Robert Todd Carroll
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Secrets of the Supernatural, ch. 11 FIERY
FATE - Specter of "Spontaneous Human Combustion"
A polyester jacket caused 36,000 volts to surge through a Victorian man's
body and leave burn marks wherever he walked.
Scorched earth policy of 'static man'
Man Burns Carpet With Static Shock
What is static electricity? |
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spontaneous human combustion
(SHC)
Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is the alleged process of a human body
catching fire as a result of heat generated by internal chemical or nuclear action. While no one has
ever witnessed SHC, several deaths involving fire have been attributed to SHC by
investigators and storytellers. Charles Dickens used SHC as the cause of
death of a heavy drinker in his novel
Bleak House (1852), fueling a popular belief that excessive drinking
could lead to SHC. Responding to criticism that he was encouraging nonsense,
in the second edition of Bleak House Dickens claims he knew of some
thirty cases of SHC, but he mentions only two.*
Both cases allegedly happened over one hundred years earlier. Dickens or his
source probably got his information about SHC from stories collected by
Jonas Dupont published in De Incendiis Corporis Humani
Spontaneis (1763).*
One 17th century tale claims that a
drunken German self-ignited due to his having imbibed an excessive amount of
brandy. If drinking a great quantity of brandy or any other alcoholic
beverage causes self-combustion, there should be many more such cases to
study.
Many of the modern SHC stories have originated with police
and fire investigators who have
been perplexed by partially burned corpses near unburned rugs or furniture.
They are completely baffled as to how a body could burn down to ashes except
for a leg or a foot, while the rest of the room avoids being consumed by the
flames.
Many of the allegedly spontaneously
combusted corpses are of elderly people who may have ignited
themselves accidentally. Some may have been murdered. Many are elderly women
who may have had osteoporosis, making their bones burn at a lower
temperature than needed for healthy bones.*
Self-ignition due to dropping a lit cigarette or ignition due to another
person are ruled out by some investigators as unlikely because they think
the whole room should have gone up in flames in such cases. Even when
candles or fireplaces present a plausible explanation for the cause of a
fire, some investigators favor an explanation that requires belief in an
event whose likelihood is extremely implausible.
physical possibility of SHC
The physical possibilities of spontaneous human combustion are remote. Not
only is the body mostly water, but aside from fat tissue and methane gas, there isn't much
that burns readily in a human body. To cremate a human body requires a
temperature of 1600 degrees Fahrenheit for about two hours. To get a chemical reaction in a human body
that would
lead to ignition would require some doing. If the deceased had recently eaten an enormous
amount of hay that was infested with bacteria, enough heat might be generated to ignite
the hay, but not much besides the gut and intestines would probably burn. Or, if the
deceased had been eating the newspaper and drunk some oil, and was left to rot for a
couple of weeks in a well-heated room, his gut might ignite. And in each of
these ludicrous scenarios additional oxygen would have to be introduced. These
possibilities are so farfetched that I have no reason to believe they, or
anything like them, has ever occurred.
Larry Arnold's theory that sometimes human cells are hit by a mysterious
particle, the pyrotron, that causes a nuclear chain reaction inside a person's body is
based on wild speculation and ignorance of cellular life and spontaneous
nuclear fusion.*
Some other theories without merit are:
maser (microwave amplification by
stimulated emission of radiation) induction, geomagnetism, and even
kundalini (a form of
yoga/mystic body heating). Perhaps the most preposterous suggestion is that
stress can cause a person to burst into flames (perpetuated by Larry
Arnold), or that hydrogen and oxygen remain as gasses in human cells and are
thus highly ignitable – in which case the reader would do well not to
inhale.*
A more economical and reasonable theory
of how human bodies burn in rooms without having the entire room engulfed in
flames is the idea of the wick effect. The ignition point of human fat is low
and to get the
fire going would require an external source. Once ignited, however, a "wick
effect" from the body's fat would burn hot enough in certain places to destroy
even bones. To prove that a human being might burn like a candle, Dr. John de Haan of the
California Criminalistic Institute wrapped a dead pig in a blanket, poured a small amount
of gasoline on the blanket, and ignited it. Even the bones were destroyed after five hours
of continuous burning. The fat content of a pig is very similar to the fat content of a
human being. The damage to the pig, according to Dr. De Haan "is exactly the same as
that from supposed spontaneous human combustion." A
National Geographic
special on SHC showed a failed attempt to duplicate the burning pig
experiment. However, it is obvious that the failure was due to leaving the
door to the room open to the outside, which created a draft and led to the
flames igniting everything in the room. Had the room been closed up, as are
the rooms in which many of the elderly persons have died in fires attributed
to SHC, it is likely that the pig would have smoldered for several hours
without the rest of the room becoming engulfed in flames.
