Carole Compton, the "witch nanny" fires of Ortisei and Elba

In May 1982 Carole Compton, a 20-year-old Scot from Ayr, travelled to Italy. Her boyfriend, Marco, was doing his military service there, and she spoke hardly any Italian. She found work as a nanny, first with the Ricci family, a wealthy household in Rome with a holiday home in the Alps. In her first days, a small religious picture fell and smashed as she walked past. The maid, Rosa, made her cross herself and say a prayer.

Mid-July 1982. At the Alpine home, which the IGPP in Freiburg places in Ortisei, South Tyrol, a fire badly damaged the second floor. Firemen suspected an electrical fault. Then came a small fire in a rubbish bin, and another in the bedroom of the family's two-year-old son. The Riccis let her go, on friendly terms.

Her next employers, the Tonti family, were staying at the grandparents' house on the island of Elba. A mattress caught fire, and wiring checks found nothing wrong. A small religious figurine fell when no one was near it. A silver cake-stand lay on its side. A blue glass vase, standing out of Carole's reach, smashed on the floor.

Just before the last fire, Compton heard a faint scratching and crackling sound she could not trace. Then the mattress in three-year-old Agnese's cot caught fire. The grandmother called her a strega. A witch. Compton was handcuffed and taken to prison in Livorno.

She spent 16 or 17 months on remand. The trial opened in Livorno on 12 December 1983, with Compton in a steel cage. She was never charged with witchcraft, but it formed the basis of the accusations against her. The prosecution called her a liar and asked for 7 years. No one had seen her start a fire, and no motive was shown.

The fire evidence was strange, and attempts to recreate the burn pattern failed. No accelerant was found. One scientist testified that a mattress could not have burned downward as this one did. Professor Vitolo blamed intense heat, not a naked flame. Teodoro Comploi, chief fire officer at Ortisei, told the court: "I've been a fireman for thirty-eight years, but I've never seen fires like those before."

15 December 1983. Compton was acquitted of attempted murder for lack of evidence. She was convicted of arson and attempted arson. Sentenced to 2½ years. With the time already served, she walked free.

Hans Bender interviewed her in Livorno prison on 8 September 1983 and wrote an expert report for the defence. Guy Lyon Playfair, investigator of the Enfield case, suspected "a classic poltergeist". The defence chose not to put that explanation to the court. Compton herself rejected anything paranormal. She did not believe she had psychic abilities.

Sceptics answer that a poltergeist explains one unproven thing with another. A 2014 Skeptophilia post weighed electrical shorts, coincidence, psychosis and Münchausen syndrome by proxy, and concluded: "we don't know." The IGPP noted that the conviction came "apparently without any evidence and disregarding the testimony of the fire experts."

In 1990 Compton told her story in Superstition: The True Story of the Nanny They Called a Witch, written with Gerald Cole. A 2001 film, Superstition, drew on the case. When mysterious fires broke out in Canneto di Caronia in Sicily, The Scotsman recalled her ordeal. Her own words, years later: "What happened to me is something that never goes away."