One of the most curious paranormal phenomena is when strange spots appear in the form of hand or foot prints, which are completely impossible to wash off in any way.
One such story, confirmed by many eyewitnesses, took place in the 1920s in Chicago (USA). In those years, a firefighter named Francis Levy worked in one of the fire stations in this city.
He was a very friendly and smiling person who gave his best at work and was always ready to help others.
On April 18, 1924, Levy was at his place in the fire station and while there were no calls, he was cleaning the windows in the room. While doing this, he smiled as usual and joked with his colleagues, but suddenly fell silent, the smile disappeared from his face and he became gloomy and sullen.
Firefighters from one of the depots in Chicago, possibly the same crew of Francis Levy.
Then he staggered, panting heavily and with one hand fully rested on the glass, which he was just wiping. Other firefighters decided that he was sick or that he had a panic attack and rushed to his aid.
But when they got there, they heard Levy say things that might seem like a patient's delirium. And he said that right now he had a terrible persistent feeling that today he would die.
Actually, it was precisely as an attack of some kind of mental disorder that his colleagues explained then these words, and soon after that the whole team went to the call to Curran Hall - a large four-story building on the other side of the city. Few of them guessed that this day would indeed be ominous and deadly, and not only for Levi, but for the entire brigade.
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When the brigade arrived at the fire and began to extinguish the flames, the firefighters quickly realized that the fire was spreading in some abnormal way. According to firefighters, the flame moved from one place to another as if it were a liquid combustible substance, while it could suddenly literally jump from one place to another, as if it were something alive or controlled.
Because of this, the fire very quickly grew to a huge scale, engulfing the entire building and the firefighters could not reduce the flame in any way. They had no breathing apparatus and the firemen began to choke on the fire, at the same time the roof of the building began to sag and the walls of the building collapsed.
Suddenly, a large outer wall collapsed, killing nine firefighters under its rubble. In addition to them, that day only one more person died in this fire - an accidental civilian.
It was one of the worst city fires in the history of the city, and later it turned out that the fire was deliberately caused by arson by the owner of the store on the first floor in an attempt to get insurance. The reason the fire spread in an anomalous way was that wood alcohol was spilled everywhere.
The shopkeeper was convicted of arson, which led to the death of people, but it certainly did not bring firefighters back to life, including Francis Levy, who left behind a wife and two children.
All this was very tragic events, but the very next day everything became even stranger. One of the firefighters of that same depot noticed an incomprehensible spot on the window, and when he came closer, he saw that it was a palm print of a person. At the same time, it seemed as if an imprint had been left by a hand heavily smeared with soot and burning.
The fireman did not like this "dirty stain" and decided to wash it off. However, the print did not succumb to an ordinary rag with water, nor did it succumb to more durable window cleaners. Later, they tried to scrape it off with knives and even invited professional cleaners with their caustic agents to remove the print, but this was also useless.
One day, hearing about a strange spot, one of those firefighters who were in the same brigade with Levi and miraculously survived the terrible tragedy in Curran Hall, approached the window. And he said that this is the very window that Francis Levy wiped when he predicted his death. And that it was his palm print, because he leaned his hand on the window.
After that, the strange imprint was considered a ghostly message from Levi and decided to carefully preserve it as a relic. Over the next twenty years, the ghostly palm attracted crowds of people and legends about it throughout the city.
The same handprint of Francis Levy. According to rumors, there is another photo with him, but it cannot be found on the network.
By a strange coincidence, exactly 20 years after that tragedy - April 18, 1944, the glass, along with the palm print, was accidentally smashed to smithereens by a newspaper boy. He threw a rolled-up bag of newspapers at the door of the fire station, but missed and hit the window.
In our years, this whole story with a ghostly imprint has turned into an urban legend and many do not believe in its reality, but there are many people who assure that all this is true. Among them are the descendants of another firefighter.
“This is all completely real. I was investigating the Curran Hall fire, and my great-grandfather was one of the firefighters who died in the fire along with Francis Levy. There is a photograph of Levy himself on Page 2 of the Chicago Tribune in the April 19, 1924 issue, and there is a snapshot of that very print that was published in January 1939 in Fire magazine. Also, along with other dead firefighters, Levy's name is on the Chicago Firefighters Memorial and on the board at the firefighters academy,”said one of them.