FREE ESSAY ON SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION

SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION

Spontaneous Human Combustion
The world is full of the unexplained and mysterious, but is spontaneous human combustion
truly spontaneous caused by the paranormal, or just simply human combustion? Most people
think of spontaneous human combustion, or SHC, as ...the reduction of an otherwise
normal, healthy human body to a pile of fine black ash, the consistency of which is finer
than that of a cremated corpse (Spontaneous). This is simply not true. First of all, it
is not complete consumption because in most cases extremities and internal organs remain
because the high temperature outside the body does not penetrate internally. Secondly,
the fact that the ash is so fine is often used by SHC proponents as to why the fire must
by paranormal. They say that the fire has to be extremely hot because even in a
crematorium calcified bones often remain, but this fine ash can also be attributed to
simple combustion.
To learn more about SHC and how it works we must take a look at the victims. Victims of
SHC are mainly elderly females that smoke. Almost all the victims have weight problems.
They are often at least overweight. It must be understood that no well-documented cases
of infant SHC have ever been reported. Some researchers say that there is ...a fairly
equal representation of the sexes among the victims, with ages ranging from infancy to
114 years; many were abstemious and thin (Mysteries 80). To get a personal opinion on
this matter, one must research this kind of information for themselves since much of it
can be misconstrued.
Some may believe the SHC phenomenon has only been around for the past few decades but
...spontaneous human combustion (SHC) began to appear in medical reports as far back as
the 17th century... (Mysteries 80). Rare and abnormal deaths caused by fire were just as
common back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as they are nowadays. To find a
logical explanation scientists looked for a common thread in the cases. This common
thread seemed to be alcohol. During this Victorian era, an evil of the Christian society
was drink. SHC ...was viewed as a sort of a moral punishment for drunkenness (Cohen 195).
Since the cause of SHC was believed to be drinking, many had oral remedies for SHC. In
Germany the common people had great faith in liquid manure as a preventive for
spontaneous combustion... (Bondeson 7). If you lived in Scandinavia at that time you may
have had heard of an even more unlikely preventive. Swedish and Norwegian folklore
prescribed human urine, preferably freshly voided by a woman, to be thrown into the mouth
of a flowing drunkard... (Bondeson 7).
During this Victorian era SHC became popular in literature. Mark Twain was one writer who
popularized SHC in his book, Life on the Mississippi, during early America. Jimmy Finn
was not burned in a calaboose, but died a natural death in a vat of a combination of
delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion. (quoted in Cohen 192). Charles Dickens also
wrote about SHC in his book, Bleak House, and he attributed it to alcohol. Dickens
described the death of the drunken man, Krook, in the following manner:
Here is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tender from a little bundle of burnt
paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to be steeped in something; and here is- is it
the cinder of a small charred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it
coal, O Horror, he is here! and this, from which we run away, striking out the light and
overturning one another into the street, is all that represents him. (quoted in Cohen
193)
Dickens was so avid about the topic that when the book was reprinted, a slip was added
that quoted Dickens on his support of SHC. It can only be believed that alcohol would
have only attributed to the death but did not directly cause it.
There has been a lot of paranormal phenomenon that has been used to explain alleged
spontaneous human combustion. Cases of individuals capable of generating explosive bursts
of electrical energy by manipulating internal organs appear throughout the world and...
amongst the Chinese and Pacific Asian cultures (Spontaneous). Some cases are reported in
which electromagnetic fields are seen, and ...fluorescent light-tubes illuminate when
held underneath... pylons, apparently from the intense ionization and electromagnetic
field filling the surrounding air (Randles 14). They have been associated with SHC.
According to Yoga, Kundelini is an energy that is supposed to pervade the individual's
astral body... (Bondeson 14). If it is released uncontrollably, it is believed a person
could combust. Some have postulated the existence of a pyrotron, a... particle, capable
of starting a chain reaction that vaporizes the entire human being (Bondeson 14-15). Such
evidence for such a particle is still to be seen. Phosphinic farts and methane gases
produced by the body during digestion have been used to explain SHC. It is known both of
these gases are volatile and combustible. There are many believers that say SHC is
started by static electricity:
Some people have been known to build up... charges, occasionally generating up to 30,000
volts. Ordinarily this static electricity is harmlessly discharged through the hair, but
in certain volatile situations, such as... hospital operating rooms using gaseous
anesthetics, these people can spark off explosions. But these explosions have never been
known to burn a person to ashes, leaving the room and furnishings undamaged. (Mysteries
91)
This simple fact should deny static electricity as a cause of SHC. Last of all these
phenomenon is, of course, alcohol. There are those that say SHC is punishment by God for
alcoholism or that believe that excessive use of alcohol may cause deposition of
flammable, nitroglycerin like phosphogens in the muscle tissue... (Bondeson 14).
