While most students are cozying up to the fire for the holidays, this student is doing something a little different – she is eating it. Hannah Mansfield, junior, learned how to eat fire after being inspired by a popular AMC TV show.

“I watch Venice Beach Freakshow, and they do really cool stuff like eating fire and sword swallowing,” Mansfield said. “And I was like, ‘I can do that.'”

Even more impressive, Mansfield taught herself this unique talent, starting off with just cotton balls and working her way up to eating fire from a torch.

The torch is definitely more difficult. According to Mansfield, “When you’re using the torch, you have to hold the cotton in your mouth for four seconds, because if you don’t, the fire will come back out.”

To eat fire, Mansfield simply lights a cotton ball (it is important that it is 100% cotton) on fire, throws it in her mouth, and quickly closes her mouth to extinguish the flame. If she inhales while the cotton is in her mouth, she could be seriously injured.

Practice is a large component to mastering this talent. As Mansfield put it, “It’s super intense. If you inhale, you die.”

Though she has been eating fire for a year now, this talented Titan has only burnt herself once while performing this dangerous stunt.

“If you don’t close your mouth around the torch in enough time,” Mansfield shared, “It will burn your lips really bad, so that’s happened… But I haven’t had any major burns.”

As for her future in fire eating, Mansfield does not plan on running away to join the circus anytime soon. 

“It’ll just be a cool thing to show off to people,” she said. “Good first date conversation, you know?”

Whether or not she pursues them, we can all agree that this Titan’s talents are on fire.