Spontaneous Human Combustion

[Byzantine Magpie]

Folks

Does anyone have any knowledge about this topic?

I'd always based my information to punters on the wick theory: clothing catches fire, melts body fat which soaks into clothing, and burns in place of the clothing, entirely consuming the body except for the low-fat extremities in a low oxygen, long duration fire. Proof was in the pig carcass experiment.

Now someone has said on a science forum that there are some holes with the theory. Firstly, he said the pig carcass experiment was done using a pig carcass drained of blood, and that when it was tried with a carcass full of blood, it didn't work. Secondly, he said that some SHC cases had been found outside, which rules out the low oxygen part of the theory.

Help me please. Thanks.

Peter

 

[Goshawk]

Cecil Adams.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_205b.html

Skepdic.
http://skepdic.com/shc.html

CSICOP.
http://www.csicop.org/si/9803/shc.html

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Almost every SHC case is purely anecdotal, and I'm betting that the anecdotes have been embellished over the years.

"Honest, I swear, my uncle never smoke or drank, took prescription drugs, or used bottled oxygen!"

~~ Paul

 

[DangerousBeliefs]

Secondly, he said that some SHC cases had been found outside, which rules out the low oxygen part of the theory.

Help me please. Thanks.

Peter

The one outdoor case that I remember was a murder where she was set on fire in a damp leafy area of the woods and her body was nearly completely consumed. Not sure how they think this is SHC since the fire was started by a human.

 

[knightmb]

Folks

Does anyone have any knowledge about this topic?

I'd always based my information to punters on the wick theory: clothing catches fire, melts body fat which soaks into clothing, and burns in place of the clothing, entirely consuming the body except for the low-fat extremities in a low oxygen, long duration fire. Proof was in the pig carcass experiment.

Now someone has said on a science forum that there are some holes with the theory. Firstly, he said the pig carcass experiment was done using a pig carcass drained of blood, and that when it was tried with a carcass full of blood, it didn't work. Secondly, he said that some SHC cases had been found outside, which rules out the low oxygen part of the theory.

Help me please. Thanks.

Peter

I don't have any links to point you to, but check out discovery.com and look up a video for it. They did an entire show just for this and the same conclusion of just people being knocked out and then set on fire was the answer. The experiment with the pig wasn't drained of blood on the show, it was dripping blood out the sides like crazy. Not to mention the pool of blood it was already in. Doesn't mean it had less than a fresh cut piece from a newly slaughtered pig, completely possible.

Burn just about anything long enough and all you have is dust, so I see nothing supernatural about human combustion except that it does not happen for null reasons Either foul play is at hand or chaos theory is at work for the unfortunate victim.

 

[Tricky]

Re: Re: Spontaneous Human Combustion

The one outdoor case that I remember was a murder where she was set on fire in a damp leafy area of the woods and her body was nearly completely consumed. Not sure how they think this is SHC since the fire was started by a human.

Ah! So it was in fact, a bizarre gardening accident!

 

[Psi Baba]

I think the fact that no one has ever witnessed anyone spontaneously combust is a bit telling.

 

[rockoon]

Not that it makes it any more plausible, but perhaps as the human is burning the flames form the face of satan and he commands:

SPEAK NOT OF WHAT YOU HAVE SEEN - I WILL BE WATCHING

 

[Eos of the Eons]

The stories I read were always a result of a slow smouldering burn. One was from a guy who died while smoking a cigar. Another was a person with a cigarette in bed. Out of all the people that smoke some die while smoking. They burn a long time very slowly.

Not one case where a person went "poof' up in smoke spontaneously ever proven.

 

[richardm]

I think the fact that no one has ever witnessed anyone spontaneously combust is a bit telling.

I'm working from memory here, but... there was one supposed SHC case where a girl caught fire on a crowded dance floor back in the (I think) 1940s. Everyone swore she was nowhere near any of the candles... and of course, in the 1940s nobody would be smoking because tobacco wasn't discovered until.. no.. wait.. that's not right.. .

 

[Byzantine Magpie]

Folks

Thanks for your comments. However, a couple of things I should make clear.

Firstly, the guy who was challenging this doesn't believe in supernatural causes for SHC. He accepts perfectly scientific reasoning for it.

Secondly, he was critical only of the theories presented by skeptics for SHC, considering they had flaws as constructed (excess liquid in the body would douse flames, open air cases would rule out the low-oxygen basis, large amounts of accelerants used in experiments didn't substitute for small flames).

However, it seems you've knocked over most of his objections anyway.

So thanks again.

 

[richardm]

I'm working from memory here, but... there was one supposed SHC case where a girl caught fire on a crowded dance floor back in the (I think) 1940s. Everyone swore she was nowhere near any of the candles... and of course, in the 1940s nobody would be smoking because tobacco wasn't discovered until.. no.. wait.. that's not right.. .

Did a bit of digging on this, because it irritated me that I couldn't remember any more details.

It was 1938, in fact, and the story is interesting , incorporating much urban legend type twisting and confabulation. Make sure you read the "True story of Phyllis". section.