Scientists that are less prone to believe in SHC are often against such paranormal
explanations. Some often say that ...mechanisms through which any of these might work are
unexplained (Mysteries 91). Even author Mark Benecke said, I will restrict my
observations to the facts as given by expert sources because the speculations on cases of
alleged SHC in popular articles are, in my opinion, nonscientific (Benecke 48).
A scientific explanation for SHC is often referred to as the candle, wick, or multiple
wick effect. This idea ...is that the cause of fire is smoking, and the victim is often
old and disabled or drunk and therefore unable to respond quickly enough when the fire
starts (Cohen 196). It has been argued that the victims suffer a 2nd or 3rd degree burn
on a small area of their body [often fires started from cigarettes], shock sets in, [and]
the victim falls unconscious (Spontaneous). After falling unconscious, the fat begins to
melt and it is drawn into the clothing. This can then support the fire for hours as the
body is consumed. Mark Benecke associated alcohol and SHC by saying:
The preponderance of alcoholics among historical victims, although not among twentieth-
century ones, remains a mystery. It is very unlikely that their bodies were really more
combustible. Instead, a drunken individual is prone to be more clumsy with fire, and
might be too befuddled, drowsy, or even unconscious to escape. (Bondeson 17-18)
This scientific explanation for alleged SHC and why drunkards may be more prone to
combusting. SHC supporters often cite cases that are often very old and do not include
whether or not the victim drank or smoked.
There have been various experiments that have been used to show how SHC might start.
Animals have been soaked in alcohol for extended periods of time, then set on fire to see
what would happen. The skin blazed up fiercely, charring some outer layers flesh, but the
rat's internal organs were hardly affected (Mysteries 91). Experiments show that
liquefied human fat burns at a temperature of about two hundred and fifty ŸCelsius;
however, a cloth wick in such fat will burn even when the temperature falls as low as
twenty-four ŸCelsius (Investigative).
There have been many ideas about how heat affects the body. Those that are pro- SHC often
state that only high temperatures produced by a crematorium can produce a body that is so
completely reduced. A scientist by the name of Drysdale explains why this is not true:
In a crematorium you need high temperatures -around 1,300 ŸC, or even higher- to
reduce a body to ash.... You can produce local, high temperatures, by means of the wick
effect and a combination of smouldering and flaming to reduce even bones to ash. At
relatively low temperatures of 500 ŸC -and if given enough time- the bone will
transform into something approaching a powder in composition. (Investigative)
This shows that an intense fire is not needed to completely reduce a body to ashes and
that a simple smouldering flame is all that is needed.
Spontaneous human combustion is easily explained by physics if careful research is done
and speculations are dismissed. The continued lack of scientific evidence for SHC ...
keeps proponents looking for cases they can attribute to the alleged phenomenon... (Fiery
15). There is no need to invent bizarre chemical reactions, or paranormal activities to
explain what is mistakenly called 'spontaneous combustion' (Benecke 50). What is more
interesting than this is that ...there are no known cases in which internal organs of a
burned corpse were damaged more severely than the outer parts (Benecke 50). This is so
compelling because SHC allegedly starts from inside the body. It has been wondered why
there are no well-documented cases of animals and children spontaneously combusting. Is
it because they ...do not become drunkards or, of course, smoke!... (Randles 182). Is
spontaneous human combustion truly spontaneous caused by the paranormal, or just simply
human combustion?
Bibliography
Benecke, Mark. Spontaneous Combustion: Thoughts of a Forensic Biologist. Skeptical
Inquirer. Mar./Apr. 1998: 47-50.
Bondeson, Jan. A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities. Ithica, New York: Cornell University
Press, 1976.
Cohen, Daniel. The Encyclopedia of the Strange. New York: Dodd, Meod & Company, Inc.,
1985.
Mysteries of the Unexplained. Pleasantville, New York: Reader's Digest Association Inc.,
1982.
Nickell, Joe. Fiery Tales That Spontaneously Destruct. Skeptical Inquirer. Mar./Apr.
1998: 15-17, 62.
Nickell, Joe. Investigative Files: Not-So-Spontaneously Human Combustion. Skeptical
Inquirer. Nov./Dec. 1996: 17-20. 21 Feb. 2001.