steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (07/07/84)
Our newsfeed machine was down for a week after I posted this last. I do
not belive it made it to netland.
A recent Bloom County had Milo saying that the latest craze in
California was firewalking. This article confirms that report.
Here in Santa Cruz, firewalking is getting to be a popular activity.
To firewalk you need a bed of coals 10-30 feet long. You walk through the
coals in your bare feet. Only a few people get blisters. Of course,
careful psychological preperation is necessary to do it.
I am a little timid to try it myself, but just last walk the president
of Santa Cruz Computer trampled through 15 feet of glowing brickets! The
president of Personetics completed his first 15 foot walk. He had already
done a 10 foot one previously.
Perhaps we should start "net.rec.firewalking".
When the going gets weird, we must be in California
Don Steiny
Personetics
109 Torrey Pine Terr.
Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060
(408) 425-0382
ucbvax!hplabs!pesnta!scc!steiny
harpo!fortune!idsvax!scc!steinykaiser@furilo.DEC (Pete Kaiser, 225-5441, HLO2-1/N10) (04/12/85)
The flames have risen and faded about that old message (I've forgotten its author) about the firewalking seminar. I don't intend to fan those flames again, but I can't resist posting this part of an article by Robert Sheaffer in The Skeptical Inquirer. The Skeptical Inquirer is the journal of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, and is available for subscription at $18 a year from The Skeptical Inquirer Central Park Station Box 229 Buffalo, NY 14215-0229 ---Pete ================================================================================ Fire-walking is an ancient ritual practiced in such remote and exotic places as the Fiji Islands, Sri Lanka, and Tibet, and it is now spreading among the natives in a place called California. The leader of the movement is Tolly Burkan of Twain Harte, in the Mother Lode country near Sacramento. He has been traveling through the state (and elsewhere) offering the curious an opportunity to walk on burning coals for a very modest $50 each. Scant mention is made of the third-degree burns Burkan's feet once suffered while fire-walking, as noted in the Los Angeles Times. That time didn't count, says Burkan, because he foolishly proceeded with a scheduled fire-walk in spite of having a fever, implying perhaps that the few additional degrees were sufficient to raise the temperature of his soles above the combustion point, although the cynic might respond that the fever could easily have prevented him from walking fast enough to avoid injury. The entrepreneurial spirit of California being what it is, today a host of "fire-walking instructors," many trained by Burkan himself (who claims a "copy- right" on this sort of thing), are working feverishly to fill this burning need. One of them is Tony Robbins of Los Angeles, who admits to having been seriously burned twice, once while on live television. (Robbins feels that the reporter's narrative caused his concentration to break.) Another is Larissa Vilenskaya of San Francisco, who recently emigrated from the USSR. Until recently, Vilenskaya pursued a successful career in both countries displaying "psychic powers" to scientists. Interviewed on KGO-Radio, San Francisco, on the morning of Friday, September 7, 1984, Vilenskaya told of her fire-walking seminar to be held that evening, inviting listeners to participate. No one has ever been injured, she assured them. One of the two reporters conducting the interview, Melody Morgan, announced that she would be participating in the fire- walk to prepare a news story on it. From the San Jose Mercury News, Sunday, September 9: "Reporter Burned in Fire Walk. A San Francisco radio reporter sustained first- and second-degree burns on her feet while participating in a firewalking seminar.... Melody Morgan, 27, was injured Friday night when she walked across an 8-foot bed of orange-hot coals." It was later reported that another woman had also been burned that evening, although less seriously. Morgan's feet were described by the Mercury News reporter as "puffed and swollen, horribly blistered"; she was treated at a San Francisco hospital, then released. The following Monday morning, Morgan was back at work, giving her report, whichincluded her tape-recorded shrieks. She explained that her "analytic mind" must have taken over, causing her con- centration to break and her feet to burn. Either that, or she didn't walk fast enough. Robert Sheaffer The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IX, No. 3 (Spring 1985)