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Spontaneous Combustion: Spontaneous Human Combustion
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Spontaneous human combustion is included in the chapter on ghosts and hauntings because for centuries certain scientists and psychical researchers have suggested that the phenomena may be due to some kind of internalized psychokinetic facet of the human mind. Poltergeists have been known to cause spontaneous outbreaks of fires, and mysterious fires and lights have been part of the repertoire of a haunted house since humans first began to keep records of such phenomena. Then, too, there are those theorists who place the blame for SHC directly on vengeful spirits or malicious entities from other dimensions of reality. Whatever the true cause of SHC, such accounts have haunted men and women for centuries... the mystery is placed in this chapter.
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Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) refers to the belief that the human body sometimes burns without an external source of ignition. There is much speculation and controversy regarding SHC, for it is not a proven natural phenomenon. Many theories and hypotheses have attempted to explain how SHC might occur, but those which rely on current scientific understanding say that instances mistaken for [S]pontaneous combustion actually required a source of ignition. One such hypothesis is the "wick effect", in which the clothing of the victim soaks up melted human fat and acts like the wick of a candle. Another possibility is that the clothing is caused to burn by a discharge of static electricity. The likelihood that truly spontaneous human combustion actually takes place is remote, due to the presence of water and the lack of highly flammable compounds and oxygen in the human body.[1]
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Spontaneous Human Combustion has probably been thought to exist because of the fact that bodies have been found where the torso has burned away completely, yet extremities, arms and legs, are left behind unburned. There's often no obvious source of ignition and as surrounding furniture etc. is often undamaged, this can create the illusion that the body had burned from the inside out. This can lead those who are unaccustomed to investigating fire deaths jumping to false conclusions simply because they do not understand the dynamics of the phenomenon.
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The strange phenomenon of ball lightning has been used by many scientists in an attempt to explain the even stranger mystery of spontaneous human combustion, but it is as difficult to isolate in laboratories for study as SHC. In 1960, Louise Matthews of South Philadelphia survived an eerie experience that might substantiate the theory of ball lightning as a factor in at least some of the mysterious cremations that have taken place throughout the world and throughout all recorded time. Matthews claimed that she was lying on her living room sofa when she glanced up to see a large red ball of fire come through both the closed window and the venetian blinds without harming either. At first Matthews thought that an atomic bomb had fallen, and she buried her face in the sofa. But the ball of fire passed through the living room, into the dining room, and drifted out through a closed dining room window. Matthews said that it made a sizzling noise as it floated through her house.
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Many contend that Spontaneous Human Combustion is first documented in such early texts as the Bible, but, scientifically speaking, these accounts are too old and secondhand to be seen as reliable evidence. The first reliable historic evidence of SHC appears to be from the year 1763, when Frenchman Jonas Dupont published a collection of SHC cases and studies entitled De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis. Dupont was inspired to write this book after encountering records of the Nicole Millet case, in which a man was acquitted of the murder of his wife when the court was convinced that she had been killed by spontaneous combustion. Dupont's book on this strange subject brought it out of the realm of folkloric rumor and into the popular public imagination.
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[A]lthough Beach's theory may well account for many inexplicable fires, it does not account for all supposed cases of spontaneous human combustion. Many of the alleged victims of SHC are recorded as bursting in flames from "within". Electrical engineers have pointed out that no known discharge could possibly have such an effect. Also, many of the accounts state that the victim's body was almost entirely consumed by fire, yet their surrounding were completely undamaged by the flames that engulfed them, which is in flat contradiction of natural law. It must be noted... that alleged SHC cases tend to be exaggerated along the lines of urban legends, and that thus "little" damage to a body's surroundings (such as is found when a human body burns due to the wick effect; described above) may become "no" damage in retellings of the case; the reliable first-hand accounts are far less unequivocal about whether the victim's immediate surroundings showed marks of fire or not. See for example the case of Mary Reeser, where objects near the body, while not lit afire, nonetheless showed considerable damage due to great heat.
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Spontaneous Human Combustion