• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Mysterious Fires In Canneto Di Caronia

Re: Mystery Fires in sicily

[

Disconnected fuse boxes have burst into flames, car central locking systems blocked up and mobile phones have caught fire.

QUOTE]

Oh, I like the mobile phone one.

"Hello, darling, I'm on the traAAARGH!"

I so love this story.
 
Ghostbusters study Sicily's blazes

Fri 2 April, 2004 05:49

By Shasta Darlington

CANNETO DI CARONIA, Sicily (Reuters) - The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires.

This is not your average ghost town.

Canneto di Caronia has been taken over by an endless flow of scientists, engineers, police and even a few self-styled "ghostbusters" searching for clues to the recent spontaneous combustion of everything from microwave ovens to a car.

The fires started in mid-January and have claimed home appliances and fuse boxes in about half of the 20 odd houses. The blazes originally blamed on the devil himself have not hurt anyone.

After a brief respite last month, the flames have flared up again almost daily even though electricity to the village was cut off long ago.

"We're working in the dark. We don't have a single lead so far," said Pedro Spinnato, mayor of the trio of Caronia towns.

"Every time some new scientist comes to town they arrive thinking the whole thing has been invented or that they're going to solve the mystery in two minutes. They've all been wrong."

ELECTRICIANS AND EXORCISTS

The 39 inhabitants of the town halfway between Palermo and Messina were evacuated after the regional government declared a state of emergency in Canneto, which occupies a single street nestled between a railway line and the sea.

But after weeks of sleeping in a nearby hotel and houses rented for them by the government, they're getting desperate.

"I've seen an air conditioner burst into flames and burn down in 30 seconds. These are not normal events, but I think we're going to have to start looking for a different kind of help," said Antonio Pezzino, whose house was first hit.

From the start, Gabriele Amorth, one of the Catholic Church's top exorcists suspected the devil was at work.

"I've seen things like this before," he told Il Messaggero daily. "Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods," he said urging the parish priest to take action.

The local priest, Don Antonio Cipriani, decided together with residents to let scientists have a first go at the fires.

After a brief visit to Canneto di Caronia, the head of the Committee for the Control of Paranormal Claims has also ruled out demons or poltergeists -- at least for the time being.

"The fact that the phenomenon occurs only when there are people present makes it hard to believe that it is a natural, or even supernatural phenomenon," said Massimo Polidoro.

"But we don't exclude further investigation if things aren't eventually explained," he added.

UNSOLVED MYSTERY

Nobody can say the experts aren't trying. Canneto looks increasingly like a set for the TV hit "The X-Files".

Two fire trucks and a police jeep sit at the entrance of Canneto on alert for the next blaze while a van with a large, rotating antennae on top measures the radio waves.

A host of three-legged instruments to monitor geomagnetic, meteorological, electromagnetic and electrostatic indicators sit in apartments and next to lemon trees in the gardens. Coloured markings on the street indicate the presence of volcano experts.

Police ruled out a possible prankster or pyromaniac after they saw wires burst into flames.

The hypotheses now range from a build-up of electrical energy caused by grounding wires running off the railway to a rare "natural phenomenon" in which surges of electricity rise from the earth's core.

The fires have even consumed unplugged lamps and an entire apartment. Black scorch marks still scar the apartment walls.

Italy's big utility Enel cut off electricity to the town and hooked it up to a generator -- but that caught fire as well.

More recently cellular phones and cars have also been acting up, with lock and alarm systems being set off without any apparent reason.

SACRIFICIAL GOAT?

The evacuated families of Canneto di Caronia who gather almost every night in the three-star hotel perched above their abandoned village are giving up hope.

"I just want to go home," said Rosi Cioffo, a shopkeeper and mother of two. "I don't know what's causing it and I don't care anymore -- even if it's the devil."

Her nine-year-old daughter, who is frightened every time a TV or bathroom fan switches on, may not agree.

Spinnato, the mayor, sounds just as desperate.

"Someone wrote to us saying the solution was to sacrifice a black goat and collect its blood. At some point, that's going to start looking like a good idea."

Source
 
Still with the spontaneous combustion

The fires in this small Sicilian village are still continuing to confound the experts:

Spontaneous Combustion

Blazing mystery is straight from the ‘X-Files’
Sicilian village spooked by seemingly spontaneous combustion

Tullio Puglia / Reuters file
A firefighter surveys the damage inside a burnt house in Canneto di Caronia, a village on the southern Italian island of Sicily, after a blaze on Feb. 10.

