Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is a name used to describe cases of the burning Combustion or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species. The release of heat can result in the production of light in the form of either glowing or a flame. Fuels of interest often include organic compounds in the gas, liquid or of a living human body without an apparent external source of ignition. Some regard SHC as a unique and currently unexplained phenomenon, others feel that cases described as SHC can be understood using current generally-accepted scientific principles, but the most common view by far is extreme skepticism.[citation needed] While there have been about 200 cited cases[1] worldwide over a period of around 300 years, most of the alleged cases are characterised by the lack of a thorough investigation, or rely heavily on hearsay Hearsay is information gathered by one person from another concerning some event, condition, or thing of which the first person had no direct experience. When submitted as evidence, such statements are called hearsay evidence. As a legal term, "hearsay" can also have the narrower meaning of the use of such information as evidence to and oral testimony. In many of the more recent cases, where photographic evidence is available, it is alleged that there was an external source of heat present (often cigarettes), and nothing occurred "spontaneously."

Contents

Causes

There are many hypothesised explanations which account for the various cases of spontaneous human combustion. These generally fall into one of three groups: paranormal explanations (e.g. a ghost In folklore, fiction, philosophy, and popular culture, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person, taken to be capable of appearing in visible form or otherwise manifesting itself to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely: the mode of manifestation can range from an invisible presence to translucent or wispy or alien Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth. It is unknown whether any such life exists, and all discussion of it must be regarded as highly speculative. Various claims have been made for evidence of its existence, such as those listed in a 2006 New Scientist article. However, the mainstream scientific community caused it), natural explanations that credit some unknown and otherwise unobserved phenomenon (e.g. the production of abnormally concentrated gas or raised levels of blood alcohol cause spontaneous ignition), and natural explanations that involve an external source of ignition (e.g. the victim dropped a cigarette).

Objections to natural explanations usually revolve around the degree of burning of the body with respect to its surroundings. Indeed, one of the common markers of a case of SHC is that the body — or part of it — has suffered an extraordinarily large degree of burning, with surroundings or lower limbs comparatively undamaged.[1]

Suggested explanations

Many hypotheses have attempted to explain how SHC might occur, but those which rely on current scientific understanding say that with instances mistaken for spontaneous combustion, there actually was an external source of ignition, and that the likelihood that truly spontaneous human combustion actually takes place within the body is quite low.[2]

Unverified natural phenomena

Natural explanations

Possible cases

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Deaths

Some cited cases include:[1]

Survivors of static flash fires/events

Two examples of people surviving static flash events are given in a book on SHC.[9] The two subjects, Debbie Clark and Susan Motteshead, speaking independently and with no knowledge of each other, give similar histories.[10] In addition, Jack Angel claims to have survived an SHC-like event:

In fiction

This "In popular culture" section may contain minor or trivial references. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject's impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and remove trivia references. (September 2009)

Examples of spontaneous human combustion are common in fictional works from the 19th century onwards. It is used both as a central plot device and as an incidental occurrence.

The second and third chapters of Charles Brockden Brown Charles Brockden Brown , an American novelist, historian, and editor of the Early National period, is generally regarded by scholars as the most ambitious and accomplished US novelist before James Fenimore Cooper. He is the most frequently studied and republished practitioner of the "early American novel," or the US novel between 1789's 1798 novel Wieland focuses on the emigration of Wieland, a German, to colonial America. Wieland practices a solitary form of Protestantism. As part of his religious practices he spends solitary hours in a temple constructed on his property. One night his family hears "a loud report, like the explosion of a mine." Rushing to the temple, they find Wieland lying with his clothing burned off and delirious. He dies soon after. While the term "spontaneous human combustion" was not yet created, Brown includes a footnote at the end of chapter 2 that suggest the phenomenon and its existence in 18th century medical studies. The footnote reads:

"A case, in its symptoms exactly parallel to this, is published in one of the Journals of Florence. See, likewise, similar cases reported by Messrs. Merille and Muraire, in the "Journal de Medicine," for February and May, 1783. The researches of Maffei and Fontana have thrown light upon this subject."

Examples of spontaneous combustion occur in three works by the nineteenth-century Russian author Nikolai Gogol. In the story "St. John's Eve" from Gogol's "Village Evenings Near Dikanka" (1831–32) the guilty character Petro the orphan spontaneously combusts when confronted with a vision of a child he had killed. 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 Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly, 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![12]" The latter incident is used in the book as a metaphorical device.

In the novel Bleak House Bleak House is the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, published in twenty monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon. The story is told partly by the novel's heroine, (1853) by Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens was the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era, and he remains popular, responsible for some of English literature's most iconic characters, the character Krook is killed by spontaneous combustion, "engendered in the corrupted humors of the vicious body itself." Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne was a French author who helped pioneer the science-fiction genre. He is best known for his novels A Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869–1870), Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) and The Mysterious Island (1875) 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 had 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."

The fictional band Spinal Tap, known largely for the casualty rate of its drummers, had two drummers die of spontaneous combustion. Drummer Peter "James" Bond spontaneously combusted at the Isle of Lucy Blues-Jazz Festival, leaving nothing but a green globule on his drummer's throne. Bond was replaced by drummer Mick Shrimpton, who spontaneously combusted during Tap's tour of Japan.

See also

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