Spontaneous Human Combustion

 

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Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) refers to the belief that the human body sometimes burns without an external source of ignition. There is much speculation and controversy regarding SHC, for it is not a proven natural phenomenon. Many theories and hypotheses have attempted to explain how SHC might occur, some of which are grounded in current scientific understanding. One such hypothesis is the "wick effect", in which the clothing of the victim soaks up melted human fat and acts like the wick of a candle. Another possibility is that the clothing is caused to burn by a discharge of static electricity. The liklihood that truly spontaneous human combustion actually takes place is remote, due to the presence of water and the lack of highly flammable compounds and oxygen in the human body.^[1]

The wick effect

The wick effect is the partial destruction of a human body by fire, when the clothing of the victim soaks up melted human fat and acts like the wick of a candle. The wick effect is a real phenomenon that has been shown to occur under certain conditions. 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 modern example is the unnamed woman discussed in a 1965 paper entitled "A Case of Spontaneous Combustion" ^[2] by Professor David Gee, Head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Leeds.

Professor Gee states:

"Belief in the occurrence of spontaneous combustion is of respectable antiquity. More recently opinion has swung away from the quasi-supernatural views of earlier years, to regard such cases as due to unusual degrees of flammability of the human body in certain circumstances, distinguishing the condition with the name preternatural combustion."

Professor Gee's article concerns an 85-year-old woman who fell dead in her home of a heart attack. Her head landed in the hearth of her open coal fire and her body was "[...] grossly incinerated, apart from the right foot which lay beyond the damaged floorboards. Both arms and the left leg had been almost completely destroyed."

That the victim was dead before the combustion began was learned from an examination of the remaining parts of her body, which also shows how incompletely the victim's body had been destroyed:

"The coronary and internal carotid arteries showed atheromatous disease. No soot particles were present in the trachea. Blood from the right foot contained no carboxyhaemoglobin."

Thus, the standard explanation offered by scientists is as follows (with minor variations):

• The victim dies suddenly (e.g., from a heart attack), or loses consciousness or mobility from excessive drinking.
• A cigarette or some other source of flame ignites the victim's clothing, which starts to burn, possibly fuelled by the spill of distilled beverages, and kills the victim if he or she is not already dead.
• The wick effect occurs.

However, there are problems with this attempted explanation:

• In many cases it has been proven by pathologists that the victim was alive at the time they burned. For example: In the case of Robert Francis Bailey, it was found at autopsy that he had died due to suffocating on the fumes of his own combustion.^{[citation needed]}
• The presence of accelerants such as alcohol is seldom if ever found in cases of SHC.^{[citation needed]} Alcoholism seems to have been the moralistic Victorian explanation for instances of alleged SHC, perhaps due to the religious influence of the temperance movement. Alcohol, being flammable, was supposed to permeate the body, making it prone to sudden ignition. Thus, drunkenness was not only a disgrace, but liable to result in terrifying retribution along semi-Biblical lines. It is now known that this cannot possibly happen. Body tissues cannot become so saturated in alcohol that they will catch fire. Nor can the explanation that victims' clothing had become soaked in alcohol be supported. However, a number of apparent SHC fatalities have involved alcoholics. ^{[citation needed]}
• It is more difficult to start a fire on a person's body using a cigarette than is popularly imagined — flesh cannot itself be set aflame by a cigarette, and, although skin can be melted, the cigarette is itself extinguished in the process. Nor can clothing soaked in fuel be ignited so easily: the glowing tip of a cigarette burns at 700 degrees Celsius (850 when puffed),^[3] which is sufficient to ignite most spirits (eg, paraffin). However, capillary action means that the cigarette is doused by the spirit, unless the spirit is already warmed or diffused. Even a lit cigarette dropped into a bucket of paraffin, or even gasoline, will not normally cause a fire, for the same reasons. This is contrary to the normal expectations of most people. Moreover, many victims of alleged SHC are non-smokers;^{[citation needed]} hence, cigarettes cannot always be the cause of unexplained human fires.