• SICILY: Maps, facts and figures


By Shasta Darlington

Updated: 1:19 p.m. ET April 05, 2004CANNETO DI CARONIA, Sicily - The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires.

advertisement

Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again — even though electricity to the village was cut off.

An endless flow of scientists, engineers, police and even a few self-styled “ghostbusters” have descended on the town, searching for clues to the recent spontaneous combustion of everything from fuse boxes to microwave ovens to a car.

The blazes, originally blamed on the devil, have not hurt anyone.

“We’re working in the dark. We don’t have a single lead so far,” said Pedro Spinnato, mayor of the trio of Caronia towns.

“Every time some new scientist comes to town, they arrive thinking the whole thing has been invented or that they’re going to solve the mystery in two minutes. They’ve all been wrong.”

Electricians and exorcists
The 39 inhabitants of the town halfway between Palermo and Messina were evacuated after the regional government declared a state of emergency in Canneto, which occupies a single street nestled between a railway line and the sea.

But after weeks of sleeping in a nearby hotel and houses rented for them by the government, they’re getting desperate.

‘I’ve seen things like this before. Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods.’


— Gabriele Amorth
Exorcist


“I’ve seen an air conditioner burst into flames and burn down in 30 seconds. These are not normal events, but I think we’re going to have to start looking for a different kind of help,” said Antonio Pezzino, whose house was first hit.

From the start, Gabriele Amorth, one of the Catholic Church’s exorcists, suspected the devil was at work.

“I’ve seen things like this before,” he told the daily Il Messaggero. “Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods.”

Amorth urged the parish priest to take action.

The local priest, Don Antonio Cipriani, decided together with residents to let scientists have a first go at the fires.

After a brief visit to Canneto di Caronia, the head of the Committee for the Control of Paranormal Claims has ruled out demons or poltergeists — at least for the time being.

“The fact that the phenomenon occurs only when there are people present makes it hard to believe that it is a natural, or even supernatural phenomenon,” the committee’s Massimo Polidoro said. “But we don’t exclude further investigation if things aren’t eventually explained.”

Real-life ‘X-Files’
Nobody can say the experts aren’t trying. Canneto looks increasingly like a set for the TV hit “The X-Files.”

Two fire trucks and a police jeep sit at the entrance of Canneto on alert for the next blaze, while a van with a large, rotating antennas on top measures the radio waves.

MSNBC Live Vote is temporarily unavailable.
Three-legged instruments to monitor geomagnetic, meteorological, electromagnetic and electrostatic indicators sit in apartments and next to lemon trees in the gardens. Colored markings on the street indicate the presence of volcano experts.

Police ruled out a possible prankster or pyromaniac after they saw wires burst into flames.

The hypotheses now range from a buildup of electrical energy caused by grounding wires running off the railway to a rare “natural phenomenon” in which surges of electricity rise from the earth’s core.

The fires have even consumed unplugged lamps and an entire apartment. Black scorch marks still scar the apartment walls.

Italy’s big utility, Enel, cut off electricity to the town and hooked it up to a generator — but that caught fire as well.

More recently, cellular phones and cars have also been acting up, with lock and alarm systems being set off without any apparent reason.

Sacrificial goat?
The evacuated families of Canneto di Caronia who gather almost every night in the three-star hotel perched above their abandoned village are giving up hope.

“I just want to go home,” said Rosi Cioffo, a shopkeeper and mother of two. “I don’t know what’s causing it and I don’t care anymore — even if it’s the devil.”

Her 9-year-old daughter, who is frightened every time a TV or bathroom fan switches on, may not agree.

Spinnato, the mayor, sounds just as desperate.

“Someone wrote to us saying the solution was to sacrifice a black goat and collect its blood. At some point, that’s going to start looking like a good idea.”

Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.
 
Sicilian village spooked by fires

Reuters story posted here on MSNBC:

CANNETO DI CARONIA, Sicily - The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires.

Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again — even though electricity to the village was cut off.

An endless flow of scientists, engineers, police and even a few self-styled “ghostbusters” have descended on the town, searching for clues to the recent spontaneous combustion of everything from fuse boxes to microwave ovens to a car.

The blazes, originally blamed on the devil, have not hurt anyone.

“We’re working in the dark. We don’t have a single lead so far,” said Pedro Spinnato, mayor of the trio of Caronia towns.

“Every time some new scientist comes to town, they arrive thinking the whole thing has been invented or that they’re going to solve the mystery in two minutes. They’ve all been wrong.”

