Chronicles of the Strange and Mysterious

by Chronicles of the Strange

  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 300° to 450°C.

  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 500°C, 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 250°C 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 orang
e-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.