Everyone I have communicated with about this tells me that it started with an image at the age of 9 to 11. The image in my case was in Life Magazine in 1942. Oh, none of you were born then?

For me it was "Dark Realm" Comic Books. Not Graphic novels like they have now. actuall comic books.

I think it was comic books, movies, tv shows I was exposed to when I was a kid. I always had a fasination with fire even before I knew what sex was. The damsel in distress thing came as I approached puberty. I saw my first burning scene at about age 8 or 9, "viking women and the sea serpent" later it was "mark of the devil" and "twins of evil". The rest is history! I would never want to see this in real life, but the fantasy is very arousing!

I was always fascinated by torture and death from a very young age, and maybe when I hit puberty, my fascination just took on a slightly more sinister twist. Due to the sorts of people I was friends with, I was surrounded by the idea of pain and suffering as beauty all the time, and that's what sparked my interest in fire. From then I just became obsessed with being burnt and seeing others burnt, though I only recently allowed myself to be consumed by the need.

Not sure exactly when it happened for me. My earliest recollection was babysitting for a neighbor kid and they had on an old B&W movie that had a women being burned at the stake. Or it might have been a book where the young character describes playing an Indian and being tied to a tree where her friends build a big bonfire around her. It was just that imagery that stuck with me. I don't know how many times I read and reread that passage and just let my mind wander...

I forgot to mention that as a small child I would also look at the JC Penny catalog at the lingerie and bra ads. I would draw scars on the picturs of the models. My mom was VERY worried about me. lol

Seeing charred remains in a movie did it for me.