Electricians and exorcists

The 39 inhabitants of the town halfway between Palermo and Messina were evacuated after the regional government declared a state of emergency in Canneto, which occupies a single street nestled between a railway line and the sea.

But after weeks of sleeping in a nearby hotel and houses rented for them by the government, they’re getting desperate.

"I’ve seen an air conditioner burst into flames and burn down in 30 seconds. These are not normal events, but I think we’re going to have to start looking for a different kind of help,” said Antonio Pezzino, whose house was first hit.

From the start, Gabriele Amorth, one of the Catholic Church’s exorcists, suspected the devil was at work.

“I’ve seen things like this before,” he told the daily Il Messaggero. “Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods.”

Amorth urged the parish priest to take action.

The local priest, Don Antonio Cipriani, decided together with residents to let scientists have a first go at the fires.

After a brief visit to Canneto di Caronia, the head of the Committee for the Control of Paranormal Claims has ruled out demons or poltergeists — at least for the time being.

“The fact that the phenomenon occurs only when there are people present makes it hard to believe that it is a natural, or even supernatural phenomenon,” the committee’s Massimo Polidoro said. “But we don’t exclude further investigation if things aren’t eventually explained.”

Real-life ‘X-Files’

Nobody can say the experts aren’t trying. Canneto looks increasingly like a set for the TV hit “The X-Files.”

Two fire trucks and a police jeep sit at the entrance of Canneto on alert for the next blaze, while a van with a large, rotating antennas on top measures the radio waves.

Three-legged instruments to monitor geomagnetic, meteorological, electromagnetic and electrostatic indicators sit in apartments and next to lemon trees in the gardens. Colored markings on the street indicate the presence of volcano experts.

Police ruled out a possible prankster or pyromaniac after they saw wires burst into flames.

The hypotheses now range from a buildup of electrical energy caused by grounding wires running off the railway to a rare “natural phenomenon” in which surges of electricity rise from the earth’s core.

The fires have even consumed unplugged lamps and an entire apartment. Black scorch marks still scar the apartment walls.

Italy’s big utility, Enel, cut off electricity to the town and hooked it up to a generator — but that caught fire as well.

More recently, cellular phones and cars have also been acting up, with lock and alarm systems being set off without any apparent reason.

Sacrificial goat?

The evacuated families of Canneto di Caronia who gather almost every night in the three-star hotel perched above their abandoned village are giving up hope.

“I just want to go home,” said Rosi Cioffo, a shopkeeper and mother of two. “I don’t know what’s causing it and I don’t care anymore — even if it’s the devil.”

Her 9-year-old daughter, who is frightened every time a TV or bathroom fan switches on, may not agree.

Spinnato, the mayor, sounds just as desperate.

“Someone wrote to us saying the solution was to sacrifice a black goat and collect its blood. At some point, that’s going to start looking like a good idea.”
 
Some sort of magnetic field inducing big currents maybe?

Or is it something spooky...:eek!!!!:
 
Or maybe a twisted firestarter:

Just last week, Reuters News reported a wildly popular and widely-distributed story about a series of spontaneous fires that had started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia — on the north shore of Sicily — in about twenty houses, they said. Even after electricity to the village had been cut off, the almost-daily fires continued to flare up. The usual expected crowd of scientists, engineers, reporters, TV crews, photographers, police, and even a few "ghostbusters" flocked to the town searching for clues to the "spontaneous combustion of everything from fuse boxes, to microwave ovens, to a car." There were reports that an air conditioner had burst into flames and burned up in thirty seconds, certainly a remarkable event. Police reported that they saw overhead electrical wires burst into flames. Fires consumed unplugged lamps and even an entire apartment. When Italy's big utility, Enel, cut off external electricity to the town and hooked it up to a generator, that equipment caught fire, as well! Cellular phones and cars also acted up, with lock- and alarm-systems firing off without any apparent reason, we're told. TVs and bathroom fans switched off and on spontaneously. Ooooh!

The scientific hypotheses ranged from a build-up of electrical energy caused by grounding wires running off the electric railway, to a rare "natural phenomenon" in which surges of electricity rise from the earth's core. In response to those possibilities, an assembly of instruments to monitor geomagnetic, meteorological, electromagnetic, and electrostatic indexes, were put in place, in the usual over-tech approach to solve similar mysteries. The mayor of the town was mystified. "Every time some new scientist comes to town, they arrive thinking the whole thing has been invented or that they're going to solve the mystery in two minutes. They've all been wrong," he said. Things got so active that the inhabitants of the town were evacuated after the regional government declared a state of emergency.

