| The Fire Within |
William Hackler’s family was like any other middle class rural Indiana family. On this particular morning, the day was just getting started, breakfast had just been finished, and the breakfast dishes were being gathered. Mrs. Hackler noticed the smell of smoke in the air. Following the smell led her to the stairway. She called for her husband, and together they headed up to the second floor to investigate.
They found that the smoke was coming from around the bottom of a window in one of the bedrooms. Putting his hand on the wall, Mr. Hackler could feel the heat coming through the wall. He ran for a hammer and dug into the wall, through the plaster, and found that the wall was on fire, burning from inside the wall. The Odon fire department was called, and the fire was quickly extinguished.
Normally it would be figured that a short in the wiring would be the cause of a fire like this, but this was 1940 rural Indiana and the Hackler household did not have electricity. The fire department was baffled as to the cause, but finding the fire taken care of, they packed up their gear and headed back to the station. No sooner had then arrived when they were called back to William Hackler’s house. Another fire had started, this time in the middle of a feather mattress!
From that time, about 8 am, until 11am, firemen were running from room to room putting out nine separate fires. The mattress in another bedroom was found burning from the inside out. A book, sitting on a small table where its reader had left it, was burning, also from the inside out! The firemen stayed at the house all day long putting out these small fires.
A pair of Mr. Hackler’s overall burst into flames. A calendar on the kitchen wall was consumed in a flash of fire. By the end of the day, there had been a total of 28 fires inside that house. The family was afraid to sleep in the house that night, so they pulled mattresses outside and slept under the stars.
The next day, William Hackler swore his family would not spend another day in the house, and he began disassembling the house, board by board. He used the salvaged lumber to build the family a new house a few miles away, and they never were bothered by the mysterious fires again.
In 1941, Traveler’s Insurance Company ran an ad in Colliers Magazine, which featured the Hackler family. The theme of the ad was to prove that the company would cover any fires, even those from the spectral world.
The End
