Spontaneous human combustion
Spontaneous human combustion (
SHC) is the alleged enormous burning of a person's body without a readily apparent, identifiable external source of ignition. The combustion may result in simple burns and blisters to the skin, smoking, or a complete incineration of the body. The latter is the form most often 'recognized' as SHC. There is much speculation and controversy over SHC. It is not a proven natural occurrence, but many theories have attempted to explain SHC's existence and how it may occur. The two most common explanations offered to account for apparent SHC are the non-spontaneous "
wick effect" fire, and the rare discharge called "static flash fires". Although physically it can be shown that the human body contains enough energy stored in the form of fat and other tissues to consume itself completely, in normal circumstances bodies will not sustain a flame on their own.
There are many
characteristics that together distinguish alleged SHC from other forms of
fire.
Indeed, it is a combination of most or all of the following factors in a fire death that leads to allegations of SHC in the first place.
* The fire seems to have been generated spontaneously without any observable source of ignition.
* Fire damage is usually localized to the body of the victim. Furniture and appliances near the victim are usually left untouched. Little or no damage is done within the vicinity of the victim. This may be, however, an artifact of the sampling process, since it is possible that in other cases, the fire spreads and causes major destruction of surroundings (especially domestic) and look like any other "normal" fire. This is discussed below.
* The body of the victim is usually more severely
burned than in a normal house fire. The burns are, however, not distributed evenly across the body. The entire torso and arms of the victim are reduced to ashes, while the head sometimes survives as a bare skull and the lower extremities of the victims are typically left intact.
* The majority of the cases of alleged SHC have occurred indoors. Again, this may be an artifact of the sampling process.
* The temperature of incineration in cases of alleged SHC is apparently much higher than temperatures achieved in commercial fuel-driven
crematoria. This contrast is examined
below.
* Due to the high temperature yet localized nature of the fire, hot air exposure can damage objects high above the fire.
* In the overwhelming majority of supposed cases, the victim is elderly.
*
Eyewitnesses to the actual combustion process are rare, tending to create suspicion or even confusion about alleged cases of SHC. However --
* -- It is conjectured (by
Heymer) that the recurring circumstance of aloneness, or actual
loneliness in alleged SHC victims may be significant. The reason for the rarity of eyewitnesses may, in his view, be precisely because SHC happens to people when they are alone.
This list is not intended to be taken as comprehensive.
*
Robert Francis Bailey*
Dr John Irving Bentley*
Jacqueline Fitzsimon*
George I. Mott*
Mary Hardy Reeser (also known as The Cinder Lady)
*
Jeannie Saffin*
Henry ThomasA number of persons have reported serious burns that injured their bodies with no apparent cause.
If this is not the alleged phenomenon known as SHC, it would appear to be a very closely-related occurrence.
This list is not intended to be taken as comprehensive.
*
Jack Angel*
Wilfred GowthorpeThe idea that a human body can burst into flames without an external source of combustion is not accepted by mainstream science, although some individual scientists believe it is possible. This is not a new debate, but one that has been conducted over the last several centuries, and is still ongoing.
At the present day, opinion on SHC remains divided. As with any apparently
anomalous phenomenon, there are a number of theories that attempt to explain how SHC happens. These fall broadly into two camps, which might be called the
misidentification theorists and the
SHC theorists.
General misidentification hypothesis
This is the hypothesis that all cases of alleged SHC are simply normal fires in which the cause has not been identified. This does not necessarily exclude
wick or
static flash fire effects.
An influential historical case of
misidentification is that of the
Countess Gorlitz
[Lewes, George Henry (1861): Spontaneous Human Combustion. In Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, issue dated April 1861]. In 1847, the
Count Gorlitz, who lived in the region of
Darmstadt, arrived home and was unable to find his wife. When her locked private room was broken into, her body was found. It had been partially incinerated. The room was fire-damaged and in a state of disorder, with a door broken and windows smashed. A writing desk was also found burned, with its mirror broken. Candles in the room were found to be melted as well.
The question arose of whether this death (in an apparently locked room) was caused by SHC.
Three years later, a man called Stauff, former manservant of the Countess, was accused of her murder. He was arrested, tried and convicted. Stauff confessed that he had gone to the Countess's room and been tempted by the sight of the jewellery and money there. The Countess had returned unexpectedly and caught him in the act of stealing them. In the ensuing struggle, Stauff had strangled her. To cover his crime, he had made a heap of combustible items on her desk and set fire to them. His intention had been to destroy the entire room.