The Catholic Church's local exorcist arrived, and — not to anyone's surprise — immediately announced that Satan was at work. "I've seen things like this before. Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods," he said, urging the parish priest to take action. But the local priest, wiser than the exorcist, in my opinion, decided to let the scientists have a first try at solving the puzzle.

Our good friend Massimo Polidoro, head of the Italian Committee for the Control of Paranormal Claims (CICAP) went there to observe, and he soon ruled out demons or poltergeists. "The fact that the phenomena occur only when there are people present, makes it hard to believe that it is a natural, or even supernatural, situation," Massimo said. This stalwart investigator of bump-in the-night stuff shares his findings with us here, in an exclusive brief summary for JREF readers. He writes:


I recently had a chance to visit Caronia thanks to the editor of "Focus," a popular Italian science magazine, who asked me to investigate the case. While I was present, there was nothing exceptional happening in the small town. Actually, it's not a town at all, it's about 6 or 7 houses, where the 39 inhabitants are all related to one other.
Various "naturalistic" hypotheses have been put forward to explain the phenomena happening: electromagnetic fields, ball lightning, geothermic reactions.... Some even tried the old "poltergeists" or "demonic possession" explanations, but nobody has given credit to them. Canneto di Caronia was promptly evacuated by the civil authorities, and since then, nothing has happened. Only when there's been someone around, did things start to burn, a fact which certainly looks odd, if this was a natural phenomenon. Furthermore, we have talked with a Telecom technician who was called right after the first damage occurred. His opinion was that burns on various electrical cables were generated from an outside source, maybe a small cigarette lighter. He even gave us samples of the cables he got there, and these are now being evaluated by experts. The case, then, is still open.


From randi.org, and there should be a longer article coming up in Skeptical Enquirer.
 
I heard a follow up on radio 4 the other day which essentially said they didn't have a scoobie. Another report:

CANNETO DI CARONIA JOURNAL

Electricity Goes Wild. Did the Devil Make It Do It?

By AL BAKER

Published: June 24, 2004



CANNETO DI CARONIA, Sicily - There are many ways for evil to arrive but perhaps only one way to get rid of it: exorcism.

That about sums up the collective psyche of this stone-filled village perched above the sea after a series of puzzling electrical shorts, unexplained fires and smoky outbursts that struck in nine houses, displacing 17 families.

First to explode was Nino Pezzino's television, two days before Christmas.

Fuse boxes then blew in houses all along the Via Mare. Air-conditioners erupted even when unplugged. Fires started spontaneously. Kitchen appliances went up in smoke. A roomful of wedding gifts was crisped. Computers jammed. Cellphones rang when no one was calling, and electronic door locks in empty cars went demonically up and down.

Before long, the mainly Roman Catholic populace professed to see the hand of the Devil at work, turning their postcard-perfect paradise into a place possessed of evil, embers and ash.

As Mr. Pezzino put it, "Whoever believes in the good believes in the bad."

He paused, wiped his brow and added: "I'm Catholic. I believe in the Devil. I don't know why the Devil is here."

On Feb. 9, after a particularly harrowing fire, 39 of the hamlet's 150 people evacuated their homes. In June, with fingers crossed, they returned.

The intervening months can be summed up like this: Enel, the country's electrical company, cut power to the village. Some scientists came. They studied things. They made declarations about the release of electromagnetic waves. The town replaced its wires and grounded them. Now, the weird phenomena seem to have stopped, but the scientists are at a loss to explain why.

"It is not certain that the fires are finished forever," said Tullio Martella, the head of Sicily's Civil Protection Agency. "They were episodic to begin with."

As a practical matter, the scientists took notes, mapped the strange occurrences, used Geiger counters and interviewed witnesses. But in the end officials from several agencies, including the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology and the National Research Center, were left with only hypotheses.

One was that high pressure from under the crust of this volcanic spit of land on Sicily's northern coast had caused underground shifts that released electrical energy that eventually found its way to the village.

The supercharged ions, once in contact with man-made electronic devices, may have caused sparks to fly, the scientists say, especially since the hamlet is near transmission lines and railroad tracks. But the fires could just as easily have been caused by some unexplainable problem in the atmosphere, Mr. Martella said.

"The cause of the fires seems to have been static electric charges," he said. "What we don't understand is why there were these static electric charges."

Even less definitive was Gianfranco Allegra, of the Italian Center for Electro-technical Experimentation, in Milan. "No one knows what the cause of these fires are," he said. "They are inexplicable."

