A video of a mesmerizing "never-ending" flame hidden behind a waterfall in upstate New York has been captivated users on Instagram.
The rare sighting was captured in a viral video shared by Mike Loughran, a fisherman, photographer and gym teacher based in Buffalo, upstate New York, from his Instagram account @fishlikemike. The video has had over 21.7 million views since it was posted on January 20.
The latest footage was taken on January 17 at the Eternal Flame Falls in Orchard Park, Loughran told Newsweek, just outside Buffalo in the western part of the state.
A caption shared with the post reads: "A rare naturally occurring eternal flame!" The video shows clips of a flame burning away just behind a small waterfall in a snow-covered forest setting.
The Buffalo native said he believes the flame was lit "well over a hundred years ago by either a lightning strike or a human being."
Loughran added that "the flame being inside of a rock wall inside of a waterfall gets great protection from winds and water since the flame is about an arm's length deep into the falls. It does occasionally blow out in rare heavy wind and weather storms. Hikers often bring a lighter to relight the flame."
The unusual natural flame is found inside a small grotto at the base of Eternal Flame Falls, a small waterfall found at Chestnut Ridge Park within Orchard Park in Erie County.
Hikers can follow the Eternal Flame Trail and follow the signs that lead you to the flame, according to an article from Visit Buffalo Niagara, the area's official tourism website.
While Loughran and some other reports says there are around nine eternal flames in existence, it is unknown exactly how many there are and where they can be found around the world.
What Keeps the 'Eternal Flame' Going?
A May 2013 study published in Marine and Petroleum Geology found that this flame "may have burnt naturally for many hundreds or even thousands of years."
The Visit Buffalo Niagara article says that this flame is not an eternal flame but rather an eternal natural gas "leak."
The aforementioned May 2013 study noted that "the presence of naturally occurring methane seep" in New York State was first documented by explorers in the mid-1600s and later by water well-diggers and gas-drillers.
The study said: "Natural gas seeps with significant, continuous and long-lasting gas fluxes are generally driven by pressurized deep gas pools, which are attributed to conventional reservoir rocks (typically porous sandstones or limestones) and are connected to the surface by faulting of overlying cap rocks."
The eternal flame at Chestnut Ridge Park, which results from the "natural seepage of shale gas," is not only striking for its unique location behind the veil of a cascading waterfall, "but its gas also exhibits a unique and extremely unusual molecular composition," the study said.
According to the study, "a similar investigation on a second 'eternal flame' in Pennsylvania suggests that gas is migrating from a conventional sandstone pool and that the seep is probably not natural but results from an undocumented and abandoned gas or oil well. The large flux of the emitted shale gas in New York State implies the existence of a pressurized gas pool at depth."
Loughran told Newsweek that these natural flames are "caused by a gas leak through the Earth's crust. As the gas leaks out it goes right into the air and disappears, unless the gas is lit."
The flames occur "when a gas leak is struck by lightning, which ignites the gas into a never-ending flame if the gas constantly comes out," Loughran added.
They can also be lit by a human if they manage to locate the source of the leak by following its smell. "Some say this flame was lit by Native Americans hundreds of years ago..." Loughran wrote in the caption of the post shared on Instagram.
If the source is found and a human brings a small flame to the source, it will ignite the gas into a consistent flame, Loughran said.
Some say there are many more than nine eternal flames in the world that have either been blown out, never lit or undiscovered, he added.
"Some say there are or have been over a hundred over time," Loughran noted in the caption on the video post.
'Magical'
Viewers on Instagram were blown away by the intriguing flame in the latest post.
User tgantrains posted: "honestly the world [really] is magical we just forget [because] we use science to understand it better and too many of us aren't connected to nature..."
User noellebercy wrote, "This is soooo cool. I love Earth," while jimiblackrose noted: "coolest thing i've ever seen."
Viewer lisa_phoenix_official simply commented, "Epic :')" and mrs.aspin posted: "Beautiful."
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Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Soo Kim is a Newsweek reporter based in London, U.K. She covers various lifestyle stories, specializing in travel and health.
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