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. 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 reportedly managed to light up his office after building up a huge charge by walking across a carpet. ^[4] Several unanswered objections, however, mark the story as a possible hoax. ^[5]

The phenomenon of massive static charges on human bodies was first noted by the late professor Robin Beach, of Brooklyn, New York, founder of the scientific detective agency 'Robin Beach Engineers Associated'. One of his very first clients was an Ohio factory-owner whose plant was suddenly plagued with as many as eight small fires a day. Professor Beach's solution was to persuade each of the factory's employees in turn to step on to a metal plate while holding an electrode; at the same time he took reading from an electrostatic voltmeter. One of the workers was a young woman recently employed; when she stepped on to the metal plate, the meter showed a tremendous jump. She registered 30,000 volts of electrostatic electricity and a resistance of 500,000 ohms. Professor Beach recommended that she be transferred to some other part of the factory where she would not come into contact with combustible materials. Apparently, the fires immediately went down in frequency.^[6]

The professor explained that under certain conditions (walking on carpets during dry winter weather, for example) almost anyone can build up an electrostatic charge of as much as 20,000 volts.^[7] Hence the shock we sometimes feel when touching a car door or other metal surface. Usually, the electricity is harmlessly discharged through the tips of the hair; however, the professor claimed, there are some people (he guessed around one in 100,000) whose abnormally dry skin permits them to generate as much as 30,000 volts at a time. In certain circumstances, he said, such people may be highly dangerous. They may, for example, have been the detonators that touched off explosions in hospital operating theaters whose atmosphere contained an admixture of anesthetic vapor and air. In addition, the professor was convinced that workers in ordnance factories and petroleum refineries should be tested to discover whether they have the type of skin which retains electric charges more persistently than others. He quoted an instance in which a man proved to be a hazard to himself:

"In one case I investigated, a driver decided to see if the battery of his car needed filling with water. It was a cold, dry fall day and the man walked a short distance on a concrete driveway, raised the hood of his car, and unscrewed the caps of the battery. There was an immediate explosion as he touched off the hydrogen gas escaping from the battery of the recently parked car. He was severely injured."

However, although Beach's theory may well account for many inexplicable fires, it does not account for all supposed cases of spontaneous human combustion. Many of the alleged victims of SHC are recorded as bursting in flames from 'within'. Electrical engineers have pointed out that no known discharge could possibly have such an effect. Also, many of the accounts state that the victim's body was almost entirely consumed by fire, yet their surrounding were completely undamaged by the flames that engulfed them, which is in flat contradiction of natural law. It must be noted, however, that alleged SHC cases tend to be exaggerated along the lines of urban legends, and that thus "little" damage to a body's surroundings (such as is found when a human body burns due to the wick effect; described above) may become "no" damage in retellings of the case; the reliable first-hand accounts are far less unequivocal about whether the victim's immediate surroundings showed marks of fire or not. See for example the case of Mary Reeser, where objects near the body, while not lit afire, nonetheless showed considerable damage due to great heat.

A televised experiment

In August 1998, using a dead pig wrapped in a blanket and placed in a mocked-up room, the BBC set out to prove the wick effect theory in its science television show QED, episode entitled "The Burning Question".

A small amount of petrol was poured on the blanket as an accelerant. After igniting the petrol, the researchers left it to burn by itself. The temperature of the fire was regularly recorded at only around 800 °C (1472 °F).

As the fire burned through the pig's skin, the fire melted the pig's subcutaneous fats, which flowed onto the blanket. Bone marrow, which also contains a high amount of fats, contributed to the burning.

The surrounding furniture was not burned, although a television placed above a cupboard had its plastic cover melted. The fire had to be manually extinguished after seven hours. Most of the pig's body had been burned to ashes.

From the experiment, the BBC researchers claimed to have explained the following characteristics of SHC:

• The fires were highly localized. The flames of the fire were less than 50 centimeters (20 inches) high; therefore, the fire usually did not spread to furniture in the vicinity.
• The body was severely burned. The fire, although not very hot comparatively, can burn for a long period of time, as shown by the experiment. It is further fuelled by the body fat of the victim, which explains why the body can burn for such a long time.
• The furniture located above the cupboards burned. The fire continuously heated the air and produced a convection current. Hot air rose and caused the plastics in the television set to melt.