In the absence of clear science, villagers say there is no question it is the Devil's work. The causes, they say, have more to do with superstitions in a land known on maps as Demon's Valley, a veritable cradle of vampire lore.

"Maybe the problem we're dealing with is technology," Mr. Pezzino said on the June day he and other villagers started trickling back to their homes. "But it's not earth-bound technology."

Then he added, "If it happens again, I'm bringing in the exorcist."

Standing around him, the town's mayor, Pedro Spinnato, 38, and an older man, Pippo Cicero, an olive farmer, burst out laughing. But Mr. Pezzino, a 43-year-old insurance company employee, looked dead serious.

"If we're going to do it, we have to do it right," he said. "In order to do it, you need a sacrifice for the immortal gods, like a black goat or a black sheep. You have to dig a hole into the ground, because this is serious."

Mr. Spinnato, an atheist, is not ready to call in an exorcist. But he did revoke his evacuation order and is now helping people settle back into their damaged, and still a little scary, houses.

In one, the story was told by a burned bathroom water heater and furniture pushed to the middle of the floor, away from electrical sockets. On a wall was a portrait of Padre Pio, the celebrated monk and mystic who died in 1968, at the age of 81, and who was credited with countless miracles and intercessions: healing incurable cancer, finding people jobs and ridding their apartments of mice.

In another, a second-floor bedroom held the soot-stained remains of Lucia Pezzino's wedding gifts: photos, clothes, silver, crystal and linens that her mother had made.

"What everyone here wants is a complete, scientific, official explanation of what happened, why it happened and could it happen again," Mr. Spinnato said. "Otherwise we will always be saying, 'I don't know.' ''

Just then, Ms. Pezzino drove up in a silver Fiat. Asked if she was happy to be back, she said, "But are we coming back?"

Another car lurched forward. Out popped Francesco Cuffari waving the two-page decree saying the houses were open again.

"For me, it's not even toilet paper," he said, laughing and thrusting the paper at the mayor. "Tomorrow, if something happens, what do we do? How are we going to defend ourselves?"

Mr. Cuffari pointed to a spot where flames had singed his car's hatchback.

"I've never done anything bad to anyone, so I knew no one did this to me," he said. "I never even called the wrong woman beautiful. And then this happened."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/international/europe/24devil.html

Emps
 
Seems the Register got a lot of feedack on their suggetsion that it might have been Satan so this is there reply and some letters:

Cyber appliances, deadly mobiles and free beer

By Lucy Sherriff
Published Wednesday 30th June 2004 11:17 GMT

Letters: We fear that some of you, our beloved readers, have misunderstood one or two of our stories this week. In particular, we refer to the news that Satan had been implicated in the latest cyber appliance attacks.

At this point, we feel obliged to remind readers that it is supposed to be funny. It is slightly worrying that anyone thought we were serious. It was filed in Bootnotes, people. Come on!

We don't actually think Satan had anything to do with it, in fact the idea is laughable. We were having beers with him at the time. It is all part of his latest demonic PR campaign to raise his profile in these increasingly godless times. Apparently he doesn't feel like he's getting nearly enough credit for "bad things that happen" any more.

Clearer? Good.

------------------

It is a hoax.

From: Randi.org

we have talked with a Telecom technician who was called right after the first damage occurred. His opinion was that burns on various electrical cables were generated from an outside source, maybe a small cigarette lighter.

-Michael Heyman

--------------------
Hi Lester,

Thanks for today's update on the fearful residents of Canneto di Caronia. I wonder if anyone has alerted you to the article in the current issue of "Skeptical Inquirer" on this subject. (Skeptical Inquirer, "The Magazine of Science and Reason," vol 28 no 3, May/June 2004, "Satan in a Sicilian Fridge," p. 26; http://www.csicop.org). The Canneto di Caronia story was investigated by Massimo Polidoro (http://www.massimopolidoro.com), a debunker of paranormal claims. He reported the following among his findings:

The area of activity was not an entire town, but a few houses on a private road whose inhabitants are all related.

The only observable result of the incident was some small fires that appeared to have their source in some charred electrical wires. (No appliance misbehaviors were found.) All the wires were easily reachable; none were inside walls or beyond arm's length. The wires had been charred from the outside, not from overheating of the copper within. A telephone repairman noticed that he could provide exact duplicates by heating wires with a cigarette lighter.

When the electric utility cut off power, reports of fires continued; when the inhabitants were evacuated, the fires stopped.

An exorcist who volunteered to visit the town "was openly invited to stay home" by townspeople "fed up" with media mania.