This is a clear case of a murderer trying to cover his tracks, however
misidentification hypothesis does not propose a single cause for alleged SHC. Rather,
misidentification theory holds that a number of unsolved fire cases have built up into an overarching SHC myth.
In modern times, Beard and Drysdale
[Beard, Alan and Drysdale, Dougal, Unit of Fire Safety Engineering, University of Edinburgh (1986): Spontaneous Human Combustion: More Open- Minded Research Is the Answer. In Fire magazine, May 1986] cite the following as a single example of
misidentification (taken from the files of
CSICOP):
An unnamed man was leaving his place of work (unstipulated but presumably a garage or similar, for reasons which will be immediately clear) when he lit a
cigarette and immediately burst into flames. It transpired that the victim had been in the habit of using a
compressed air line to blow detritus off his clothing. On this occasion the victim had accidentally used a pure
oxygen line, temporarily (but greatly) increasing the flammability of his clothing.
Within
misidentification hypothesis, there are two main schools of thought, neither of which excludes the other. These are usually referred to as the
wick effect and
static flash.
The wick effect hypothesis
The wick effect is a real phenomenon that has been proven to occur under certain conditions, and thoroughly observed.
Since both
wick effect and SHC would necessarily involve the incineration of bodies, and therefore the melting and combustion of body fat, there are many similarities between the known phenomenon (wick effect) and the alleged phenomenon (SHC).
A fuller discussion of contemporary mainstream scientific acceptance of the
wick effect theory of SHC can be found in the article,
spontaneous human combustion controversy.
An outlined example of a typically 'deadlocked' exchange between an SHC adherent and a
wick effect adherent follows.
In the case of
Henry Thomas,
Heymer published a description of the scene and his own questions about what he suspected was a case of SHC, which appeared in the magazine
New Scientist [Heymer, John (1986); A Case of Spontaneous Human Combustion? In New Scientist, p. 70, issue dated May 15 1986.].
A rebuttal was printed in the next issue of the magazine from David JX Halliday of the
Metropolitan Police Force's Fire Investigation Unit, stating
inter alia:
The static flash fire hypothesis
This is a condition in which
static electricity apparently builds up to such dangerous levels in the
human body that a sparking discharge can ignite clothing.
A noticeable
static electricity shock typically measures 3,000
volts, created by performing certain activities. The
charge can build up to much greater levels depending on other conditions such as
humidity. Walking across a
carpet can create a
potential difference of 1,500 to 35,000
volts. [
1]
Static discharges can ignite
petrol fumes at
filling stations, and are one suspected cause of filling station explosions which are popularly (but erroneously) believed to be caused by emissions from
mobile phones. [
2]
Seventy percent of such incidents occur in cool dry weather, which favours the buildup of charge.
The phenomenon of massive
static charges on human bodies was first noted by the late professor Robin Beach of the
Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.
Professor Beach believed that some people could build up a sufficient static charge to ignite combustible materials in contact with their bodies. While putting this forward as a possible cause of SHC reports, Beach did not believe there was a connection to allegedly genuine SHC as no known form of electrostatic discharge could cause the tissues of the human body to ignite.
In static flash fire cases, the
voltage that builds up is much higher, producing bright flashes capable of illuminating dark surroundings, or shimmering flame-like effects, depending on circumstances. In some cases, the charge is apparently sufficient to ignite
dust or fluff clinging to clothing, which may then set clothing alight.
One famous case occurred in 2005, in which an office worker managed to light up his office after building up a huge charge by walking across a carpet. [
3]
Survivors of static flash fires/events
Two examples of people surviving potentially-catastrophic
static flash events are given in
John E Heymer's book '
The Entrancing Flame'. Each case is backed up by an eyewitness.
The accounts are in the form of written and signed statements from named indviduals, shorn of some details to protect the privacy of correspondents. Summaries follow.
