That was my first thought. Many inks now are vegetable based, but they used to be almost exclusively petroleum-based. More to the point, bookbindings used to be often petroleum based, and there’s enough of the stuff in one place that igniting the binding might produce a decent-sized flame of uncertain-direction. As for the “scream,” heck, a normal wood fire will from time to time produce squeal-ish kinds of noises. Burn some sappy pine logs sometime for a multi-media extravaganza.
I have been asked to explain (as the token sceptic) eerily similar episodes and I would tentatively agree with the “full of crap” conclusion.
The first question that springs to mind is: do both the people involved in this incident report the same thing?
You say “assuming two people witnessed the fire and the screams,” so making that assumption, I would first suggest that throwing a moderately heavy object into a fire may quite easily result in embers being scattered from it. After that, consider that paper is perfect fuel and book glue and some inks (as manhattan mentions) can be highly flammable. If the book did indeed explode or otherwise combust violently, and if there was indeed screaming when it happened (and it wasn’t an ordinary result of the fire), it was probably your friend or her boyfriend who was doing the screaming, and may not have realized it in all the excitement.
In one of the cases I looked into, a guy reported how he and his girlfriend used an Ouija board in conjunction with attempts at witchcraft one evening and ended up with a frightening and fiery visitation from what appeared to be the Devil himself. At first the Ouija board scribbled various threats, one of them in Tagalog which was later translated by someone who speaks Tagalog. The visitor (manifesting apparently as an unseen presence) left behind a scorched room, dozens of ruined candles, and two traumatized 20-somethings literally pissing in their pants. Shortly after that, a photo was taken in which the guy reportedly has a bestial, furred, clawed arm instead of his normal limb (I am told the beast arm showed up in the photograph only), which according to him was punishment for dabbling in things forbidden by god. Well, on closer inspection:
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the fellow relating the story (his girlfriend was by then an ex and had moved on) was not what I would call normal and well-adjusted (I would in fact refer to him as sociopathic) and was hopelessly credulous and highly susceptible to suggestion, with an uncanny ability to lie convincingly (I have caught him lying)
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the girlfriend, the only other person involved, was unavailable to comment
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no record of this event exists. The fire department heard nothing about it, since the two victims supposedly cleaned up themselves. There were no other witnesses, nor did the neighbours hear anything. No pictures of the devastation were taken. I was promised with great enthusiasm and assurance the alleged photograph of the beast arm, but (what a surprise) it never materialized. In other words, there is zilch except for the anecdote.
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I know that the person’s father, who is also a sociopath, is insanely religious (Islam) to the point of extremism. He believes that dark magic, djinn, and the evil eye exist, among other things, and transferred such silly beliefs to his son
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The story has a morale, which is often grounds for deep suspicion: after the event the two victims supposedly went back to their religions (Islam and Christianity) and totally abandoned magic and ouija boards.
That’s a pretty typical case. Sounds impressive and dramatic, particularly when you hear someone relating an experience that obviously freaked them out quite badly, but on digging deeper there is no substance other than the colourful account of one person without a single bit of corroborating evidence. I don’t think the guy was consciously lying about the event, however I do not for a minute find reason to believe his account. It makes rather more sense, considering his personality, background, and total lack of critical thinking skills, to conclude that he imagined the episode and (possibly subsequently) embellished it with additional details.
People here are forgetting the subjective nature of proof. Yeah, subjective.
If I see something weird happen, then I, personally, am convinced that something weird happened. I can’t prove it to you unless I’ve taken photos, movies, recordings, etc., or if I have a gaggle of witnesses. Even then, the hardcore skeptic is likely to scoff and cry fakery.
That doesn’t change the fact, however, that I’ve seen what I’ve seen and am personally convinced.
So it goes with these ghost threads, or threads concerning “paranormal” topics. I’ve experienced the phenomena myself, and I’ve seen tons of physical evidence, and it all makes sense to me. When people talk about how there is no evidence for the paranormal, or about how it’s all just nonsens, all I can do is smirk. I’ve seen it.
If the woman described in the OP saw what she saw, then she, like me, knows that “paranormal” phenomena are, well, normal phenomena. She can’t convince a skeptic (no evidence remains), but neither can all the skeptics arguments change her thoughts a whit.