Could it be that the story was exaggerated? Well, Polidoro did observe one reporter who insisted that his interviewee "scream and curse on camera in order to make her interview 'more effective.'" Possibly the Danish crew who were there "to film the devil" didn't help.

As your report stated, bodies as diverse as the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology failed to offer a plausible reason for the fires. Indeed, the volcano people did not find a single volcano; however, the president of the organization was quoted as saying, "If you think about it, nothing extraordinary has happened since the area has been evacuated."

Hope you find this interesting. All the best,

Ross Carter

-------------
Fortunately, not everyone thought we meant every word.

Sir, having read your article, I should inform you that there is, at least, a fictional precedent for this. Stephen King wrote a short story "The Mangler" concerning an industrial laundry pressing and folding machine that got splattered with virgin's blood in a minor industrial accident and became demonically possessed. A film was adapted from it (IMDB link http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113762/ ).

For an even earlier and non-demonic example, there is M R James' short story, "The Malice of Inanimate Objects."

Lukin Brewer, London

-------------

Sounds like some one tried one of Tesla's experiments

from http://www.neuronet.pitt.edu/~bogdan/tesla/

In Colorado Springs, Colo., where he stayed from May 1899 until early 1900, Tesla made what he regarded as his most important discovery-- terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that the Earth could be used as a conductor and would be as responsive as a tuning fork to electrical vibrations of a certain frequency. He also lighted 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 25 miles (40 kilometres) and created man-made lightning, producing flashes measuring 135 feet (41 metres). At one time he was certain he had received signals from another planet in his Colorado laboratory, a claim that was met with derision in some scientific journals.

Richard Andrews

Now that is more like it.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/30/letters_3006/

The Randi one is interesting:

http://www.randi.org/jr/041604our.html#1

I like the idea of the Italian Committee for the Control of Paranormal Claims (CICAP) - I thought part of the point was that the paranormal was beyond our control ;)

The summary in full hardly suggests "Its a hoax" as that first letter suggests:

Furthermore, we have talked with a Telecom technician who was called right after the first damage occurred. His opinion was that burns on various electrical cables were generated from an outside source, maybe a small cigarette lighter. He even gave us samples of the cables he got there, and these are now being evaluated by experts. The case, then, is still open.

I would assume that most fire servcies would be looking out for arson as a first explanation but we'll wait and see how things go.

Emps
 
MYSTERIOUS FIRES IN THE MESSINESE: NEW ONES REOPEN CASE

(AGI) - Messina, 21 October - The arrival of experts from the Region and from Civil Protection is expected in Canneto di Caronia, the small town on the Tyrrhenian coast of the Province of Messina, where new phenomena have revived worries of people who from January to April were forced to leave their houses due to spontaneous combustions that remain mysterious. Over the last days the residents have Canneto have reported to the Carabinieri that there have been spontaneous holes appearing in eight water pipes in three different houses. The items have been impounded and Carabinieri are on site, as happened in the months of the strange fires that happened mainly in furniture, household equipment and electric items although there was a total lack of current. The piercing of tubes, said the expert chosen by the people of Caronia, Franco Valenti, is a phenomenon easily explicable in terms of a cathode current that, not finding an outlet via an electric item, heads towards the water pipes thus causing an effect called the partridge eye." Caronia spokesman, Nino Pezzino, prefers at the moment not to make statements before the arrival of the experts.

Source
 
MYSTERIOUS FIRES IN MESSINA PROVINCE, SUMMIT TOMORROW

(AGI) - Messina, 23 October - A joint summit of the inter-institutional work group of the civil protection forces and the technical consultants of the Mistretta prosecutor's office (Messina) will take place tomorrow morning. Their task will be to try and understand what is happening in Canneto di Caronia, in the province of Messina, where many families have reported cases of plumbing pipes suddenly perforated, attributing this occurrence to the dispersion of electrical current. The same thing had happened at the beginning of 2004 when a series of mysterious fires had taken place. Stray current, has this time affected Caronia's aqueduct which has no cathodic protection. The technicians of the prosecutor's office and the civil protection forces will examine the broken tubes and will try to draw some initial conclusions on this anomalous incident which is filling local families with fear and uncertainty.

Source
 
austen27 said:
"Some sort of magnetic field inducing big currents maybe? Or is it something spooky...:eek!!!!:"

I suspect that high-gauss magnets and spooky share the same bed and compare notes all night.
 
France, 1907

A report of a quite similar fire poltergeist phenomenon came from the Paris suburbs in 1907.

