Spontaneous human combustion (any recent cases?)

As a child i was always terrified of the stories of spontaneous human combustion, whereby an apparantly healthy human being bursts into flames, hot enough to consume them (bones and all), yet strangely leaving other items unmarred by the flames.

In some cases the floor and furniture have been burned, yet plastic objects in the room only slightly melted (now consider how hot a source of flame must be to consume a body into ash), yet only causing minor damage to the surrounding room, how is this possible?

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Now my question i wish to present to this community is:

Have any cases of SHC occured as of late?

I know in the 50's, 60's and 70's there were a few cases of this unexplained phenomena, but i've heard nothing in recent years.

Did anyone figure out the cause? Was it hysteria / hoax?

Thanks in advance.


[edit on 22-1-2009 by mr-lizard]

Well I have read cases from the 80's and 90's, but that is as late as I can remember for the moment. I am "sure" there are several later cases aswell, though.

I just read an article yesterday about a man with 3rd degree burns to his face, and 2nd degree burns to his body. When rescuers got into his apartment the only heat source they found was a candle in the bathroom or bedroom. He was in another room in the apartment. I don't remember where and don't have the article handy right now though.

Well, this guess of mine is probably impossible.

I've noticed some long-term alcoholics stink all the time of old alcohol, even after bathing, as though their tissues are permeated with the stuff. The muscles of these people tend to feel like gnarled wood instead of squeezable flesh.

I wonder if the water content of fat cells can eventually be replaced with alcohol. Our bodies undergo reactions all the time that produce heat. Perhaps, in some unlucky alcoholics, this reaction goes wild and their fat cells ignite.

I'd be interested to know if there's any indication whether people who have died this way were heavy drinkers.

Of course it could be murder with something like white phosphorus.
There are many ancient stories of murdering by giving a garment which will burst into flames on contact with moisture.

No; it's not a hoax. It appears that in some cases, an accelerant spilled on the body and then ignited will turn the body itself into a candle. The fat stores initially liquify and wick into the flame, burning the body to ash. This process can take many hours. There are several cases that do not fit that mold tho.

In the 1970's, a lady was walking acrosss a freshly plowed field on a farm in NW Florida. Her daughter was gone for less than 45 minutes. When the daughter returned, the mother's body was more or vaporized where she stood in the garden. No accelerants present.

Perhaps some lunatic with access to military satellite technology fried her. Who knows.

I believe the reason you don't hear about SHC is that they've perfected the art of torture.

SHC was a side-effect of Directed Energy Weapons(DEWs), until they fine tuned it and released a working version in the form of a micowave....

I wish I could point you to one thing that would show why I believe this but unfortunately it was not one thing but many many things. I've read so much in the last year that I'm unable to find all the info leading to certain ways of thinking. I know that many have been removed intentionally because of the content.


Here is one link that may answer some...


Maybe someone else can provide more on the link between DEWs and SHC.

Rgds
S&F

reply to post by AllTiedTogether


Judging by the age of some of these cases,i highly doubt that some high tech weapon was responsible.

www.paranormaldatabase.com...

reply to post by scobro


I agree that there are SOME that may not fit this... but then are they talking about the same thing?

Here a scenario...
Aspartame disease.. also known as Multiple Sclerosis(Lupus, FibraMyalgia). The MS societies will say that MS was seen in people as early as 1868. But how can they say that when it takes numerous MRIs and other tests to be done before it can be diagnosed?

I have had approx 40 symptoms of MS in the past 6yrs. I've had an MRI which showed "something". The second MRI showed nothing.. They will not diagnose me as having MS even though the neurologist says it's just a matter of time before theirs an indication...

So how can they be so easy to say that MS was first seen in 1868 when I have so many symptoms and am living and can't be recognized as having it. Well when the poison aspartame came out they looked for prior history of these symptoms and made a link. You can do it for just about any disease...


So, are we sure those were SHC? They have some characteristics. Most of the stories I remember were of most people being vaporized leaving little behind but shoes and maybe a scorch mark on the ceiling.

I'm not saying that the human body can't overheat and combust. I'm saying that between the 50-70s alot of people SHCd. How many people died in fires that were caused by SHC and they didn't find the link? Now it's pretty much stopped. Like I said they perfected it in the 70s and that's when the m/w oven came out.


But this is all a bunch of coincidence isn't it???

I can speak personally of DEWs. I am currently being targetted and suffer the daily ringing in the ears as well as many other symptoms.

*added** I also believe that SHCs has decreased because they have some of their group check on the targeted individual and ensure that the levels are not too high.. I have signals being directed at me that are between 1-3ghz and usually about 20db above the noise floor.. Occurs all day long and I'm not targeted when I leave, hence no ringing ears.

Rgds





[edit on 22-1-2009 by AllTiedTogether]

One possible explanation for spontaneous human combustion is the "wick" theory:

A candle is composed of a wick on the inside surrounded by a wax made of flammable fatty acids. The wax ignites the wick and keeps it burning. In the human body, the body fat acts as the flammable substance, and the victim's clothing or hair acts as the wick. As the fat melts from the heat, it soaks into the clothing and acts as a wax-like substance to keep the wick burning slowly. Scientists say this is why victims' bodies are destroyed yet their surroundings are barely burned.
And what about the images of a burned body with feet or hands left intact? The answer to that question may have something to do with the temperature gradient -- the idea that the top of a seated person is hotter than the bottom. This is basically the same phenomenon that occurs when you hold a match with the flame at the bottom. The flame will often go out without provocation because the bottom of the match is cooler than the top.

Finally, how does science account for the greasy stains left on walls and ceilings after a "spontaneous combustion"? They could simply be the residue that was produced when the victims' fatty tissue burned.

No one has ever conclusively proven or disproven the truth of spontaneous human combustion, but most scientists say that there are more likely explanations for the charred remains. Many of the so-called victims of spontaneous human combustion were smokers who were later discovered to have died by falling asleep with a lit cigarette, cigar or pipe. A number of them were believed to have been under the influence of alcohol or to have suffered from a movement-restricting disease that prevented them from moving quickly enough to escape the fire. Another possibility is that some of the fires and strange states of the victims' bodies were the result of a criminal act and subsequent cover-up.

science.howstuffworks.com...

Only problem with the "official" explanation of such cases, are that in some of them, the victim have been completely consumed and turned to ashes within a matter of mere minutes.

reply to post by Nightchild


I have not been able to find any documented cases where the victim turned to ashes in minutes. In the cases I have read about, the victim was alone for a long periode of time, and was later found dead, with parts of the body (often hands or feet) intact.

Source

To my knowledge, no scientific book or article written by a chemist, physicist, biologist, or forensic pathologist has ever reported bodies suddenly igniting through some internal but unknown mechanism. Nevertheless, for the forensic biologist it is worth thinking about the possible evidence that may be found in photographs taken at scenes of alleged SHC. For this reason, I will focus on the evidence that may be gained from a detailed examination of photographs of unusual death by burning found in the forensic and medical

It's a debunking page but does have some good information.