A burning question: Can science explain the mystery of the fire walk?…All over the world, from Japan to Sri Lanka, Spain to Bora Bora, fire walking has been a high point of intense religious ritual. The mystery has always been how the human bodies can with-stand the high temperature involved, how fire walkers emerge unscathed from the burning pit with no apparent sensation of pain.

On April 14, 1985, about a thousand people gathered at the California Institute of Technology sports field in Pasadena to see a demonstration of one of the most mysterious of human feats: walking on red-hot coals. By the end of the afternoon 125 of the audience had themselves walked through a pit of fire with a temperature that reached 1,400°F.

None had any special training or preparation for the event. None had been hypnotized, and none were in a state of religious or mystical ecstasy. They were just ordinary people...