Fires danced back and forth between two neighboring residences (located about 200 feet apart, with only a few outbuildings in between) for the better part of a week, leaving both structures calcined wrecks.

P. S. Emps, is there a specific Fire Poltergeist thread?
 
I found the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canneto_di_Caronia_fires quite cautious and almost understated, so I suspect what it reports is accurate. In addition, it's a very good general outline of the alleged events, against which all the other (and often far more lurid) news accounts I've saved can be vetted.

But, no, I am by no means precluding paranormal involvement here. The entire episode has that "edge" to it. I can't help but feeling that if things had transpired 150 years ago rather than today it would have been candles and rush lights and hearth fires that acted all funny.

Or maybe it's just me that's going all funny.
 
From Breaking News:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... tviewedbox

Aliens caused Sicily fires, say officials
By Nick Pisa in Rome
Last Updated: 1:05am GMT 29/10/2007

Aliens were responsible for a series of unexplained fires in fridges, TV’s and mobile phones in an Italian village, according to an Italian government report.

Canneto di Caronia, in northern Sicily, drew attention three years ago after residents reported everyday household objects bursting into flames.

TV news footage at the time showed electrical appliances as well as cookers, a pile of wedding presents and furniture smouldering.

Dozens of experts including scientists, electrical engineers and military boffins, arrived in the village 60 miles east of Palermo to investigate the phenomenon.

Arson was quickly ruled out and at one stage an amazed scientist was interviewed after he described how he saw an unplugged electrical cable burst into flames.

Locals were quick to blame supernatural forces and at the time the Vatican’s chief exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth backed up their fears and said: "I’ve seen things like this before. Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods. Let’s not forget that Satan and his followers have immense powers."

Now in an interim leaked report published by several Italian newspapers it has emerged that the Civil Protection Department has concluded the most likely cause was "aliens".

The report was ordered by the Italian government and brought together dozens of experts including a NASA scientist. Their two year investigation has cost an estimated £1 million.

According to the report the fires were "caused by a high power electro magnetic emissions which were not man made and reached a power of between 12 and 15 gigawatts."

The report also detailed a possible UFO landing close to the village, citing "burnt imprints which have not been explained were found in a field."

Francesco Mantegna Venerando, Sicily’s Civil Protection chief who coordinated the report, said: "This is not the final report. We are still working on our conclusions and this has been leaked.

"We are not saying that little green men from Mars started the fires but that unnatural forces capable of creating a large amount of electromagnetic energy were responsible.

"This is just one possibility we are also looking at another one which involves the testing of top secret weapons by an unknown power which are also capable of producing an enormous amount of energy."

What kind of a solution is that? Talk about more questions than answers.
 
policy waving Sicilian: "Oi! Churchill! Does my home insurance cover electromagnetic thermal pulse surges of alien or terrestrial origin?"

Anthropomorphic Dog: "No."

You're right, that's pretty out there as preliminary conclusions go :D.
 
In spite of the lurid "Space Aliens" headline, which really had very little do do with anything, what the Italian scientists actually said struck me as merely open-to-the-idea-of-the-Paranormal, and I found that immensely refreshing.

Maybe stones really DO fall from the skies.
 
It makes a change from swamp gas and weather balloons, I suppose.
 
What I can't understand is why a great and respectable newspaper such as THE TELEGRAPH saw fit to headline "We are NOT saying that little green men from Mars started the fires...." (emphasis added) to ALIENS CAUSED SICILY FIRES, SAY OFFICIALS.

And here we thought the WEEKLY WORLD NEWS had gone belly-up.
 
next thursday corriere della sera magazine is going to run a sort of "round up" about the canneto di caronia happenings. here are sme pix (if i manage to post the link correctly):

javascript:galleriaN("Cronache","2008/09_Settembre/magazine_xfiles/1&1");

anyway, it's about ufo sightings; a chopper apparently attacked and damaged by "something"; mass-beachings of one specific mollusc; a "fire" that only destroyed one species of plant, burning it down to the roots; and the investigators being forced to quit their task because of the lack of funds.

anyway, in my next post i will post a different link in case the one above doesn't work


oh, and a harvest of green aubergines, as opposed to, uhm, what their usual colour is
 
When the Devil Enters
A town plagued by mysterious fires turns to science, the church, and the law in a search for answers.
Ariel Ramchandani
The Atavist Magazine, no. 62

