09/12/2026
Talking the Fire Out........
Some folks in Southern Appalachia were said to know how to take the fire out of a burn.
Not with salve.
Not with ice.
With words.
They might pray over it, whisper a Bible verse, or repeat something they had been taught never to tell anyone else.
The practice was often called “talking the fire out.”
And the peculiar part was not simply what they did.
It was who could do it.
🤲🏻 In some families, the ability was treated like a gift. The words might be passed from one person to another under very particular rules, and once entrusted with them, you were not supposed to repeat them freely.
Nobody needed to call it magic.
The person who knew how to do it might attend church every Sunday, tend a garden, raise children, and live an otherwise ordinary mountain life.
They simply knew something you didn’t.
Maybe the burn eased because of prayer.
Maybe belief mattered.
Maybe time did what time does.
But families remembered the people who could “talk fire.”
And in parts of Southern Appalachia, some still do.
