‘A gateway to hell’? Fire bursts from the inside of a tree in Maine, video shows

Flames literally burst from the trunk of a hardwood tree in southern Maine on Wednesday.

It’s the kind of forest witchery few people would have believed, had it not been caught on video.

The fire department in Wales, Maine, recorded the incident and posted it on Facebook, where it was viewed more than 60,000 times and shared 1,300 times in 17 hours.

The 15-second video shows flames mysteriously boiling from out of the tree, through a crack that runs the length of the trunk.

How can that happen?

The fire department believes it was hit by a bolt of lightning that some how “traveled up into the trunk,” causing the tree to burn from the inside out.

Reactions on Facebook ranged from disbelief to fear, with a few likening it to something from a horror movie. Some speculated the inside of the tree was already dead, making it easier to burn.

“That is a gateway to hell... obviously,” Dan Bisson commented in response to the video.

“This is the craziest thing,” wrote Christian radio station WHCF in Bangor. “They say it got hit by lightning and set the inside of this tree on fire. You gotta admit 2020 does not disappoint in the ‘Never-saw-that one coming’ department.”

“Wood from that tree is supposed to have magical powers. Good for wands,” William Andrew Pettengill wrote after the tree was identified as a century-old white pine.

This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 1:25 PM with the headline "‘A gateway to hell’? Fire bursts from the inside of a tree in Maine, video shows."