The Unexplained

Several girls have reportedly set themselves on fire in a spate of mysterious deaths in India.14-year-old Henna was the most recent of around 20 cases in which young girls were alleged to have died in mysterious fires that were said to have either occurred without explanation or as a result of the victim setting themselves on fire for no discernible reason. Many have cited paranormal influencing as afactor in the deaths and some have reported seeing two strange girls talking to the victim beforehand.Local police have confirmed details of the cases but remain perplexed.

The exact reason the victims set themselves on fire and the identity of the two mysterious girls seen talking to them in several of the cases remains so far unexplained. A bizarre ghost story is in circulation in a part of old Indore after the parents of a 14-year-old girl,who was found with cent percent burn on Wednesday afternoon.  

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Prof Brian J Ford has turned his attention to determining why some people allegedly burst in to flames.Cases of spontaneous human combustion usually involve an individual being found burned to death in their own home despite not setting fire to the rest of the building. Victims are usually incinerated at high temperatures in a rapid blaze that is sometimes reported to have started from within their own body. Existing theories to explainthe phenomenon range from excess alcohol consumption to a concept known as the candle-wick effect.Professor Ford however wasn"t satisfied with these theories.

Having run a series of experiments using pork to simulate a human body, Ford discovered that acetone within the body formed from ketosis could both explain the cases he"s examined and represent a common factor in each of the victims. Prof Brian J Ford is a research biologist and author of more than 30 books, most about cellbiology and microscopy but he has turned his attention to the mechanisms behind why people ‘explode’.  

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In 1944 Emmimarie Jones believed that she had conceived a child without the involvement of a man.In one of the most famous cases of an alleged virgin birth, Jones responded to an invite in the Pictorial newspaper for a project aimed at finding women who believed that they had conceived through parthenogenesis, a rare biological process in which an egg was said to begin dividing inside the female without being fertilized. Both Jones and her daughter underwent a series of tests along with a number of other candidates but beforelong found themselves to be the only ones left.At the time it was decided that the only way to know for sure if this was a genuine virgin birth was to perform a skin graft from mother to daughter and vice versa, doctors believed that if the graft was accepted then it would indicate for certain that her daughter was fatherless.

Crucially however the skin graft test failed and the Jones" case faded in to obscurity.In the years that followed science went on to reveal that parthenogenesis in humans is a biological impossibility, putting an end to the virgin birth concept onceand for all. Despite the normality of her existence, Emmimarie had a secret. She was convinced her 11-year-old daughter, Monica, was the result of a virgin birth. Monica would have been conceived in the summer of 1944.  

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Nobody is able to explain the strange, bare circular patches that appear in the Nimibian grasslands.Known as "fairy circles", the mysterious circles of bare land seem to appear and then disappear again, often years later, for reasons that nobody is yet able to determine. The circles range in size from 2m across to as much as 12m across with some lasting as long as 75 years. The remote region in which the phenomenon occurs has made itdifficult for researchers to investigate.Biologist Walter Tschinkel has been trying to get to the bottom of the mystery since first encountering the circles while on Safari in 2005.

Theories considered and ruled out include underground nests of harvester termites and types of plants able to draw resources towards them; but despite his best efforts nothing to date seems to satisfactorily explain what is creating them. In the sandy desert grasslands of Namibia in southern Africa,mysterious bare spots known as "fairy circles" will form and then disappear years later for no reason anyone can determine.  

View: Full article |  Source: Live Science