Flying lemons, modern or not, might not be frightening to the entrenched materialists of the modern day. Fires of unknown origin are another kettle of fish altogether. Charles Dickens, the famous novelist, was convinced of the reality of spontaneous human combustion, in which people are consumed by fires that appear to come from nowhere and vanish in an equally inexplicable manner. This phenomenon found an ardent defender in more recent times in the person of Larry E. Arnold, who reported a 1966 case of spontaneous human combustion in the Fortean periodical Pursuit. Fate magazine later reprinted the same case in its pages. The event took place in Condersport, Pennsylvania, and the victim was a ninety-two-year-old named Dr. J. Irving Bentley. Mysteries Of The World (1979) tells us, “What little remained of Dr. Bentley was discovered by Don E. Gosnell, a gas company meter reader, in a scene very reminiscent of the discovery of Mr. Krook, described by Dickens. Part of Dr. Bentley’s leg remained unburned, but that was about all. A hold had been burned right through the floor, and most of Dr. Bentley’s ashes had fallen into the basement. The rest of the room was untouched by flame... The major puzzle, according to Arnold, was how Dr. Bentley’s body could have been burned so completely without burning down the rest of the house, or at least causing a lot more damage. Arnold says that the body must have been consumed in a heat that could not be matched even in a crematorium.” In the absence of any other explanation, Arnold concluded “that Dr. Bentley’s fiery death was probably due to human spontaneous combustion.” Arnold’s theory on this phenomenon holds that periodic cases of “severe magnetic flux” can result in “mysterious fires.” Arnold avers, “This raises the fascinating prospect of interrelations between human, terrestrial, and possibly cosmic energy patterns.” Why do these magnetic anomalies choose humans as their destructive focus? And what produces these periods of magnetic disturbance? We will return to these points as we continue.

Arnold is not the only modern proponent of human spontaneous combustion. Charles Fort, the visionary writer on the paranormal from whose name the term “Fortean” has been derived, referred often to this phenomena in his books. Ivan Sanderson, another modern researcher, recorded “forty one separate cases of human spontaneous combustion, and cited many more in which animals inexplicably burst into flame,” according to Mysteries Of The World (1979). Sanderson reported one case of spontaneous combustion that took place during July of 1951 in St. Petersburg, Florida, in which a sixty-seven-year-old woman was reduced from a 175 lb. flesh and blood woman to less than ten pounds of charred bones and ash. The papers and drapes that also occupied the same room where the fire took place were mysteriously undamaged. Fortean theorist Ronald J. Willis from the International Fortean Organization (INFO) attributes spontaneous human combustion to mysterious “fire beings” who incinerate individuals for inexplicable reasons of their own. Could these fire beings be rogue poltergeists whose power got out of hand? Or might they be something even more sinister? Speculative author Richard Shaver claimed in his writings that poltergeists, possession by demons, and spontaneous combustion could all be attributed to beings called “deros.” Everything Is Under Control (1998) says that “Deros are evil dwarfs who live inside the earth and use super scientific mind machines to torture and torment the humans on the surface...” Maybe the Deros are responsible for the weird magnetic patterns that cause deadly fires of unknown origin. 13th century Deros might even have used their “mind machines” to torment and harass St. Christina, a virtuous figure whom they must have loathed. This may sound like the strangest explanation of all, but it might seem a bit more plausible by the time you’re done reading this course.