For 10 years, the residents of the Sicilian village
of Canneto di Caronia have been utterly spooked by hundreds of
mysterious, unexplained fires that seem to erupt out of nowhere. The
bizarre phenomenon, which has seen a sudden surge this year, includes
spontaneous combustion of mattresses, beds, cars, and devices like
fridges and mobile phones, even when switched off.
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The episodes have attracted the attention of geologists, physicists and
volcanologists for several years, but no one has been able to provide an
accurate scientific explanation so far. Naturally, the villagers are
blaming supernatural entities like UFOs, poltergeists, or other demonic
forces. And with no other logical reason in sight, one tends to wonder
if they actually might be right.
It all began in January 2004, when, without any apparent cause,
appliances (including a cooker and a vacuum cleaner) in several houses
began to catch fire. Wedding presents, random pieces of furniture, and
even a water pipe erupted into flames. In response, the local electric
company tried cutting off the power supply to Canneto, but that made no
difference. The village was evacuated and a through investigation was
conducted, but the experts and authorities simply failed to locate the
problem.
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Even with the arrival of volcanologists from the National Institute of
Geophysics and Volcanology, and a team of experts from the Italian Navy,
no viable solution was found. Understandably, the villagers were
terrified, and a few of them even suggested calling in a priest to
conduct an exorcism. Months went by, and a period of calm followed, when
most of the villagers returned to their homes.
Unexplained fires still occur from time to time, and the villagers have
pretty much learned to live with them. Other bizarre events have taken
place as well - there were unexplained leaks from water pipes of three
different houses, a vanity mirror in a bathroom caught fire three times
in 35 hours, and an entire plantation of eggplants developed
rainbow-like colors, making them unfit to be sold.
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Air conditioners have spontaneously melted, car glasses have imploded,
hard drives have been erased, automatic gates started opening and
closing randomly, and animals have died mysteriously. Without any
science to explain these events, it’s easy to see why the whole affair
appears sinister. I’d be pretty terrified too if I were living in
Canneto.
In April 2005, the Italian government created a special Task Force (of
high-ranking army officers, engineers, architects, geologists and
physicists) to investigate the situation in the sleepy little village.
The group conducted an extensively thorough analysis – aerial
photo-remote sensing, assessment of geophysical and geochemical data,
detection of magnetometric and electromagnetic fields, radio-electric
spectrum monitoring, and more. The results, however, were inconclusive.
In 2007, an Italian newspaper published a leaked interim report from the
Civil Protection Department, concluding that the only plausible
explanation was ‘aliens’, because the fires were ‘caused by high power
electromagnetic emissions which were not man-made and reached a power of
between 12 and 15 gigawatts’. A year later, the case was dismissed
following further investigation – they just attributed it to an ‘unknown
electromagnetic radiation’. |
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But in the absence of tangible evidence, people have returned to
supernatural theories. Sicily’s council member for health and safety,
Vittorio Alfieri, said in an interview that the fires were caused by ‘an
entity’ that ‘transfers from one house to another’. “A house on the
ground floor caught fire then it was the turn of objects on the first
floor,” he said. “Consequently, the fire moved to a nearby house. It was
like moving.”
Now, after a period of respite, the inexplicable fires have returned to
plague the citizens of Canneto. On September 30th, a series of fires
were reported throughout the otherwise peaceful settlement. First, a
chair covered in cellophane caught fire for no apparent reason. Hours
later, someone else called the fire department to report a stack of
folded clothes had burst into flames, and then an entrepreneur who was
getting ready to drive away in his car but returned to get something he
had forgotten from the house, found his vehicle burning. A book and a
sofa were also found scorched for no apparent reason in different areas
of the town.
According to media reports, the locals have once again been evacuated,
while a small team of fire fighters have been assigned to control the
small fires.
Several fantastical theories exist – some have even gone as far as
claiming that this could all be the work of a single individual who
suffered strong emotional distress at a young age (a lot like Stephen
King’s Carrie), and is now attracting the curiosity of UFOs. Well,
there’s no limit to human imagination, and unless a real scientific
explanation emerges, each theory is just going to be wilder than the
next. |