In 1988, This Illinois Home Wouldn’t Stop Catching Fire

This video is sponsored by War Thunder. March 14th, 1988. T'was a lovely spring day in Orland Hills, Illinois. A stereotypical, perfectly normal Chicago suburb. Well, almost perfectly normal. You see, one particular house on 169th street was about to begin a long series of strange events. This home was owned by the Gallo family, Bob, Karen, and their two children. They had purchased it only a few years prior in 1979, and it was a new build, so surely it was in great condition. Well, on the night of March 14th, 1988, their 14-year-old daughter, Dinah, heard a strange popping sound while relaxing in her room. She looked over to the wall to see a continuous stream of sparks flying out of one of her wall outlets. But things were about to get much worse. The sparks grew in intensity to the point that they set the window's curtains on fire. Immediately, she screamed downstairs and Dinah was panicking. She did manage to put out the blaze on her own. A few moments later, the Orland Hills Fire Department showed up, and Dinah told them what happened. They inspected the outlet and found nothing out of the ordinary. They opened it up, looked at the internal wiring, and couldn't find any reason for the unusual sparking incident. It even still had power. So, they decided to depart the scene. Three days later, on March 17th, that same daughter, Dinah, was cooking a meal in the family's microwave, when she suddenly noticed smoke coming out of one of the vents. Within a few moments, the entire room filled up with a white haze. The family unplugged the microwave and opened a few windows to disperse the smoke. The next day, they called an appliance repairman who, just like the fire department, found absolutely nothing wrong with the microwave. For the second time in only a few days, an unusual electrical fire event had occurred in the family's home. Now, you may have found a common denominator. You might be like, wow, this Dinah girl is up to something. She was the first person to see both of these fire-related events. That's what I originally thought, too. But on the very next day, another strange event happened. And this time, it was witnessed by the whole family. While they were all sitting in the living room, watching TV, they heard an unusual popping sound coming from the next room over. At first, they didn't think much of it. I mean, homes make weird creaks and sounds all the time. But a few minutes later, they smelt smoke. They all quickly darted to the next room and noticed that a huge chunk of their carpet had caught on fire and was now smoldering with smoke. Interestingly, though, the fire had been put out on its own. All that was left was smoke and a black spot on the carpet. They called the fire department again and again. They didn't find anything wrong with the house. There didn't seem to be any electrical issues. Nothing. What was even more unusual was that these fires were occurring in random locations throughout the house. You'd think, oh, one outlet must have some issues. But then the next day, it was a completely different outlet. So what was going on? The firefighters were completely perplexed. Little did they know that this was just the beginning and that over the next seven months, they would return to this house on over 20 different occasions. This is the true story about the mysterious and bizarre Orland Hills electrical house fires. Did the home have faulty wiring? Was arson at play? Was the home built on top of a natural gas reserve? Or was it something more sinister, perhaps even paranormal? Because many to this day believe the house was actually cursed. Welcome back to the channel. Today, we're going over a rather peculiar incident, a house that seemed to be hexed by strange phenomena. As far as I can tell, this incident has never really been covered on YouTube. 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It's easily one of the most content-rich free games out there. Thank you so much to War Thunder for sponsoring the video. Now let's get back to the Orland Hills house mystery. To recap, in the month of March of 1988, the house had already encountered three different unusual electrical fire events. But come April, things would get even strange. On April 7th, a strange white haze appeared in one of the bedrooms. This white haze smelled like sulfur and caused intense eye burning. The police and firefighters came and couldn't find any fire or source to the haze. They opened up a few windows, and thankfully, this fog smoke quickly dissipated. After the smoke had dissipated, all the outlets in the room had brown burn marks on them. At this point, the Orland Hills Fire Department was starting to get annoyed by all the calls, and some were beginning to think that maybe arson was at play. Someone was starting these fires on purpose. Either by the whole family collectively, or maybe one of the children. Several investigators were called in to find any signs of arson, but everything checked out. Again, there was nothing out of the ordinary. A few weeks passed with no strange fires. The gallows thought that maybe they were in the clear. That is until May. Another room filled with some smoke. They again called the fire department, and they again went out expecting to find nothing. But this time would be different. While two police officers were in the room that still had a little bit of white haze, a blue flame suddenly shot out of the wall. This blue flame was one inch in diameter and two feet long, and it lasted for thirty seconds. This actually happened. It was in the police reports. I mean, two feet of a flame just sticking out of an