There are many problems with the QED program, which were raised by John E Heymer (who was unhappy with his own appearance on the show):

• The wick effect, while a real phenomenon, is a slow "smoldering" process with gentle lapping flames and thus very at odds with the reported rapidity and ferocity of SHC.
• The use of accelerants was not appropriate, since they are not a known factor in apparent SHC.
• The programme made use of time-lapse photography in demonstrating the wick effect, without labeling it as such. This undoubtedly led many viewers to erroneous conclusions about the rapidity of the wick effect, which (as discussed above) is a slow process.
• One section of the programme attempted to demonstrate the wick effect" on a wooden-framed stuffed armchair, presumably because of difficulties in procuring a human body and various ethical matters arising thereof. The armchair resolutely refused to behave in the manner predicted. When the armchair remained 80 percent unburned, this was announced as a partial demonstration of an effect that could happen under other conditions, that could (if the chair were a corpse) happen to a corpse.
• Fire Research Station Officer Stan Ames was shown inspecting the damaged chair and declaring: "So! Really, this is broadly what we expected to find. It can all be explained in terms of ordinary physics and chemistry."
• Other fire investigators disagreed with the programme's conclusions, writing to the magazine Radio Times (issue dated 20-26 May, 1989) to express dissent after transmission of the QED programme:

"It [the programme] was, however, marred by the conclusions drawn, which were not justified by the content of the programme. This is: it cannot be said at the present time, that 'science' has explained beyond reasonable doubt what is happening in these unusual cases."

The writer was Dr Alan Beard, Unit of Fire Safety, University of Edinburgh and close colleague of Dr Dougal Drysdale^[8]).

• Dr Drysdale had appeared in the QED programme, demonstrating the wick effect by burning animal fat wrapped in cotton. Hymer records ^[9]:

Once the fat had been completely obscured by the cloth roll, which overlapped the fat by an inch on either side, the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the fat roll.

"Suddenly, we were looking at a completely different piece of fat."

"Whereas the first piece of fat had been overlapped by the piece of cloth by an inch on either side, the second piece of fat was now protruding about one and a half inches on the one side.[...] It was clear on the film that the fat was the sort that comes cooked a rich golden color from an oven - a process, I might add, that just happens to drive off the water."

The fat was then shown burning away very rapidly, through (uncaptioned) time lapse photography.

On 16 May 1989, Heymer^[10] spoke by telephone to Drysdale at Edinburgh University. Drysdale told Heymer that the fat was beef and said that it took: "A long time [to burn away], probably about two hours.

"I'll tell you one thing, I did that experiment in Edinburgh with some animal fat from the butchers. It worked extremely well. I tried it twice. Very easy to ignite and it burned for a long time. They produced this piece of stinking animal fat down at the Fire Research Station and we couldn't light the bloody thing."

Heymer asked if this was the reason for the unremarked-upon substitution of one piece of fat for another.

Drysdale replied: "That's right, that's right, yes."

• The programme's narrator (Anna Massey) summed up as follows:

"So it seems that every aspect of these mysterious fire deaths can now be explained. Some form of ignition causes the body to burn. The heat dried out the body so that condensation forms on the windows. Once the body is dry, the fat melts and orange fatty deposits build up on surfaces like the light bulbs. It would seem the mystery is finally over."

This statement, says Heymer appears to suggest that a waterlogged body can catch fire for long enough (and at a sufficient temperature) to dry out (requiring the evaporation of an average of 10 gallons of body water), before it can become a suitable human candle.

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 eyewitnesses

The accounts are in the form of written and signed statements from named individuals, shorn of some details to protect the privacy of correspondents. Summaries follow.

• ^[11] In September 1985, a young woman named Debbie Clark was walking home when she noticed an occasional flash of blue light:

“

It was me. I was lighting up the driveway every couple of steps. As we got into the garden I thought it was funny at that point. I was walking around in circles saying: 'look at this, mum, look!' She started screaming and my brother came to the door and started screaming and shouting 'Have you never heard of spontaneous human combustion?'

”

Debbie's mother, Dianne Clark:

“

I screamed at her to get her shoes off and it [the flashes] kept going so I hassled her through and got her into the bath. I thought that the bath is wired to earth. It was a blue light you know what they call electric blue. She thought it was fun, she was laughing.

”

• ^[12] In winter 1980, Cheshire, England resident Susan Motteshead was standing in her kitchen, wearing flame-resistant pajamas, 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.

