason to doubt the evidence of the voyagers aboard the Renovation, which was in passage from Limerick in Ireland to Quebec in the spring of 1851.

The first account appeared in a letter from John S. Lynch published in the Limerick Chronicle:

The icebergs we met with were frightful in size. I do not exaggerate when I say that the steeple of Limerick cathedral would have appeared but a small pinnacle, and a dark one compared to the lofty and gorgeously-tinted spires that were on some of them. We met, or rather saw at a distance, one with two ships on it.

Later, Lynch was interrogated by the Admiralty. He told Captains Herbert and Boxer, RN, who were investigating, that the Renovation had been off the Newfoundland banks.

We came in view of one iceberg, on which I distinctly saw two vessels, one certainly high and dry, the other might have her keel and bottom in the water, but the ice was a long way outside of her. I examined them particularly with the spy glass; one, the larger, lay on her beam ends, the other upright. I said to the mate that they were part of Sir J. Franklin's squadron. He said very likely, and that it would be a good prize for whoever would fall in with them.

My reason for supposing them to belong to Sir John Franklin's squadron was there being two ships on one iceberg, they appearing to be consorts, and having no appearance of being driven on the berg in distress, as the rigging and the spars of the upright one was all as shipshape as if she had been laid up in harbour; also the one on her beam ends had no more appearance of a wreck than a vessel with her topmast struck and left by the tide on a beach, no loose ropes hanging from any part of her.

The captain of the Renovation was sick at the time and would not countenance going any closer to the iceberg. But Lynch was quite clear that he had not seen an optical illusion: 'Having seen them in different positions and minutely, I can have no doubt upon the subject at all.'

Later, the second mate of the Renovation, Robert Simpson, was questioned. He produced a vivid sketch, which was published in the Nautical Magazine of 1852, and confirmed the details of Lynch's account. He estimated the ships' size as between 4,000 and 5,000 tons for the larger and perhaps 100 tons less for the smaller. Both the rig and the deck array of the ships coincided with the appearance of Erebus and Terror.

It seems clear that all Franklin's crew perished in the vain attempt to reach the Canadian mainland at Fish River. The details of his attempted route, which indeed was accepted as proof of the existence of the North West Passage, are now clear. Professor Beattie may soon, from his analysis, know what caused Petty Officer Torrington's death -possibly lead poisoning from the early tinned food cans. But what happened to Erebus and Terror themselves is as mysterious as it was 140 years ago. The sledge-boat on King William Island remains one of the eeriest wrecks in all history.

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