It hit me right away that there was something really strange about them. Some days I'd see two or three of them that hadn't been there the day before, and the fact that there were more than one made it even stranger.
The most noticeable thing was how small they were. None were over about a foot across, and most were less. The second thing was that none of the surrounding leaves or grass was singed. The fires burned long enough and/or hot enough to turn punky wood into charcoal, yet nothing around them even seemed to get warm.
Granted the wind could've blown leaves and twigs onto the burned spot after the fire had gone out, but I'd see sprigs of plants right next to the burned area and there was absolutely no damage. It's almost like some sort of energy, like a mini lightning bolt or a laser or whatever struck the ground and instantly charred the wood, but it was too brief to burn anything around it. Even that makes no sense, as unlikely as it is to begin with...heat is heat.
Part of me wants to believe that it's elves or little people or fairies or something, and they're building tiny fires and roasting mini-marshmallows on twigs. How cool would that be? I sorta doubt it's that, but we can't completely rule it out. It still wouldn't explain how none of the surrounding leaves and grass were burned at all. The notion that it could be elves almost makes more sense than the fact that nothing around it was singed.
I've spent lots of time in the woods and I've run across dozens of old fires, but never any that looked like this. Most of course are much bigger around, and the area around the fire is burnt. Fires tend to want to spread. It makes no sense, unless I'm missing something, and if so I'd love to know what it is. These tiny fires seem to fuck with the laws of thermodynamics and such, at least to my simple brain.
It's perfectly okay to come up with outlandish and unlikely explanations, if for no other reason than to entertain yourself and let your brain form new synapses, which it will definitely do if you let it think about elves roasting mini-marshmallows and things like that. I've said before that you can think about crazy stuff all day long, but it doesn't mean you're crazy, as long as you don't believe everything you think. And as we know, sometimes the craziest explanation is actually the correct one. That's so cool.
Above all though, you must try to debunk it. After years of pondering, all I can come up with as to how someone could duplicate these fires would be to take a blowtorch and burn a small area, and then throw leaves and stuff on the area after the fire is out. The concentrated flame wouldn't heat up the surrounding area like a normal fire would. Or someone could start a small fire with lighter fluid or something, and keep spraying the surrounding area with water to keep it from burning.
Those two options would probably work, but they hardly make any more sense than elves roasting mini-marshmallows or energy beams. Who would go to so much trouble to fake something like that, in the middle of the night, just to possibly fool someone? It's almost stupid to think about those options but you have to consider all possibilities. Not a single thing I've speculated on makes any sense, but something happened.
A few years back I put up pics of different tiny fires on Facebook, but hardly anybody thought anything of it. I was surprised because to me it's a genuine mystery, and I love a mystery. Tiny fires just aren't a thing...if they were we'd see them all the time. After all this time I can't come up with an explanation to save my life, and I'd love to know what the story is. For now I'm going with elves.
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