Spontaneous Human Combustion

[Karmi-Sempai]

Have any of you heard of it? They say it occurs when a sort of fire sparks out of a person's body and the flames consume them. Personally, I believe it's nothing really. I support the Wick Effect. The person's clothes become the wick, and the fat the candle. That explains why people burn up. You can even use it to murder somebody. I wonder...

[Mike Covell]

We had a well documented case in Hull in an Almshouse. A lady had retired to her room for the night and her neighbour had checked on her, she was tired and in a good mood. She didn't smoke and there was no naked flames in the room. An hour later the neighbour could smell burning, he traced the source to her room and knocked down the door.
He found her in bed burnt to a crisp, the bed covers, bed and wooden pannelling and floorboards were untouched!

[revpetero]

Shc

Comes from holding your farts in

[Mayerling]

For an interesting (if too willing to suspend disbelief) account read FIRE FROM HEAVEN by Michael Harrison (the author of CLARENCE: WAS HE JACK THE RIPPER? and the "higher criticism"* book IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES).

*The "higher criticism" is what members of the Baker Street Irregulars and the Sherlock Holmes Society and other similar groups refer to those learned
essays about Sherlockian controversies and minutiae.

Best wishes,

Jeff

[sdreid]

Unsolved Mysteries did a segment about this. They had a guy on there who caught on fire spontaneously and his wife put him out before he went completely up. That's what they said anyway.

[louisa]

I wonder if the spontaneous combustion victims had consumed a lot of spirits. Maybe that would aid the combustion. People that have observed it happening have said the flames seem to be coming from the victim's stomach area.

[Graham]

It nearly happened to me one night after a vindaloo.

Graham

[lynn cates]

Dickens

Hello All. Try Dickens' "Bleak House"--if I recall properly. Not a new idea.

Cheers.
LC

[kensei]

I heard of a case in which a man survived a case of partial SHC. It happened in his sleep and didn't even awaken him. When he awoke at his normal time he discovered his entire arm had been incinerated. Yikes.

[caz]

Did he realise when he went to look at his watch to see if it was his normal time?

Graham, I was thinking the same thing. I had a rather powerful prawn madras in Brick Lane on Saturday night and when all the sirens started going off later that night (before I knew it was the riots kicking off) I thought the fire brigade were coming to put me out.

Love,

Caz
X

[Scorpio]

Have any of you heard of it? They say it occurs when a sort of fire sparks out of a person's body and the flames consume them. Personally, I believe it's nothing really. I support the Wick Effect. The person's clothes become the wick, and the fat the candle. That explains why people burn up. You can even use it to murder somebody. I wonder...

I guess the zimmerframe just could not take it any more and snapped.

[louisa]

You would have thought that the kind of person who would sponaneously combust would have had rather a lot of fat on them (and maybe a bit gassy), but both of those photos show people with slim legs.

[Penny_Dredfull]

Spontaneous Human Combustion

Yeah, I first heard about this phenomena from Dicken's Bleak House- wonder where Dicken's heard about it?

[Penny_Dredfull]

Spontaneous Human Combustion

Well, I've done a bit of research and now I can answer my own question isn't that neat? heh heh
Apparently, Dicken's created a bit of an uproar with his depiction of spontaneous combustion in Bleak House, with many members of the public protesting that he was letting his imagination run riot. But Dickens defended himself, in his Preface to the second edition, by claiming that he researched the subject and knew of at least 30 authentic cases. It is believed that in part he relied upon a collection of cases published 90 years before Bleak House by a Frenchman, Jonas Dupont.
Apparently, the American writer Charles Brockden Brown included an example of spontaneous combustion in his novel Wieland(1798) that predates Dickens. Brown explains the phenomena to his readers in a footnote which refers to Italian and French medical publications of t least 1783.
Howzat?