Did you know about the Spontaneous human combustion?

Did you know about the Spontaneous human combustion?

There is a common courtesy warning offered by the author that if you’re a simple-tin, soft-heart person, and do not enjoy reading the bizarre and weird phenomena of life, please do not read this story…and if you’re brave enough..go ahead

Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is the burning of a person’s body without an apparent external source of ignition. In other words, the human body automatically catches fire and burns into ashes. In our culture, such events are mostly associated with magic
spells and act of ghosts (Jins). Likewise, in other parts of the world there is much speculation and controversy over the SHC but there have been some 200 cited cases
worldwide over a period of around 300 years.

However, it is a factual thing as one case was report where the person actually survived. In 1944, Peter Jones reported that there was no sensation of heat or sighting of flames but he saw smoke emitting from his body. He was lucky to survive but there were
other reported cases where people lost their lives. Let’s take a look at the following reports:

In 1951, the Mary Reeser case recaptured the public interest in Spontaneous Human Combustion. Mrs. Reeser, 67, was found in her apartment on the morning of July 2, 1951, reduced to a pile of ashes, a skull, and a completely undamaged left foot. This event
has become the foundation for many a book on the subject of SHC since, the most notable being Michael Harrison’s
Fire From Heaven, printed in 1976. Fire From Heaven has become the standard reference work on Spontaneous Human Combustion.

On December 5, 1966, the ashes of Dr. J. Irving Bentley, 92, of Coudersport, Pennsylvania, were discovered by a meter reader. Dr. Bentley’s body apparently ignited while he was in the bathroom. His whole body burned, while only a portion of one leg remaining
intact. Nearby paint was unscorched.

On May 18, 1957, Anna Martin, 68, of West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was found incinerated, leaving only her shoes and a portion of her upper body. The medical examiner estimated that temperatures must have reached 1,700 to 2,000 degrees, yet newspapers
two feet away were found unaffected.

July 1, 1951 — Perhaps the most famous case occurred in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mary Hardy Reeser, a 67-year-old widow, spontaneously combusted while sitting in her easy chair. The next morning, her next door neighbor tried the doorknob, found it hot to
the touch and went for help. She returned to find Mrs. Reeser, or what was left of her, in a blackened circle four feet in diameter. All that remained of the 175-pound woman and her chair was a few blackened seat springs, a section of her backbone, a shrunken
skull the size of a baseball, and one foot encased in a black stain slipper just beyond the four-foot circle. Plus about 10 pounds of ashes. The police report declared that Mrs. Reeser went up in smoke when her highly flammable rayon-acetate nightgown caught
fire, perhaps because of a dropped cigarette. But one medical examiner stated that the 3,000-degree heat required to destroy the body should have destroyed the apartment as well. In fact, damage was minimal – the ceiling and upper walls were covered with soot.
No chemical accelerants, incidentally, were found.

 It is not a proven natural occurrence, but many theories have attempted to explain SHC’s existence and how it may occur. The two most common explanations offered to account for apparent SHC are the non-spontaneous "wick effect" fire, and the rare discharge
called static flash fires. Although mathematically it can be shown that the human body contains enough energy stored in the form of fat and other tissues to consume it completely, in normal circumstances bodies will not sustain a flame on their own.

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Posted by Irfan Khokhar on Jan 13 2012. Filed under Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry