Spontaneous Combustion

One speaks about spontaneous combustion (or autocombustion , human combustion …) when a person takes fire without apparent reason. This phenomenon, known through very rare not easily verifiable testimonys, is also proposed like explanation for the cases, also rare, of bodies reduced in ashes, discovered in an intact environment or almost. The reality of the phenomenon is rejected quasi-unanimement by the scientific community and the spontaneous Combustion arose until proof of the opposite to the field of the Paranormal.

Description

One speaks about spontaneous combustion when an human being burns “interior” without no apparent external element being in question; the environment remains intact little or touched, whereas the body can finish in ashes. The belief in the possibility of such a phenomenon rests on two kinds of not very frequent incidents:

Testimonys of people claiming to have seen their own eyes a person taking fire without explainable reason: the phenomenon is typically described like very fast, the person reached pretense to enter in fright, but the body is not systematically tiny room in ashes. Two recent cases (the Fifties and the Eighties) concerning two young girls “having taken fire” respectively in a ballroom and a discotheque did not make disappear the bodies. The first victim would have died of its burns at the hospital and the second would have survived by keeping some traces. The oldest testimonys seem to go back to the 16th century, where a certain knight Polonus Vorstius would have taken fire in Milan under the reign of the duchess Bona Sforza; at the same period, one finds the deposition near the academic Senate of Copenhagen of the case of a person died after having spit of the flames. These testimonys are not easily verifiable; in the rare recent cases, the sources do not quote the real names of the victims nor of the witnesses, or do not quote any name.
the discovery, apart from circumstances of fire, corpses entirely or partially reduced in ashes, fact which was regarded a long time as unexplainable. Indeed, the fires generally produce calcined skins but not entirely consumed, and the Os require, to be entirely destroyed, a temperature of 1650 degrees Celsius constant during a certain time. The incineration of the skins in the modern furnaces shows that there remain always some fragments of bone, thereafter reduced out of powder to be mixed with ashes. Moreover, it often happens that the only central part of the body is destroyed, the ends remaining intact. Moreover, the person is sometimes found in a natural position, laid down in her bed or sat on an armchair, giving the impression of an instantaneous disappearance. These cases, noted in the past, like that of the countess Cornelia di Bandi of Cesena, discovered in 1731 reduced in ashes in its room, except its legs (sheathed of bottom) and of part of its head, are also known at the time modern police services. Recently “the effect of wick” was proposed like explanation (see low Point of view of skeptic ).

Various assumptions

In the known cases, it was revealed that the victims of spontaneous combustion were often elderly and alone, or moreover suicidal young graduates. Many were alcoholic. According to some, their health condition largely weakened, added to psychological factors (depression, Loneliness), like another factor discovered by physicists, is an important intensity of the Magnetic field, could be the cause of the phenomenon. According to them, there would exist a Corrélation between the cases of spontaneous combustion and the peaks of the Terrestrial magnetic field.

Many attempts at explanation of physiological upheavals were proposed, but nothing exceeded the stage of the assumption. One of the largest specialists, called a John Heymer, ex-investigator of police force, would explain the phenomenon by a reaction between the Hydrogène on the level of the cells.

Some lean even on the assumption of the Mitochondrie S, part of the human cell being used to transform the nutrients of food into energy. A failure in the energy conversion could result in an mini-explosion from mitochondrion in question, which would involve by the fact even a chain reaction. While bursting because of one malfonctionnement, the failing mitochondrion would involve the others in its explosion and, by the very narrow proximity of the human cells, the flashover of all the body, and only the body, since an human cell is microscopic. Indeed, the series of explosions would not reach surrounding fabrics or materials and could just as easily cease itself before reaching the ends of the body.

An eccentric explanation appears in an episode of the series South Park: spontaneous combustion would have with a methane overflow in the human body. Thus, the best means of avoiding a combustion would be to expel methane regularly… It goes without saying that this explanation is only one joke invented for the needs for the series. In any event, with the relay of other series as X-files it proves an interest of the media for the phenomenon.

Skeptic point of view of

For the rationalists, there is no mystery in the discovery of bodies entirely or partially reduced in ashes, which are generally presented like “unexplainable”, therefore proof of the existence of spontaneous human combustion, because this reduction in ashes does not occur at the victims of fire, nor after the passage on one to rough-hew funerary or in a crematorium; there remains a calcined skin, or at least of the fragments of bone. However, of the experiments, of which one filmed and presented in documentary of the chain Discovery Channel, showed that the reduction in ashes is the result of slow combustion by effect of wick of the grease of a corpse vêtu, after flashover using one accelerating (minor amount of highly flammable product like alcohol) or of an intense source of heat. The “corpse” of the filmed experiment was a carcass of pig, whose distribution lubricates some approaches that of human.

The experiment was suggested by a crime committed in the south of France, in which the corpse of an old woman had been found almost entirely tiny room in ashes. The culprits having been stopped, the circumstances of the firing are well documented: after having killed the victim at the time of an attempted burglary, they had poured on the collar of its clothing the contents of a bottle of perfume which was in the vicinity, then put fire at the liquid before fleeing. Their intention was to set fire to the places to erase any trace of their effraction; but the corpse had been consumed slowly inside the closed part without fire being communicated to the whole of the room. The carcass of pig was placed in an environment reproducing that of the victim (carpet, pieces of furniture and television) to give an account of the traces (blackening, deformation.) observed on the spot of the crime near the body.

Accelerating produced a sufficient heat initially to initiate a combustion of grease but, being in small quantity, it is quickly exhausted and does not cause a fire. It is the grease of the corpse which takes over; this combustion, accompanied by very short flames, is propagated along the body by clothing, which plays the part of the wick of a candle. The process, very long (several hours), requires a sufficient quantity of grease, this is why it touches in priority the central part of the body and can leave part of the intact ends. Apart from the crimes where the firing is carried out voluntarily by the criminal, an accidental firing near a source of heat, a such cigarette or the hearth of a chimney, is possible after the natural death of the victim or when this one is in the incapacity to react, such as for example at the time of an ethyl coma.

Known cases

Very little case was listed until today:

Countess Cornelia Bandi: The first known case of the history takes place in Italy, close to Vérone, in 1731. After having regained her room after a dinner, the 62 years old countess is found in ashes (except arm and legs) in her room filled with soot.
Old woman of Caen: In 1782, an old woman is found in ashes.
Patrick Rooney: In Christmas 1885, a married man is found calcined in its kitchen.
In 1938, an young girl takes fire and dies in a ballroom to Chelmsford in England.
George Turner: In 1958, in England, a man is consumed in his truck.
John Irving Bentley: doctor de Couderport, Pennsylvania was found in December 1966 of ashes, causing a hole in the floor of his bathroom.
Ginette Kazmierczak : A mother alone, in the Lorraine borough of Uruffe in 1977, is found carbonized in her room. Only its arms and its legs are intact.
In 1980, an English young person burns in a discotheque with Darlington.
Mary Reese : In Florida, a woman is found in ashes in her apartment. The experts evaluated that a temperature of 2500 degrees Celsius throughout one 3 hour was necessary to such a combustion. Experts in Pyromania, pathologists and agents of FBI did not find an explanation.
Bailey: With London, in England, a fireman finds a homeless person named Bailey, burning on the level of the Abdomen.

References

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