outlet? The officials couldn't believe their eyes. But finally, they had seen one of these mysterious fires in person, and they were eager to get to the bottom of it. But again, after the flame had dissipated, the officials couldn't figure out what caused it. In fact, the outlet still worked perfectly fine after the event. After the incident, they advised the family to move out for the night, just as a precaution until they could figure out exactly what was going on. The family took the advice, and they found a hotel. The next day, a sea of electricians poured onto the property. They did a full workup, checking all the internal wires, as well as various electrical components and systems. Everything seemed to be fine inside the house, so they took their investigation outside and checked all the electrical infrastructure around the house. Again, everything seemed to be in order. After the checks were complete, the family moved back into the home. While things again seemed normal for a few weeks, you guessed it. Another blue flame incident occurred with one of the outlets, and a mattress actually caught on fire this time. The fire department came out and dissipated the flames. This was the largest fire event so far, and at this point, the family was feeling extremely overwhelmed. The news of these mysterious fires had also began to spread around the community. People in suburbs love to talk, they love to gossip, and many thought that maybe there was something more sinister at play. Many began to suspect a poltergeist, a ghost. Many truly believed that the only explanation for all these strange fires was something supernatural. These rumors, of course, very much upset the wife, Karen. She found the claims to be absolutely ridiculous. Karen stated that all this talk about a haunted house is ridiculous. This has taken a tremendous emotional toll on my family. But then again, there really didn't seem to be any explanation. Several more electrical fire events occurred throughout the summer. At night, they would literally have to turn off the breakers to their home, turn off all the power to prevent a fire from occurring. This was their dream home, so the Gallo family really wanted to figure out what was going on. They wanted to get to the bottom of this. They ended up replacing the entire electrical system in their home. This was very expensive, and it took a long time. Thankfully, though, it was covered by the Traveler's Insurance Company in Naperville. We will get back to that insurance company later. The Gallos were forced to live with relatives for a few weeks, while the electrical infrastructure was installed. Now, this is where things get super weird, and it's where this story gets a little more credible. While the family was gone, there were nearly a dozen workers at the house reinstalling wires. The electrical system was completely shut off at this point, and while they were all out there working, they saw another room fill up with smoke. Yet another fire had occurred. The family was gone. Only workers were there during this event. And if you thought that was bad, this would happen again on five different occasions. What was going on? Was the house actually haunted or even cursed? Engineers got together to brainstorm some possible explanations. One possible scenario was that all these strange events were caused by something going on underground. This, to me, seems kind of reasonable. Perhaps the home was sitting on some natural gas reserve. Flaming gas bubbles are a very rare phenomenon, but they do occur. In fact, here's a video of a man setting gas on fire leaking in his own backyard. So such an event would explain all this strange activity. They gathered a team of geologists who took samples underneath and around the house. Two soil boring cores were drilled into the ground down 20 feet. After bringing these cores to the lab, they concluded that nothing unusual was going on under the house. The house was sitting on at least 20 feet of heavy clay. By the fall, there had now been 26 separate fire, electrical, or smoke events since this all began back in March. 11 of these events were witnessed by either workers, police, or other investigators. Now, thankfully for the Gallo family, they did have insurance. Like I said, they had traveler's insurance based in Naperville. All these repairs were being covered by the insurance company. However, the insurance company was not very happy. They did not love making these payments. So they decided to conduct an even more thorough private investigation. They hired the Packard Engineering Inc., also in Naperville, to come out and do a full write-up. The Packard Engineering Co. came out and ran various tests, including taking infrared pictures around the house looking for any heat anomalies. They also set up a fog machine to look at currents to see if anything was leaking out of the ground like a gas. They did a ton of different things. They unfortunately also came up empty in their search. After one last electrical smoke incident in October, the insurance company decided to condemn the home. The home, for safety reasons, had to be torn down. On October 16, 1988, the Chicago Tribune published an article titled Bulldozers Lay House to Rest. Mysterious Fire Strange Fumes Defeat Investigators. The article was written by David Elsner, and it discusses the various fire anomalies the house had encountered throughout the past six months. It stated, because no one has been able to explain the mysterious fires, account for the sulfurous odors, or rationalize the eye-burning white haze, the Chicago area's own version of the Amityville Horror has been bulldozed into rubble. It even