Ghosts, hauntings, poltergeists, and supernatural powers, does anyone really believe in this kind of stuff and if they do, can they offer any proof? That is the $64,000 question. It seems to me that people have been trying to prove that ghosts exist since the beginning of time. Even some religious practices are conducive to the belief in ghosts but we won't get into that. I don' know when the first person claimed to see a ghost, but I can picture it. Laying in his or her cave a bereaved relative thought he or she saw a deceased relative or maybe a monster from beyond the grave. Being very superstitious, all the tribal members thought that this must be true and thus started the trend to believing in ghosts.

Having said this about ghosts, who was Jennie Bramwell? She was a little orphan girl that had been adopted near the end of the nineteenth century. But poor Jennie was also a very sickly girl. One day Jennie was very sick and fell into what looked almost like a coma or trance. Then it happened, she somehow possessed the power to start fires just by pointing at things. Because of this she had to be under constant supervision while ill. She would point at things and say look at the fire and it would be there. But her adopted parents soon began to realize that she was somehow causing the fires. Fire after fire started and Jennie had to be sent back to the orphanage.

People everywhere believed that this girl had some sort of supernatural power. These people included her scared adopted parents. Not everyone was ready to accept this theory however. A newspaper reporter working for the Toronto Globe decided that there was more to this story and began his own private investigation. What he found out was that the girl liked to steal from stores she was sent to and one of the most frequent places she was sent was to the chemist shop. Everyone had thought that the girl was not to bright but the reporter came to the conclusion that she did understand the use of some chemicals and had helped herself to certain ones that would cause combustion when smeared on something. So much for Jennie's powers.

Spontaneous combustion of the human body is a very strange phenomena. This is one area that has never been disproven or has it? Many people have been found completely burned to ash while in bed or in a chair, yet the area around them is not burned at all. Sometimes parts of their body are left intact, such as legs and feet. So how does this happen? Well it seems that many times a flame source has been overlooked. A flame source is necessary. Experts claim that the reason for these strange burings is that sometimes the fat in the human body starts to seep onto the clothing as the body burns fueling the flame .sometimes for hours, as the clothing acts as a wick, thus producing such a complete burning. But is this necessarily true? What about the people who claim to have witnessed the event first hand? There are cases where people began to burn in front of their relatives and not just in front of one person but several. As I said there are many documented cases where witness have seen this and yet it is ignored for the most part. Unexplained also is the fact that nothing around the body gets burned or the fact that the temperatures needed to achieve turning a body to ash are beyond the temperatures of a normal fire. So what could be causing this phenomena? As for the fires themselves, could they be started by static electricity or the body's own electrical system, or is it some sort of chemical reaction that only happens quite infrequently? That is an area that must be better investigated.

Fire seems to possess some sort of intrigue for some people. It is true that fire with its ever changing shape can at times look like something else. What I mean by this is that fire can take the loose shape of a face or anything else for the matter, for an instant. It is sort of looking up at the clouds and imagining that you see object in the sky formed by these clouds. If you look at the photographs below you might be able to imagine a face in the fire.

Photo Source: Clipart.com

So you see, many people have never gotten over their fascination with fire and it is engrained into our civilization. Some still believe that there is a sort of magical power connected with it. They use fire in healing ceremonies, there is a fire wedding ceremony, and everyone burns candles. As far as controlling fire by the strength of one's mind or being able to wish fire into being, this IS just so much wishful thinking.