“

I was stood in the kitchen and my daughter just screamed out that my back was on fire. As I looked down it sort of whooshed all over me. It was like yellow and blue flames all over me. I was not burned at all. Not even my hair was burned.

”

The daughter, Joanne Motteshead, confirms this account and adds that the fire brigade arrived and tried (unsuccessfully) to set fire to Susan's pajamas.

• ^[12] : The three subjects (Debbie Clark, Daniel C. Boone, and Susan Motteshead), speaking independently and with no knowledge of each other, give similar histories.

Clark:

“

I was not wearing any nylon clothing [at the time of the flashes]. I used to suffer a lot with static electricity so I tended not to wear anything nylon. I used to crackle with static when taking off my clothes and if I touched any metal thing it used to hurt me. I used to have a lot of trouble with electrical things. They would break down or blow up.

”

Motteshead:

“

I had just washed and dried my hair [at the time of the incident]. I used to have a lot of static electricity when I was younger. I used to get shocks from touching fridges, things like that.

”

General misidentification hypothesis

Misidentification theory holds that a number of unsolved fire cases have built up into an overarching SHC myth. This may include wick effect and static flash as other unusual fires.

In modern times, Beard and Drysdale ^[8] 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.

Spontaneous human combustion as an anomalous phenomenon

Adherents to non-mainstream SHC beliefs 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 broadly into two camps: the supernaturalists and the non-supernaturalists. The supernaturalists believe that the cause of SHC is almost certainly beyond human knowledge forever. The non-supernaturalists believe that the cause of 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.

John E Heymer and 'The Entrancing Flame'

Described by Joe Nickell as an "English coal-miner-turned-constable,"^[13], 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 before 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. Ian Simmons, in a review of The Entrancing Flame, criticized 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."^[14]

Alleged SHC deaths and survivors

• Robert Francis Bailey
• Dr John Irving Bentley
• George I. Mott
• Mary Hardy Reeser (also known as The Cinder Lady)
• Jeannie Saffin
• Henry Thomas

Survivors

A number of people 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
• Professor H (University of Tennessee professor whose clothing caught fire in 1835)
• Wilfred Gowthorpe

SHC in fiction

In the novel Bleak House by Charles Dickens, the character Krook is killed by spontaneous combustion, "engendered in the corrupted humors of the vicious body itself".

In the first chapter of the novel Jacob Faithful (1834) by Charles Marryatt there is a vivid account of the hero's mother perishing "in that very peculiar and dreadful manner, which does sometimes, although rarely, occur, to those who indulge in an immoderate use of spirituous liquor. Cases of this kind do, indeed, present themselves but once in a century, but the occurrence of them is too well authenticated. She perished from what is termed spontaneous combustion, an inflammation of the gases generated from the spirits absorbed into the system."

Examples of spontaneous combustion occur in two works by the nineteenth-century Russian author Nikolai Gogol. In the story "Vii," a huntsman in a Cossack village combusts after an encounter with a witch: "And once, when they came to the stable, instead of him there was just a heap of ashes and an empty bucket lying there: he burned up, burned up of his own self." In the novel Dead Souls, the landowner Korobochka laments that her serf-blacksmith burned up: "Something inside him started burning somehow, he'd had too much to drink. A blue flame just came out of him, and he smoldered and smoldered all over, and turned black as charcoal, and he was such a really skillful blacksmith!"

Jules Verne describes in his novel Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen (1878) that when a fictional African "King of Kazounde" tasted a punch set aflame, "An act of spontaneous combustion had just taken place. The king had taken fire like a petroleum bonbon. This fire developed little heat, but it devoured nonetheless." Verne has no doubt about SHC being the result of alcoholism : "In bodies so thoroughly alcoholized, combustion only produces a light and bluish flame, that water cannot extinguish. Even stifled outside, it would still continue to burn inwardly. When liquor has penetrated all the tissues, there exists no means of arresting the combustion."

Spontaneous combustion that does not harm a person is a superpower granted to many comic book characters such as the Human Torch of The Fantastic Four and Fire of the Justice League of America.

In the movie Repo Man the incineration of a police officer by the mysterious object in the trunk of a car is cited as an example of spontaneous human combustion by a government agent ("It happens sometimes. People just explode.")

