In September 1935, Kuda Bux walked barefoot over hot embers at Carshalton without the injuries that might have been expected. Harry Price organised the tests and recorded the performance as real rather than a simulated fire trick. What the first series did not establish was why Bux escaped burns while amateur volunteers suffered them.
The investigation continued in 1937 with another professional, Ahmed Hussain, followed by amateur walkers and a final demonstration at Alexandra Palace. Price’s later account attributes the results to brief contact with embers, their relatively low thermal conductivity and differences in the walkers’ steadiness. An amateur, Reginald Adcock, eventually completed a comparison walk without injury.
The source and the organisation
The principal source reviewed here is Price’s own Fifty Years of Psychical Research (1939), chapter XIV, pages 250–262. It contains his retrospective description of the 1935 and 1937 series, including the instruments, volunteers, injuries and concluding explanation. It is the organiser’s account, not a new independent replication or a fresh examination of the surviving film.
Price used the title University of London Council for Psychical Investigation for the organisation sponsoring the experiments. The name needs care. In a December 1935 letter to Nature, physiologist A. V. Hill reported that the University’s Principal had told him the council had no connection with the University. The title alone should therefore not be presented as institutional certification of the conclusions.
Hill’s contemporary letter concerns that institutional impression and the relevance of psychical research to a heat-transfer problem. It does not negate the observation that people crossed hot embers; it questions the authority that readers might infer from the organisation’s name.
Kuda Bux at Carshalton in 1935
Price dates the two Bux demonstrations to 9 and 17 September 1935, in private grounds at Carshalton, then in Surrey. He says that Bux had performed fire-walking in India and was willing to be examined. The immediate question was whether the absence of injury depended on faith, unusual preparation or some practical feature of the performance.
In the final 1935 demonstration, Price reports a measured surface temperature of 430°C. Bux crossed in four strides, each foot contacting the embers twice, and was found unharmed. Amateur attempts resulted in burns. Price estimated the average contact per step at approximately half a second.
The distinction between surface temperature and the heat actually transferred to skin is crucial to the later interpretation. Price’s account does not describe Bux standing still in the fire. Nor does the measured temperature establish that his feet reached anything approaching the temperature of the embers.
Price says that the examination found no necessary chemical preparation, fasting or exceptional callusing. He contrasts Bux’s relatively soft soles with the harder soles of amateur Digby Moynagh. Yet he explicitly acknowledges that the 1935 tests had not solved the question. Short contact, a knack in walking and the claim of faith remained alternatives in his account of that stage.
A contemporary note by C. R. Darling, who attended both September demonstrations, emphasises that contact between the feet and fire was substantially shorter than five seconds. The accessible publisher preview confirms that observation and his attendance; the full note was not available through that route, so its unviewed remainder is not treated here as inspected evidence.
A different professional in 1937
The 1937 participant was Ahmed Hussain, not Bux returning under another name. Price describes him as a professional magician and fire-walker who also claimed that he could transmit his alleged immunity to others. Price again used private grounds at Carshalton and recruited amateur volunteers as comparisons.
The first 1937 test in Price’s account took place on 7 April. He reports that Hussain crossed without burns. Three volunteers then followed in physical contact with him, while further amateurs crossed separately. Their feet were examined before and after; the amateurs sustained burns to varying degrees.
This directly tested the claim that Hussain could confer protection. According to Price, the supposed immunity was not transmitted. The injuries did not prove that the professional’s own first walk was fabricated, but they prevented the successful crossing from being treated as evidence of a transferable power.
Measurements and a professional’s burns
For the later series Price describes more suitable temperature instruments supplied by the Cambridge Instrument Company, with H. G. Starling responsible for the measurements. Surface, interior and skin temperatures were measured separately. Medical examinations were associated with C. A. Pannett and W. D. Newcomb, while Guy B. Brown recorded times.
A longer Carshalton test followed on 9 April. Hussain sustained blisters and reddening after taking six steps. Newcomb’s observations, reproduced by Price, distinguish the early appearance of the injuries from the examination on the following day. The professional refused another walk at that demonstration.
The result is important because it limits what immunity can mean in this case. The same professional who crossed uninjured under one set of conditions was burned under another. His experience and claimed faith did not amount to unlimited resistance to heat. Some amateur participants were injured more severely, so their involvement should not be romanticised as a uniformly successful replication.
The final comparison at Alexandra Palace
Price places the final demonstration at Alexandra Palace on 20 April 1937, with broadcast and television coverage. He records a higher measured surface temperature than in the Bux series. Hussain crossed without injury, followed by Adcock, who also crossed without burns.
Adcock had participated in the earlier experiments and sustained lesser injuries on those occasions. In the final account, he moved steadily and reported confidence based on that experience. Price compared the performances, contact times and body weights rather than relying only on a professional’s assertion that faith was essential.
That comparison supplied the decisive counterexample to the special-immunity claim. A volunteer outside the professional tradition could achieve the relevant observable result. It did not require dismissing the original Bux walk as fraudulent: the crossing could be authentic while the proposed paranormal explanation was unnecessary.
What Price concluded
Price identifies three interacting factors: the short duration of contact, the low thermal conductivity of the burning wood embers and steadiness in walking. He also describes a comparison involving rope-soled shoes, whose main soles survived brief contact without burning, although loose fibres were scorched. The effect was therefore not confined to a supposedly exceptional human subject.
His account also rejects a protective chemical coating and finds no support in these tests for control of sweating as the explanation. He discusses confidence as something affecting the way people moved, rather than evidence that belief created a supernatural barrier to heat. The documented injuries remain part of that explanation, not exceptions to be edited away.
Price makes broad claims about having settled fire-walking for all time. The narrower supported conclusion is sufficient here: his series documented a physical interpretation and an uninjured amateur comparison, while the professionals’ results varied with the conditions. It does not settle every fire-walking tradition, every disputed performance or Bux’s separate claims of eyeless sight.
Assessment, dates and location
The case is classified as explained for the claimed need for special psychic or religious immunity in these experiments. Price documented ordinary physical factors and a successful amateur comparison. This classification does not mean that the original uninjured walks were imaginary, or that all participants escaped injury.
The incident years are 1935 and 1937. The 1936 and 1938 technical bulletins and Price’s 1939 book are publication dates, not additional fire-walking years. The Carshalton and Alexandra Palace stages are kept together as one investigation rather than counted as separate cases.
The map uses an approximate Carshalton locality reference at the village ponds, drawn from the contextual photograph’s published object location. It does not identify the private garden, a surviving fire trench or the separate Alexandra Palace demonstration site. The photograph is locality context, and no public access to the Carshalton incident property has been established.
The complete Price chapter was read, including its concluding explanation; the separate Hill letter and accessible Darling preview are attributed within their limits. The original technical bulletins and complete cinematographic record were not independently inspected for this article. Sources checked 13 November 2026.