Long story short, an acquaintance of mine inquired a few moments ago about a candle she was sitting next to, that re-ignited by itself some number of minutes after being extinguished by her.
My obvious answer was that the other person sitting next to the candle ignited it to mess with her head while she was looking away. There's even a rationale for this; my acquaintance doesn't believe in ghosts; the other person in the room did, and they had just had a discussion about that, which somehow related to the extinguishing of the candle; supposedly she was to blow out the candle to let a spirit in or something like that. Basically, it sounds like a plain and simple prank.
However, she insists that this is impossible.
So setting aside this obvious explanation for a moment, could embers remaining in a candle re-start the cycle of combustion, re-igniting airborne parrafin and re-lighting the candle after several minutes? The candle is a large, thick one (nothing I could possibly imagine being a trick candle), and it's placed in a somewhat wider vase two-three inches higher than the candle itself. My thought is that maybe the paraffin fumes could stay in the vase, to be re-ignited even several minutes later.
This seems physically unlikely, as the ember simply isn't hot enough to re-start the combustion cycle. You need to bring a flame close to the fumes, at least. There's no other flame in the room that could possibly account for that.
What do you think? Could something like that happen?
My obvious answer was that the other person sitting next to the candle ignited it to mess with her head while she was looking away. There's even a rationale for this; my acquaintance doesn't believe in ghosts; the other person in the room did, and they had just had a discussion about that, which somehow related to the extinguishing of the candle; supposedly she was to blow out the candle to let a spirit in or something like that. Basically, it sounds like a plain and simple prank.
However, she insists that this is impossible.
So setting aside this obvious explanation for a moment, could embers remaining in a candle re-start the cycle of combustion, re-igniting airborne parrafin and re-lighting the candle after several minutes? The candle is a large, thick one (nothing I could possibly imagine being a trick candle), and it's placed in a somewhat wider vase two-three inches higher than the candle itself. My thought is that maybe the paraffin fumes could stay in the vase, to be re-ignited even several minutes later.
This seems physically unlikely, as the ember simply isn't hot enough to re-start the combustion cycle. You need to bring a flame close to the fumes, at least. There's no other flame in the room that could possibly account for that.
What do you think? Could something like that happen?
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=270711&goto=newpost
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