*
[Heymer, John E (1996): The Entrancing Flame, pp202-3, London, Little, Brown, ISBN 0-316-87694-1;] In September
1985, a young woman named Debbie Clark was walking home when she noticed an occasional flash of blue light::: Debbie's mother, Dianne Clark::
*
[Heymer, op cit, pp204.] In winter
1980,
Cheshire, England resident Susan Motteshead was standing in her kitchen, wearing flame-resistant
pyjamas, when she was suddenly engulfed in a short-lived fire that seemed to have ignited the fluff on her clothing but burned out before it could set anything properly alight.
: The daughter, Joanne Motteshead, confirms this account and adds that the fire brigade arrived and tried (unsuccessfully) to set fire to Susan's pyjamas.
The two subjects (Debbie Clark and Susan Motteshead), speaking independently and with no knowledge of each other, give similar histories.
Clark: :
Motteshead: :
Spontaneous human combustion conjectures
Adherents to SHC conjectures hold that the cause of SHC is none of the above, but that it is a
discrete and genuine phenomenon in which the flesh of the human body catches fire without any external cause.
The field of SHC theories divides into two camps: The
supernaturalists and the non-supernaturalists.
The supernaturalists believe that the cause of SHC is almost certainly beyond human knowledge forever. This faction puts forward various conjectures that include
poltergeists,
divine wrath, etc, which are not considered separately here.
The non-supernaturalists believe that SHC either is knowable or will be knowable.
There is little or no general agreement between those advocating such SHC conjectures. Moreover, there is little agreement between the SHC non-supernaturalists and the SHC
skeptics.
Brief discussions of some of these advocates follow:
Described by
Joe Nickell as an "English coal-miner-turned-constable,"[
4],
John E Heymer wrote a
1996 book entitled
The Entrancing Flame.
The title is derived from one deductive conclusion that he has reached from examining many cases, namely that SHC victims are lonely people who fall into a trance immediately prior to their incineration.
Heymer suggests that a
psychosomatic process in such emotionally-distressed people can trigger off a
chain reaction by freeing hydrogen and oxygen within the body and setting off a chain reaction of
mitochondrial explosions. Heymer's theories have won little support. They have also generated misunderstanding: Ian Simmons, in a review of The Entrancing Flame, criticised Heymer thus:
"He seems to be under the illusion that [hydrogen and oxygen]
exist as gases in the [mitochondrial]
cell and are thus vulnerable to ignition, which is, in fact, not the case."[Simmons, Ian (1996). All Fired up With Spontaneity. In Fortean Times, p 57, issue number 90 (September 1996).]The wick theory
There is one theory that suggests that spontaneous human combustion does not originate from inside human flesh. This theory, the
wick theory says that due to the fact that a large majority of the alleged victims of SHC were smokers, that perhaps they were ignited from outside the body by a cigarette butt while the victim was unaware. The theory goes on to say that once the person had fallen asleep, the cigarette butt ignited the fatty human tissue which would burn like an inside out wick. This explains why the legs and head would remain intact, which in most cases they do. The head and legs have little fat, while the torso has much more. The fire would burn like an inside out candle, until the fatty fuel was burned out, and then would go out. This theory explains many elements that appear in most cases of alleged SHC.
There is also another situation that could be responsible for many of the cases. In most of the alleged cases, the victim was over the age of sixty. It has been hypothesized the victim died of something such as a heart attack. Next, a lit cigarette fell onto the victims body, and the same set of events as explained before occur. This situation would explain the victims helplessness in each of the cases, as it would take a little while for a human to burn in this manner.
Another possible contributing factor could be a high fat diet. Without sufficient carbs to process the fat, the human body would build up ketones, a by-product of fat metabolism. Ketones are highly flammable. Alternately, some persons may have genetic factors that cause unusual fat metabolism.
*
Anomalous phenomena*
Anthropic misidentification*
Combustion*
Pyrokinesis*
CSICOP article on spontaneous human combustion*
"Spontaneous Human Combustion" - from the
Skeptic's Dictionary*
A BBC article describing the experiment*
Burning issuesfrom alternativescience.com on BBC August 1999 QED documentary and its perceived shortcomings.
*
Article on causes of spontaneous human combustion including history.*
Spontaneous Human Combustion an Anomalies Study.*
Spontaneous Human Combustion or SHC from SpookyFiles.* [
5] A compilation record album featuring, as the cover artwork, an alleged "victim" of spontaneous human combustion.
* [
6] Matthew Alice's Straight from the Hip column on spontaneous human combustion