The article is a great read, and a terrific demonstration of why we should always be careful when dealing with this kind of story.

 

[Psi Baba]

Did a bit of digging on this, because it irritated me that I couldn't remember any more details.

It was 1938, in fact, and the story is interesting , incorporating much urban legend type twisting and confabulation. Make sure you read the "True story of Phyllis". section.

The article is a great read, and a terrific demonstration of why we should always be careful when dealing with this kind of story.

Wow, what a great article. Thanks for posting that link, richard. I've known about that story as well, since I have one of the books mentioned in the article, Strange Stories, Amazing Facts (1976), published by Reader's Digest. The entry in the book is only a paragraph or two and has no references. Now I finally know the whole story. Did you notice how the process of the evolution/mutation of that story seems to parallel that of the history of Bermuda Triangle stories?

 

[exarch]

Originally posted by richardm
I'm working from memory here, but... there was one supposed SHC case where a girl caught fire on a crowded dance floor back in the (I think) 1940s. Everyone swore she was nowhere near any of the candles... and of course, in the 1940s nobody would be smoking because tobacco wasn't discovered until.. no.. wait.. that's not right.. .

It seems NYLON burns extremely fast, and seeing how it was just invented/discovered in those days ...

 

[richardm]

Wow, what a great article. Thanks for posting that link, richard. I've known about that story as well, since I have one of the books mentioned in the article, Strange Stories, Amazing Facts (1976), published by Reader's Digest.

Snap!

I spent many a happy hour reading and re-reading that book as a kid. I must admit I was quite unhappy to flick through it again recently - so much of it is actually garbage, or at least very pro-paranormal (in the spooky section, at least). Very uncritical.

Ah well, it doesn't seem to have done any lasting harm (if you discount the occasional nervousness re: werewolves - that picture of the werewolves lining up against that wall in Brittany scared the life out of me

Yes, the mutation of the story is quite an eye-opener. The writers really worked quite hard on the article, I think.

 

[Johnny Pneumatic]

What I think is funny about SHC is that the believers can't come up with reasonable causes of it, build-up of Chi, god punishing drunks etc.

 

[exarch]

Originally posted by bewareofdogmas
What I think is funny about SHC is that the believers can't come up with reasonable causes of it, build-up of Chi, god punishing drunks etc.

What I found more compelling is the complete fabrication of details (up to the point where the original story became two separate stories), and even the invention of completely unexisting events, just to make an unrelated, already morphed fact become mystical and sensational (i.e. the triangle).

I suppose spontaneous human combustion is thereby proven to be an urban legend, which, like all the others, regularly reoccurs in newspapers and e-mail messages, all originating from the same source, but often regarded as different or fairly recent events.

Edited to add:
For those who didn't read the article, the original woman suffered (probably only minor) burns after her dress caught fire, but died of sepsis a week or two later. No spontaneous instant combustion ever occured.

 

[carlosy]

Woman goes up in flames during surgery – dead

The woman who was to be operated on on the pancreas “burned like a torch” on the operating table. A nurse extinguished the fire after a few seconds by pouring a bucket of water over the cancer patient. According to hospital staff, 40 percent of their body surface burned.

The fire started because the patient was rubbed with a disinfectant that is easily flammable because of an allergy to iodine. The operating doctor should have taken this into account, but still used an electroscalpel. When he put this on, it was said that flames shot up immediately.

https://www.en24.news/2020/01/woman-goes-up-in-flames-during-surgery-dead.html



Insane...

Must have been quite a shock for everyone involved. I mean a human body being completely on fire in a matter of seconds. All the people standing around waiting for the surgery to start, and all of a sudden you are standing right in front of a big fire.

A fire is probably one of the least things any person would expect to happen in an operating room.

 

[Armitage72]

Woman goes up in flames during surgery – dead


https://www.en24.news/2020/01/woman-goes-up-in-flames-during-surgery-dead.html

Insane...

Must have been quite a shock for everyone involved. I mean a human body being completely on fire in a matter of seconds. All the people standing around waiting for the surgery to start, and all of a sudden you are standing right in front of a big fire.

A fire is probably one of the least things any person would expect to happen in an operating room.

I remember one of the crime procedural shows in which a man was murdered in his hospital room while recovering from surgery. To conceal physical evidence, the killer inserted the victim's oxygen tube into the surgery incision, gradually filling the body cavity with oxygen, and left behind a lit cigarette. When a fire started, the oxygen in the body and that had leaked out turned the corpse into a pyre.

 

[theprestige]

Woman goes up in flames during surgery – dead


https://www.en24.news/2020/01/woman-goes-up-in-flames-during-surgery-dead.html

: eye-poppi

Insane...

Must have been quite a shock for everyone involved. I mean a human body being completely on fire in a matter of seconds. All the people standing around waiting for the surgery to start, and all of a sudden you are standing right in front of a big fire.

A fire is probably one of the least things any person would expect to happen in an operating room.

This may be naive of me, but I always assumed that there's sources of oxygen in operating rooms that make a greater fire risk.

I'm more surprised about the bucket of water, actually.