Spontaneous Combustion Ghost Story Raises Questions
by S. Scesney
Is spontaneous combustion real? Can ghosts create fire?
I used to live in a pre-Civil War era home. One night while living there, I dreamt that my dog was tugging on my clothes; I could feel the dog's teeth also pinch my skin. I soon awoke, realizing that this was actually happening. My dog was trying to wake me up, and she was coated in a gray ash that covered her natural yellow cover. My bedroom was full of a olive-gray smoke. The walls of the room were covered in soot, and I struggled to breathe with lungs full of smoke and residue. I coughed up black tar, and my tongue was almost glued to the roof of my mouth. Had I slept any longer, I would have died.
Rushing out of the bedroom with my dog, I collapsed on the floor gagging and coughing. After I could somewhat breath again, I returned to the smoky room. From the floor to half-way up to the ceiling, the air was clear of smoke. Above that, there was still thick smoke from what must have been a fire. I opened up the windows to clear the room and noticed a pile of ashes on a small plastic table beside my bed. This was very odd, because the night before I had wanted a cigarette but didn't have a light. So, I went to bed. I know for sure that there were no matches or lighters in my room after having searched intently before calling it a night.
Looking at the first pile of ashes, I decided to touch them; they disintegrated as soon as my finger touched them. It was then that I realized this had been my wallet. All of my credit cards, license, and other plastic cards were burnt along the edges as if they had been baked. Oddly, there was an untouched part in the middle of the cards - a centrally-located, dime-sized circle on each card. After examining my wallet, I noticed that the PlayStation CDs and my cell phone on the table had also been reduced into a pile of ash. I thought, perhaps, that the cell phone battery had possibly exploded; but the char marks on the table top appeared to be evenly distributed. The burns marks that were baked into the table were only found underneath the items that had disintegrated. The rest of the table remained completely untouched. A normal fire would have melted, or at least warped, the thin, plastic table.
What further amazed me about this event, is that a glass candle holder (there wasn't a candle in it) somehow melted into the table. It was the glass that had melted down from extreme heat. Also, it was odd that I had an oily, black soot on my legs and above my head on the wall that differed from the residue that covered the walls and dog. It was so oily that it reminded me of shoe polish. The very dark soot mark above my head was a solid half-oval, rainbow-shaped, as if it had emanated from within me somehow! The remaining walls had a light grey ash covering them. I have no idea how soot could have gotten under my bed covers, onto my body, why it was oily, or why it was darker on the wall above my head. Strangely, I noticed a sunburn on the side of my arm and face that must have come from the intense heat that had been generated.
I decided to invite the local fire department over to my house to see if they could provide some answers. They were also unable to determine the source of the fire and were stumped as to what may have happened. They were able to tell me that the flash fire had to be in excess of 1200 degrees to melt glass and that my dog likely saved my life. Hating to use the words, they suspected it to be a case of spontaneous combustion. The strange event did remind me of a picture I had once seen of a body that was thought to have combusted spontaneously. In the photograph, the human body and bed underneath was almost entirely disintegrated, with part of the body remaining untouched. This reminded me of how the items on the table were disintegrated, charring only parts of the table underneath the various items-turned-ash.
Eventually, I placed the table outside of the house in order to move past the event (and because different firemen kept seeking to examine the table where the fire had taken place). I must note that before the fire, we had observed an orb floating above a cornfield across the street from the house. I have no idea if the orb was relevant to the fire (was it evidence of a ghost or spirit?). I slept for two solid days after this fire occurred. My life seemed to spiral downward the following seven years. Was it due to the fire? After the fire, my friend and I both observed orbs following me in another neighborhood thirty miles away. Could there be a connection with the orbs, the fire, spontaneous combustion, ghosts, etc?