Once you see it, you know it.
Personally, I neither believe nor disbelieve the story told in the OP, but stranger, far stranger things have happened.
Now I probably shouldn’t pick fault, since I’m not exactly the archetypal hard-nosed skeptic, but there seems to be a lot about this story that marks it as fabrication (or a tiny grain of truth with a heap of wild exaggeration); it’s all (particularly the open fire, crackling away there in the hearth) just too convenient.
There’s no need for a rational explanation for an event for which there is no evidence and any attempt to speculate upon a rational cause for such a story can very easily come across as a reaching, grasping, desparate attempt to prop up your skeptical worldview. Remember, you may look bad by trying to formulate imaginative rational explanations for things that simply never happened.
I think you’ve forgotten about the burden of proof, then. Since this story seems to involve something paranormal (assuming everything went down as described and all that),
The OP asked how a skeptic would explain it. So rational explanations are the entire point of the thread.
If they’re normal, why did they mean so much to her? No, I think you’ve missed the point. Obviously you can’t forcibly change anybody’s mind. But if you’re interested in actual proof (as opposed to just telling yourself that you’re right), there are standards and your smirks and beliefs are not enough. And if they are enough, why are you here?
The ultimate non-starter argument…
Name one.
If these ‘weird’ things happen so regularly, how come the only evidence of them is anecdotal?
(If I ever find myself existing as a ghost, you can bet I’ll do my utmost to be seen as regular as clockwork!)
Swamp gas. The cause of all supernatural occurances.
Marc
Anecdotal evidence gets a rather skewed rap. That’s all newspaper reports and history books are: anecdotal evidence. And yet, people cite them all the time.
Why? Maybe if you ever find yourself existing as a ghost, you will find that you prefer doing ghostly things with other ghosts. Besides, lots of ghosts appear as regularly as clockwork. Stocken prison’s 'hanged man”, for example, reportedly appears on December 22 every year at exactly 2:45 in the afternoon.
I’m too lazy to read this whole thread so please forgive me if this has already been said.
Sounds to me that they were having a stressfull moment. I get this impression because the dude threw the book in the fireplace as opposed to just tossing it in the garbage like any sane person would do.
When the mind is under stressed the mind is very subjective to outside influences. Also they become very subjective to the power of sugestion,.
So with that in mind. If the girl thought she saw something then immediately exclaims: “OH MY GOD!! DID YOU SEE THAT BIG F’N FLAME SHOOT OUT OF THERE?” then the guy being stressed himself would be like “uh, yeah, I think I did. I did see a flame come shooting out of there.”
Plus there’s that whole Freudian thing where people want to believe something so bad, that they fool themseves into thinking they saw something they didn’t.
I guess I should point out that the above mentioned is just MY theory hence no cites for the things I said about the mind being under stess.
And look how often we find ourselves on this board talking about how screwed up they are.
Lib, please tell me you don’t believe this. Santa Claus reportedly appears at midnight 3 days later everywhere.
Who needs a thread wanting to start an urban legend, while perfectly good urban legends appear without any prompting?
I don’t know if the events really happened to ‘Jen’, they may well have. I certainly doubt her interpretation of them. But the final “boyfriend returns to his Catholic roots” is pure gold. It completes everything you need from the perfect urban legend.
If you really wanted to gild the lily I would suggest adding a bit about a feeling of oppression leaving the house, and maybe a marriage. Or how about a topical twist and making the book a Harry Potter one?
Well, no, my friend, I don’t believe it. But I’m not the one who established regular appearances as a criterion of evidence. 
“(If I ever find myself existing as a ghost, you can bet I’ll do my utmost to be seen as regular as clockwork!)” — SentientMeat
I’m having some trouble with the middle of the story/account.
They argue and he angrily tosses it into the fire?
We’ve had a fireplace since for ever, never has anyone tossed anything into it, in anger.
Come on, that’s just a bad ‘Charmed’ or ‘Buffy’ script…
Why was the book lying on the table, in the first place?
I feel inclined to think she made the story up.
However, yet another possibility is that she was fooled by her friend.
