Mystery: The fire burns even inside locked boxes

8 March, 2010 - Norbu Wangdi’s two storeyed traditional house in Tsangpo village, Thrimshing, is famous in the area for a unique reason – mysterious fires that spring up from nowhere inside their home.

His daughter and wife always keep some water nearby and quickly search the house the moment they smell something burning.

The fires start appearing at around 6:30 in the morning and continue through the day, but do not appear at night.

“The fire mysteriously began burning in our house about three years ago,” said Norbu Wangdi. “We believe it burnt our previous home too.”

Norbu built his present house two years using the charred beams of the previous house on the same location.

In the past three months the fire has now burnt most of their clothes and damaged parts of their bamboo ceiling and a small portion of their stored maize harvest in the attic.

“The fire burns our clothes even if we keep it locked in boxes,” said Norbu’s daughter, Lazang. “It first started with our mattresses.”

Lhazang displays a burnt gho

Ten boxes and a heap of clothes lie in the centre of their altar room all partially burnt by the fire.  Norbu said he also lost to the fire five dunlop mattresses and six carpets, along with two of the three blankets given to them by the dungkhag.

“The dungpa (sub divisional officer) and gup (elected village leader), along with police, came several times to inspect the house,” said Lazang. “We even invited lamas but nothing seems to be working.” Several lamas performed kurims at their house.

On the advice of a lam, the family recently felled a huge old walnut tree behind the house.  The fires stopped for about two days then came back again.

A house below Norbu Wangdi’s was razed down to the ground a week ago.  It was the third mysterious fire incident in that household.  According to Norbu, the fires have also affected four other houses in the village.

“We’ve never seen anything like it,” Thrimshing gup Ngawang Dorji said.  A belief among the villagers say that such a fire is a manifestation of an evil spirit, which would either make the house owner very rich, if the spirit is happy with him or her, or otherwise do its worst.

Theu rang is a lha dre (evil spirit), village elders say. “The fire burning in Norbu’s house could be thue rang but we’ll never know,” said a neighbour, Lobzang Dorji.  “It’s, however, scary.”

Norbu has a loan of Nu 14,000 from the Bhutan development finance corporation he availed to build the present house.  “My family is in deep trouble now and out of options,” he said.