Can i spontaneously combust

The only damage was to the body, which was totally burnt, the ceiling above him and the floor underneath him. Dr McLoughlin said he had consulted medical textbooks and carried out other research in an attempt to find an explanation.

He said Professor Bernard Knight, in his book on forensic pathology, had written about spontaneous combustion and noted that such reported cases were almost always near an open fireplace or chimney. Retired professor of pathology Mike Green said he had examined one suspected case in his career. He said he would not use the term spontaneous combustion, as there had to be some source of ignition, possibly a lit match or cigarette.

He said the circumstances in the Galway case were very similar to other possible cases. Mr Green said he doubted explanations centred on divine intervention. Most scientists say there are more likely explanations for what happened to those who died in the cases we've discussed. Many so-called victims of SHC were smokers who probably died by falling asleep with a lit cigarette, cigar or pipe. Several them were believed to have been under the influence of alcohol — or suffered from a movement-restricting disorder that prevented them from moving quickly enough to escape the fire [source: Benecke].

The validity of spontaneous human combustion is viewed with skepticism by the scientific community. But some objects have been scientifically proven to burst into flames without an outside heat source.

One example is a pile of oily rags stored together in an open container such as a bucket. As oxygen from the air hits the rags, it can slowly raise their internal temperature high enough to ignite the flammable oil. Wet piles of hay or straw have also been known to spontaneously combust. When they decompose, microbes and bacteria living inside them can generate enough heat to kindle a spark [source: Fransen and Zaugg ].

In , a year-old widow named Mary Reeser was at home in St. Petersburg, Florida. On the morning of July 2, her landlady discovered that Reeser's front door handle was hot. When the landlady broke into the apartment with the help of two workmen, they found a slipper-clad foot and what looked like a charred, shrunken skull.

No other body parts were present. Those gruesome remains sat in a puddle of grease on the floor where Reeser's easy chair used to be. The rest of her apartment bore very little evidence of fire. Paranormal enthusiasts see Reeser's death as a classic example of spontaneous human combustion.

Skeptics point out that the woman was a confirmed smoker who'd taken at least two sleeping tablets that day. Maybe a dropped cigarette — and not SHC — was what sealed her doom [source: Kelly ]. In , a mentally handicapped woman named Jean Lucille "Jeannie" Saffin was sitting with her elderly father at their home in Edmonton, in northern London. To her parent's horror, Jeannie's upper body suddenly became enveloped in flames.

The stove appeared to be unlit and no smoke or fire damage could be found anywhere else in the room. Even the wooden chair that she was sitting on at the time was spared. Saffin and his son-in-law, Donald Carroll, managed to put out the blaze, but after a brief hospital stay, Jeannie died of third-degree burns. Did she combust without warning? Believers think so, but some forensics analysts wonder if an ember from her father's pipe ignited poor Jeannie's clothing [source: Nickell ].

In , year-old Michael Faherty of Galway, Ireland was found dead on his living room floor. His body was thoroughly crisped, with his head lying beside his open fireplace. The ceiling space immediately above his body showed burn marks, and so did the floor beneath it. Yet nothing else in Faherty's home was torched. News of his tragic death probably wouldn't have spread beyond the local obituaries if coroner Ciaran McLoughlin didn't point to SHC as its cause.

To find out more about spontaneous human combustion and related topics, check out the links that follow. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. Science Vs. Unexplained Phenomena. How Spontaneous Human Combustion Works.

Can a person actually catch fire with no apparent source of spark or flame, and then burn so completely nothing else around them ignites? The Theories Tales of Spontaneous Combustion. For several centuries, people have debated whether human beings can spontaneously combust, or burst into flames without being ignited by an external source.

More recently, cases of SHC have been suspected when police and fire department officials have found burned corpses with unscathed furniture around them. For instance, an Irish coroner ruled that spontaneous combustion caused the death of year-old Michael Faherty, whose badly burned body was discovered near a fireplace in a room with virtually no fire damage.

Because the human body is composed mostly of water and its only highly flammable properties are fat tissue and methane gas, the possibility of SHC being an actual phenomenon seems remote. Many scientists dismiss the theory, arguing that an undetected flame source such as a match or cigarette is the real culprit in suspected cases.

Typically, deceased victims are found close to a fire source, and evidence suggests that many of them accidentally set themselves on fire while smoking or trying to light a flame. On the other hand, believers point to the fact that the human body has to reach a temperature of roughly 3, degrees in order to be reduced to ashes.