Willow and Hearth

“This candle almost burned my house down.” Bethenny Frankel opens a 44 second video on her account, @bethennyfrankel, with that sentence, holding a large candle up to the camera in one hand. It sits in a two tone vessel, taupe on top and white at the base, with a dark medallion on the front. The text across the screen reads, “This candle is the devil.”

The clip, posted on October 3, is partly a warning and partly a request for help. “I need to know where it’s from,” she says. She turns the candle upside down to show a round white label of small print on the base and reports what she found there: “It doesn’t have any sort of brand name on the bottom.”

She gives the candle its due first. “This candle smells spectacular,” she says.

Then she describes what happened. She says she was upstairs when she heard someone scream. In her words there were “flames, like literally flames up to here,” and she holds a flat hand out in front of her to show the height.

According to her account, the people in the house put it out by smothering it. They had to grab another, larger candle cover, she says, and put it over the top.

That was not the end of it. “It was hot for hours,” she says, and she adds that it was oozing onto her wood end table. When she tips the vessel toward the lens, the wax inside is pale, pitted and flecked with black.

Her verdict comes in the closing seconds: “This candle, she’s like the devil. She smells phenomenal, but she will burn you.” The caption under the video reads, “She is a dangerous one.”

What Her Close Call Says About Burning a Candle You Cannot Identify

Frankel was on a different floor when it flared. By her telling, the first she knew of it was a scream from someone else. A large candle should burn only in a room with a person in it. Blow it out before you go upstairs, not when you come back down.

What her household did next is the move to copy. They covered the flame with something bigger than the candle and cut off its air. Before you light a big candle, put its lid, or another cover that is wider than the vessel and will not burn, within arm’s reach. Cover a flaring candle where it stands. Do not carry it, and do not pour water onto burning wax.

She says hers stayed hot for hours. Once a candle like that is covered, leave the cover on and leave the vessel where it is until it is cool to the touch.

She also says it oozed onto a wood end table. Set a candle on a plate or tray that can take heat and catch a spill, never directly on wood, and keep it clear of anything hanging over or beside it.

The detail driving her video is the missing name. Turn a candle over before the first burn, the way she does on camera. If the base does not tell you who made it, you have no maker to ask about burn time, and no one to report a problem to if it misbehaves.

If one does flare, do what she has done and keep it. Photograph the base label, the vessel, the wax surface and any mark it left on the furniture, and do not relight it. The object in her hand is the only lead she has on where it came from.