Joelma Building — São Paulo's Tower of Fire
The 1974 office-tower fire that killed at least 179 people, leaving a building — renamed Praça da Bandeira — that many Paulistanos still refuse to call anything but Joelma.
Case File No. 141
FILE 01 The Legend
On 1 February 1974 an electrical fault on the twelfth floor of the 25-storey Joelma Building set alight an office tower with inadequate exits and flammable finishes. At least 179 people died: some trapped, some asphyxiated by toxic smoke, some choosing the fall over the fire. It remains one of the deadliest building fires in South American history, and it rewrote Brazilian fire codes. The burnt shell was renovated and reopened as the Praça da Bandeira — but the old name stuck to the address like a scar, and so did the stories.
FILE 02 The Sightings Log
For years after the fire, tenants reported the smell of smoke on floors where no one was burning anything, and elevators stopping of their own accord at the twelfth. The best-known legend is that of Martha, a woman said to have died in the fire while searching for her daughter, whose grieving spirit was said in the 1970s to have possessed a survivor — leaving the plea 'procure-se Martha', 'looking for Martha', repeated in séances and in the city's ghost lore ever since.
FILE 03 The Skeptic’s File
The fire, the death toll and the code failures are thoroughly documented; the hauntings are classic post-tragedy folklore. Persistent smoke smells in a 1970s building renovated in haste are plausible in themselves, and the Martha story grew through spiritist circles popular in 1970s São Paulo, where it was never attached to a verifiable victim.