In the middle of dinner, Antonino Pezzino discovered that his house was on fire. It was late December 2003, and Pezzino was at his home in Canneto di Caronia, a one-street town in the north of Sicily. The source was a fuse box, engulfed by flames so intense that they swallowed the heavy curtains that hung nearby. S’èbruciato tutto qui. All burned here. Pezzino, a 43-year-old insurance salesman, put out the fire and snapped a picture of what was left—a black and gray tangle of wires against a sooty white wall. Like the others on the street, the house was a refuge against the brilliance of the Sicilian sun and the sea—tight, shadowy interiors crowded with dark textiles, heavy wooden furniture, and framed photographs. A normal home, a normal fire. But then a few days later the kitchen fan caught fire, and the television, and other appliances, immolated as if by a secret hand.

Canneto di Caronia is an outpost of Caronia proper, a small town of about 3,400 people halfway between Palermo and Messina, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is a city of bricklayers, construction workers, small-business owners, and contadini, farmers worn by years of work in the sun. Thirty nine people lived in a dozen houses along a road called Via Mare; another hundred residents lived in the surrounding hillsides. Dusty chickens cluster in green yards, and when you pass by, dogs bark and jump, rattling the chain-link fences. In the winter, heavy yellow and orange citrus dot the emerald green hillside running down to the sea, and the air smells of smoke and soap from farmers clearing their fields and from clothes drying in the sun. The homes on Via Mare stand pushed together like stucco-and-stone teeth facing the water, with terra-cotta roofs and wild gardens. A looping ramp connects them to the main road above.

In the weeks that followed, Pezzino’s neighbors—his father, his mother, his aunt and cousins, who lived close together in four or five attached houses—also experienced unexplained fires. Pezzino lived with his wife, Maria, and a son, Giuseppe, who was 15 at the time. Together with his father, Pezzino had built his home in the 1980s; now he assumed faulty wiring was to blame. At the end of January, he changed the wiring, but the fires continued.


Continued at length:
https://magazine.atavist.com/when-the-devil-enters
 
A very long (but worthwhile) read to discover that Nino and Giuseppe - father and son arsonists, were caught thanks to hidden cameras and a tapped phone. Still interesting how readily the credulous latched onto pseudoscience and supernatural explanations for the fires.
 
Still interesting how readily the credulous latched onto pseudoscience and supernatural explanations for the fires.
Including myself and a few others on this board, crying "poltergeist" etc. It seemed like a genuine mystery for so long. I assumed that arson had been thoroughly investigated from the beginning and disqualified.
 
I assumed that arson had been thoroughly investigated from the beginning and disqualified.

An extract from the article:
"The comment about the “laser jet” was widely reported in the press as proof of Giuseppe’s guilt. Yet a device, if one existed, was never found, and the police still don’t how the fires were set"

So there is motivation (cui bono? The perpetrators, of course) but no forensic proof of method or mechanism.

This makes no sense. A student fire investigator could confirm or deny the presence of accelerants in a couple of hours at one location. With this huge number of instances, it's inconceivable that they don't yet know how the did it.

And if nobody can show that they did do it (captured on camera, or not) how did they start these fires?

I can't explain any that were done 'in absentia' (ie where they had genuine alibis) but I may have a theory as to how this was being done by the pair. Which I'll not share on an open forum....it is very mundane and utterly-unsupernatural.

But it is still forensically-traceable (if not at the sites of the fires, then on the clothing of the perps). Perhaps Italian Policing is still working in the distant past....
 
Looks like the motivation took three main forms:

Insurance fraud - people wanting to replace decrepit electrical equipment, furniture and even their homes.

Raising the whole profile of the town, when it had been considered an underfunded and pretty well ignored backwater.

The malicious and perverse pleasure arsonists take in burning things.

So, sorry, but Occam's razor suggests strongly that this whole story stems from Nino and Guiseppe's pyromaniac acts (which certainly spawned copycat arson attacks), rather than anything supernatural.
 
Yes, but unless the Italian Police are as bad as the Keystone Kops, they surely should have no doubts at all as to how the fires allegedly started by these two individuals were ignited/sustained.
 
The very long report in Yithian's post above hinted strongly that Guiseppe, sneaking off to one side surreptitiously ("like an acrobat") followed closely by fire erupting from his hidden location was pretty strong circumstantial evidence of arson.
I took the tapped phone conversation, where his father, suspicious of their activities being monitored, warned his son against looking into methods of remotely starting fires, including some sort of laser device, as being further evidence of their culpability.
Sorry, but nothing genuinely Fortean here to see. Move along now!
 
Back
Top