In their investigation of a number of SHC cases, Dr. Joe Nickell and Dr. John Fisher
found that when the destruction of the body was minimal, the only significant fuel source
was the individual's clothes, but where the destruction was considerable, additional fuel
sources increased the combustion. Materials under the body help retain melted fat that
flows from the body and serves to keep it burning. The reason some bodies
are totally consumed except for the legs or feet probably has to do with the
fact that these victims were seated when they caught fire and flames move
upward.
Some alleged cases of SHC are cases of spontaneous
combustion but they are explicable by natural means. For example, a chemical
reaction on or in a person's clothing can result in spontaneous combustion.
The National Geographic special, mentioned above, investigated a case of a
woman whose clothes suddenly caught fire and burned the skin on her thigh.
The most likely explanation is that she put a shell in her pocket that was
covered in sodium from a fireworks show that had taken place on the beach
where she had retrieved the shell. Later, she stuck a wet handkerchief in her
pocket with the shell. The sodium may have reacted with the water, releasing
hydrogen that self-ignited,*
causing her burns. In any case, she did not burn from the inside, as is
claimed happens to SHC victims.
Richard Milton,
the alternative scientist, lists several cases that he thinks are
convincing proof of SHC. All but one of the cases he cites come from Larry
Arnold, the one who posits an unknown particle that occasionally strikes a
cell inside a person, causing a nuclear reaction. Here's a sampling.
- Jean Lucille Saffin. This 61-year-old
mentally handicapped woman burst into flames in her kitchen. "Her father,
who was seated at a nearby table, said he saw a flash of light out of the
corner of his eye and turned ... to find that she was enveloped in flames,
mainly around her face and hands." The fire was put out with water by Mr.
Saffin and his son-in-law. No cause of the fire was found. How does this
qualify as a case of SHC? Because an unnamed policeman told Saffin's
relatives that that's what he believed caused Jean's death. Milton is also
impressed by the fact that the father and son-in-law claim the fire lasted
only a minute or two (so there should be no surprise that the rest of the
room didn't go up in flames!). Milton doesn't consider that the testimony
of the father and son-in-law may be tainted.
- Helen Conway. You've probably seen this
picture before.
Conway was an elderly, infirm woman who was a heavy and
careless smoker. (There were many cigarette burns in her room.) She burned
up while sitting in an upholstered chair in her bedroom. Why is this
considered SHC? The fire chief said that's what he believed. He also said
it only took 21 minutes for her to burn.*
If it did, the wick effect would not account for how she burned. (Arnold
uses some sort of "deduction" to figure out that it may have taken only
six minutes for Conway's body to be consumed.) Since they can't figure out
how Conway burned up in such a short time, both Arnold and Milton conclude
it was probably SHC.
Joe Nickell speculates that the fire "may have begun
at the base of the seated body and burned straight upward, fed by the fat
in the torso, and may have thus been a much more intense fire - not unlike
grease fires that all who cook are familiar with. Indeed, in searching
through the dense smoke for the victim, an assistant chief sank his hand
"into something greasy" that proved to be the woman's remains."*
Milton's research in this area is limited almost
exclusively to Larry Arnold's book Ablaze!: The Mysterious Fires of
Spontaneous Human Combustion, a book which features a blurb from
Maury Povich on its back cover. Paranormal investigator Joe Nickell refers to this
work as Spontaneous
Human Nonsense.
The stories that Milton posts on his web site reveal
his willingness to be dazzled by speculations about SHC. It is true that the
examples he has chosen can't be explained by the wick effect because they
are all of cases where the person in flames is come upon within a relatively
short time of being on fire. The wick effect requires hours of slow burning.
However, the evidence that any of these cases is actually a case of
spontaneous human combustion is flimsy at best.
further reading
reader comments
Callahan Gerald N. (2002). Faith, Madness, and Spontaneous Human
Combustion : What Immunology Can Teach Us About Self-Perception. Thomas
Dunne Books.
Edwards, Frank. Stranger than Science (New York: L. Stuart,1959).
Nickell, Joe. Secrets of the supernatural: investigating the world's
occult mysteries with John F. Fischer (Buffalo, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1991).
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