By Tim Binnall
In what ought to be a cautionary tale for soothsayers and occultists with a penchant for home decor, a crystal ball is being blamed for a fairly sizeable fire that erupted in a Wisconsin residence. The odd incident reportedly occurred last week in the community of Delton, where the owners of a house had kept the classic divination tool atop a table in their living room. Their decision to display the crystal ball in that precise spot, however, proved to be a big mistake as it just so happened to be in the path of direct sunlight streaming through some windows, leading to a disastrous chain of events.
And so, like a scene out of a cartoon, when the sun's rays passed through the psychic instrument last Monday afternoon, their intensity was magnified into a fine point that was cast onto a nearby couch which subsequently burst into flames. In a Facebook post detailing the strange turn of events, the Delton Fire Department indicated that the inferno was fortunately confined to just that room, although the main home of the floor was also impacted by the considerable heat generated by the fire. All told, the blaze is estimated to have caused around $250,000 in damages and, as one might imagine, more than a few jokes about how the object was apparently unable to predict the trouble it would cause.