She was being taken for a ride, she just never found out.
Verified appearances are a criterion of evidence - whether regular or not. Regular appearances would seem the most promising source of verified appearances, and even your prisoner in Leicestershire is still only anecdotal.
How would your own appearances be anything other than anecdotal?
My appearances would be real. My question is, if these regular appearances are real why are they so seemingly impossible to verify? If a conclusion were to be drawn (and we ought not, yet) it would surely be that your prison ghost appearances were not real but imaginary, mistaken or misleading?
But that’s just supposing, isn’t it? I mean, you used the subjunctive mode: “If I ever find myself existing as a ghost…”. My question is, how will we — we who are not ghosts — know that you are real? As you know, just because we cannot explain your verified (whatever that may mean) regular appearances, that does not prove that you are supernatural. God of the gaps and whatnot. I mean, we couldn’t explain lots of things all throughout history, only later to find out that they were easily explainable. How do we know that the “ghost” appearing each day in Times Square at noon and claiming to be you is not merely a living being using a sufficiently advanced technology? What I’m saying is that there can never be empirical evidence of anything supernatural anymore than there can be anecdotal evidence of something never told. Your regular appearances would not constitute evidence that you are a ghost.
Now, wait a minute. That’s different. What exactly is it we are asking here — whether the ghosts are real, or whether the appearances are real? For an appearance, there can be only two kinds evidence: circumstantial and anecdotal. In other words, we must witness something at the scene (like a chair that has been moved) or else hear from someone (like an eyewitness). But even these evidences hardly constitute proof. The chair might move for any number of reasons, and the eyewitness might be wrong or lying. But the exact same thing is true for any natural event. The only way you know that there was a Hurricane Hugo back in the late 80s is from reports in newspapers, magazines, eyewitnesses (including yourself), etc (anecdotal evidence), or else examination of the damage and destruction (circumstantial evidence). You cannot escape the tautology of existence. Even if you read a peer reviewed journal that cites barometric pressure readings and wind speeds from that day that constitute a hurrican by definition, along with references to its name as “Hugo”, you are looking at anecdotal evidence of circumstances. Now, the only difference is that you are willing to accept such evidence that you deem by whatever standard to meet whatever bar you establish. For example, a peer review journal report might satisfy you, but all that is being satisfied is your own subjective standard. Proof of Hurricane Hugo, in se, is not being satisfied. Someone else might be satisfied by a newspaper report. Someone else might demand a particular newspaper’s reporting (not accepting a report from say, The National Enquirer). Someone else might rely on a memory (which is what I do because I was there). And even if you examine the damage and destruction, you cannot preclude the possibility that it was caused by something else.
Well, you already knew what I would say. It depends entirely on what you believe is real. I don’t believe in ghosts. But then, I don’t believe in atoms either. I want to hang my hat on something more than a probability distribution.
Berkeley? Is that you?
I’m not quite sure whether you’re going through the motions for the sake of it here, Lib, but I will endeavour to restate what I think we’ve agree many times in the past.
The central point is whether or not there is a real phenomenon requiring explanation here. When I say that my hypothetical appearance would be “real”, I mean that my appearance would have some physically detectable consequence, such as light, sound or motion of objects. If all we have is dreams, hallucinations and misremembered events with no physical manifestations, I suggest we don’t have anything real at all.
Agreed. Indeed, I cannot offer evidence that a human being is not an extremely convincing ghost, nor that Caspar himself is not some time-travelling teenaged prankster. All I can ask is whether there is some physical phenomenon which requires explanation.
Now, let us come to atoms and hurricanes. If we are to believe almost anything, ultimately we do have to put our trust in a particular source. I could set up Rutherford’s experiment myself, or access old video footage, but I could again be foiled (excuse the pun) by hoax and fabrication. One must eventually accept that nothing is certain (keeping in mind Descartes’ Devil) and that a certainty “beyond reasonable doubt” is all we can attain.
Hurricanes and atoms have physically detectable consequences, beyond reasonable doubt.
There is, surely reasonable doubt about whether the same can be said of ghosts. The question is if these inexplicable physical effects in everyday situations are so common, how come they seem so difficult to actually detect?