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Spontaneous
Human Combustion
Facts
& Theories
By Benjamin Radford - Live
Science Contributor
For well over a century, some have
claimed that people can suddenly and inexplicably explode into a ball of fire.
The phenomenon is called spontaneous
human combustion (SHC), and it has been described in many popular books on
mysteries and the unexplained.
Though the term "spontaneous
human combustion" is of fairly recent vintage, it was a rare-but-real
concern to many in the 1800s.
In fact, there are nearly a dozen
references to people bursting into flames in pre-1900 fiction.
The most famous example is Charles
Dickens's 1853 novel "Bleak House," in which a character explodes
into fire, though the phenomenon can also be found in the works of Mark Twain,
Herman Melville, Washington Irving and others.
In modern times, SHC has appeared in
movies and on television shows, including "The X-Files," and it's
even, sort of, the super-power of Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in
"Fantastic Four" comic books.
Spontaneous
combustion theories
Fires do not typically start on their
own.
When investigators search for the
cause of forest fires, they don't assume that the flame ignited itself.
However, many things can self-ignite without exposure to flames, under
the right circumstances, including coal dust, piles of compost and used oily
rags.
But it's a whole different matter to
claim that people can suddenly burst into flames for no apparent reason.
There is no doubt that bodies can
burn; crematoriums routinely reduce the human body to ashes in the course of a
few hours.
The mystery of SHC lies in the
supposedly strange circumstances under which victims burst into flames.
Typically, the story goes, there is
no obvious source of ignition, no open fires nearby that might set the person
aflame.
Furthermore, the victims are killed,
and not, for example, only partly burned on one arm or a leg; SHC is fatal.
Some claim that burning often seems
to begin in the chest or stomach area, leaving the grisly remains of legs and
hands intact.
Others claim that the furniture and
floors under and surrounding the victims (including even their clothing) remain
mysteriously unburned.
A
closer look
Some of these popular
claims are simply wrong.
For example, there are
many photographs of supposed SHC victims that clearly show extensive burning
and damage to the clothing and surroundings of the burned person.
It's also important to
understand a bit of fire forensics: many fires are self-limiting; that is, they
put themselves out naturally because they run out of fuel.
Though the public often
sees uncontrolled fires completely engulfing and burning down entire rooms and
buildings, fires are unpredictable.
It is quite possible, for
example, for only a rug, bed, or sofa to catch fire without spreading to the
rest of the room.
Because fires normally
burn upward instead of outward, there is nothing paranormal or strange about
finding a victim in one part of a room burned to death while the rest of the
room has little more than smoke damage.
What about the source of
ignition? What could possibly cause people to suddenly burst into flames?
A century ago, it was
blamed on intemperance and even God's wrath: most victims were assumed to be
drunkards who had saturated their cells with alcohol.
In the 1970s, a
quasi-Freudian explanation came into vogue suggesting that a person's
depressive emotional states could somehow cause him or her to become enflamed.
Others have suggested
that sunspots, cosmic storms, gas-producing intestinal bacteria, or even a
buildup of the body's supposed "vibrational energy" may be to blame.
Yet all these
explanations are pseudoscientific, and there is no evidence for any of them.
Our bodies are about 60
percent to 70 percent non-flammable water, and the simple fact is that there is
no physical or medical mechanism by which a person could possibly self-combust.
If people truly could
suddenly burst into flames without being anywhere near an open flame,
presumably there would be examples that have occurred while the victim was
swimming, in a bathtub, or even scuba diving. Yet those cases do not exist.
Real-life
cases
Only about a dozen
claimed real-life cases of SHC have been investigated in any detail.
Researcher Joe Nickell
examined many "unexplainable" cases in his book "Real-Life
X-Files" and found that all of them were far less mysterious than often
suggested.
Most of the victims were
elderly, alone and near flames (often cigarettes, candles, and open fires) when
they died.
Several were last seen
drinking alcohol and smoking.
If the person is asleep,
intoxicated, unconscious, infirm or otherwise unable to move or put the flames
out, the victim's clothes can act as a wick (most people spend most of their
time wrapped in flammable clothing made up of cottons and polyester blends).
The flames draw on the
body's fat (a flammable oil very near the skin's surface which combines with
the burning clothing) to fuel the fire.
There is also a rare
medical condition called Stevens-Johnson syndrome that, in extreme cases, may
be mistaken for a case of an aborted spontaneous combustion.
The skin disease, which
can be triggered by a toxic reaction to medications, including antibiotics and
prescription painkillers, causes the appearance of severe burns and blisters,
and can be fatal.
If SHC is a real
phenomenon, why doesn't it happen more often?
There are 7 billion
people in the world, and yet we don't see reports of people bursting into flame
while walking down the street.
No one has ever been
seen, filmed or videotaped (for example, on a surveillance camera) suddenly
bursting into flames. It always happens to a single person left alone near a
source of ignition.
And if some natural (but
unknown) mechanism causes the combustion, why would it only occur in humans?
Why wouldn't cows, dogs,
elephants, birds or other animals suddenly, randomly and inexplicably explode
in a ball of flames now and then?
Even if the phenomenon is
incredibly rare, with billions of animals on the planet, statistically we
should expect to see thousands of them exploding every day all around us.
Though there is no
scientific evidence that SHC exists, now and then a case makes the news when
officials cannot find another explanation.
In 2011, a coroner
concluded that Michael Faherty, an elderly Irishman living alone who
burned to death in his home in December 2010, may have spontaneously combusted.
Though Faherty's body was
found a few feet away from an open, burning fireplace the coroner decided that
it had not set him afire.
Benjamin Radford, M. Ed., is deputy editor of Skeptical
Inquirer science magazine and author of six books including
"Scientific Paranormal Investigation: How
to Solve Unexplained Mysteries." His website is www.BenjaminRadford.com.
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