Spontaneous Human Combustion

1853 Dickens Novel

It was December 1966, when the body of 92-year-old Dr. J. Irving Bentley was discovered in his Pennsylvania (USA) home’s bath room by a meter reader. Well, technically, only a small part of Dr. Bentley’s leg and slipperier foot were actually found. The remainder of his body had been burned to ashes. A dark charred hole in the bathroom floor was the only evidence of the fire that had consumed him; the rest of the house remained perfectly intact or un-harmed.

Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is an event or case of the burning of a living human body without an apparent external source of ignition. There have been about 200 cited cases worldwide during the past 300 years or so.

The hundreds of apparent spontaneous human combustion accounts are very much like the one described above or have followed a similar pattern: The victim is almost entirely consumed, frequently inside his or her home. Coroners at the scene have sometimes described a sweet, smoky smell at the scene of the incident.

Not all spontaneous human combustion victims necessarily burst into flames. Occasionally victims develop strange burns on their body which have no obvious source, or a few emit smoke from their body without the presents of fire or other external forms of heat. In such instances it is not uncommon, though it’s ever so small, for the victim to survive such an event.

A few world wide cases including the *Bentley case described above are listed below:

·                    Polonus Vorstius (Italy, in 1470)

·                    Nicole Millet (France, in 1725)

·                    Cornelia di Bandi (Italy, in 1731)

·                    Phyllis Newcombe (United Kingdom, in 1938)

·                    Mary Reeser (United States, in 1951)

·                    Anna Martin (United States, in 1957)

·                    Helen Conway (United States, in 1964)

·                    John Irving Bentley (United States, in 1966) *

·                    Robert Francis Bailey (United Kingdom, in 1967)

·                    Ginette Kazmierczak (France, in 1977)

·                    Henry Thomas (Wales, in 1980)

·                    Jeannie Saffin (England, in 1982)

·                    George I. Mott (United States, in 1986)

·                    Michael Faherty (Ireland, in 2010)

·                    Elizabeth McLaughlin (Ireland, in 2011)

To date, no one has offered scientific proof or a reason that explains spontaneous human combustion. Theories and speculation however, abounds as to the actual causes but two of the most common and more recent theories suggests that the fire begins as a result of a buildup of static electricity inside the body or from an external geomagnetic force exerted on the body; which is scarcely better than the theory most commonly offered during the 1800’s, which was said to be a the high intake of alcohol.    

A self-proclaimed expert on spontaneous human combustion, Larry Arnold, has perhaps placed himself “out on the preverbal limb” by suggested that the phenomenon is the work of a new subatomic particle; he called it a “pyroton”, which he says interacts with human cells to create a mini-explosion. But to date there is no practical scientific evidence which proves the existence of such a particle.

Perhaps the best-known case of spontaneous human combustion is actually fictional: it occurred in Charles Dickens’ 1853 novel “Bleak House” wherein a drunken character explodes into fire. The phenomenon has also appeared in movies and on sci-fi TV shows such as “The X-Files.”  In fact the concept was plentiful throughout 19th Century literature. It made appearances in books and stories from  major writers other than Dickens, including Melville, and  America’s  humorist, Mark Twain.

Sources ...                                                                                                                       http://www.zimbio.com/Spontaneous+Human+Combustion/articles/x_f0AmwMU38/Spontaneous+Human+Combustion+Literature+Mark                                                      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleak_House                                                              http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/unexplained-phenomena/shc.htm                     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_human_combustion                                       http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/26/7976119-irishman-died-of-spontaneous-human-combustion-coroner-claims

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