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.
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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. What Is Spontaneous Human Combustion? Spontaneous combustion occurs when an object bursts into flames from a chemical reaction within. The Theories " ". Many of the so-called victims of spontaneous human combustion were known smokers who probably died by falling asleep with a lit cigarette, cigar or pipe.
Spontaneous Combustion. Tales of Spontaneous Combustion " ". Stories of spontaneous human combustion abound. But is it really possible? Sources BBC News. 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. Unless SHC were a genuine factor, it seems impossible that furniture would not burn as well. Proposed causes of the supposed phenomenon include bacteria, static electricity, obesity, stress and—most consistently—excessive consumption of alcohol, but none have been substantiated by science so far.
One recent hypothesis comes from British biologist Brian J. Ford, who in August described his experiments with combustion in the magazine New Scientist. Unlike others, Baker lived to tell the tale. Most scientists dismiss the idea that humans can catch fire for no reason.
Many cases involved victims who were alone and close to a flame, such as a cigarette or candle. Often, the victims have been elderly or intoxicated, and thus unable to put out the flames. In order for anything to combust, three things are required: very high heat, a source of fuel and an oxidizing agent, which is generally the oxygen in the air.
The human body is largely composed of water, making it very difficult to burn. Some have suggested the fat in a human body could act as a fuel source, and the victim's hair or clothing might act like a candle wick — known as the wick effect. The inquest never sorted it out, but I know what I saw. Dr John Irving Bentley's death was among the cases of SHC which captured the imagination of newspaper editors and readers alike in the s, with an image purporting to show his charred remains now a symbol for the theory.
The lower leg and slippered-foot of the year-old retired physician were discovered next to the toilet in his Pennsylvania home, surrounded by a pile of ash beneath a walking frame. In a highly dramatic tale which mirrors claims of blue flames and SHC, but diverts from the recurring theme of victims dying in their living rooms, Maybelle Andrews was reportedly taken over by a flame in To test the theory , Mr Ford marinated abdominal tissue from pigs in acetone - a highly flammable substance which the body produces in reaction to alcoholism, fat-free dieting and diabetes — and set it alight.
He told the Cambridge News at the time: "This was used to make scale models of humans, which we clothed and set alight. They burned to ash within half an hour.
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