In the animated series Aaahh!!! Real Monsters episode "Spontaneously Combustible", main character Ickis is given a diagnosis by the school's doctor predicting he will Spontaneously Combust due to burning belches he emits. It turns out that it was nothing but gas from eating a car battery.

In the TV series South Park, the episode "Spontaneous Combustion" involves many people in the town suddenly bursting into flames. Stan Marsh's father is assigned to figure out why. He finds out it is caused by people withholding their flatus.

In Stargate SG-1, priors of the Ori are able to spontaneously combust if they are captured, believe they are a danger to their cause, or betray the Ori.

In an episode of Dead Like Me, Daisy witnesses a man spontaneously combust. She then remarks, "Spontaneous human combustion... I thought it was a myth."

In the popular manga series Rurouni Kenshin, the character Shishio Makoto dies by spontaneous combustion during his fight with Kenshin. This occurs because Shishio sweat glands were destroyed, allowing for his internal body temperature to skyrocket during the fight, igniting his internal fats and oils.

In the movie This Is Spinal Tap several of the band's drummers died of freak accidents, including one who spontaneously combusted on stage, leaving behind only a "globule". David St. Hubbins stated "Dozens of people spontaneously combust every year; it's just not very widely reported."

In the MTV show Celebrity Deathmatch a former interviewer named Stacey Cornbred died that way.

In the comic book series Sam and Max, a villain spontaneously combusts, having cornered the eponymous heroes.

In the Playstation game Parasite Eve spontaneous combustion is shown and attributed to Mitochondria.

The Song Pardon Me by Incubus is about spontaneous combustion

The song OhMyGodImOnFire by the late Logan Whitehurst is about the singer watching a burning man screaming and running around, referenced as spontaneous human combustion.

In the musical episode Once More, with Feeling of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a demon named Sweet is able to cause people to combust by making them dance to death.

In TV series Darkplace, in episode "Once Upon A Beginning," one of Dagless’s old colleagues combusts.

In Yukito Kishiro's science-fiction manga series Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, a world where science ensures eternal youth, spontaneous human combustion became the leading cause of death in higher developed zones. It is explained as psychosomatic effect which changes the body's chemical setup to ultimately lead to combustion. In the manga, spontaneous human combustion can also be caused by hypnosis.

In an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the character Dr. Weird has his head spontaneously combust after his moth monster escapes. In another episode, Carl's head similarly combusts but with no reason.

The pilot of the television show Max Headroom featured a story about 3 second TV ads overloading a viewer's nervous system in a way that causes them to explode.

In the comic strip "Dilbert,” one of the employees' head explodes, after he kept talking when he was not supposed to at a meeting. When he was asked to be quiet, he replied that he was the kind of person that had to talk, or his "head would explode.” A co-worker tested that theory by putting her hand over his mouth.

In the computer game "The Sims,” it is possible for the simulated humans to spontaneously combust. (A peculiar bug in some versions of the game caused the flames to be invisible, so that Sims writhe and "die" with no obvious cause.)

In the manga version of X/1999, Tōru Shirō dies when her body spontaneously starts to burn, presumably, as an effect of her use of the so-called "kage-nie" powers.

Quotes

“	There's one mystery I'm asked about more than any other: spontaneous human combustion. Some cases seem to defy explanation, and leave me with a creepy and very unscientific feeling. If there's anything more to SHC, I simply don't want to know.	”
—Arthur C. Clarke (1994)

“	The opinion that a man can burn of himself is not founded on a knowledge of the circumstances of the death, but on the reverse of knowledge - on complete ignorance of all the causes or conditions which preceded the accident and caused it.	”
—Justus von Liebig (1855)

“	What causes it? Who cares, as long as its damn funny?	”
—Richard Blaira (1927)

References

See also

• Exploding animal
• Anomalous phenomena
• Anthropic misidentification
• Combustion
• Pyrokinesis

External links

• 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.
• Matthew Alice's Straight from the Hip column on spontaneous human combustion
• A BBC article describing the experiment
• Article on causes of spontaneous human combustion including history
• Pardon Me, While I Burst Into Flames
• Spontaneous human combustion: What's behind the mystery of spontaneous human combustion?

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