A video which appears to show a humanoid figure emerging from roaring wildfires has sparked a flood of theories on social media.
The clip, apparently taken as blazes tore through Greece last month, shows the mysterious silhouette walking and stumbling among the flames.
It was shared to TikTok by content creator The Paranormal Chic, who introduced it by saying: “Witnesses recorded what looks to be like a person walking through the fire, but they have stated that it was humanoid, but it was not a human.”
She added: “As it was walking through the fires, it was not being burned.”
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The video racked up more than 58,700 views in just two days as commentators offered their own interpretations of the mystery.
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Some suggested the whole thing was fake, and that whoever made it had used “CGI” or a “greenscreen”.
Others likened it to scenes from popular movies, with one asking: “Isn’t this from ‘V for Vendetta’?”, and another joking: “That’s the guy from ‘Fantastic Four’. The fire guy.”
Meanwhile, paranormal lovers shared more offbeat conclusions, with one suggesting: “He is between dimensions and only visible because of vibration of the flames.”
However, others agreed that it was all just an optical illusion.
“The fire is behind him and I’m going to guess it’s a lot farther than it appears,” one posited.
“He's at least 100 meters away from the fire, and most certain isn't walking through [it],” wrote another.
And a third shared a more technical explanation, writing: “[It’s a] perspective illusion created by the focal size of the camera lens.”
Still, jokes and whacky theories aside, the damage and havoc wreaked by the wildfires are most certainly, and devastatingly, real.
Greece battled 10 major blazes last month, including fires outside Athens and on the island of Rhodes, during three successive heat waves.
At the end of July, two people were found dead following fires in the central mainland — an older woman burnt to death in a caravan and a shepherd who had gone to save his flock.
Meanwhile, evacuations were ordered on the islands of Corfu, Evia and Rhodes, where thousands of tourists were moved to safety in dramatic scenes.
Authorities said the charred remains of a missing farmer were found in southern Evia — a discovery made following the death of two Greek firefighting pilots, in a crash during a low-altitude water drop.
More than 500 square kilometres (nearly 200 square miles) of land have been burned so far this year, more than double the annual total in 2022, according to the European Forest Fire Information System – a European Union agency that tracks wildfire damage using satellite data.
If only this was the stuff of science fiction rather than the stark, painful reality of climate change.
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