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Satan in a Sicilian fridge
Skeptical Inquirer, May-June, 2004 by Massimo Polidoro
The next World Skeptics Congress will be held October 8-10, 2004, in Italy (see www.cicap.org/congress). For this reason, I am devoting four columns to popular Italian mysteries. The previous ones were on a very special liquefying blood and a case of scientific fraud related to the Shroud of Turin. Should you come to the Congress, you could take advantage of your trip to visit these famous enigmas.
Last February 11, the Reuters news agency distributed an extraordinary news item titled "Sicilian town battles 'demonic' blazes." The article began, "A Sicilian town is struggling to work out why dozens of household items from fridge-freezers to furniture keep mysteriously bursting into flame, terrifying locals and sparking theories of demonic activity."
Since mid-January, in fact, dozens of electrical goods and pieces of furniture have been reported to "spontaneously go up in flames," causing a great deal of damage in Canneto di Caronia, a small town perched on the Mediterranean island's rocky coast.
"I've seen unplugged electrical cables burst into flames with my own eyes, but I just can't explain it," said a local police man who did not want to be named. "I've never seen anything like it."
Some fires have spread to engulf houses, and police decided to temporarily evacuate some forty residents. "There has been a sense of panic, and people have been evacuated from their homes," said Salvatore Mezzopane, who works at the town hall. "We're trying to find the cause of the fires, but there are no answers yet."
Italian utility Enel tried cutting power to the town after the first reports but the fires continued. Tullio Martella, the regional civil defense chief, stated on television: "What is happening in this area is an unexplainable phenomenon, certainly an anomaly. I can say for sure that there are no previous cases like this one."
The experts were no closer to explaining the phenomenon; theories ranged from arson to a freak power surge or even poltergeists or demonic activity.
"I've seen things like this before," Catholic exorcist Gabriele Amorth told Italian newspapers. "Demons occupy a house and appear in electrical goods.... Let's not forget that Satan and his followers have immense powers." This is when we were drawn into the story.
We Have Come to Film the Devil
Focus, the top-selling, popular science magazine, asked me if I could investigate the case and then report for them. So on Friday the 13th, I went off to Sicily along with Roberto Spampinato, a photographer from the magazine. What we found on our arrival was that the only hotel in Canneto was filled with journalists from all over the world: CNN, BBC, Associated Press, and everyone else was (or had been) there. A crew from Denmark told us that they had come to "film the devil." Not surprisingly, they later left a bit disappointed.
The locals were quite fed up with all this media mania. They kept saying that they don't believe in ghosts and even less in demonic activity. When an exorcist announced his intention to visit the town, he was openly invited to stay home.
But this is not what some journalists wanted. They need sensationalism, and we witnessed a few examples of manipulation, such as when a reporter from a local TV station insisted that a lady who had been evacuated--who though upset was very quiet--should instead scream and curse on camera in order to make the interview "more effective." She did not agree and the reporter lost his temper.
We were then allowed by the firemen to enter the evacuated area and look around under their surveillance. We immediately noticed that, in contrast to what the newspapers said, this was not a "town" that had caught fire, but a few houses on a private road (an area of 350 meters), where the inhabitants are all related to each other. Damage ranged from blackened electrical cables to burned pieces of furniture. All the fires started from cables burning, and there had never been electrical appliances behaving strangely by themselves.
There was not much else to see there. We were told that the phenomena had stopped when the area was evacuated, and the only single episode after that was a very suspicious blackening of a young man's shoe sole, right after entering his own house alone to recover something.
"At the moment, there is nothing relevant to report," says Giuseppe Maschio, professor of chemistry and head of the various experts gathered here. "The Ministry of Telecommunications measured electromagnetic fields; Enel, Telecom, and Railways technicians tried to find possible electrical leakages. Nothing out of the normal was found."
So what could cause these phenomena? "The hypothesis on which we are working now is that of a technical accident, but we still don't know the cause," says Maschio.
Others are less cautious. "I sent a few vulcanologists," says Enzo Boschi, President of the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology, "to make technical measurements on possible magmatic movements down deep in the earth, but we found no indication of possible volcanic or seismic activity. If this was really a natural phenomenon, it wouldn't be restricted to such a small area. I personally find all this very odd and do not exclude the possibility of fraud. If you think about it, nothing extraordinary has happened since the area has been evacuated."
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