went in and talked about that specific strange blue beam flame incident. Once, a blue flame an inch in diameter shot out of a wall socket for more than 30 seconds, and the outlet still worked. The incident was witnessed by two police officers. Another time, a similar flame set a mattress afire while investigators were In all, there were 26 incidents, 11 of them witnessed by either police or fire investigators. The story of the strange electrical fires kind of spread like wildfire. Several newspapers throughout the entire United States posted stories on it. Amityville Horror Bulldozed. Fires, odors, white haze, inexplicable. Reports of haunting forces house to be razed. Bull or not, spooky house is bulldozed. Now, you might be thinking, okay, they're fires. Why is everyone talking about it being haunted or spooky or whatever? Well, the thing about these fires is they felt more like pranks, if that makes sense. Like, no fire was substantial enough to be like a full-fledged fire. They were all just like little sparkity spark events. They were just subtle enough to be kind of spooky. So, what was really going on? Let's talk about some theories. First theory is arson. Arson, of course, seems like the most likely scenario to someone on the outside. I mean, there were like 20 separate events and they were all small. They're small little events like I was talking about, as if someone was doing it on purpose. Many have claimed that the daughter, Dinah, she was the one that was responsible for all these small fires. Now, of course, as you know, many fires occurred when the family wasn't around and half of them, almost half of them, were viewed by investigators in some way. So, arson is not likely. Terry Highland and Steve Smith of the Orland Fire Protection District were in charge of the arson investigation. They stated this, we have ruled out everything over the last seven and a half months, including arson, pranks, natural gas, methane gas, sewer gas, and a faulty electrical system. There is no logical explanation. After they finally bulldozed the property, Terry Highland stated, thank God, this is the end of it. These people know what they're looking for. I mean, they're, when people commit arson acts, even if the entire house burns down, people know it's arson. I don't know how they know, but they're experts, okay? And I also don't think it was arson or pranks because all these mysterious fires really upset the mom slash wife, Karen. In the paper, she stated, all this talk about a haunted house is ridiculous. This has taken a tremendous emotional toll on my family and all I know is that I've lost my home for a reason no one can explain. I don't know if we'll ever find an answer. There were never any garbage cans flying around or anything like that. This haunted house stuff is doing a lot of harm to my family and it's probably going to make this lot more difficult to sell. So we move on to theory number two, the place really was haunted. I mean, technically it is a theory. Some have suggested that this all goes back to Dinah, the daughter. Some people believe that she had some weird supernatural ability or something. I don't know. I don't think this is true, especially when you consider that they moved on to a new house after this and there were no reports from anyone else after they had moved. So if, you know, if she's an arson or if she has some special abilities, you would think that these things would continue and they don't. And finally, there's theory number three and this is the theory that I believe. I think they just missed something. It was probably something super simple, just a little minor thing that could have resolved all of it that they just missed. I don't know if it has something to do with like a natural gas underneath the house. I don't know if it has something to do with like a shorted wire somewhere. I don't know. I don't know anything about these things, but I believe it was just a simple thing that everyone missed. And I'm not the only one who believed this. The associate manager of the Travelers Insurance Company, Joe Skubis, stated this, We really don't think there was any mystery. It was probably just a gas leak. So to conclude all this, I did find the actual house on, I found the actual address. The house is obviously gone because they bulldozed it, but I found the address of the house. I'm not going to share the exact address, but here is an aerial view of it from 1983. This little, little house right here. Now interestingly, they have another view from 1988, but in this view, the house looks a little bit bigger. It looks a little blackened out. So I don't know if they did like an addition, and it was during this addition that these electrical things started to occur. No one ever said anything about an addition, but the house clearly looks bigger. And if you go even further into the future, it's a completely different house. The people who live there now probably don't even know about this story because it is kind of obscure. Could you imagine watching this video and you live in this house? That would be awkward. But as far as I can tell, there have been no other reports of strange, mysterious fires since this new house was built. I want to know your theories. What do you think happened? Do you think that the house was haunted? Let me know in the comments below. Oh, and again, don't forget about War Thunder. It's free on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and mobile, and you can claim the limited time massive bonus pack available for new and returning players on PC and consoles by signing up through the links in the pinned comment or description. Thanks for watching.